Chapter Text
▾▾▾ I - PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT▾▾▾
Flirting was a science.
And, like any science, flirting was something that Susie inherently did not understand. She tried, at certain points in her life and to varying degrees of failure, to make sense of whatever the hell this unpredictable, back-asswards social phenomenon was. She took mental notes, turned herself into something of a field psychologist—not that it paid off.
Up until she met Kris, this is what Susie knew about the mechanics of flirting:
- SAY COOL AND INTERESTING THINGS
Wooing crushes was possible by appealing to their interests. The hot sports girl who sat in front of Susie at her previous school played basketball, so, for instance, Susie would say stuff like: “did you know I can put four of those things in my mouth,” or “I’d play, too, but I’m so awesomely tall that I’d dunk my own head through the hoop.” -
EYE CONTACT
She figured it was best to maintain it constantly. The more eye contact you made, and the wider you peeled your eyes, the more interested the recipient could see you were. Blinking was entirely off limits—easy for somebody like her, who had a nictitating membrane. -
SALACIOUS BODY LANGUAGE
She had to draw the damn line somewhere. Maybe her unwillingness to commit is what tanked her chances.
Her findings ended up not mattering in the end. Susie moved towns, and her desire for romantic pursuits didn’t move with her. After learning about the supposed certainty of a prophecy leading her and the only couple friends she’d ever made towards absolute doom, flirting was—similar to her first few months in Hometown—nowhere near the forefront of her mind.
The topic crept up, anyway. But not while she was walking away from Kris’ place on Sunday, the overcast sky spilling leftovers from the earlier storm down in a light drizzle.
It crept up later. Though not much later.
Rain funneled between her scales in shallow streams. Returning to her apartment wasn’t really an option at this hour unless she wanted to camp on the stoop and get wetter or pick the lock and get yelled at for the next several hours. Too damn cold to deal with the first, and too damn tired to deal with the second. Alleyway it was.
Maybe she could stack trash cans on top of each other as temporary lodging. Maybe somebody decided to spoil her and left a medium-to-large cardboard box sitting in the corner.
The back of her neck prickled as she rounded the intersection by the convenience store. A disturbance stirred in the air. Listening closely beyond the hissing drizzle, slowing her gait, behind her there tapped soft, hollow footsteps, moving to cadence with her own.
With all that had happened that day, Susie wasn’t taking any chances. She halted in the middle of the street and patted her pockets down. There was an appropriately sharp object in her trench coat that she’d forgotten about.
“Back off,” she yelled over her shoulder. “I’ve got a great stabbing knife.” She flourished the weapon in question.
“Can I have it back?” a voice droned.
“Kris?”
They were standing halfway down the block with their phone screen lighting the path in front of them. The umbrella in their other hand raised in greeting.
“Dude, I coulda shivved you to death. Announce your goddamn self.”
Susie lumbered over and ruffled their messy hair messier, transitioning into a headlock that they swayed under a little too easily. She straightened them upright with her free arm.
“You sick or what?”
They shrugged. “Tired. S’loud at home.” Something about their voice registered off-kilter. It sounded viscous, muddled.
“... Yeah, I figured. Know anywhere better?” she asked. “I was gonna go see if there’s any leftover alley-milk. But, uh, to be honest, I don’t really want to be anywhere near—” home? “—there, right now.”
Kris cranked the handle of the umbrella and drew the canopy a notch or two wider. Susie had to duck underneath to fit. “Felt,” they said. “Sit with me.”
“What, on the ground?” They veered down the street leading towards their house. “Wait up. Damn.”
“At the bad kids’ table.”
She thought they were fucking around, being vague and metaphorical, but they brought her straight to the benches on the lake path. With wet leaves squelching underfoot as they neared, the tap-tapping on the umbrella thinned out until the rain subsided to the rhythm of a leaky faucet drip, then to nothing at all.
“Nice and damp,” Susie said. The metal benches were soaked. “You think this far ahead?”
Kris removed their rain coat and tossed it over the nearest seat. They patted it. Looked between the coat and Susie.
“Dorks first,” she said.
Kris stared in dissent.
“Guess we both gotta sit, then.”
Susie took up most of the jacket’s surface area, but after Kris swung their legs across hers, they fit fine.
The features of each other’s faces, of the world around them, were shrouded in indistinct shadow; the moon shone feeble, useless rays which struggled to reach past the assembly of lakeside trees from its house inside the clouds.
When Susie looked out into the dark for long enough, she was sure she could see it clotting together into one massive, smoking pillar.
Kris unlocked their phone and placed it on the table face-up, allowing the light to glow outward. “Flashlight eats my battery,” they murmured. “What’re you thinking?”
She crossed her arms on the benchtop. Thin puddles of water soaked through the sleeves of her jacket. “Y’know, I was gonna…” she said, “I was gonna talk about what happened. The Prophecy, Undyne. Everything.” The longer she spoke, the more the forest seemed to press around her on all sides. “Not… tonight.”
Kris hummed. “Talk about something else?”
“Yeah.”
They considered their next words carefully. She could tell by the delicate shit-eating grin worming across their face. “You mack on Noelle?”
They were doing this right now? “The hell? No!” Susie sputtered.
Kris’ grin persisted.
“I mean, look. Have you ever, uh. Been asked out before?”
“No.”
“Guess I'm shit outta luck. You think Ralsei—” She didn't bother finishing. Poor guy had talked to his first ever real life person three days ago. Dating experience was out of the question. “Forget it.”
“She ask you out?”
