𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐲 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐞 જ⁀➴

VIII

Cassandra

"Why can't you just say no to tutoring him?"

A string of colourful curses rolled from Cassandra's tongue, as she resorted her textbooks, notes and cassettes into categorised piles, the mounted tiles high enough that one simple nudge could send it tumbling down. Hence, the swearing and the placid glare she sent Aleksandr's direction. The hastily torn fabric of his shirt caught her attention momentarily, along with the revolting shade of scarlet that marked and painted his lower neck. A hickey. A careful roll of the eyes she had directed towards him before she forced her attention away from him, and urged it to remain on the parchments and the labelled cassettes that scattered her bedsheets.

Cassandra pretended to be nonchalant, as she contemplated who could have possibly been giving her best friend the hickeys. A random girl, anyone but the person he truly wanted it to be. The boy who currently was gone for the same reason.

"Professor Kingston gave me no choice," Cassandra answered his previous question, not wanting to delve too far into a discussion that strained her heart to think about. Hill was still under the category 'to not be thought about' and Cassandra was not going to ruin her years of success because she needed to tutor him for some time. Yes, she nearly had a heart attack when she was relayed the news but that was before.

Cassandra was fine now—composed and unperturbed.

Aleksandr huffed out an incredulous laugh, showing her that he did not believe her in the slightest and stretched out beside her. "You're rich. You can say no if you really wanted to."

"Who gave you the hickey?" Cassandra diverted the attention, and it had worked as the boy momentarily froze.

After a long, tense smile, he said, "Cadence Summers."

The name stunted and rendered Cassandra speechless, which was completely unlike her, but she had no other reasonable action to act upon when he startled her with the confession. It was the same and only girl that Dorian spent the last week and a half talking about, and it struck her surprised to see that Aleksandr would stoop that low to break the unspoken boundaries that was established between the two friends. Don't fuck each other's crushes (sexual or not), the rule was pretty self explanatory, but perhaps not to Aleksandr.

The silence lapped between them for far too long, and Aleksandr was panicking—his fingers flexing and his breathing growing a lot more slower as he stared at her with his eyes braced for cold judgement, but Cassandra had no clue what to say. Her thoughts lagged at a snail pace, as she pickpocketed the cruelest of thoughts from the comforting ones she was supposed to convey back to him, but she struggled to realign them.

"Say something." It was desperate, his voice, brittle and hoarse like he understood he had fucked up. "Tell me I'm a terrible friend, that this is going to hurt Dorian, but...don't do that. Don't stay silent, and quietly judge me in your head."

Cassandra averted her eyes. "I don't know what to say."

"Something," he commanded, forcing stability against the violent blush that tore through his cheeks. "Anything."

"Why'd you do it?" The words were out before Cassandra could stop them, but it was nothing but sincere. Aleksandr and Dorian were best friends, and deep down, yes, maybe she did understand why he must have done it. To inflict pain upon his best friend because he was grappling with the consequences of understanding his sexuality was an excuse, but might not be one that Dorian would comprehend if disclosed to. "You know that it'd hurt him, and that because he cares about you he won't get angry at you, he'll just feel...betrayed. But you still did it anyways." Admit it. You're in love with him. Admit it.