The Boy Behind the Counter

✑ chapter fifteen: i want to know what love is

i'm gonna take a little time, a little time to look around me
i've got nowhere left to hide. it looks like love has finally found me
in my life, there's been heartache and pain. i don't know if i can face them again
can't stop now: i've traveled so far to change this lonely life
i want to know what love is— i want you to show me
i want to feel what love is— i know you can show me

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A/N: some of you might have seen my earlier note about my whole chapter and most of this fic getting eaten by ulysess. i managed to recover MOST of my data from a backup after contacting ulysess, which took like four hours and a lot of back and forth, but still not everything (for some reason my intact stuff was only in much older backups, idk what even happened there). after recovering my data i almost lost it all again, too! ...well, you will find that i am motivated by NOTHING more than by sheer fucking spite, so here you go!! i've also generally reconstructed the whole story skeleton bc i found notes buried in lots of random places, so my progress is largely un-stuck. still missing a decent chunk of prose but i'm back in this bitch with more productive rage than ever before. also i'm officially a scrivener slut now. happy (july of) 2022 motherfuckers

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"Congratulations!"

Kay shouted that across the store the moment she spotted Miles in the doorway of the shop. He clicked his tongue and stepped aside to allow Maya past him, seeing as she was likely the one that bit of encouragement was meant for.

"Don't get our hopes up," Larry yelled back. "This only means we're going to regionals!"

"But that's still a big deal!"

"Larry thinks you'll jinx his chances of getting to nationals if you make too much of a fuss about it," Phoenix explained. "As for me? I don't mind it. I'm, uh, pretty proud of making it this time around."

Phoenix, Larry, and Maya had all gotten the word back already— all three of them had made it through the preliminary round of judgement and would be allowed to travel to the regional art tournament. The visual arts were judged first. The writers had yet to learn their fates, while the musicians had yet to so much as perform. It was a grueling three or four day process. Miles was usually quite confident in his own abilities, and so he didn't particularly care about how he'd fare as an individual. But this time was different. This time he was part of a unit that he had genuinely grown to care for, and he didn't want to let his orchestra down. Or the quintet.

He chose to focus on the present and on the good news that had presented itself. His friends' artistic abilities had been formally recognized. That was a good thing. It meant that there was cause to celebrate. That was what brought them to the shop this particular afternoon— they would all meet here before making their way to some likely overpriced restaurant that Franziska had chosen and insisted on paying for.

"You say that like you thought you weren't gonna make it," Kay chided. "Maya said you got all the way through to regionals last time!"

"O-Oh, no, it's not that! It's just that I used the techniques I learned from my mentor this time to do a portrait of her, and they're a little out there compared to what I usually do. I'm just glad I apparently did her some justice."

"You can drop the 'apparently' part." Maya gently slapped Phoenix across the back of his head. "She would've loved it. I'd know." She sank into a plush armchair and sighed dramatically as if she had worked several shifts back-to-back. "I'm glad I got through. The clan's kind of fallen on hard times ever since what my Aunt Morgan pulled."