“To the festival,” Susie said. “Stupid for me to worry about stuff like that at a time like this, but. It, uh… I mean, it sounded like it’s supposed to be a date. Kinda out of left field, right?”
“Better go.”
“Duh,” said Susie. “And, hey, you're still invited, so… come.”
Kris twitched. “Invited to your date?”
“It can be a hangout-date!” Susie punched them. “Doesn’t always gotta be one or the other. Jeez.”
They seemed pleased. “Sure.”
“Just, you know. You may need to bounce if we, uh…” Oh, no.
Susie stood up, gripping the table. Wood splintered beneath her claws. She nearly toppled Kris into the mud as their legs plummeted from her lap, but they saved themself by jamming the tips of their fingers through the rows of holes in the bench seats.
“Shit, Kris. What if she tries to kiss me?”
“You do it back.”
“Easy to say when you don't got a mouth full of knives,” said Susie, baring her teeth. “Speaking of which.” She dug into her pocket and handed Kris their weapon of choice.
They laid it on the table: the knife, and their proposition. “We could practice,” Kris said.
Huh?
She must have imagined them saying that. But no—they were waiting for an answer, twirling their knife in circles blade-first where it sat on the table, finger guiding it like a needle on vinyl.
For a moment, she forgot about everything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Susie belly laughed. “What, never been asked out but you flirted hard enough to score anyway? Gonna show me what you know?”
“Sure,” Kris said with a shrug. “Yeah.”
No way they were serious. “Dude, really?” Susie pressed. “Are you crazy?”
Kris mustered up the courtesy to look embarrassed. “Been told,” they said. “Nevermind.”
Well, now she felt bad. She’d be lying if the idea didn’t intrigue her—she’d already theoretically entertained it at Noelle’s house, earlier that day.
“Alright,” Susie said. “Look. Is it gonna be, like, weird?”
“Probably. We are.”
“Solid argument,” said Susie. “Almost have me convinced. But.”
Susie crawled out from the bench. It was a struggle—her legs were too wide to squeeze between the seat and bottom of the table comfortably, so she had to shimmy to free herself.
Once she did, she walked around and collapsed at the other end of the bench, across from Kris. Wet seat be damned. “I’m not making out with you ‘less you tell me who you were kissing.”
“Not applicable.”
Susie clasped her claws and leaned across the table, growling for extra measure. She flicked out her forked tongue. She saw a guy do that in an action movie, once. “Makes me think it’s applicable.”
She was sure she looked pretty damn intimidating. Kris, however, contested this assumption. They shook their head.
“C’mon.”
Shook it again.
Maybe bribery was necessary. “I got a three-year-old mint chocolate cough drop in my pocket right now. Already unwrapped.”
“Noelle.”
“C’mon, you can—” Flirting prowess aside, she wasn’t sure she was expecting an answer at all, much less that answer. “That sounds pretty goddamn applicable to me!”
“We only kissed a little. Drop me.”
“The hell do you only kiss a little?!” Susie chucked a hardened sphere of menthol and pocket lint in their direction. Kris stuffed it in their mouth immediately. “Like, side of her mouth instead of full French?”
“Thidn't mea anythin’,” they said. They pushed the cough drop to the side of their mouth, where it bulged against their cheek. “We were just little kids. We were little kid kissing.”
“Don't say it like that, dude.”
“I can help, s'what I'm saying. Since I've done it before, with her.”
Definitely the strangest proposal Susie had received, though she didn't have much to compare to. People typically avoided her like a chemical spill—forget speaking to her long enough to ‘propose’ an ‘idea.’ The last time someone had proposed an idea to her, it had been when Ms. Alphys timidly asked her to consider not chewing the leg off the unused chair in her classroom because it was school property, which was obviously bullshit. Schools weren't people. They couldn't own property. They couldn't own anything.
She thought harder about what Kris was saying. It wasn’t like it didn't make sense. Kissing Kris would be different than kissing a deer monster, but not so different that it'd throw her off when it came time to apply her research. They and Noelle both had lips, didn't they?
“Alright,” said Susie. “Whatever. Let's do it. Not like we have time to waste, Prophecy and all. Might as well make sure I can wow her right out the gates.”
Kris marinated in astonishment.
“Quit looking surprised, idiot. You suggested this, so what's the first step?”
They sucked the cough drop. “G’tn th th’ne,” said Kris.
“First step decided. Spit that shit out, man.”
A half-dissolved wad of syrup rocked out of their mouth with a disgusting ptoo. “Get in the zone.”
“The zone?”
“Immerse.”
“How?”
Kris laid their arms flat across the benchtop and tapped their fingers along the surface. Best not to interrupt their scheming. As they plotted, their face tightened into a grimace.
“How about.” Kris sucked air through their teeth. Whenever they were thinking, their words never trailed off—they jammed like paper in a decrepit library printer. “How about I. Roleplay. As her.”
“Uh, like. Pretend to be her?”
Kris nodded.
“What the hell,” Susie acquiesced. “Guess that could work, since you, uh. Y’know.” She swung her arms out. “Hit me.”
Kris smacked her in the chest.
“Not literally, dumbass! Look, I’ll stay here and get ready to ‘be in the zone’ or whatever. You go over there—” she pointed to the shoreline “—and, like, twirl your hair. Do something Noelle would do.”
Kris did as she asked. Susie collected herself, mopped the sweat off her forehead, and rehearsed her course of action as their footsteps trailed away. This was when her old notes came in handy:
- Say cool shit.
- Eye contact.
- Still not doing the last thing, but maybe if she looked badass enough, that'd suffice.
