fuxking up what matters :: [ hatchet x leo ]

^{sophomore year. february.}

Rockfall Public's competitive combat team starts practicing in January, when everyone returns from winter break. That means Hatchet has already spent a month overhearing loud retellings of Wilder Zombi's various hookup adventures, so she knows exactly what's coming today. Doesn't mean she's ready for it. Fuck no. Hatchet might have skipped practice if it wouldn't get her removed from the roster for the next tournament and potentially demoted to bench warming for the rest of the year. There are only four chances per season to qualify for the league championship gauntlet and she already screwed up the first meet. Her situation is precarious enough. "Yeah, I dunno," Wilder shrugs to the huddle of gossip hungry jocks elbowing her for details about last Friday's party shenanigans, when Drinko was abruptly cancelled mid-game so the Captain could suck face with her. "Some chick on the track team?" There's a pause of contemplation. "Might've been exy actually..." Considering how badly the exy team performed this year, after their star striker made the baffling decision to forgo exy in favor of committing social suicide by joining up with the improvised weapons team, everyone struggles to remember who this year's exy players even were. "She's got hurdler's legs though," Wilder's lecherous grin makes no secret of the ways in which she is now an authority on this subject, "so she's wasting her talents there." There's a round of shoving and sword clanging as everyone wrestles to be the first one to fist bump Wilder over her most recent achievements in scoring trophies, records, and women. Despite being a freshman, she's already a god to her fellow Granite Vista tourists — the kids who transfer into Rockfall each year from much wealthier parts of District Two, looking to prove that their athletic skills are earned, not bought. The day they graduate they're already packed up and moved back to wherever they came from, while the real Rockfall kids are left behind with nothing and no way out. Unless they manage to qualify for one of the District's national teams. Then they have a shot. Hatchet swings her double-bladed battle axe in a full circle — five and a half feet tall and hand-forged with hot pink plated steel, the name BABY GIRL is proudly carved into the handle — practicing her footwork. Swinging it around is easy; every day is arm day. What's tricky is controlling the momentum so it goes precisely where she wants, rather than settling for a general direction. A powerhouse player, all she needs is one good hit to dominate a match, but more agile opponents have a massive advantage against her. That's how she wound up bombing so hard last week. A repeat performance of that isn't an option. "Hey! Hatchet!" Zombi's voice breaks her concentration and Hatchet nearly twists her ankle. It's all she can do not to turn her axe on her teammate. "You're on exy! Who am I hooking up with?" It's an impulse that doesn't relent. It only grows. "Knowing you?" Sneering, Hatchet stomps the butt of her weapon into the practice mat with an echoing thud. Leaning her weight onto it, she starts rolling her ankle out so that she has a lesser type of pain to focus on for a little while. The low level ache is almost a relief. "Coach Q." Wilder Zombi is a known milf enthusiast. The jab could be sharper — after all, the exy team's head coach is objectively good looking, with biceps that could crack skulls as easily as hearts — but all Hatchet really wants is to have nothing to do with this conversation. "Ohhh, don't I wish! Bucket list." Zombi laments her inability to actually pull off seducing the hot older women of Rockfall. Yet. "But nah. A player. Took me to her place. Lives in The Cad." Already knowing the name that Wilder is searching for doesn't make it any easier for Hatchet to suffer through the descriptions of her ex-best friend. It's not surprising that Wilder doesn't bother to ask the names of the girls she picks up at parties, but it is astonishing that anyone wouldn't ask for Leo's. Hatchet's knuckles flex white on her axe handle, but she swallows back the flash of nausea in her stomach. It's harder to find comfort today in the similarities that she shares with Zombi than it was at the party. Leo's type sucks. "With all the freckles?" Hatchet throws out the misleading description in hopes that Wilder remembers what Leo looks like about as well as she remembers her name. Zombi shakes her head, her mouth puckered up in rejection of the false information. One thing she doesn't forget is what women look like. "With the cheeks," she corrects and Hatchet's stomach turns on itself again. Leo has the most squishable face in Rockfall. Even if Hatchet hadn't witnessed the Drinko antics firsthand, she would know exactly who Wilder had hooked up with based on this fragment of description alone. "I was gonna dine and dash," the crowd of lackeys titters; Hatchet reconsiders the merits of walking out, just to save herself from committing assault in broad daylight, "but I overslept and she made breakfast." It takes conscious effort to unclench her jaw. "Burnt toast?" She hates this. She hates Wilder. She hates everything. "No way." Of course not. It was always Hatchet who was in charge of burning toast. Leo would never. "Killer hash browns. I'm talking crisp. Some kind of ham." Leo's love language is food. Hatchet learned this within hours of meeting her, the two of them splitting lunch together on the school's rooftop. Spanikopita and the best donut that Hatchet had ever eaten — a stale bear claw with little almond sliver claws, dusted in cinnamon sugar. But that was nothing. The diner leftovers that Leo brought to school were garbage in comparison to the the things she made herself. It didn't matter if it was pancakes or popcorn or BLTs or things more complicated; there was always so much care put into whatever she did that Hatchet could taste her heart, as if Leo cracked her chest open to make every meal. Wilder can't even remember Leo's name. She doesn't deserve hash browns. "Who casually poaches eggs?" Leonardo Wordriff. Something festers in Hatchet as she thinks about Zombi snoring in Leo's bed, dreaming about avoiding seeing her in the morning (as if that's not backwards as hell), while Leo peels and grates potatoes in the kitchen. The ghost in her head hums to the beat of crackling oil, as shades of golden are painstakingly considered before choosing the nicest one for Wilder's plate. The ham is cut from a particular angle, in accordance with the grain. The eggs? The poached-fucking-eggs — Acid burns in Hatchet's throat. Maybe someday Leo will find someone who deserves her, but it's not anyone here. "Haversmith," Hatchet snarls and turns her back on the situation — ten feet tall and monstrous with Baby Girl raised above her head — cleaving a practice dummy in half. Hot pink steel splits through the center of the skull, slicing all the way down through the pelvis. The right half and the left half of the body clatter outwards, separated in opposite directions. Everyone cheers. That's some national team shit right there.

