Chapter Text
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Trish was alone with her least favourite person. Usually it was more tolerable, spending lunch with the human fuck, thanks to the others being there to keep him distracted- as little as it worked. Of course that wasn’t the case today, and it was insufferable. Reed had to take off for a ‘refill’ of that noxious concoction he kept in his thermos. If she wasn’t so used to the drugged up idiot’s antics, she’d be concerned. Fang had messaged her that they’d be late- something about Mrs Roberts holding the sharp tongued pterosaur back after class for a ‘stupid fuckass difference in opinion about how much of resting bitch face the old cow wears every day’. The hostility of her best friend having consequences was not at all a new occurrence, but still infuriating today of all days.
Prodding the food below her, it was hard to find any actual appetite within the purple scaled teen’s gut.
“Wow, the stereotypes about what you triceratops call ‘food’ continues to look more believable every day.” Anon chuckled from beside her, jabbing a fork in the direction of her tupperware full of wilted leaves of lettuce and chopped cabbage.
The only reason he hadn’t been gored straight through the chest already was that he at least never used that word to describe her. But the moron was- as always- treading that thin line with a deathwish.
“You’re one to talk, asshole.” She spat, turning up her nose at the dry chunk of ‘meatloaf’ that sat crumbling on a platter atop his lap. “How your kind can tolerate that shit I will never fucking understand.”
Anon rolled his eyes, stabbing his utensil into the offending mass before taking a bite. He pulled a face of mock euphoria, eyelids fluttering, with a muffled mumble of how good it tasted.
A puff of hot air shot out of Trish’s nostrils, scowling, as she watched the display. A part of her wanted to laugh, almost succeeding, before she doubled down into a counterattack. The indignant girl skewered a clump of floppy greens from the container on her lap, and stuffed it into her beak tipped mouth. With a squeaky groan of disdain, fluttering eyelashes, and both hands on her cheeks, she mumbled out while chewing.
“Oh if only I could be tearing into some big juicy animal meat instead, like a primitive ape!” She squinted at Anon’s stupid face, the ridge of her beak wrinkling.
A massive, shit-eating smile spread across his face as Trish watched. Too late, she realised what was coming.
“How crude, at least take him out for dinner first.” Wriggling eyebrows accompanied the grinning human’s comment- a hand raised to his mouth in mock shock.
A flurry of emotions swept across Trish’s features, her cheeks hot and eyes wide, before having to lean forward and cough into a fist so as not to choke. The moment her composure returned by any measure, the fuming purple triceratops glared daggers at Anon.
“You perverted fucking pig of a caveman, shut up!” Her eyelids twitched.
“Pig? I’m not even the one stuffing my face- or talking about it.” Feigning innocence, the human shook his head and closed his eyes in a despondent frown.
Raptor Jesus, Trish thought, if Fang wasn’t so dead set on keeping this loser around, she’d kill him. Right here and now, violently.
Head still hot and chest still tight from a mix of rage and things too confusing to unpack in the moment, she settled instead on averting her gaze away from Anon and shovelling another- smaller- lump of those wilted greens into her mouth. She didn’t see Anon wince, a grimace of something that might have been shame passing over his features in the blink of an eye.
“Hey, Trish?” His tone softened, still eyeing those leafy greens sat on her lap, with a slight warbling edge to it she couldn’t figure out. “Why does it look like our, uh, food… is days old?”
A moment’s silence, the embarrassed triceratops unable to look at him, before blinking back whatever emotions besides anger she might risk showing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you should eat more vegetables and you’d know what they actually looked like, asshole. Just go back to picking at your stupid beef brick.” She spat, her dark purple eyes darting to him with all the fury she could muster. The conflicted saurian’s gaze dropped back to her wilted food when she found no malice in Anon’s own.
He was right, in all reality. More so than she dared admit. These nearly freezer-burned, half week old salad greens were all there was left in the fridge when packing before she left in the morning. Funds had been tight, especially after the spa day, and mom hadn’t been shopping in a week. Trish was long used to scrounging for what she could at this point- just another exhausting consequence of being the eldest of so many siblings. They needed good food more than her, so they got fresh bowls of salad while she got the forgotten leftovers from days prior.
Did it sting? Always and without fail.
Was there one fucking thing she could do about it? No. Not yet.
A cough, as Anon cleared his throat. It drew the short fused teen’s attention again, if only for a moment.
“So, uh, anyway. The concert thing, tomorrow at Moe’s, are you looking forward to it?”
“Of course I am.”
“Even after leaving the venue-hunt to me and Fang?” He snickered, with a shrug, though the way he winced after speaking did not go unnoticed. “You know their dad roped Naser and Naomi into it because of his distrust of me, right? You should have seen the places she tried to get us to look at.”
