𝑷𝑯𝑶𝑻𝑶𝑮𝑬𝑵𝑰𝑪 // Michael Afton x Reader//

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"You're kidding?" Luna gaped, mouth hanging open as she leaned over the wooden table, palm pressed to her cheek. "When I said you would find your Romeo soon, I didn't mean you would bump into him literally a few minutes later."

Alex snorted at that while I just rolled my eyes. "Oh my god, Luna. Shut up, please. He's not my 'Romeo'." I huffed; arms crossed over my chest.

"Wait, so you fell for Michael Afton. Literally."

I looked over at Alex and deadpanned. "Yes, I literally fell because of Michael Afton. But I didn't fall for him." Alex shrugged, light brown hair shifting around her cheeks. "Eh, same thing."

"No, it's not the same thing," I said, stabbing a carrot with my plastic spork; the utensil bent against the force, threatening to snap if pushed further. "And he was very nice about it. He picked up my notebooks and gave them back to me, apologized, all that jazz." I waved off the incident as if it had never happened, nonchalant and stone-faced. Although, inside, it didn't particularly feel like nothing. I felt silly. It was just a simple bump - some love trope that would happen in the classic black and white movies my mother always watched as a kid - yet my heart pounded when I thought about it.

"So, maybe not Romeo then. How about Prince Charming instead?" Luna suggested, drawing a groan from me. I looked down at my half-eaten tray of food (a bowl of soupy meat that tasted like beef and rotten eggs, stale fries, and untouched soggy peas and carrots) before looking up at the clock hanging on the cafeteria wall. It was a little past noon which meant I had a little while until class started.

I pushed my chair back and stood up, grabbing my tray and emptying its contents into the nearest trash can. "Hey, I'm gonna go around the school and try to find something to photograph for class," I told Luna as I passed by the table. She nodded. "Do you know what you want to take a picture of?"

I lingered on the thought for a moment, scratching my chin and shifting my weight between my feet. "No, not really," I admitted, "I'll just take a picture of whatever jumps out at me as 'expression'." I waved my hands in a big gesture, emphasizing the word expression with a whispery voice.

"Well, okay. Have fun!" Luna smiled at me, watching as I made my way to the big open doorway leading to the white-bricked hallways lined with beige lockers, teenagers leaning against them as they chatted and ate lunch. I considered taking a picture of one of them – capturing their carefree expressions as they mindlessly joked around with their friends, laughing and smiling when someone made a funny comment – but decided against it, unwilling to disturb people I didn't know for a photo.

I huffed and continued roving down the hall, eyes diligently snapping back and forth in search of worthy photography material. As I wandered further from the cafeteria, the number of students loitering around decreased. The sound of chatter faded into soft mummers, muffled by the walls. My footsteps echoed across the empty halls. There was a sort of liminal feeling to being alone in a usually very populated place, the absence of people feeling strange and wrong.

I soon found myself standing in front of a heavy door, and as I pushed it open, the sound of voices started back up again. It was one of the old stairwells leading to the second floor; bifurcated metal stairs winding upwards like a path leading to a dungeon in an old medieval-styled tower. Curiously, I began up the stairs, the rusty metal bending and creaking under me. It was a wonder people still used this as it was built around 1918 (when the school was first built) and posed a serious safety risk.

As I drifted upwards along the staircase, the voices turned from muddled mumbles to a lucid conversation.

"Fuck off, Fredrick. You know damn well you'll die if you try that," a flat, unexpressive voice stated. "Yeah, maybe I will. But you never know unless you try, my friend," another voice responded, this one high-pitched (like a kid who never went through puberty) with an edge of amusement in his tone.