_{bitter by fletcher.}

^{sophomore year. october.}

"They, um —            Shear Hill goes to the diner after games a lot. Obnoxious... Usually I can deal, but they've never recognized me before. And, uh — I need backup. I, uh —" (Need you.) "Hah.            Ha ha.                       Would you want to come with and spit in their food? You can have my tips, but they never leave any, so it won't be..." (Worth it.) x x x On the other side of the door, Hatchet wrestles with the desire to go back inside. To be Leo's backup. To be Leo's. "You go," she tells the goalie attempting to shepherd her onto the bus back to Rockfall. There's a party she's wanted at, because there's always a party. She doesn't care. "I've gotta —" Cutting herself off, she walks away without bothering to explain. Hatchet doesn't want to party tonight. She wants to crack skulls. Loitering outside the home team's locker room, she doesn't have to wait long for their shithead striker to present himself for punishment. The door opens and Hatchet grabs it by the handle, slamming it into his face. Taking him by the collar, the fabric of his shirt bunches up in her fist. It splays her fingers so that they can't quite tighten into perfect form; this is the closest he comes to fighting back, too disoriented to have the wherewithal to struggle against her. Dragging him under the bleachers is easy. Then they're alone, ready for a nice little private chat. Hatchet suckerpunches him right in the face, knuckles digging into his eye socket, his neck cracking back from the force of the blow. It knocks him to the ground. Back slumped against the wall with his head lolling as he battles dizziness and the urge to vomit, Hatchet takes a seat beside him and casually drapes an arm around his shoulders. Anyone looking might mistake them for buddies if not for the part where Hatchet's hand is holding the sharp end of a broken bottle to his neck. Leo has her shank, so Hatchet picked this new enforcement tool out from an overflowing trashcan on her way to pay the Shear Hill striker a visit, busting the bottom out against a brick wall. Patting down his pockets with her free hand, it doesn't take long to find his wallet. She flips it open and slides his ID card out with her thumb, tossing the billfold back over to him — he'll need that to pay for dinner later. It hits him in the chest before rolling down to the ground on his other side. He doesn't make any kind of move to pick it up. "Raymond Ryequist," Hatchet reads aloud. "Can I call you Ray? If you and me are gonna be close now, then I think I should. Don't you?" Skimming past the details about his height, weight, eye and hair color, she quickly finds her way to more useful information. "6632 North Pike Road, apartment five. Hey! I know where that is," she exclaims in a cheery voice, giving him a friendly smack on the knee. She's lying about knowing where it is, but not for long. She can find it. "So, Ray. I couldn't help noticing that you and Leo Wordriff seem to know each other. That's so cool. Seeing the way you two get along got me thinking that I should introduce myself." Hatchet's grin doesn't quite match her bright tone of voice. Sharp teeth and shadows, the curling corners of her lips are nooses waiting to be dropped. "I'm Leo's girl." Hatchet's inability to accept her ex-best friend's invitation to play bodyguard at the Bingo Diner tonight is complicated by her confusion over why the invitation was extended at all. They're not on good terms. Assault will do that; just ask Ray over here. In any case, even if they were living in a timeline where Leo — somehow — didn't hate Hatchet for what she did, that wouldn't change that Hatchet hates Hatchet. She would kick the shit out of anyone who did what she did to Leo, but making things right with herself isn't so simple. A year of beating herself up about it still doesn't feel like enough. None of that really matters right now. Just because Leo thinks that Hatchet doesn't have her back anymore doesn't mean that Hatchet is going to step aside and do nothing when someone crosses her. Leo didn't need to ask. Hatchet was going to rough this kid up either way. She had already decided to slam his face into a door before the game was even over. Whether or not he shows up at the diner later on doesn't really factor into this. While it's a perk that this chat of theirs is sure to prevent further trouble for Leo tonight, mostly Hatchet just wanted an eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A fuckup for a fuckup. "I think you and I could be good friends, what with us having Leo in common and all. I hear you even go to the Bingo Diner after games." Wits not yet fully recovered, his lolling head drifts too close to the jagged glass of the bottle and jerks back suddenly. A trickle of blood rolls down his cheek as he peers over at Hatchet. "If you want me to come hang out with you again, all you've gotta do is just let Leo know and that message will get passed along to me. Then I'll know that you want me to drop by." 6632 North Pike Road, apartment five. Hatchet slips the ID card into the pocket of her varsity jacket. She'll be keeping that. "Or, y'know, if you don't want to hang out again then that's cool. We don't have to be friends, Ray. Just don't tell Leo to say hey if you don't wanna see me again. It's totally up to you." Getting to her feet, Hatchet tosses the broken bottle into a nearby trashcan before tucking her bloody knuckles into her pockets and heading outside. It's a long walk back to Rockfall; she doesn't have any more time to waste on this guy. Not tonight. Unless he wants the rest of his face to match his new shiner, then not any other night either.