“Are you ready?” she shouted.
Kris gave a thumbs up. They stood on a flat rock by the shoreline, baggy pants thrashing as a particularly aggressive gust of wind engulfed them.
The sky had brightened a shade since the two of them had arrived, allowing Susie to at least be able to see where she was stepping. She swaggered towards Kris. They twiddled their fingers in a distinctly Noelle-like way, alternating between clasping and tapping.
“Hey, Noelle,” Susie said. “Weird seeing you here at the, uh. Convenience store? Church?” She pinched the bridge between her eyes. “Dude, where are we?”
“Not in the zone,” Kris chastised.
“Then where the hell is the zone?!”
They thought about it. “Hallway. Lockers by Ms. Alphys’ classroom. School’s over. Before the festival.”
“‘Kay,” Susie said. She could work with that. “Are you, like, there for moral support, or—”
“I’m Noelle.”
They both tried again. Susie walked over with a similar level of swagger. Kris met her halfway, this time.
“Noelle,” Susie said.
“Hi, Susie,” Kris said in a subtle, chilling falsetto. They sounded like a haunted doll. “Are you excited to go to the festival with me.”
“Nope. Go back to the freak-ass monotone,” she demanded. “You’re putting me off.”
“Okay,” Kris replied in haunted doll. “Sorry, Susie.”
Susie pointed to the shoreline. Kris whimpered. “Back. Go back.”
Kris dragged their feet to their designated position by gouging long, deep trails into the moistened soil with the tips of their shoes.
Again. Susie approached, Kris pivoted towards her, et cetera.
“You come to the lockers often?” Susie said. “Me too. It’s one of my favorite places to… lock. Stuff.”
“Hi, Susie. That’s super interesting. I have a really long, boring study session with Berdly this afternoon before the festival,” Kris said. “I wish someone would help me feel better about this tragedy, perhaps with some lip to lip contact. What long teeth you have.”
Off to a terrible start, but she could roll with it. “Heh, thanks.” Susie traced the lines between her incisors. “I, uh, grew them, myself?”
Kris nodded—Kris-Kris, not Kris-Noelle. “Good. Girls like self-sufficient women.”
“Don’t break character, asshole.”
They moved on. “Of course a pretty girl like you could grow teeth like that.”
Susie’s face flushed. Whatever. Practice would help her get better at handling verbal assaults, like being told that there were cool and nice things about herself. “How about you ditch the study session with Berdly and come hang out at the, uh.” She clicked her tongue. “Bad kids’... table.”
“I don't know,” Kris considered, rocking their weight back and forth. “I really need to prepare for midterms next week.”
“Can't you, like. Uh.” Not good. Susie was losing her. She propped her elbow on an invisible locker, though not without receiving a frown of bewilderment from Kris. “Study, my lips, or… something.”
“I don't think that would be good for my grades, Susie.”
“Isn’t she supposed to say some shit like ‘your eyes are an ocean?’”
“This isn’t WatsPadd,” Kris said. “Her mom wants her attending an Ivy.”
“Huh? ‘WatsPadd?’”
They froze. “Nothing. Susie, why don't you join me and Berdly's study session.” They paused. “‘Berdly and I.’”
“No way,” Susie scoffed. Suddenly, a light; a revelation. Maybe she was good at this flirting thing, after all. “Hang on, Noelle. I've got an idea.”
She inched closer to Kris. They arched their neck back as she loomed higher and higher above them.
“Mhm,” said Kris. “I mean, what is it, Susie.”
“Why don’t I,” she rumbled, “study with you, instead.”
Susie halted as her boot sank into a particularly deep patch of mud. Kris looked puny, standing toe to toe with her. “Won’t Berdly be sad?”
“Study with him later,” Susie said. “That way, when we're done, we can walk to the festival together.”
“Works,” said Noelle-Kris. “That works.”
“And at the festival,” Susie said, “she’ll probably ask to kiss me or something, right? Do people normally ask?”
Something hard to identify flashed across Kris’ face. They ducked their head and went quiet for a moment. “Depends.”
“How would she?”
“She’d say,” Kris said. “She’d say, ‘Susie, can I kiss you?’”
Susie hesitated. So did Kris. They hovered close enough together for the sleeves of their respective jacket-sweaters to brush.
Neither of them made an attempt to move away.
“Can I?” Susie asked.
“Um,” Kris said. “Noelle says ‘yes.’”
Susie had watched enough television to know, loosely, what kissing was supposed to look like. Mashing of the lips, smashing of the face—the basics. What she hadn't seen was any onscreen action with reptile monsters.
No better time to wing it. Susie cracked open her jaws, tilting her head this way and that, a little left, right, up, down, trying to keep Kris in her line of sight. The corners of their lips wavered in several consecutive attempts to conceal their laughter, the little bastard. She found it, eventually: an angle that sort-of-kind-of worked. As she puckered her lips, they made contact with the strip of skin below Kris’ nose. Teeth scraped across their faint day-old stubble.
Goddamn, it was hard to see with her big ass snout.
“Don't have to stare,” Kris snickered. Under the exertion of their own laughter, they flinched, oddly, but recovered well enough to nudge Susie's nose away with the heel of their palm.
“The hell am I supposed to do, then?!” Susie huffed. “So eye contact is bad, but no eye contact means you’re not interested—at that point, isn't it better to just rip your eyes out?! This is total bullshit.”
Kris reached towards her face until their hands eclipsed her vision. They feathered Susie’s eyelids shut with shaky but gentle fingers. “Do this,” they said. “I'll help.”
