and i love her ▸ tate langdon ✓

22. hold onto me

Just the brilliance and the passion
And the bitterness remains

-

Marceline situates her skirt, fixing her shirt as she steps out of the stall. Tate follows her out, zipping up his jeans as he fluffs up his hair.

"I wonder if anyone heard," Marceline comments, looking in the bathroom mirror to make sure she didn't look like she just got fucked in the bathroom at her school. "Probably. But so many people fuck here, that I guarantee nobody would care," Tate shrugs.

She watches him in the mirror as he pulls his usual small vial out of his back pocket and dumps some of the coke onto the back of his hand.

He snorts it up, sighing in content as it enters his body. Marceline grabs it from him, snorting her own line off the back of her hand before handing it back. "I fucking hate this place. Everybody and everything here sucks," she says flatly.

"I know, right? The more I come here, the more I despise it," Tate agrees.

"School is just a place where dreams come to die. Dreams and people," Marceline chuckles dryly, fixing the band of her bra underneath her shirt.

"People," Tate scoffs under his breath, standing behind her as she fixes her smeared mascara. His hands wrap around her waist, pulling her into his body. "People suck. All we gotta do is care about ourselves. And we'll survive,"

Her eyes meet his in the dirty mirror, a small smile on her lips as he rests his head on her shoulder. "Yeah. You're right," she says.

"I know I am," he replies cockily, pressing a kiss to her cheek before walking away from her. "See you after school," he says, pulling the door open and leaving the bathroom. Marceline stays in the dirty bathroom for a few more moments until the bell rang.

Pulling her eyes from her reflection, she walks to her next class.

-

It was midnight and Marceline had snuck out of her house to meet up with Tate.

Since it was finally Friday, Tate had snuck some vodka from his mom's stash. Tate knew he'd be trouble later, but he was too high to care. This time, they were strung on some weird drug Sally gave them that made them feel like they could jump off a cliff and survive. That plus the alcohol made an amusing concoction.

Marceline holds the vodka bottle loosely in her hand, balancing herself on a big rock as they stand on the beach Tate had shown her a few weeks ago.

"Look! Tate!" she calls out, swaying on the point of the rock. Tate looks at her from the sand, a smile on his lips. "I see you, Mars," he replies, noticing how insanely off this planet she was on alcohol and the most likely laced coke.

"I'm flying," she comments to herself, her head falling back as she holds out her arms in a T-shaped pose. "I wonder if I jumped, if it would hurt,"

"Depends on how you land," Tate responds, raising his voice so she could hear him from the rock that stood maybe two or three feet above him. She laughs, not at anything in particular, but just to laugh.

She jumps off the rock, somehow managing to not spill or drop the bottle of vodka she held. She stumbles into Tate, allowing him to steady her. Giggling, she sips at the alcohol.

It was dark and the only light was from the moon and stars. Waves crash onto the sand, not reaching too far up due to it being low tide. There was a hill made out of grassy sand that provided privacy for Marceline and Tate as they roamed the small beach.