2:19 AM.
Void stared at the ceiling like it had personally betrayed her. Again.
Sleep, the elusive little bastard, had slipped through her fingers hours ago, probably off to cuddle some emotionally stable straight girl who didn't flinch when someone said the word "future."
She shifted under the sheets, blanket twisted around her leg like a snake trying to strangle the last shred of her dignity. "God, even my bedding's clingier than anyone I've dated," she muttered, then laughed. Dry. Bitter. Like oversteeped tea.
It was always like this. These nights where everything in her life felt like a punchline to a joke she didn't remember telling. Void: pretty face, sharp mind, a touch of 'don't touch me,' and allegedly - if enough exes could be trusted - "a captivating personality." Captivating like a cursed mirror, probably.
"I'm like a collectible card that looks cool but no one actually wants in their deck," she muttered to the ceiling. "Rare, beautiful, wildly impractical, and prone to catching fire."
People liked her. They told her that all the time. So much potential, so fascinating, so unique. She was a walking compliment sandwich, except the filling was just loneliness and mild rage.
"No, seriously," she whispered to no one, "what is it about me that screams 'forever alone, but make it hot'?"
The silence didn't answer. Obviously. Silence never gave feedback.
And then, without her permission, her thoughts started tiptoeing toward Dee.
Fucking Dee.
Soft-spoken, clever Dee with her British accent and those shy little smiles that made Void's stomach do things it had no business doing. Void didn't like the way Dee crept into her thoughts. Not like a storm. No, that'd be easier to ignore. Dee was more like rain dripping through a leaky roof. Subtle. Constant. Inescapable.
Void rolled to her side and groaned into her pillow. "Nope. Not going there. Absolutely not."
But her brain, the sapphic panic gremlin it was, had other plans. Because it remembered the way Dee lit up when she talked about her 3D art. That sparkle in her eyes when she explained her workflow, or showed off the way she rigged a character's spine like she was reanimating beauty from bones and pixels.
And Void? Well, Void just sat there like a dumbass, nodding along, heart skipping like a broken guitar riff, pretending she wasn't completely mesmerized.
"She's talented," Void whispered. "That's all. Just... stupidly talented."
And kind. And genuine. And painfully soft in a way that made Void want to wrap her up in a blanket and hand her tea, then promptly run the fuck away before her own feelings got her killed.
She closed her eyes. "No. Nope. Don't like her. I just admire her. Fiercely. Like, intensely platonically."
Frankly, even Void knew that was a fucking lie. A big, stupid, sticky lie.
Void liked Dee's voice. She liked how it dipped low when she was focused, and how it fluttered when she laughed at one of Void's flirty remarks. She liked the awkward silences between them. Those didn't feel heavy - just waiting. Like maybe the silence was sacred too.
She liked watching Dee work. There was something intimate about it. The way her hands moved when sculpting digital models like she was coaxing truth from a void - ironic, really - and how her face scrunched when something wasn't working, lips pursed like she was about to curse at her screen but was too polite to do it out loud.
It made Void want to curse for her.
"Jesus Christ, I'm down so bad," she muttered, then immediately shook her head. "No. I'm fucking not. Shut. The fuck. Up."
Feelings were dangerous. They cracked the armor. They turned you soft and pliable and stupid. And Void had been all three once. That version of her drowned in a river and came back with fangs. She wasn't going back.
But Dee had this... effect. Like she wasn't trying to fix Void or dissect her or even understand her fully - just... exist with her. Which felt more terrifying than any kind of love.
Because what if Dee saw her? Not the snark, not the bravado, not the digital witch mask. But her. The scared, jagged thing underneath.
And what if she didn't run?
That's the thought that scared Void the most.
Not rejection.
Acceptance.
She rolled over again. Her bed creaked like it too was tired of this emotional rerun.
Maybe it would be easier if she was one of those sad bisexuals who could at least pretend to flirt with a man to fill the emptiness. But no - Void was an angry lesbian. Capital A, strike-through, circled, and set ablaze. She never liked them, but after what men had done to her, she wouldn't piss on one if he were on fire.
She didn't want men. She wanted a girl with art-stained fingers and a voice like midnight rainfall. A girl who could sculpt a city from geometry nodes and still blush when Void teased her gently.
"Fuuuuuuuck... Being sappy like that was Aura's job..."
She really was catching feelings, wasn't she?
Void curled up, tugged the blanket over her head like it might smother the feelings into submission.
"She probably doesn't even like me like that," she mumbled. "I'm just the weird lesbian on the other end of a video call who says shit like 'I'd murder someone for you' and actually means it."
Silence. Again. Just her and her overheating thoughts.
She imagined Dee seeing her like this: eyeliner smudged, hair a mess, existential dread clinging to her skin like static. And she didn't recoil at the image. That scared her too.
Perhaps if the universe stopped being a complete bitch for once, something good could grow between them. Slowly. In the quiet. In between calls and laughter and long pauses where neither of them needed to say anything.
"Of course I'd fall for a girl across the fucking sea. Again," she muttered, bitter. "Because the universe has jokes, apparently."
She curled tighter, eyes burning. Not from tears. Not yet. Just the heat of holding too much and never getting to let it out.
What hurt more than loneliness was being ready for love - open to it - only to find out no one thought she was the kind of girl worth loving.
So yeah. She was pretty. She was funny. She was deep. And somehow, it never mattered.
She buried her face in the pillow. "I'm the girl you write poems about and then ghost."
If there was a God, she wanted a refund. Or at least a fucking hug.
Still. She let herself picture Dee again. Creating. Building. Breathing beauty into the void.
Her lips curled, just a little. "Stupid talented sweetheart," she whispered.
Then closed her eyes.
Not to sleep. That wouldn't come. But to dream - just a little. Just enough.
Of warmth.
Of hands that stayed.
Of a heart that said: "you. Yes, you."