Submerged in darkness, Susie felt Kris’ fingers drift from her eyelids to the corners of her jaw. They shepherded her forward. Pulling, pulling. Then, a warm pressure against the seam of her lips, softer than she thought possible.
She let the pressure sit, trying to decide what to do next. Then it receded, a downy tingling spreading in its wake.
“Move your lips,” Kris instructed. “S'what Noelle would say.”
When Kris pressed back in, she tried. Her lips were nowhere near as soft, as malleable, but whatever she was doing seemed to earn their approval. As her own lips parted, she could feel the heat expanding from Kris’ mouth to her own. Curious, she drew back, only to nudge deeper into another kiss and tug a surprised chirp from Kris that pulsed through her mouth. Susie wondered if Noelle would sound the same.
It was a little slimy and awkward, but it was nice. Really nice. Kris grew overzealous, weaving a hand into her hair and opening their mouth wider—
—only to clack their nubby human teeth against her needle-sharp ones.
They recoiled. “Hah,” Kris breathed.
Susie pulled away, too. “Need a second?”
Their face contorted; it became apparent that they weren’t just catching their breath.
“Shit,” said Susie. She grabbed their shoulders. “Dude, you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“No, no.” Kris panted and braced against her. “Home.” Cold sweat smeared onto her scales as their hands fell from her face. “Gotta go home.”
“I’m helping you walk.” Susie wrapped an arm around Kris from beneath their armpits. Hardly convenient, considering their height difference. She’d have to waddle them home. “Nevermind. C’mere, freak.”
She swept under their legs and hauled them into her arms, prompting a croon of confusion—but they sagged in her grasp without a fight, accepting the reality of their situation. Whatever that reality was. As she passed the bench, Susie made sure to grab their raincoat and umbrella, sliding them into Kris’ hands.
The two-block journey back to Kris’ house dragged on and on. Susie’s eyelids drooped as she pushed onward, exhaustion finally setting in. Kris coughed like a sick infant. By the time they made it, the sun was crawling reluctantly over the horizon, probably as overjoyed as they were to be awake.
“Home sweet home.” Kris reacted about as strongly as a corpse would. Susie blew a sharp gust of air at their forehead, and they groaned. “What’s with you?”
“Got this, um.” While it was normal for them to speak without a general sense of rhythm, their words slogged more than usual. “Condition. Human thing. Don't wanna talk about it.”
“If you say so.” Their bedroom window was wide open. “How are you gonna get back–”
“Door is fine,” said Kris. “She’s knocked out. The wine.”
“Wine,” echoed Susie. “Right.”
Susie lowered them to the ground. They stood beside her with a hand clutching her trench coat to gather their bearings.
Disjointedly, they trudged towards the door, knees wobbling like two loose-screwed doorknobs. Susie trailed behind them with a hand supporting their back until she was sure they wouldn’t collapse, all the way up to the entrance, where Kris dropped their coat and umbrella and fumbled a spare key out from underneath the welcome mat.
Kris grabbed the door handle. Paused. “Good job,” they said. “Real hotshot.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yup.” They popped the p. “Deer girls swooning everywhere.”
Warmth bloomed through Susie like melting sugar. It felt something like pride—that had to be it. “Teach me more then, idiot. I’ve gotta learn all the right moves.”
“When I can move,” Kris promised.
Over the next couple weeks of toiling through school and Dark Worlds and unsuccessful attempts at finding bunker codes, they built a jagged, inconsistent training routine that revolved around practicing when they felt like it. Neither of them worried about scheduling. Too much pressure.
Beyond scheduling, the steps in their routine were always the same:
They’d hang out, normal-like. After a couple hours, Susie might bring up some prospective meeting with her not-yet-girlfriend, and from there Kris would nod meditatively, disappear into the bathroom, bedroom, or off-path wooded area to piss, eat moss, perform a ritualistic sacrifice or whatever the hell else they needed to do to “get in character.”
Five to ten minutes later, they’d loop back. Then they'd make out for an hour or two. Kris said two hours was the ‘cutoff point.’
“Cutoff point for what?” Susie cackled. “We’re not baking a pie. There an oven timer on makeouts?”
“Yes,” they said.
Training was paying off big time. With merely one session under her belt, when she kissed Noelle at the festival—that's right, Susie took the lead—she'd gone catatonic with awe, ears quivering and mouth slack.
Of course, training wasn’t all makeouts. These were flirting lessons, after all, and aggressive smooching sessions were only a single component of at least three other existing courting methods Susie knew about.
Kris taught her some good lines to drop: are you in the Cervidae family? Because you’re very deer to me—which seemed to land quite well with Noelle when Susie struggled to sound out the word Cervidae—or are you the Severed Hand? Because I’m Blood Crushing on you. They showed Susie where the most isolated hangout-slash-date spots were in Hometown; an abandoned playground north of their house, a rocky clearing behind the school perfect for delinquency, with their favorite location being this big, climbable, partially uprooted tree a few minutes off-trail in the woods past the police station.
Susie’s favorite non-kissing flirting techniques involved Kris’ “Noelle Protips,” as they referred to them. Little things to keep in mind that would raise Noelle’s affection statistics (“What the hell is an affection statistic?”). The best way to hold her hand, thumb against her palm, or the fact that she liked using chests as headrests, not shoulders, or the fact that she liked pumpkin spice lattes over peppermint and was embarrassed to say so out loud, which meant Susie should ask for her.