_{i'm your girl by khan.}

^{freshman year. october. november.}

Just because Leo knew that Hatchet wouldn't be in third period chemistry doesn't mean the vacant seat on her right is any easier to deal with. The draft from the window hits her full-force now; the emptiness is chilly. She can't stop herself from glancing over at it, trying to catch its eye to share a snicker when Mrs. Collier's brief tangent on advanced topics frequently references the apparently-scientific term backside attack, or looking down to see if the empty space has doodled anything interesting in the margins of its homework, or leaning in to double-check that she copied the right notes down from the board. She puts her feet up on the extra chair to remind herself not to do any of that. It doesn't help. Ilyich had waited until four days before Leo's return to school to inform her of Hatchet's schedule change. It wasn't surprising to learn that her cousin had several sources in the school office; bored administrators and secretaries love gossip as much as Ilyich does. "I stop by for a chat twice a week," they admitted, "when Agatha is on her smoke break. So I don't have to smell the mothballs." That's as often as they need to stay on top of all the ordinary Rockfall drama, apparently — dropouts, suspensions, detentions, whether or not the latest lead on the identity of the Third Floor Bathroom Bomber would pan out. Leo doesn't ask, but Ilyich gleefully informs her that the acid incident dominated the administrator gossip cycle for a full two weeks; somehow, this doesn't make her feel like much of a celebrity. "Lunch too?" was all she could think to say. "Everything," Ilyich had confirmed, nodding. So now they have nothing together. Hatchet made sure of that. That first Monday back, Leo doesn't know what to do during her lunch period. Their spot doesn't feel like an option; the void on her right will grow so much larger on the school roof, and she doesn't think she should be up there alone right now. Ilyich's lunch period is later in the day. The cafeteria smells like Mystery Casserole, and the thirty seconds she spends there is enough to turn her lack of appetite into outright nausea. She doesn't have anyone to sit with, anyway. She pretends the lump in her throat is pride and swallows it, then trudges to the gym. Her aunt is kind enough to hand Leo the keys to her office to eat there without asking any questions. There's no point in asking. All the answers are obvious. Taking a seat at the messy corner desk, Leo scoots a stack of papers to protect them from spills and unpacks her lunch. She doesn't know why she brought it. Optimism maybe. There was no way that she'd have an appetite today — certainly not enough for leftover goulash, which is rich at the best of times, and is particularly hard to stomach when it's cold. Feebly dunking her stale hunk of sourdough into the vivid red stew, she tries to make herself eat at least that much while she stares off into space. The diagrams on Coach Q's whiteboard catch her eye. Trying to parse out the play from the squiggly line and the mess of her aunt's handwriting distracts her brain enough to get a few more bites of bread into her stomach. She doesn't really follow it; the lines are too chaotic, her head is too fuzzy, and she's not on the team — it's not worth the processing power to try to untangle all the scribbles. When her eyes fall on a word she always recognizes, the last bite of bread becomes impossible to swallow. It's a big deal that Coach Q is starting 10 LAVEAU during this week's game against Highland. Shear Hill might be Rockfall's rival, but the Highland game is the one that her aunt pulls out all the stops to win. A flash of pride comes first — she must be doing really well on the court, her varsity career is clearly off to a great start already — followed by a double dose of heartbreak and despair. This isn't how Leo's supposed to find out shit like this. This news should be heralded by an over-the-top routine of flexing, triumphant and arrogant, high fives and headlocks and hugs exchanged before Hatchet even bothers to oh-so-casually ask "guess who's starting next game." Leo should be the first to know. She hates this. Hunching over, Leo spits the last of her bread out into the trash can under the desk before the over-chewed bolus can dredge up the few bites she did manage to choke down. She stays down for a few moments, wallowing, then hits her head on the tabletop on her way back up. The tightly-crammed furniture knocks together, jostling the adjacent trophy case. A lump of orange fabric spills from the top and lands on the floor. She stares at it, rubbing the back of her head. When it still doesn't pick itself back up after a minute, she heaves a sigh and hauls herself out of the seat, plodding across the room to put it back wherever it came from. It's a home game exy jersey, number 9. Her number. When she played, anyway. Trying not to dwell on those thoughts — apprehensive about where they'd lead — she wads it up again and goes to tuck it back where it came from. A black sleeve dangles over the edge of the top of the trophy case. Curiosity getting the better of her, she tugs it down. It's the away game twin of the jersey in her hand. Leo doesn't know what to do with that. She doesn't want her aunt to think she dug them up to take a look — then she'll never get a reprieve from the gentle reminders that she can join the practice squad whenever she'd like — so she shoves them behind the league championship trophy from two years ago. Out of sight, out of mind. The second Monday back, Leo waits by Hatchet's locker before school. When there's no sign of her by the time the late bell rings, she heads to class. "Sorry," she tells her teacher, holding up her bandaged hand, "locker