Letters to You (RedxBlue)

Letter 6: -Red

Monday is a holiday, and Leaf is in town, so somehow they wind up in Blue's bathroom discussing beauty regimens. "This lotion is so expensive," Leaf complains while she dabs white smears of Blue's lotion under her eyes.

"You don't have to use it if you don't want to," he snaps, taking the eyeliner pencil away from his eye so he doesn't accidentally stab himself. When he's done, and it's her turn to bicker, he goes back to looking in the mirror while he outlines his lower lid—not too much, though, because he's not a fucking Zigzagoon.

Leaf makes a show out of moaning dramatically. "I love how mad it makes you, though."

Blue rolls his eyes.

"Yellow misses you," Leaf notes casually in the space of the next breath, delicately smoothing lotion over her cheeks now.

Blue's heart spasms in his chest, twisting to get up in his throat, pounding to get away from him. Lie, he thinks violently, A lie. If only Leaf had seen how Yellow had broken up with him. Blue's breath is strangled in his throat, and he drops the eyeliner. It clatters into the sink.

Leaf, wide-eyed, catches his stare in the large mirror. "As a friend," she blurts bluntly, "I meant as a friend."

Blue moves to the toilet, drops the lid down, and sits on it. He's almost dizzy with it—the sudden excitement, the brutality of the memories. He breathes, willing his heart to slow.

Lotion forgotten on her skin, Leaf turns to him and announces, "She's completely over you."

She was over me from the beginning, Blue thinks uncharitably but keeps his wounds and his bitterness to himself. "I know," he mutters.

Leaf's eyes are still wide, now they soften with something wretchedly akin to pity. "Is this why she suggested the pen pal thing?"

Blue's been around people plenty enough to hear the real question: You aren't over her yet? He answers the one that's been said, "Yes," but he's quite scared enough that the answer to both questions are the same anyways.

"What?" Leaf asks, barely above a whisper, "She thought you'd," her voice picks up volume and taints with anger, "get lucky? Find your true love in the mail? Leave her alone?"

Blue is relieved to hear her irritation. The thought of defending himself from Yellow and Leaf is too much. He clasps his hands in front of him, between his knees, and says nothing.

"That is so twisted, Blue. Why would you listen to her?"

Blue thinks about the two letters he already has tucked away—about someone talking to him with nothing but honesty and no care for his feelings because they don't know him but they just want to talk to him. "It's been alright," he sighs. He looks up into Leaf's eyes, pleading with her to believe him.

Whatever Leaf sees in him, it makes her huff and turn away. She puts her back to the countertop and leans against it. "Do you like your pen pal?" she asks, all derision and pity gone from her voice—nothing but casualness left, just making conversation. She brings her hands back up to her cheeks and rubs the remaining lotion in with little circles of the pads of her fingers.

"He called Yellow a man," he blurts, repressed laughter surprising him by being present in his voice. He didn't realize how much he liked that assumption until now. Yellow being called a boy again, like when they were children—the way her face used to scrunch up, red from the teasing. There's a brutal satisfaction in that. His lips twist with a mean grin.

Leaf bursts into her witchy cackles that punctuate themselves with endearing snorts. She claps a hand over her mouth to catch them, undeservedly self-conscious. "Oh, she'd love that," Leaf chokes out, wide-eyed and stifling laughter. She lets her hand fall after a breath and smiles at him gently, "Do you have his letters?"