There were hitches, of course. After too many incidents where Kris’ head ended up in Susie’s mouth, she had to train herself not to instinctively unhinge her jaw whenever she leaned in for a kiss. Kris assured her that these blunders weren't “that bad,” that “Noelle would probably like it.” Per-makeout, with either of them, she continued leaving a scratch, or two, or three. Some habits were unavoidable.
Kris was right, though. Noelle didn't seem to mind.
Susie owed them. Maybe she could get Ralsei to cook Kris a big chocolate cake for their bro-kiss-iversary—nothing to say that couldn't be a holiday of its own.
Ralsei had been informed of her and Kris’ regimen. Or—less informed, really, than it was him finding out about it against his own will. The important part was that he was supportive.
When he found out, Susie and Kris had been staying the night at the castle after a particularly grueling adventure in a since-sealed Dark World. In the Light World, it was two in the morning. Neither of them wanted to deal with the logistics of coming home at an hour that late ever since the Church.
So the three of them stayed in Susie’s room and made a sleepover out of it. Kris was too bashful to let them stay in their room, and Ralsei’s room was too depressing to exist in for longer than a minute, forget sleeping in it. Kris and Susie were working on the furnishings, but he’d only amassed a plushie of himself, a single couch cushion, a stool, and a tube of ICE-E’s© bacon-pizza flavored toothpaste.
Before they turned in for the night, he insisted on making tea. “Just a little tea!” he said. “With some sugar. And I won’t do anything else.”
“Good,” said Susie. “Better not be running around checking on people this late at night, Prince of People-Pleasing.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Got it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Get your ass back here fast.”
He scuttled away. While his furry footsteps thumped down the hall, Susie turned to Kris.
“Wanna raid my closet?”
While they waited, Susie flung jackets from her wardrobe onto the bed into a big, black, pointy pile. Denim jackets with the sleeves ripped, jeans with shiny silver studs, a bomber made entirely out of chains.
Reaching the back of the closet, she unveiled her favorite: a leather jacket with massive steel spikes of varying lengths glued to the shoulders, sleeves, and back. “Do you think Noelle would wear something like this?” Susie asked.
Kris smiled to themself. “Maybe back when she went grimdark.”
“What about now?”
“If you gave it to her.”
Susie had an idea. It was an idea she had a lot. Knowing Ralsei, he wouldn’t be back for another ten minutes.
Susie tossed the jacket at them. “Put it on, doofus.”
The jacket swallowed Kris, hem stopping half an inch above their knees. They looked cool in it, and it appeared Kris thought so, too, striking brooding poses and admiring their reflection in the mirror. As they rotated to look at the backside of the jacket, it slipped lower, peeling off their bony shoulders. Susie fixed it by sliding the fabric back up to its proper place via the grabbable-looking spikes near the collar.
Once it sat evenly, she kept a hand wrapped around one of the larger spikes, leveling her snout to Kris’ ear. “What d’you think she’d say?” Susie asked. “If I gave it to her?” She didn’t have any clothes to give Noelle, really, not unless she came to Castle Town, but indulging in hypotheticals never hurt anybody.
At any rate, this scenario would be good practice for… something. At some point. Whenever that was. She watched Kris in the mirror as they fretted with the sleeves dangling far beyond the reach of their fingers. A sense of satisfaction crept over her.
“Gotta go to my room,” Kris gritted through clenched teeth. Susie had to lean in closer to hear them.
“The hell would she say that?”
Kris held the jacket secure by its lapels as they mouthed a soundless be right back, and staggered away, not bothering to shut the door.
Weirdo. Susie waited, swinging the closet open and shut and open and shut with a claw. She wasn't sure what to say when they got like this—whether she should be worried or not. When Kris returned, they were sweating.
“You do push-ups in there or what?”
“Just getting in character,” Kris said, as expected. Susie didn’t know what the hell they were doing to ‘get in character’ that involved them coming back looking like they’d completed a full hundred laps of the Pacer, but she hoped it worked.
“So what would she say?”
They slunk her way, floor creaking beneath each footfall. “Something like.” Kris stopped, mouth still open, mulling through their next words.
“Don’t do a dumb voice.”
Kris pouted. “Thanks, Susie,” Noelle-Kris said normally. “Really generous of you to give me your jacket.”
“‘Course. It’s gonna start getting colder soon. Fall and stuff.”
“But you’re cold-blooded,” said Kris. “Won’t you get cold without a jacket?”
“I guess we’ll have to share.”
“Oh no,” Kris deadpanned. They drifted closer, towing Susie's arms by her leather wristbands to rest at their waist. “That’s okay. Let’s stay close so the jacket doesn’t fall off.”
Susie snared their wrists. “I know what’ll warm us up.”
Their lips mashed. Teeth chipped against teeth. Susie ignored the resulting throb in her gums, ignored that they weren't bothering to share the jacket. Once Susie freed Kris’ captive wrists so she could squeeze their waist, they threw their arms around her neck and yanked her close with reckless abandon.
This was one of the other major hitches Susie ran into, aside from the occasional face-eating. In the beginning, the lessons were clearer, the roles delineated. Susie would outline a scenario and Kris would oversee it, and later, with Noelle, that scenario would happen, in some capacity. It might happen differently, but her training prepared her for the broad strokes. Their practice together was theater; they’d enter stage left, exit stage right.
In her room in the Dark World, mouths locked together, she’d forgotten that they were pretending almost entirely.
Before they had the opportunity to separate for air, Ralsei popped open the door with his hip. The two of them jolted, still lip-to-lip.
