Lovers: XOXO [the guidebook]

❤️/East: _life

🔥 sPoIlErS 🔥

This is a canon chapter from Lovers: Boarding School//The First Reset. This chapter will appear after the first half of the book (if I manage to get there) so if you don't wish to be spoiled, AVOID this chapter and pray for me to update because I need all the divine intervention I can get to write this motherfucker QwQ

🎃👻 Enjoy and Happy Halloween! 😈💀

*not edited

*This chapter may be subject to changes in story/characterization later in its development.

Gabriel tapped the ends of his pen in time with the ticking of the clock. He was almost unaware that the pen between in fingers had become a metronome of sorts, each click of the second arm christened with the tapping of plastic bouncing off hardwood desk. Earlier, his pen had clicked twice per second when the suspense of what was to come was at its highest. But when the suspense receded and what was to come didn't come, the tapping naturally fell in line with the rhythm of the clock and his anxiety bled out into a calm that was neither comforting nor tense.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

Are we really going to do this?

The needle of his metronome rolled down his middle finger before hitting the base of his dusty desk lamp. He stared blankly at the pen for a few seconds, its steel gray casing glinting under the lamp light like the smoking tip of a loaded gun.

Gabriel dropped his gaze from the pen to the messily scrawled notes in front of him. On the open spread of his notebook, illegible lines and blots of black ink filled occupied the pages, the words only he could read manufacturing conceivable machinations and constructed realities atop an empty vacuum of stale white. None of what he'd written registered in his mind despite his eyes swimming in its contained wildness, the words, the diagrams, the scribbles merely passing through his eyes and refusing to make sense behind them.

Sighing, he closed the notebook and leaned back into his chair. For the fifth time that night, he looked up at the cracked face of the analog clock that hung above his desk.

9:56

1 hour and 42 minutes.

"What's taking her so long?" he whispered. He'd told her to "take her time", even encouraging her to cancel their arrangement and this crazy course of action she'd proposed altogether. Gabriel was sure that Violet was just as reluctant as he, if not more so, in delving into territory reserved only for the most devoted and lovesick of people, but there was only so much time someone could hole themselves up in his bathroom without raising alarm bells.

Is this the only way?

Is this the only way to get hearts?

Gabriel looked back at the clock. 10:02.

It's only sex, he told himself. You've done this before. Why is she any different?

Well, for starters, the circumstantial context is very different. Plus, she hates your fucking guts.

"Fuck it."

Leaving his desk, Gabriel headed towards the bathroom of his room before the self-defeatist in him made him into any more of a coward.