forum boarding school dark academia murder mystery queer love triangle rp (closed, but feel free to stalk <3)

Started April 13, 2020 by @darling-velocipede group

tune

Kate looked at her reflection one last time before heading out. It really shouldn’t matter whether her bun was centered or not, but for some reason she cared enough to double check. Of course, it was a bit messy, but it seemed to be centered. She made a face in the mirror before heading out, walking down the street to the coffee shop where she was meeting her best friends.

It wasn’t a far walk, besides, something about the walking was soothing to Kate. She could think and daydream a bit as her body made repetitive steps. Thankfully, there weren’t too many others on the sidewalk, but even if there were, Kate’s resting bitch face tended to help her avoid people anyway.

She hummed slightly, getting that stupid butterfly feeling in her stomach that she had been telling herself to ignore for a while now. She had gotten quite good at it, too. Mostly. At any rate, Kate didn’t think that she had anything to be embarrassed about, having worn a cute but not overly nice outfit. She had on her favorite pair of colorful striped jeans, a black tank top, and yellow sneakers. For jewelry, her earrings were her only adornments, besides a simple locket around her neck.

Kate didn’t take too long to get to the cafe, since she walked fairly quickly and was good at avoiding people on the sidewalk. She opened the door, which let out a soft chime, then did a quick scan of the room. No one looked like her friends, so after she got a latte, she sat down at a table and waited, checking the time on her phone. She was early, but only by a couple of minutes, so the others should be there soon. Probably.

At any rate, the latte was good and the light pop music playing was nice, even if Kate was more of an alternative rock type of person. She drank her latte and scrolled through her phone distractedly while she waited for her friends, hoping no strangers would try to approach her (though obviously the likelihood of that was low). Any moment now, they would arrive.

Zephyr had been up far before light had so much as tasted the horizons, so went oblivious of the pavement-dark clouds smothering the sky until his oxfords hit the sidewalk outside his dorm building. Even then, he hardly noticed, though it was his favorite weather. The changes from the wooded scape of north dakota to the refreshingly urbanized campus of Thomas-Thyme Boarding School in Massachusetts were manifold in the environmental sense, and he cherished that on days like these. Everything was different in a social sense also. He preferred living alone as he did here; away from the noise of his family. He loved them, yes, and they tried their best, but it was quieter here.

Zephyr had always preferred the quiet.

He had friends here also, which he was far from used to. It certainly hadn’t been part of his plan to make any when he came here, as he had always found himself comfortable in solitude, but there was something about Leon that was so warm, something about Kate so explosive that he hardly had a choice.

His eyes ached behind his round, wire-rimmed spectacles as he hurried down the sidewalk– nearly three hours of reading small print by dim lamplight before dawn does that to a person. Still he couldn’t take even half a moment to stop and rub them. The tarnished silver watch weighing his right wrist told him he was already almost ten minutes late. And, knowing Kate, she’d likely been there for fifteen. Zephyr had started the morning with every intention to arrive on time, but one more page of his book on Pre-Socratic Scholars slipped into two, into three, and by the time they’d planned to meet he wasn’t properly dressed; hadn’t fixed his hair. Surely, he looked a mess in the clothes he’d thrown on, the comb he’d wreaked through the longer top part he usually spent a good few minutes and a healthy dose of pomade on. Even as he walked, he realized how painfully his deep orange slacks crashed with the trench coat he’d snagged from the coat hooks as he staggered out the door. But these worries were reassuring in their pettiness. His vanity kept his mind from… other, more troubling things. Like how he’d caught himself taking almost half an hour to puzzle out how to respond to Leon’s text of invitation to this very meeting, though it couldn’t have been interpreted as anything more than friendly and even if it had been, he would have shut her down. Yet, somehow, nowadays even the sight of her name on the illuminated screen of his phone made his heart murmur in a way he couldn’t say he cared for.

Zephyr had always preferred the quiet.

A soft chime rang from a little bell above the door as he shoved his way inside, almost tripping over his own feet as he walked briskly across the room to Kate. She caught his eye, nodded, and waved him over. He thought he’d be okay, but a yard from the table he noticed the scattering of freckles on her shoulders. A neutral, meaningless detail. But in the moment they felt like a punch to the stomach, another murmur from his heart.
“I’m going to get a coffee,” he muttered too quickly, not meeting her eyes as he threw down his messenger bag on the chair opposite to her and barreling towards the counter.

Zephyr had always preferred quiet.
So why couldn’t his stupid heart seem to shut up?

Leon wasn’t the type to ever flat-out ignore get-togethers. And the fact that she was the one who initiated it should have reinforced that decent habit. Unfortunately, it didn’t.
Though, it was somewhat true. She wasn’t just ignoring the “meeting.” She had simply forgot. Living alone with no one to remind her what she had planned was troublesome, to say the least.

Lee obliviously hummed along to the melody drifting from her phone. She was turned away with a hand tacking up a picture on her bare wall, so seeing her phone’s alarm was relatively impossible. And while it failed its duty in stopping her music to get attention, she’d see it soon enough. However, as time went on, and her picture-tacking ceased to end, she’d be later than usual.
Finally satisfied with the placement of the painting, she stepped back. Lee sucked in a deep breath, squinting her eyes and exhailing slowly through pursed lips. Her tired eyes wandered the barren wall— though, not barren for long. She had another pile of paintings to hang.
Her eyes soon drifted down to her phone. The case was littered with a constellation of paint splotches— as were her jeans— but she didn’t seem to mind. She raised an eyebrow, taking a moment to remember why she had actually set the alarm in the first place. With a sudden shooting realization, Lee yanked her dad’s old sage flight jacket from its stand, grabbed her phone, and strolled out the door. She didn’t bother to wipe the paint from her hands, smudges from her face, or fix her messy hair. She wasn’t ever too caught up in looks, especially if good ones took energy.