“I know I said I’d be fast, but Queen—” he choked on his words, a well-balanced tea tray shooting up to cover his eyes in horror. “Oh, no!”
Susie’s let go of Kris’ waist. Kris unfolded their arms from around Susie’s neck. Slowly, slowly, they shuffled away from each other.
The tray lowered from Ralsei’s face at a similar slow, slow pace. “Why were you…”
“They had some shit on their chin.”
“Spider,” Kris supplied.
“They had a spider on their chin and it was huge and about to inject them with venomous hyper-poison, and so I had to eat it. To save them.”
Ralsei pattered into the room and slid himself onto the floor with the tea tray. More than lone sugar cubes decorated the platter, a detail which scored him a glare from Susie: two tea pots, honey, milk, mint leaves, and lemons. His big pink eyes begged Susie and Kris to join, however awkward it would be.
They complied. Once Ralsei finished pouring tea into each of their cups, he put his hands on his hips. “I think you two are being dishonest with me.”
“Okay, fine. We were making out,” Susie admitted. Kris’ hands chopped through the air in the universal signal for ‘shut the fuck up.’ Well, cat was out of the bag, now. “Big deal!”
“I-I think it is, too?” Ralsei squinted while Susie gulped her tea. “How long have you both been, erm. Together? You could have told me. I would have… liked it, if you did.”
Silence. The brassy bellow of a saxophone from the town plaza reverberated through Susie’s closed window.
“HAHAHA!” Susie slammed her cup down. Tea sloshed over the rim, painting sloppy pictures on the floor. “You must be outta your mind, dude!”
“O-Oh. Um, I didn’t know I had said anything odd!” Ralsei dabbed at the spilled tea with a napkin. “I think maybe it’s easy to assume that when two people are kissing, they’re—”
“Kris and I aren’t together,” she said. She glanced at Kris for backup, but they were preoccupied with pressing a fist against their forehead and breathing deep, humiliated breaths. “It’s a practice thing. Between warriors.”
Ralsei’s face pinched. “I don’t think I’ve heard of any legends where the warriors are kissing each other.”
“Guess you need to hear more legends. We do it all the time.”
“All the time?”
“I’m only romantically roleplaying as Noelle,” Kris offered.
The napkin soaked up the remaining liquid on the floor until it became a big, wet, papery wad. Ralsei stared wordlessly.
“Okay,” Ralsei said. “I’m glad you two are having fun!”
If Susie asked, of course he’d bake the cake.
Susie and Noelle’s most recent date went swimmingly.
It was perfect weather for a picnic, and lucky for Susie, Noelle had loads and loads of Holiday allowance money to throw at extremely specific and delicious foods. Noelle loaded their assortment of delicacies into an old toy wagon and Susie, with her new, secret date-knowledge, led Noelle westward of the police station into the woods.
When they arrived at the massive, half uprooted, moss-laden tree Kris had shown Susie, Noelle gaped in surprise. “How do you know this place?” she asked.
Susie tried to look nonchalant, walking backwards, hands behind her back. She only tripped once, which she counted as a victory. “Kris showed me,” she said. “Cool, right?”
Noelle lowered the handle of the wagon to the ground. Her eyes lingered on the tree in private reverence. “Y-Yeah,” she said. “It’s a good spot.”
Once they unfolded the checkered picnic mat and smoothed it over a patch of ground, Noelle perked up. She talked about the games she and Kris used to play on the tree and the snowstorm that was responsible for its evicted roots. She pointed out which foods were which—Susie recognized the classics, the peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and chips & dip and fruit salad, but there was a bunch of other shit she’d never seen before: almond croissants stuffed with vanilla cream, a platter with ten different types of cheese, prosciutto wrapped melon, fig spread, crab-stuffed shrimp.
Maybe Susie taste tested the lineup too fast, but who could blame her. Besides, Noelle looked thrilled as Susie did so, crumbs littering the blanket—what was the harm?
When the snack population dwindled to critical endangerment, Noelle broke into a buck-toothed grin and reached for her backpack.
“Oh! Susie!” Noelle said. “I almost forgot. I brought a treat for you.”
“Like a dog treat?”
“No, silly, like a dessert-treat.” She dug through the bag, pencils and makeup tubes clinking and clacking together, until her hands closed around a tupperware container. She presented it to Susie like a sword.
Susie popped it open. It was chalk. Loads of chalk.
Fuck. Yes.
“Best day of my life,” she cackled. “You find this on the sidewalk? Sidewalk chalk is the best.”
“N-No, it’s homemade, actually! Fahaha. Same chalk I put in that lunchbox, when we first started… talking, you know. Cornstarch and water and some food coloring. Does it taste different than normal chalk?”
Susie’s face flushed. “Uh, I dunno. DIY chalk is also pretty good.” She chowed down on a pink stick. It crumbled in her mouth like a crisp almond croissant.
“How is it?”
“Top three chalks ever,” she said. “Want some?”
Noelle’s lips pursed. “I think it might be an acquired taste,” she giggled. “You’re really sweet for wanting to share, though, Susie.”
While Susie demolished a few more sticks of chalk, they lapsed into comfortable silence. The tree next to them groaned low in its trunk, but didn’t teeter from its tall, crooked perch. It’d been stuck in that position for years, Noelle informed her; she wasn’t sure if it would ever finish falling over.
“S-Susie, um…”
“Mph? Wh’s up?” Susie swallowed another mouthful of chalk. The tupperware container full of joy and gorgeous, tasty dust felt so, so right in her hands, but sacrifices had to be made for intelligible speech. Reluctantly, she allowed the picnic blanket to babysit her gift.
