Who: Briar Moss and Cassie Banner-Romanoff What Hanging Out When: Tuesday night into Wednesday Where: Cassie’s house Warnigs: TBD Status: Partial gdoc TBC
Cassie wasn't exactly looking forward to her birthday, but it was sort of an important thing. Since it had been so nice out before, she'd hung out with Briar for most of the day so they could take advantage of it. Something weird was going on with the weather considering the whole town had been nearly flooded from the constant, ridiculous rain the day before. It had been fun, ditching class and just chatting. She could almost forget about the fact that he'd gone to some stupid dance without her. With some other girl.
They'd separated around dinnertime so she could have dinner with her parents like usual. That had been fine, nice and low key since tomorrow was her birthday. Impulsively, at around 11pm, Cassie texted Briar to see if he'd come over and hang out for a little while longer. He didn't know it was her birthday and she had every intention of keeping it that way. Just like she had every intention of not letting her parents get clued in on the fact that he'd snuck in. He was going to have to teach her the window trick sooner or later.
"Hey," she greeted when she caught sight of him. She might've been glancing up every few seconds while she'd been waiting for him, but he didn't need to know that.
***
After being trapped indoors because of the rain, Briar had been more than happy to spend the day ditching school and spending time with his friend. She was good company, he liked her, and though he called her mate like he did his sisters it was a very different sort of like that he was determined not to think too hard about; the last thing he needed was for things to go getting complicated between them because of feelings or something.
She’d called him back after they parted ways, which was unusual but Briar didn’t have anything he’d rather be doing, so went and scaled the house the same way he always snuck in, tapped on the window frame.
“Hey,” he echoed, sliding inside, perching in the open window. “Got bored without me already, huh?”
***
Cassie rolled her eyes at him. "Don't be ridiculous," she replied. "You're the only one I know that can scale the side of the house." It was better to not let his head get too big and she wasn't about to admit that she wanted to hang out with him for her birthday. Feelings were not her strong suit at all and neither were relationships, so she was determined to just not talk about it at all. That was clearly the best way to go about anything to do with Briar. Denial wasn't just a river in Egypt, after all.
She set her sketchbook aside and moved to sit cross legged on the edge of her bed. Her pjs weren't anything he hadn't already seen before, just some sweatpants and a t-shirt with some fuzzy socks to keep her feet warm. "Besides, it's not like you've got anything better to do." Cassie arched an eyebrow as if daring him to say otherwise. "Why not hang out with me?"
***
Briar was the only one he knew too who could scale the side of a house. What he didn’t share was that he wasn’t completely on his own in it and never had been as it turned out. Climbing slick wood siding was harder than cracked stone walls but in the past he’d always had vines and flowers to help him along, some hurting him in the process, including the thorny thing that had scarred his palm deeply and given him his name. Here, knowing his magic better, it was easy to coax even dead wood into bending just enough to help him.
He just shrugged, shivered a little as the warmth of the day continued to fade away. “Who says I don’t got something better to do?” he teased. “Maybe there’s some skirt I’m tryin’ to peek under.”
There wasn’t and if there was he would have told her. Briar didn’t share a lot but he did share with his friends. They just so happened to be far and few between. Especially around here.
***
"Oh you mean like the girl from the dance?" she countered, the words out of her mouth before she even registered them. Cassie froze for the briefest of moments and then dropped her gaze to her sketchbook like she wasn't even the least bit interested in who his date had been or how it had come to pass. She did glance up though after a moment when she went to change colored pencils.
"You can come in and shut the window," Cassie added, not quite sourly but definitely a little put off. It was silly, absolutely, but as much as she told Lydia and Lorna and her mom, she was jealous and she did care and it wasn't so easy to just ignore those things. She was more mad at herself for feeling that way. It just made things more complicated. She'd had more than enough of complicated to last the whole rest of her life.
***
“Maybe,” he shrugged again, but did slide off the window, closed it and moved to sit beside her on the bed. “She seemed sort of fancy.”
Fancy didn’t suit Briar and he figured that Cassie would know that. He didn’t know the first thing to do with a fancy girl. They’d never be like Cassie was and like sneaking out of school or home to disappear into nature. They wouldn’t want to climb trees or trek through the woods off the trails while Briar hunted something down. They’d frown and disapprove at the knives tied beneath his sleeves and when he lifted wallets just for fun and just for practice. Briar knee that if he was going to have something real and deep with someone it needed to be with someone more like himself.
Someone like his friend.
“You got somethin’ to say ‘bout all that?” She sounded like she might but what did he know? Girls didn’t make any sense and he’d learned that well enough