trouble." It isn't a lie; besides, the pinching-twisting motions required to operate a combination lock still send the occasional sharp stab of pain through her acid-mangled hand. "Can I leave a couple minutes early so I'm not late for my next class?" The teacher just shrugs. It's Rockfall; she wasn't going to miss anything crucial. This gives Leo enough time to be waiting at Hatchet's locker when the bell rings to signify the end of class. Again, no Hatchet. "Sorry," Leo tells her second period teacher when she arrives late, "locker trouble. Can I..." By the end of the day, it's definitive that Hatchet is avoiding her. The third Monday back, Leo has a plan. A few dozen attempts to write a note to slip in between the slats in Hatchet's locker have already failed — she doesn't know what to say. Every time she tries to start one, her brain gets so scrambled that the five or six words she manages to put on paper come out entirely indecipherable. Some of the letters even come out mirrored; she hasn't done that since before she moved to Rockfall. Once, she got three or four sentences written down, but when she tried to read them back they were so completely incomprehensible she couldn't remember what she was trying to say in the first place, and the only word she managed to spell right was Hatchet. Instead, she brought a bear claw. That's the clearest way she can figure out how to say... whatever it is that she's trying to say. Hatchet will understand that. Leo can get her words all mixed up all the time, but it's impossible to misinterpret a donut. She'll always get that right. A pastry obviously will not fit through the slats, but that isn't a problem. She knows how to open Hatchet's locker. At least she used to. After ten frustrating minutes, Leo realizes that she doesn't actually remember the combination; she's been opening it the last few years by muscle memory. Trying to open it lefty is entirely backwards. Nothing works. She even borrows someone's compact mirror and tries to look at the reflection of her hand, but somehow that's even worse. She can't get it. Now that she's on a mission, she's feeling brave enough to revisit their lunch spot. That's a good place to leave Hatchet's donut. Getting to the roof by herself is harder than expected. The bolt cutters are where they always are, stashed behind the fire extinguisher next to the roof access door. They're heavier than Leo expects, and much harder to operate than they look. Hatchet always made it look so easy — even all the way back in fifth grade, it seemed effortless for her. It's no wonder she can get the lid off of every jar Leo hands her with one powerful twist. Leo struggles with the padlock for awhile, but with her mostly-one-handed grip, all the bolt cutters manage to do is chew up the shackle. She sits at the top of the stairs trying to rework her plan until a teacher nearly catches her up there, then she stashes the tool and slinks back down the stairs, defeated. Too sick to her stomach to eat it, she finds Ilyich between classes and foists the bear claw on them. "No thank you," they say when she tries to hand it off. "Please?" Leo must look and sound like as much of a wreck as she's been feeling lately, because this is enough to get Ilyich to reconsider. Furrowing their brow the way that they always do when they're taking pity on her, they sigh heavily. "...Okay." The fourth Monday back, Leo's revised lock cutting strategy works spectacularly. She positions the bolt cutters so one handle is braced against the door, then delivers a full-force body check against the other. The door reverberates with a loud bang!, much less stealthy than usual, but the lock falls to the ground. Success at last. Leo scoops it up and puts it in her pocket, then steps out onto the roof. It's a cold day in Rockfall. Migrating geese have taken up temporary residence across the school grounds, and the roof is no exception — Leo has to chase a few away before she sits on the exposed air vent to take in the view. Overcast and windy, there aren't many people out and about today; there's not much to look at. A Halloween rain already took down most of the fall foliage. The last few autumn leaves cling to the branches in Cadmium Park, but most of the trees are bare gray; instead, short garlands of toilet paper strung up by teenage mischief-makers flutter in the wind. From this distance, the park looks as bleak and trash-covered as the rest of the neighborhood. It'll stay that way for a long time. It'll get even worse before it gets any better. She tries not to think about spending all winter cooped up inside. She tries not to think about decorating the Ratmas tree this year without her mom excitedly explaining exactly where and from whom every ornament came from before hanging it on the tree, as though there was no other Ratmas over the past four years where she'd gone into extra detail about how this slightly misshapen clay crescent moon was one Leo made in first grade, or how that little tree-shaped ornament was a broken pie server that her dad repurposed, or how the snowman fashioned out of three skateboard wheels on a carriage bolt was one that her Aunt Talia had crafted eighty-some-odd years ago out of old parts from her own board for the Ratmas before she was killed, or how every year her sister outdid herself with the model train set that ran around the base to the point where it was impossible for anyone but her to figure out how to get to the tree without causing a miniature train derailment. She tries not to think about going over to her aunts' Ratmas Eve party and taking turns causing derailments on purpose to get Ilyich to repeat their elaborate miniature incident postmortems which were always so varied, detailed, and hilarious that it was impossible to tell