“Have you ever had a girlfriend before?”
“Oh, hell no,” Susie said. “Haven’t even gotten close.”
Noelle nodded. She tapped a contemplative half-bent finger against her lips, unable to spit out what it was she wanted to say.
“Have you?”
“N-Not yet,” Noelle said. “But, maybe soon?”
Susie realized only after the date was over what Noelle was trying to ask. Maybe that was for the best, because if Noelle had posed the question, Susie would’ve had no idea what to say. Sure? Of course? Let's smooch?
It was never that simple.
So she did the smart thing and asked Kris for advice.
“Dude,” Susie started. “I think next time I go out with her, Noelle's gonna, like, ask me to be her girlfriend.”
The two of them were walking along a poorly maintained hiking trail that bent around the town. They had tired all other avenues of entertainment that day: it was Saturday, no new fountains had opened, Ralsei couldn’t be bothered while he was doing maintenance on Queen’s acid pool, and half of the few available establishments in Hometown were closed. For a while, they pestered Berdly at the library, skimming summaries on the back of books and leaving them upside-down on their shelves when they were done so he’d hurry to fix them, feathers puffed out in rage—but the library closed at five, leaving them to their own devices again.
The sun shone down like a big disco ball in the sky, leaving neat, dappled patterns of light on the earth through the dense canopy.
“So?” Kris asked. They looked strange—Susie wouldn’t describe their expression as unbothered, but they didn’t seem annoyed, either.
“What d’you mean, ‘so?’ So what should I do?”
“Do you want to be her girlfriend?”
“Of course I do.”
Kris stopped walking. “Then say yes.”
So did Susie. “It can’t be that easy.”
“S’that easy,” Kris said.
“No, dude. Goddamnit.” Susie tossed a chunk of tree bark down the path. It tumbled into the bushes, disturbing a family of quail who paraded away in a panic before plunging back into the underbrush. “You’re not getting it.”
“How?”
“It’s, like, different. There’s a science to this stuff, right? I don’t know how the hell to be a girlfriend.”
“You didn’t know how to be a friend, either,” said Kris, gesturing to themself as evidence.
Susie threw her head back and sighed. Her neck cracked, dangling mass of purple hair not helping ease the strain on it. “I guess,” she said. “She said she’s gonna take me to QC’s tomorrow after service.”
“Yummy,” Kris intoned. “Spoiled. Two dates back-to-back.”
“Yeah, I’m freakin’ royalty. You go to QC’s a lot, right?”
“Used to.”
“Been recently?”
“Other than with you,” they said, “I went for my birthday last year. It was fine.”
“Heh, look at this guy, celebrating their goddamn birthday. If I’m royalty, what are you, King? Queen? … Monarch?”
Kris quirked their head. “Weird celebrating birthdays, now?”
“S’not, like, crazy common,” she said. “Right?”
Kris didn’t emote, but they didn’t need to. She felt them thinking. She wished they'd do less of that. “How long since you last celebrated?”
Susie couldn’t recall. When she last had a birthday party, she was a little kid: four, five, six, maybe seven. Nothing happened during those years that was worth remembering. A birthday party wasn’t going to change that.
Not that she’d tell Kris. She hated pityfests. They’d start looking at her like the people did in every other town she’d lived in.
“Don’t care.” Susie scoffed. “Dude, you’re lying if your family celebrates all your friggin’ birthdays.”
Susie strode ahead. Kris had to scuttle their runt legs to keep up with her, but they clung by her side regardless. “Most,” they said. “I have seven each year.”
Susie glowered at them gently. “Now I know you’re fuckin’ with me.”
“They pick one,” said Kris. “I pick the other six. Dogs age faster—more birthdays.”
“You’re really into this dog thing, you little freak. One old-ass dog.”
“Special dog. Immortal dog.”
“You, like, a hundred?”
“Hundred-eleven. Hundred-and-twelfth birthday is…” They scratched above their lip. “Next week, Friday-ish.”
“Get a pup cup or something, then. Damn.”
Kris’ voice dropped an octave in an attempt at sounding woeful and tortured, but it sounded more like an audition for the role of a sad, droopy old pug in a Saturday morning cartoon. “It’s lonely. My other dog friends are very dead. Because I’m so old.”
“Sucks to be them.”
“If only someone would share my birthday with me.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Very serious,” they said seriously.
“Dipshit.”
Susie shoved the back of their head. They propelled forward, conveniently tripping on an invisible rock and thudding face-down. They yelped and yelped and yelped. Dust caked their sweater and cargo trousers as they rolled around like a sausage dropped on the ground.
“Fine, I get it! I get it!” Susie stomped towards them, stabbing her boot into their stomach as they started to howl. “I’ll share your stupid dog birthday. Stand up before you get ticks or something.”
“Glorious.”
Kris got up and brushed themself off like nothing happened. Susie tilted her head, mystified—maybe viewing them from a different angle would help make sense of whatever the hell that was—before unleashing a fit of cackles.
Whenever she laughed hard enough, her vision blurred, cheeks pushed up so tightly that her line of sight narrowed into a paper-thin line. Soon, though, her laughter faltered, and when it did, Kris was looking up at her with a fond smile, exposed eyes glimmering from a tapered window between their bangs.
Susie wished they’d look like that more often.
“Gotta tinkle,” Kris said.
Moment ruined. “Fucksake, dude, way to steer the conversation.” Susie pointed into the wilderness. “Go.”
