Total Drama One-Shots

[Courtney/Gwen] "I Love You" in Five Languages

Ship: Courtney/Gwen
Rating: General
Warnings: Swearing, bit of angst
Originally Published: 26 Nov 2022 (Ao3)
Republished: 6 Dec 2022

1. Words of affirmation

Her fingers skim the board, brushing over invisible frets. They play on a coordinate map from sharp to soft, sting to pluck, and fill the room with breaths of <i>Andante</i>. A hundred little dances make one song, one symphony, as she glided across the stage with nothing but the feeling of slick floor beneath her feet and the cascade of melody up from the floor. Her bow rips a few times across the pad as she teeters on the edge of the catwalk, and she makes a final slice up the horizon of her violin as she breaths in and holds.

"WOO!"

"Agh!" She stumbles back, almost dropping her instrument into the orchestra pit, and she sees her. She's roaring through black lips, the balm stuck to her teeth, and her eyes are crinkled under heaps of smudged liner. She's feathery-headed and blue like methylene, clothes torn and necklaces tangled.

She's gorgeous, Courtney thinks, in a rat kind of way.

"Dude, okay, THAT was incredible!" The girl shouts at her, walking up with finger guns out.

"Oh!" Courtney almost blushes, instead turning to put her violin in its bed. "Thank you!"

"No problem," She said. "New here?"

"No, actually," Courtney replied, trying to focus on smoothing on the velvet instead of the girl's high boots and chains. She's so rugged, but like an old violin, or a Greek portrait. "I'm actually first chair."

"Really? Never seen you here," She said.

"Are you in orchestra?" Courtney asked.

"No, can't stand band kids," she snickered. "I just come here to draw during lunch. You have no idea how many try-hards come in here every day, can't remember the last time I didn't hate taking my headphones off."

"You're an artist?" Courtney looks at her torn tights. "Makes sense. What do you, uh, draw?"

"Anything. Monsters, city scapes, fashion. How about you, what do you play?"

"Classical," Courtney said, almost turning her nose up. "Obviously."

"Yeah?"

"The new stuff is just...too soulless. Made just for deviance."

"Hey, deviance is fun," The girl replied. "Try graffiti."

"And destroy public property? Uh, no thanks. Some of us want a career."

Courtney scrunched up her face, preparing her arguments in her brain. Instead, she heard a snorting laugh. "Yeah, and some of us want to have fun."

"Hmph!"

"Check out the subway tunnel off Fennel and 45th sometime," The girl continued. "If you ever wanna join the dark side."

"Whatever, Ms. Edgelord."

"Gwen."

"Huh?"

"It's Gwen, Ms. Edgelord's my grandma."

"Funny."

2: Receiving Gifts

Ms. Edgelord was becoming less funny and more actually interesting.

You know, in a science experiment way; some trash that turned radioactive, maybe. She'd been there almost every day, and— true to her word— drawing, too. Courtney pretended not to look, but god, how couldn't she? It was gory, disgusting, but the way she lined trickles of blood in oil pastel for the wet effect, and the way she mapped faces out with rulers...it was a purely methodical interest. But an interest.