Flipping the lights out, she stepped out the door, closing it gently behind her. The thing couldn’t have taken more than that— it was the cheapest apartment she could find. Barely room for a bed, the studio didn’t serve much purpose besides basic shelter. Still, she didn’t mind. A house was a house.
Lee continued down the fire escape, the steps spitting her out behind the building. She swerved through a few alleys, utilizing her little knowledge of the city to take the quickest route. It wasn’t too long before the sauntered into the cafe.
With no surprise to her, Zephyr and Kate were already there. She gave them a quick smile, asking the barista for a water before heading over. Leon couldn’t have afforded much more— yet she was working two jobs back to back. All her savings would go to her brother and father— as she had promised.
She slid the water on the table, taking a seat and shoving her hands into the pockets of the flight jacket. The worn green fabric was littered with patches, and had been her favorite jacket since she was young. She couldn’t even remember ever wearing another.

Kate wished that she could say her friends’ lateness surprised her, but it was pretty much par for the course. Although it was a tad unusual for Leon to be quiet this late. She gave them each one the looks that she was famous for when they arrived tardy. While many people took this gazes to be annoying or even rude, Kate’s friends knew that while she was a bit annoyed at them, there was a fondness to it. There was a fondness, a softness, in every expression she had for these two goofballs. Especially Leon, her traitorous mind loved to remind her when the girl in question finally showed up.

Kate’s heart skipped a beat to see her, even with her paint splattered clothing. Her smile at that was every bit as teasing as it was caring. “I see that someone was in the middle of an art project,” she remarked, lips turning up at the corners. “Looks like you really got into it. It must be something special.”

She tried to glaze over the way that Zephyr had quickly dismissed her earlier, giving a quick hello and walking off to get a drink before she could truly respond. It annoyed her a bit, and yes, there was a pinprick of hurt there, but she tried to brush it off. They were best friends, surely Zephyr was just distracted. She tried not to think about it as she refocused on Leon, waiting for an answer. She wasn’t trying to ignore Zephyr, but him barely looking at her while they waited for Leon bothered her. When something was bothering Kate, she always seemed to let it show in little unconscious moments. Of course, she still hadn’t realized this about herself, and it was entirely possible that Zephyr had noticed her ever so slightly brushing him off like he had her. Kate had a habit of keeping her emotions very near the surface sometimes, especially with her best friends.

The combination of saccharine indie-pop piping through little speakers on the ceiling and the way Kate kept glancing at him, squinting, opening her mouth as if she had something to say, then closing it again without a word had grated Zephyr’s nerves to a jagged stump by the time Leon arrived. Kate’s greeting to the other girl, which seemed so painfully jolly in the wake of their shared uneasy, silence sealed the deal. He couldn’t imagine how he could have so swiftly offended her; it was as though his very presence was enough to irritate her. This is Kate, he reminded himself. She’s silly and sensitive, this isn’t new news. If he felt any guilt at whatever he may have done, it was clouded out by the sting of her slight.
“No, not really.” Leon’s response to Kate’s inquiry returned Zephyr to the moment. “Just hanging some old stuff up, daydreaming. You know.” Her voice was sincere yet undemanding. Her eyes, though a glittering blue, shone with grains of orange in the rays of orange in the pale sunshine that managed to weave it’s way through the clouds and into the cafe.
“Don’t you want something other than that?” Zephyr asked distractedly, nodding to Leon’s glass of ice water.
“Seriously?” Kate butted in. “Mister oblivious, right here. Glad you can afford a seven dollar coffee whenever you feel like it, Zeph.” He hated when people called him that. Kate was the only one who ever did.
Zephyr squinted back in disbelief. “But your drink cost more than mine! You’re far from struggling.” A poison burned behind Kate’s eyes, and Zephyr had to grit his teeth to avoid looking away, to avoid losing. Yeah, Kate was pretty. But a handful of minutes with her made Zephyr plainly recall why he could hardly stand to speak to her.
“Guys, let’s not.” Leon interrupted, soft and confident in equal measure. “There’s no point in this. And it’s our last year here. There’s not much time to waste.”
Kate’s eyes darted back and forth, Leon to Zephyr and back again as she tried to decide whether to continue the fight. But Zephyr knew she’d give in to Leon– she’d said the magic words. Though oft-unspoken, the countdown was on for their time together. And neither of the three of them was dull enough to believe they wouldn’t all be going their separate ways when high school ended.
“I… guess you’re right, Lee,” Kate resolved, shooting one last toxic glance at Zephyr, who smiled lazily, impassively. He wasn’t in the habit of faking repentance.
“Would anyone care to tell me why we’re even here?”
“Because we’re friends.” Leon sighed, face flat. When Leon was beginning to get irritated, even Zephyr could tell things were falling apart.
“If we don’t have anything to actually talk about,” he hurried on, “I found something at the library the other day.”
“Oh, imagine that. Everyone’s favorite scholar in the library.” Zephyr was surprised the sarcasm Kate’s words were drenched in didn’t drip down and burn holes in the table.
“I was at the library the other day and I found this.” He pulled a neatly folded print of a scan of a newspaper article from a pocket of his book bag and slid it across the table towards the girls. “A professor died here, nearly 50 years ago now. They never figured out who did it. Didn’t find much evidence at all, really. But he was found under a bridge on the other side of campus. With a gold-gilded dagger through his heart.” The air around them hummed, electric.