if her cousin was doing them as a bit. She tries not to think about smuggling a bottle of Coach Q's renowned aged eggnog and a plate of pecan shortbread cookies into Ilyich's room under the very understandable pretext of avoiding the Highland cousins. She tries not to think about getting roped into folding hundreds and hundreds of dumplings for New Year's by her dad, or about how this inevitably turns into a competition about who could fold the most, or about how her dad would always drop desperate hints that they see how many they could fold neatly the fastest, or how she'd always insist the lumpy ones taste just as good as the rest even though hers always came out flawless. She tries not to think about fending off the blizzard-induced cabin fever by running amok in the hallways of her building, allegedly terrorizing the elderly chihuahua in Apartment 18 without even setting foot on that floor. She tries not to think about filling the time building blanket forts and with heated debates about the absolute best way to kick off the spring. She tries not to think about realizing on Friday that the rest of the snow would melt overnight and that the first day of nice weather would fall on a Saturday. She tries not to think about staying up half the night excitedly discussing just about everything they were going to do that next day, or about laying awake the other half imagining the rest of it. Without the canopy covering Cad Park, she can see the gazebo from here. It looks lonely. The bottom of Shear Hill looks like a fortification in the distance. Its pointed palisade of rooftops ringing the ridge make it clear that she's unwelcome. She knows all too well that Shear Hill doesn't want her either. The first time she sat on this roof, Rockfall felt huge. It was full of adventure, full of possibilities. Leo never felt stuck here the way that so many people do. Never wanted out. Now the granite quarry walls feel suffocating and small, like she's trapped. A fishbowl. A dollhouse. A model train's model village. Rat City. Nothingtown. She can't believe it took her this long to notice that this place isn't home. A gust of wind calls attention to how cold Leo's cheeks are. She doesn't want to be here anymore. She pulls the paper bag with Hatchet's bear claw out of her backpack and sets it down on top of the ducting, ensuring it's in the door's line of sight. It'll work. When the bag rustles in the breeze, she pulls the severed padlock out of her pocket and sets it down on top; it makes a perfectly adequate paperweight. It has to work. She double-checks the view of the donut bag from the door, then adjusts its position a foot to the left so it will still catch enough light in an hour. If it doesn't... she doesn't know. She doesn't know what else to do. By the fifth Monday back, it hasn't changed anything.

_{triple dog dare by lucy dacus.}

^{eighth grade. march.}

The trees in Cad Park don't feel very big — few and far between, with shallow roots searching for soil between cracks in the old quarry stone, none of the trees in Rockfall do. It's just lucky when one manages to grow at all. Despite their dwarfed height, Hatchet miscalculates how high she needs to jump in order to reach the branches; this is due to her usual habit of underestimating opponents and overestimating herself. At least Leo didn't seem to notice the failed attempt. That's not how she wants to start today off. The second attempt only just manages to put her fingertips into contact with the bark, but it's enough. Hatchet's thumb swipes at a bundle of the white flowers that burst into bloom overnight and it snaps off into her hand. There are at least a dozen blossoms unfurled on this one sprig, with another ten buds hidden beneath — pink and patient — that weren't quite ready to wake up yet. It's a miniature bouquet. She twirls it between her fingertips for a moment before turning to hold it out to Leo. "Look." Once she's won her smile, Hatchet drops the flowers onto Leo's palm and begins her next important task: searching for a good stick. The stick options are not great. Most are too old. Cracked through the center, they've spent the winter rotting in slush puddles and it shows. The entire search would be a lost cause if not for a small stack of freshly cut branches near the road, where a tree was recently trimmed back to prevent it from growing into some power lines. The first one Hatchet tests out is much too thin, feeling like the sharp crack of a whip when she test-smacks it against her leg. Grimacing, she tosses it aside. That won't work at all. Most of the others are unreasonably thick and much too heavy to make for a believable sword. They'd be decent staffs, but Leo doesn't need one of those today. There's one good one. Not only is it the right length and weight, but the freshness means that it has just enough give to harmlessly bounce off her leg when she tests it out. There's not too much snap, like the first one she tried. Plus, it's fairly straight and smooth. She grins. It's a good sword stick. More importantly, it's a perfect pestering Leo stick. Heading back to the gazebo, Hatchet stops short before her return is noticed. Stealing a moment for herself, she watches Leo absently toying with the flowers she gave her. Maybe they're helping with her nerves, because she's only fidgeting with them half as anxiously as Hatchet expected. Mostly she looks happy. Excited. She glances around for Hatchet, checking every wrong direction before pausing the search and turning her attention back to the white blossoms. Giving them a sniff, she immediately scrunches up her face. Whether it's Just Rockfall Things or if these flowers lack a sweet scent wherever they grow, it's hard to say. Hatchet doesn't hold back her laughter, sprinting forward to take