Trish once again felt a procession of emotions flow through her. Heat burnt her cheeks, eyelids twitched, and the scales of the indignant triceratops’ brow scrunched up. A heavy loadstone of guilt tightened her chest, confused fury at Fang for getting Anon involved as much as at the human himself, and no small degree of pallid horror at the idea that Naomi could have had any say in the venue at all. It all passed in a matter of seconds. Snapping her attention fully back to the source of her present ire himself, the hotheaded teen settled on a scowl- but didn’t know what to say.
After waiting a bit for her to respond, Anon just shrugged and pulled out his phone. A frown dug into the corner of his lips as he stared at that guarded screen, silence falling between them again. She could have left it there. It was bad enough how often he insisted on engaging with her, back and forth tirades and antagonistic teasing she was all too susceptible to. This respite from his attention should have been welcome.
And yet Trish’s lips moved on their own, uttering a line of curiosity that had been digging and scratching at the back of her mind ever since Fang let slip that the two of them had gone… out, together.
“Why’d you even go?” The words slipped out, slow and low in tone.
He frowned, cocking his head to the side ever so slightly.
“What?”
“With Fang, on the weekend. Why’d you agree to do it?”
The baffled human gave a loose shrug, blinking at Trish with a raised eyebrow.
“I mean, it was just the right thing to do I guess? They asked me to help out since you and Reed flaked.” His explanation was given with a deadpan sincerity, every word tinged to sound more like a question than a statement.
Flaked. Was that his phrasing or theirs? One way or another, his words stung to hear being delivered so casually. If there had been venom to his tone, Trish would have had something to bite back against.
“That’s just what friends do, look out for one another.” He added, his intonation unchanging, with a smile.
“The fucks that supposed to mean?” She snapped, making the boy jump.
Anon blinked, his eyes flitting between each of her own for a moment before something seemed to click inside. Trish watched him go a shade paler, swallow, and look away.
“Uh, like you said way back that first time in maths, I suppose. The ‘looking out for each-other’ thing, anyway.” The forced chuckle under his breath as he spoke made it sound like another teasing jab, but his eyes darting to find anything else to look at other than her told a different story.
She did not get this boy. And her confusion would only grow greater when- before she could even open her mouth to launch a response- he mumbled something into the air that was just about loud enough to hear.
“Sorry… I, uh, didn’t mean anything by it.”
Trish deflated, frowning as she stared at the inexplicably defeated human before her. This whole conversation had felt so… off. Swinging between attacks, jokes merely at her expense, and out of place moments of sensitivity. The whiplash was giving her a headache, while that fluttering feeling in her stomach which lingered whenever she and Anon were together still made no sense.
He had been acting weirder than usual for about a week or so now. From day one the strange new boy had been a confusing thing to deal with. Infuriating most of the time. Inexplicably sentimental the next. But ever since he started actually hanging out with the band at lunch, she’d become aware of some growing oddities. He talked more, but only when it was just them- or at least when the others were distracted. Sure, most of that talking was asinine jabs and taunts in tandem with her own. But more and more it was dumb jokes, questions about her day, and smiles that she hated with increasing intensity the more she started to like them. Each time Trish caught herself actually laughing at something he’d said, or smiling back, she wanted to gag immediately after.
It sucked how much it was working, how disarming the behaviour was. Suspiciously so. The sceptical triceratops knew she needed to work out his angle. What his big plan was. No matter how much Fang decided to trust him, or what Reed said about being a good judge of character, Trish was far from convinced. This random human boy was bad news.
And what better time than to probe for answers, than this sudden moment of sensitivity?
“What would you have been up to that weekend, anyway, if Fang hadn’t asked you?” She wanted to sneer, but forced her face to remain flat- soft, even.
“Probably just like, I don’t know… playing Rock Ring? Watching dumb shit on SnootTube?” Anon let out a sigh, shaking his head. “Nothing interesting, that’s for sure.” She could buy it. That game was practically all he and Reed ever actually talked about, even if she wasn’t fully satisfied by the admission. He had to be more than just an innocuous loser.
“And next weekend? Got any plans for that?”
He blinked, a little more colour dusting his cheeks, and gave her a strange look; squinty, blatantly suspicious of her question, before melting back into his typical plain smile. His lips moved, a low mumble breathing out that she couldn’t discern anything from.
“Fuck all, not gonna lie,” he chuckled, before flitting his deep green eyes between her face and the floor. “What about you? Gonna be doing anything?” It took Trish by a modicum of surprise, but she decided to just roll with it.
That would be after the concert, obviously. Depending on how it goes, who knows what the plan would be. Worst case scenario, she’ll have a date with her bed, main activity being screaming into the pillow and cussing out everyone responsible.
“Depends. If tomorrow goes anything like our last experience, then I’ll be… preoccupied. Otherwise, no. I guess I don’t have any specific plans… why?” Trish let out a puff of air and rolled her eyes.
