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SUMMARY
Akeno Menzies hides a secret no one can touch and it is eating him alive.
It starts when he is six and can barely understand how warmth can transfer between two people. How he is able to look into someone's eyes and see the world staring straight back at him, how he knows that love is stored within hands before he even hears the words thermal conduction. And that's where Akeno is truly fucked, when he goes to school and meets Junko Hamasaki who cradles his frostbitten fingers like a wounded bird just to press soft pecks to his rosy knuckles.
Best believe, Audrey Hope is unaware of the implications of his present partnership with Junko in Japanese class. Learning languages is impersonal, he convinces himself as his partner saves him a seat in the back row just so they can whisper outlandish things to each other. She tugs on his ear whenever his sentences come out choppy and comments on new jewelry she's seen that would look lovely on him.
Lovely. Akeno is not lovely but he can learn to be if he is just given the chance. Yet, he's missed the mark so many times that he feels stuck in the middle and can only find refuge within the back of the study hall just to be content hearing another ramble about things that are trivial in the grand scheme of things. Junko holds his hand, gently and loosely as if this moment will pass like all the others, under the table and these are times where he truly feels lovely.
Akeno Menzies keeps Junko Hamasaki in the dark, not because he is ashamed of her, but he is afraid of how she'll see him when they're in the light.
NOTES
• Although I allowed changing Junko's name and face claim, I want to make it extremely clear that she should still be Japanese and that this is non-negotiable.
• Not a lot is said on this for Junko character wise but she is described as self-assured, headstrong, and witty.
• Aki does not physically cheat on Audrey during this story with Junko, maybe emotionally but he's just getting confused with Gossip Girl, his relationship with Audrey, his kiss with Max, and Junko falls somewhere in between all of that.
• Even if I wrote a lot of this about Aki, it doesn't need to be written in his perspective but Junko does get irritated by the feeling that Aki is hiding her and he doesn't know how to explain how he really feels without feeling like shit because he's always the meditator to everyone except himself.
• She is not friends with Julien and the rest of them, knows slightly about them through Gossip Girl and Aki but is unaware about what's going on until she's roped in. It doesn't matter when it happens although I would suggest somewhere around the third episode where Audrey and Aki are both worried about their infidelity.
• Junko is rich, make no mistake, but her name doesn't carry as much power compared to her peers and both of her parents are lawyers. A lot of Aki's uncertainty carries from the fact that Junko is special to him and he doesn't want to know what putting her in the public eye will do.
• Title is from Black Star by Radiohead, I feel like that's just fun to point out or whatever.