a swipe at Leo with her new stick. "EIEIEIEIEIEI!" "Hey!" Leo complains. "Hey," Hatchet echoes with an upwards nod of her head, as if this is nothing more than a totally normal exchange of hellos. It's not an unusual tactic. A lot of their larps involve Hatchet getting a little too enthusiastic about stick fighting, but today it's intentional. Every time Leo starts to look too in her head, anxious fingers twisting at the seams of her clothing or nerves plucking at her words, Hatchet swats her with the pestering Leo stick because that's what it's for and it's great at its job: being a nuisance. "Ow! Hatchet!" She yelps when Hatchet bops her on the head for unconsciously pinching her own leg too many times because today's panic was welling up again. "What was that for!" "You'll need to keep your guard up if you hope to defeat me and claim the title of Amazon Queen," Hatchet covers for herself, lowering the stick as she circles Leo, attempting to gauge if that smack was only half as gentle as she meant it to be or if Leo's playing it up for attention. Either way, she looks cute with her lip jutted out into a pout and if she really were hurt then she'd say so. "We should look for some pots when Rockfall Ratmas rolls around. That way Ilyich can make me a helm." "You could also keep your guard up," Hatchet counters, "so we don't have to haul cookware around all day. "Or you could stop hitting me on the head," Leo grumbles. "But you leave it wide open! It's too good of a target." Sheathing her pestering stick, Hatchet's concern gets the best of her. Leo bows her head to make it easier for Hatchet to check her over and suddenly neither of them can find much to complain about. It's quiet as she runs her fingers through Leo's hair, picking out a few flecks of mud that must have fallen off the stick and running the sides of her thumbs over any spots that might have turned tender. Despite the lack of complaints, she passes her hands through Leo's hair once more, absently coiling a lock of the dark strands around one of her fingers. It's even harder to resist leaning in to kiss Leo right now than it was last night. All she needs to do is tip Leo's chin back up. They're close enough. Swallowing back the impulse, Hatchet lets the hair unwind from around her finger, glancing up at the sky as if to ask it for advice. It's as blue as the bedsheets they used to make their blanket fort this winter and it does nothing to steady her heartbeat. She musses up Leo's hair to cover for the stalling. "Looks fine," she whispers a little too softly. Patting Leo's face as if she's teasing her and not herself, she's still thinking about how easy it would be to forget the script and do the thing they've both been waiting months to find the right moment for. "You're fine." Leo nods in a decisive and wide-eyed way that means: I wasn't really paying attention, but I trust whatever you say. She's too busy thinking about the kiss that she knows is coming to realize that every moment between them is an almost. It's been that way for a while. "Okay," she says. "Let's go again." Drawing their sticks, they resume their duel. "I won't let you start another war with the centaurs," Leo declares melodramatically, smacking her imaginary blade so hard against Hatchet's that the cracking sound echoes through the park. Hatchet laugh-gasps, impressed. It's always fun when Leo's bravado starts running unchecked. Suddenly she'll be cocking her hip, striking poses without realizing, and waving off threats as if they're peasants that she can't be fussed about dealing with today. She doesn't challenge Hatchet as often as she should; she deserves to make up for that from time to time. "If that means I must claim your crown, then so be it." Yeah! So be it! Hatchet cackles, as much for enjoying Leo's swagger as for the characterization of her own part. With the wind dying off, she has to swirl her cloak around with her hand in order to create enough drama to get on Leo's level, but she makes do. "If you want my crown, you must also take my head!" "Gladly!" When Hatchet lunges with the kind of stick assault that respects Leo's ability to hold her own, Leo is ready for it. A little too ready, maybe. "Even though it's unsporting for me to fight such an obvious novice to the death, I must prevent war at all costs." Hey now. "I am no novice!" Rolling back her shoulder to prep for a better attack — no more messing around with her cloak this time — Hatchet takes another heavy swing. It's a miss. Right! Yeah! That was on purpose... "I am Queen of the Amazons!" "Yeah, but, like —" Smacking at Hatchet's stick again, Leo shoots her a patronizing grin. "— you've been queen for what? A day?" Immediately Hatchet realizes: Gotta end this before the pestering stick gets busted up. Only to remember, after she makes a follow-up attack on Leo's ankles, that this fight is supposed to end with Hatchet losing. Oops. Thankfully Leo jumps in time to avoid the swipe, hopping right over it. It's as cool of a move as Hatchet's failed attack was supposed to be. Hatchet grins — "You sure fight like it anyway." — but it's short lived. This is not the type of part that makes Hatchet feel like her crush is going to be really impressed with her and want to kiss her afterwards. Maybe she should have kissed Leo last night instead. Or earlier, when Leo was scheming for an excuse for Hatchet to run her hands through her hair for no real reason except because they both wanted to. Either of those options would be way better than working up to their first kiss by miscalculating her moves so badly that Hatchet's stick goes several inches into the soft, muddy ground and gets stuck. Or how Leo gives it a victorious stomp, snapping it in half. "Your crown," She demands, her own sword stick held to Hatchet's