Lovers: XOXO [the guidebook]

❤️/East: //blue_

I hate myself for writing "this" instead of updating the other projects that actually DO need updates, but you know me; once an idea takes hold of me I just have to write it :)))) FML.

To be honest, I'm posting "this" here because I don't want a lot of people to read "this". I might remove this "thing" later because I am a flaky bitch when it comes to plotting and it might cause a lot of confusion down the line when I do begin writing LBS 2. Is this "thing" canon? Will it not be? I don't know I'm confusing myself :D

IMPORTANT NOTE: In term of this "thing's" chronology (is it an extra chapter? A character study? I dunno), this happens after chapter 10 of LBS 2 (Part 1). Also, SPOILERS and GRAMMATICAL ERRORS (cuz editing doesn't happen here)!

yOu'Ve BeEn wArNed.

"Gale, do you think this lipstick colour looks good on me?"

A pair of emerald green eyes looked up from his e-Reader to his seat partner who was puckering a pair of ruby red lips at him like a fish. She too had his vivid eyes of absinthe that stared down at him from under a thick fringe of curly brown hair a shade darker than his.

"You look like a dead fish," Gale said dryly before returning back to his e-Reader. He was approaching the end of a book he was currently immersed in and was agitated that he'd been interrupted at a such a critical moment in the story.

Gale's seat partner sighed and she gripped his head tightly with a hand. "Can you say something nice for once Little Shit?" she said, her nails digging slightly into his scalp. All around them, the sounds of spectators in hard plastic seats buzzed throughout the large ice rink the two of them were in. Below them, behind a meter high panel of glass, was a massive ice rink, its smooth surface gleaming like that of a polished moonstone's.

Never raising his eyes from his eReader, Gale shrugged, unbothered by the older girl's taloned hand squeezing at his head. "If you acted your age maybe," he grumbled, rolling his eyes.

"Follow your own advice," the girl beside him shot back. "I never met a twelve year-old who acted so much like an old man like you."

"Better than a sixteen year-old who acts like a kindergartner like you."

"Shut up niaiseux."

"You're the one bothering me vidange."

The girl beside him gaped at him, her nails close to scalping him of his wavy chocolate hair. "You ungrateful little--if I didn't take you out here you would've missed out on a free dinner and a good time."

You brought me out here because you wanted an excuse to see that abusive asshat, he wanted to say but he bit on the inside of his cheek and stared holes into the dimly lit screen of his tablet.

"Gale, he's not a bad guy."

Gale clamped his lips tightly, his eyes focused on a sentence that he had tried reading for the past few minutes. The hand that had been close to leaving five crescent-shaped puncture wounds on his head was now gently patting him from the top of his head to its back. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. The feeling of her hand running through his hair reminded him of their mother when she wasn't just a fuzzy memory of a frail woman lying lifelessly on a bed of white flowers in an empty room that felt colder than the ice rink chilling his cheeks a ruddy pink.

Reluctantly, the young boy looked up from his eReader at the girl beside him. She was smiling down on him, her sunny smile always giving off the impression that she had discovered the secret to happiness in a place no one could've guessed--even though Gale knew that couldn't be further than the truth.