They vanished into the bushes. Susie paced along the trail, watching microscopic bugs dance around her shoes to pass the time, swarms of them jumping and crawling and disappearing into the weeds clotting the soil. Shoots of dry, wheatlike grass brushed against her pants.
She stretched her arms behind her back and let the sunlight hit her scales. There were not a lot of moments where she felt peace.
The undergrowth rustled and out popped Kris.
“Don’t need to roleplay this time,” they said.
“Really?” Susie asked. “She’s gonna ask some serious questions. Kinda important to get that right.”
“She likes you. You’ll do fine,” said Kris. “Technique-focused class today.”
Kris didn't waste any time. Taking her hand, they led her past a wall of salmonberry bushes into a tiny clearing where the sky peeked through a gap between trees. A huge, craggy boulder rested beside a divot in the forest floor, rocky surface begging for a gaggle of teenagers to sit on it.
“How d’you know all these places, anyway?”
“‘Splorin,” Kris elaborated.
Two minutes later and they were eating face non-figuratively, Susie’s back pressed against the boulder. Kris told her a little biting was okay—“you’re contradicting your own advice, asshole”—that she had to be careful, but it was okay. Good, even.
Kris climbed onto her lap. As the sun roamed across the sky, the forest cooled around them, light blocked by the thick crowd of branches above and replaced by calm, dense shade. Thank God. Susie was sweating like crazy.
When they parted for oxygen, Kris said: “Nice. She’ll be impressed.”
“Noelle talks about you a lot, y’know,” Susie told them. Their hands curled against her shirt, face twitching indistinctly. “She was telling me yesterday that you used to terrorize your brother by nosediving off that tree you showed me. Hell’d you do that for?”
For a moment, she wasn’t sure Kris was breathing. “Dunno,” they said. They looked down, embarrassed, maybe, by their dumbass childhood stunts—but Susie was missing something. This time, their ever-cryptic withdrawal seemed sorrowful in a way that was hard to overlook.
They kissed her again. Susie cupped the back of their head. They combed their fingers across the side of her muzzle, delicate, doting. They were enjoying themself, that was clear enough—but it didn’t seem like they were present.
It was weird to be on the receiving end. She parted from their lips. “Break?” Susie asked.
Kris nodded.
The two of them tried resting on top of the boulder, but its jagged surface was too harsh on their backs. The pasture of weeds and wildgrass in the center of the clearing offered a better respite, so they laid there for a while, catching their breath.
“Kris,” Susie said after they'd stopped gasping for air. “Do you think—ah, whatever.”
Grass rustled around their head as they turned towards her. “Hm?”
She kept eyes on the canopy above. “Do you think I'll be a good girlfriend?”
The inscrutable conversations of birds and insects, buzzing, chirping, singing, filled the void where neither of them talked. A cricket had landed an inch away from Susie's head, strumming harsh chords on its legs.
“The bestest,” Kris said.
“Heh.” Susie whacked their shoulder without looking at them. “I'm glad you're helping me, Kris. I've never had someone really… like me, like that.”
Not a word, but they were listening. She could tell. They had an attentiveness she could feel. That was why she stopped their training session, after all—that attentiveness had weaned.
“I used to think it could never happen. I mean, I'm me. Moved around so much I think that, like, if the towns themselves were people, they probably wouldn't want me, either.” She picked at the skin around her claws. “So… I didn't want to screw it up.”
Confidently, they said: “You’d never screw it up.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“It’s true.”
“If you say so, man.”
“Know why?”
Susie sighed in mock-despair. “Why,” she asked.
Kris’ dull red eyes focused on hers. They jabbed a finger straight into her chest and held it there. If she snapped a candid photo, their face would print wonderfully on a classroom poster with a motivational caption. “‘Cause you’re you.”
“Cornball.”
“Think about it.”
Susie hated that she was smiling. “Whatever,” she said. “Love you, dumbass.”
They laid there for a while, itchy and covered in dirt but too warm and lazy to move. Susie tucked her arms behind her head as she watched the sky darken from blue to violet.
It was getting late.
“Hey, do you wanna—” Kris had their back turned to her. “Kris? You awake?”
Didn’t seem like it. Then, as the patch of long reeds shielding their curled-up body swept in the twilight breeze, their head bobbed and chest heaved a ragged, muted breath.
“... You crying?”
Kris sniffed and shook their head.
“Did—Did I say something wrong?” Their head twitched, as if to nod, but it was a movement aborted early.
“S’not you,” they mumbled.
They laid motionless. If a hiker passed by them at that moment, they might have mistaken Kris for a fossil, more than perfectly preserved. Weeds smothered beneath Susie’s knees as she moved closer to shake their shoulder.
“It’s gonna get dark soon,” she said. “Maybe you’ll feel better if we head outta here?”
Susie got ready to stand up.
“Wait,” Kris croaked. They tugged her wrist, facing her at last. “Don't go.”
Susie frowned. “I’m not going anywhere, man.”
They buried their face against her arm. Dampness gathered on her scales, a shudder traveling secondhand from Kris’ body to hers.
“Sorry,” they muttered. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Susie stroked their hair. “I really don’t care. I’ve gotten worse shit on me than snot.” They shook their head again, choking a noise that could have been an apology, or a disagreement, or an expression of shame, but offered no further explanation. They held onto her tighter.
What was she supposed to do when they shut down? What was she supposed to feel? Kris’ hands were cold, wrapped around her arm, and growing shakier. They were her best friend. One of the only people she trusted.
There was still so much she didn’t know. Helplessly, she put an arm around them.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I got you.”