throat. "Hey!" Shit. How's she supposed to distract Leo from being nervous without her pestering stick? Being overenthusiastic with her weapon was a solid excuse; it'll be too obvious if she just swats with her hand. Then Leo will realize how much Hatchet's been noticing her anxious moments and she'll feel awkward about that on top of everything else, even though she shouldn't. Hatchet likes how Leo blushes when she leans in too close or how these days she's constantly smiling at stuff that shouldn't really be smiled at, because she got caught daydreaming again and smiling at Hatchet is always the first thing she thinks to do to cover for herself when that happens — because smiling is her most common expression when they're together. "That was a good stick!" Better than Leo knows. Now everything is riding on Hatchet being good enough on her own. Her palms prickle with sweat as she lifts the crown of scavenged copper wire and spare keys from her head, placing it on Leo's. "Queen of the Amazons —" For once, Hatchet's confidence falters. "— our next order of business is finding me another stick." "The Amazon Queen does not take orders from someone she just defeated in single combat. You should be grateful I spared your life," Leo declares, denying Hatchet's attempt to get her own masterplan back on track. She hands over the broken remnants of the pestering stick, not understanding the real problem. "Anyway, the King of Thieves can fight with two daggers. That seems like a better weapon choice for someone who's more concerned with stealth than combat strength." Whelp. Daggers it is. They're useless, but the Queen of the Amazons has spoken and so this is what she has to work with. Time to look cool and impressive and totally not thrown off her game by unforeseen catastrophes! Thwarted, Hatchet pulls up the hood of her curtain panel turned cloak and quietly psyches herself up. She can still pull this off. All she has to do is keep Leo's attention on her. She's good at that, she reminds herself. So long as she keeps Leo laughing she doesn't need anything else. If Hatchet can't do that much then she doesn't deserve for Leo to like her back. — and Leo does. Hatchet grins smugly to herself, thinking back on a hundred different moments that she knew it with absolute certainty. Last night. Standing outside the bathroom earlier this week, listening to Leo practicing her monologue while she thought no one could hear her. When they danced around to the radio on Ratmas and afterwards Leo sat down on the step of the doorway to the sunken living room — the one with the mistletoe hung over it — and wouldn't move to a different seat, no matter how many people complained at her for being in the way. That time she woke up to Leo holding her hand and Leo suddenly panicked, as if waking up like that wasn't something totally normal that had happened countless times before. The entirety of February. It puffs her up with all the arrogance she needs. Weaving her footsteps, the King of Thieves sneaks between rays of light and cloud shadows to prove her stealthiness. She tiptoes to the right. She tiptoes to the left. This is what hiding in plain sight looks like, right? Yup. It definitely feels like she's pulling it off perfectly until — Yoink! As though puppeted on strings, Hatchet jolts to a halt, balanced awkwardly on one foot with her limbs suspended in midair. "Helloooo, Thief Prince," she greets herself with a ghostly warble. Whipping her head back and forth in paranoia, she glances over one shoulder and then the other in search of the invisible force holding her body hostage. "Huh? Who's there?" Then, remembering her arrogance: "And it's the King of Thieves to you!" Leo's madcap laugh echoes through the quarry, throwing itself off alley walls and swinging from roof ledges, reaching up to tap every shingle. "This is Xena. I'm —" "It can't be Xena, Xena's dead." "—dead. I need you to —" "Is this a possession situation?" "...Sure. Now, I —" "Why me though? I was just minding my own —" Hatchet slaps herself across the face hard enough that the skin burns red and furious. It shuts herself up immediately. Leo collapses onto a nearby rock, gasping for breath as she cracks up so hard that the world slides out from underneath her. As Leo flounders around in hysterics, Hatchet's grin ratchets itself up a notch each time she breaks character to sneak a peek. Hitting herself kind of hurt, but honestly? Worth it. Finally, she lets the theatrics fall away entirely, openly smirking as Leo struggles to pull herself back together enough to stop being a full-scale interruption. Okay, yeah. Maybe Hatchet can pull this off. Maybe her parts aren't so bad for impressing cute girls after all. Maybe she knew all along that her being nervous is just as dumb as Leo being nervous, but if the feeling in her stomach right now is a kind of nerves then maybe they're not all bad. Maybe she needs to think less about sticks and more about ways to make Leo feel the good kind of nervous too. "Silence. Listen to me." The King of Thieves nods, finally ready to concentrate on the assignment. For real this time. "I need you to go steal my body back from the Amazons. I'd prefer to be reunited with it before the funeral pyre. Do we have a deal?" There's a long pause as Leo's giggles escalate again. "You may speak now." "What's in it for me?" "I won't punch you in the face again." "...Deal." Staggering dramatically over to Leo's rock, Hatchet drops into a crouch to better watch her writhe with laughter. She sounds unhinged. Hatchet has never felt prouder of a Xena reenactment. Leaning forward, she rests the side of her face against the rock near where Leo's is pressed into the stone, the rest of her best friend's body flailing into itself with her arms wrapped around