Anon just nodded. His mouth opened like there was something he wanted to say, before snapping shut with a sideways wince. Strange. After a slight shake of the boy’s head, he put back on that stupid grin.
“I don’t know, maybe it’ll go so well that you’ll all get signed up by some big record company and dragged off on tour round the country.” He didn’t sneer as he said it. Just… smiled with a soft chuckle under his breath.
“Pfft. Maybe we fucking will, what about it?” She leaned forward, her beak upturned. “Then we’d finally be rid of you.”
He snickered, crossing his arms, before matching her lean.
“Really now? When exactly was the last time you had a good performance?” There was still no malice in his tone, even if the words wrenched forth white-hot memories of the last few times she and the band had tried to show off.
Anon had admitted early on to having been there for the disastrous concert of their first day back. According to Fang, he’d told them in science class and given his condolences or some sappy shit Trish herself did not trust. But, it had convinced her pale scaled best friend well enough. The same routine of confession and apology had been doled out to the whole band when he got dragged kicking and screaming by Reed into hanging out at lunch that one day. Asshole did at least somehow notice the whole ironic reference thing. Lucky guess, she had to hope.
The worst part had been how genuine his assurance that he hadn’t laughed felt- how real the regret in his downcast eyes looked, as he admitted his sympathy for what they went through.
Made up for it by being an unapologetic ass from thereon out, never failing to bring up the shitshow just in time to crush Trish’s attempts at puffing herself up in their spats.
With a deep sigh, she spat out the obvious answer to his question.
“Not a single fucking one, no. Just one catastrophe after another.”
Anon grimaced, cocking his head to one side again with a nod. The penchant he had to switch tack from jabs and jokes to this… soft side… was something still jarring for Trish to witness.
“I hope it goes better this time, I really do.” The green of his gaze snapped back to meet her own amethyst eyes, with a gentle smile. “I’m sure you’ll rock their worlds up there.”
She only paused a second, unable to stop her own cheeks from going a shade darker, not sure how to handle the compliment.
“We’d better. You best bet it's gonna be on your head if the whole guitar thing doesn’t work out.” The leering triceratops bit back, her face still warm and flushed.
Anon put his hands in the air, nodding without any change to his expression, and uttered a solemn decree.
“I’ll take the fall, not that it’ll happen. My perspective was, is, and will continue to be objectively correct.”
It got a snicker from the unwillingly enamoured triceratops girl, even while the back of her itched with barely withheld fury.
She still felt more than a little butthurt about that whole ordeal. Sure, the annoying idiot didn’t really do much of anything besides state his outright opinion, after listening with full attention to both attempts. Not like he’d pushed for anything, hell the boy even suggested that there could still be a way to make the double bass work. How a talentless hack like him, without a musical bone in his body, knew about the different types of stringed bass she had no idea. But it was Fang who shot that down on the spot. Too fast.
Trish’s eyelids twitched as she tried to forget that line of thought. It was Anon she had to focus on. He was the problem, the fluttering in her chest be damned, for sure. There was too much missing, too many unanswered questions. Any time his past got brought up - which had been quite a good few instances across the last five or six weeks - the nuisance had managed to wriggle out into a new topic and dodge the inquiry. Pretty much all she knew was that he liked that dumb video game about aliens and super soldiers, lived alone, was poor as hell, and clearly wasn’t fond of the gardens.
This whole conversation was just to break him down and find out his plan- yes, that’s all. That’s why the two of them were face to face, grinning like idiots close enough to feel one another’s breath heating the air between them. Nothing else.
“Oh sure, your faith is worth so much to me. Have you ever even known what it feels like to get laughed at by an entire crowd of people? Those assholes do not hold back, and neither will I if you fuck this up for us.” She spat out, her flustered sneer faltering when Anon’s face fell from a grin into… something else.
She waited for a deflection, a retort, anything of the sort.
Instead, the suddenly downcast boy just shivered, looking away in silence. Anon’s hands wrung against one another before him, a pained wince flashing over the features of his face for a fleeting moment, as a nearly inaudible mumble escaped his lips.
“...want to tell… make me…”
Her own eyes went wide. His lips parted wider, face scrunched into a reluctant grimace, as a sentence properly prepared to leave his throat. No way this will have actually work-
“What the fuck? I’m held back for like, ten minutes, and you two freaks start making out?” A sly and all too familiar voice sounded from above the two of them, its tone sharpened with an accusatory, almost offended, edge.
Trish almost leapt from her scales, a squeal of terror tearing from her beak before she could suppress it. Anon jumped back just the same, though with only a stifled yelp of surprise, as the two put as much distance between one another as possible without actually moving from where they’d been sitting.
Whipping her head around and peering up, the suddenly guilty triceratops found a pale scaled pterosaur standing in front of the stage on the edge of which she and Anon were perched; Fang was wearing something between a scowl and a smirk, beak bent into an offended frown while they raised an eyebrow and glowered with those intense amber eyes.
“What- we- no- just- uh–” Trish tumbled over her own words, heart pounding harder than Reed’s drums ever could, with a burning heat flooding her darkened face. Why she wasn’t just disgusted by the suggestion, and instead flustered, was a whole other issue to process later.
“We were just talking about the, uh, concert tomorrow.” Anon gasped, a hand clutching his chest, like if his grip loosened something might just pop right out. “I was being an ass about the whole, y’know, past attempts issue, a-and Trish was just having a go at me in return!”
Fang’s gaze narrowed, pupils still narrowed to slits, and flicked side to side as they examined the two fumbling idiots before them. The purple scaled saurian herself felt a lump form in the back of her throat, that took some effort to swallow, under the scrutinising fire of her best friend’s focus.
Then the mint toned and dark clothed pterosaur gave a casual shrug, snorting, before plopping themself down into the space between the other two agitated teens.
“Whatever… ugh!” A deep groan pushed its way out of their long scaly beak as Fang tipped their head back. “Mrs Roberts is such a fucking bitch!”
A glance was shot between the two people to either side of them, still bearing a trace of that sceptical scrutiny.
“Raptor Jesus, who pissed in your lunches? How bad was the argument this time?” A loud ‘tsk’ shot out of their lips, accompanied by a heavy eyeroll.
The triceratops grunted, taking another reluctant bite of her wilted verdant lunch. Salad was more than she could bring herself to call it.
“Mine’s just fine although, with the state of Trish’s slop, who knows. That or the state of herbivore cuisine really is as dire as I feared.” Anon attempted to chuckle, though his voice was still laden with a panicked strain that left him a little breathy.
Fang snorted out a sharp laugh all the same, wrinkling their beak at the sight of what the purple scaled saurian beside them was eating.
“Wow, Trish. Anon’s right, not gonna lie. That looks so fucking awful.”
“Oh shut up!” Trish snapped, puffing out her chest with a scowl. “Like he eats any better! All I’ve ever seen that dumbass eat is greasy chicken nuggets and soggy burgers!”
“Woah now! Don’t you dare go after the nugs! The ones here may be nothing like my dino ones, but a nugget is a nugget. Take it back.” Fang leaned away, closer to Anon, with a jab of their clawed finger pointed at the purple triceratops beside them.
“Will not! Those things are awful! I don’t know how you carnivores can eat something like that!”
One by one, they all broke out into their own flavour of laughter, the tension from mere moments before draining away.
A nagging frustration lingered in Trish’s gut, though strangely she could not say what in particular it was that she felt disappointed about. How close she came to getting information from Anon seemed the obvious answer, yet it just didn’t feel like the whole picture.
She’s never felt the warmth of someone else’s breath against her scales until then: With how close she and the target of her investigation had been leaning towards one another, it had been inescapable. It was awful, she should have pushed him back like a normal person.
So why did she already want to do it again?
The peculiar train of thought buzzed in the back of Trish’s mind, constrictive turmoil churning deeper within, even as the three of them in that auditorium kept on bickering over the foods they each did and did not like. Arguments weaving back and forth - flitting between smiles, smirks, and gasps of betrayal - paused only a moment when Reed sauntered in to join.
Trish barely noticed the way he kept nursing the back of his head, even after several sips from that thermos.
She didn’t notice how her own amethyst eyes kept latching onto Anon’s face either- nor the way her lips curled up into a smile a little more than usual when it happened. That fluttering feeling in her stomach went unaddressed, still so quiet compared to all the other sensations screaming inside her crowded subconscious.
Eventually, lunch came to an end. Reed was the first to peel away, Anon close after. Before Trish could follow, however, she was forced to pause by Fang’s trepidation stained voice calling out from behind her. Turning, the confused triceratops raised a brow.
“Hey, uh, Trish?” The taller of the two saurians shifted back and forth on their feet, backpack slung over one shoulder.
“...Yeah?”
“Could I… talk to you, after music?” Fang’s eyes darted away, an unreadable frown spread across their beak. “Like, today?”
Trish blinked, but nodded. “Sure, yeah. Want me to meet you there?”
“Yep. Great.” The mint scaled pterosaur hummed, before rushing past their shorter friend and into the hall.
It wasn’t uncommon for Fang to wait behind in music class, nor odd for Trish to stop by and catch up before they both went home. No, that was all perfectly ordinary.
Yet something about the usually so headstrong teen’s shaking hands when they asked her this time felt odd. Very odd.
With a shrug, Trish decided not to linger on it. She had to get through a few more classes before it would matter, after all. So she set off as well, and left the auditorium behind.
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Everything will be fine. And nothing terrible is going to happen ever at all. Trust me. I’m not evil.