her stomach and knees punching into each other. "Did you want to do your monologue about deciding to stay and be the Amazon Queen?" Hatchet asks gently, reshaping her voice into a lure. She could watch this all day, but they've got even better things to do. "Or did you want to skip this one?" Leo nods, but takes another minute to compose herself. There's no way she wouldn't want to, not after spending so much time practicing. Hatchet already knew that. The questions are mostly just something to say to remind her about what comes next. Getting back to her feet, Hatchet offers both her hands to Leo for assistance with standing back up. Obviously she needs it. Shamelessly running a thumb over her knuckles once they're hand in hand, Hatchet pulls her up a little too quickly on purpose. It's enough momentum to ensure that Leo stumbles into her chest, the two of them lurching for a precarious moment before Hatchet wraps her arms around Leo to steady them. Oops. "My bad," Hatchet deadpans, biting back the kind of smile that would immediately give away just how pleased she is with herself. Which is: very. She flicks her eyes up to the sky and then back down to Leo, who has no complaints about the mistake. Hooking her chin over Leo's shoulder, Hatchet pulls her in closer for a moment and squeezes before stepping in circles to get them moving again. The hug swivels around awkwardly, rocking back and forth, but when they trip enough to split apart they're both smiling wide. Even huddled around an overturned garbage can — the best representation of the warrior princess's casket that they could find — it takes a significant amount of effort to settle their faces and feign more solemn expressions. It's too much for Hatchet. She finally has to channel some of her energy into practicing her King of Thieves strut or else she'd risk derailing the whole reenactment. All she can think about is how the good part is coming up and now it's like she's been possessed by Leo, so impatient that she starts thinking through schemes about how she could speed things up, because otherwise she'd probably just lose her mind. "It's still so hard to come to terms with. But if you were ready to move on, I guess I need to find the strength to move on too. Maybe that's one last thing you can teach me. How to let go. I learned and saw and did so much as your traveling companion," Leo removes the copper wire circlet from her head, holding it over her heart, "and I will always love you and carry you with me. And, uh —" Noticing Hatchet focusing on adding last minute flourishes to her already flamboyant one woman swagger parade, Leo has to swallow back another round of chuckles in order to tell her off about it. "Hey! I'm baring my soul over here! Pay attention when I'm mourning you!" Oh shit. Right. This is the good part too. Everything is. Hatchet shouldn't be thinking about jumping ahead, she should be thinking about right now. Tucking her stick halves into her armpits, she hides the evidence of her folly of distraction and nods to signal that she's got her priorities back in order. "Anyway... um... carrying you with me..." The Amazon Queen fumbles her words, pausing to clear her throat. Hatchet stares attentively, expression wiped clean of antics, content to comply with the request for undivided focus. She can do that. "No matter where we went, I was always home with you." Sometimes it's a little hard to wrap her head all the way around what the big speeches in Xena are about, but when she stops to think about the words of this one, they're nice. In an itchy way. Plus, being Queen of the Amazons just... suits Leo. She holds her shoulders a little straighter, her head a little higher, and pulls off the whole champion of the people thing way better than Hatchet could. It just makes sense. In a world bigger than Rockfall, maybe Leo could be everything that she deserves to be, the way she gets to be when they're playing Xena and she's the Amazon Queen or the Goddess of Titans or the Battling Bard of Potidaea. At least they have this. "But perhaps I can find a home here too, where I'm needed." Leo places the crown atop her head once more — choosing to stay, choosing to lead the Amazons. "Now?" "Yeah," she nods, "I think that about covers it." Whipping the stick daggers out from hiding, Hatchet's cloak billows outward as she leaps into action. Flinging herself towards the rock Leo collapsed onto earlier, she rolls over the top of it before dropping into hiding on the far side. Making a comedic show of tiptoeing behind a tree, she repeatedly pops out from behind the too-skinny trunk to assess the situation from multiple angles before whirling like a stealth tornado as she flings herself towards a tire pile in search of better cover. Haha! Who could possibly see her coming? Definitely not Leo. She's too busy trying to catch her laughter in her hands, looking like she's dropping it all over the ground, but persisting with the futile efforts anyhow. Sneaking sneakily out from behind the tires, Hatchet creeps up on the garbage casket by crouching down to make herself as small as possible and duck waddling forward until she's squatting down within its shadow. Popping up to reveal her stealth-attack entrance with as much drama as possible — like someone bursting out from a suspiciously large cake, arms spread out in a wide tada! — she gives Leo her best bet-you-never-saw-this-coming! face and punctuates the ridiculous shenanigan with a gratuitous wink. "King of Thieves!" The Amazon Queen gasps, utterly scandalized by this oh-so-surprising turn of events. "I thought you were more honorable than a common graverobber!" "So... funny story about that," drawls the Thief King, whirling her dagger-sticks around in a completely unnecessary display of — Showing off. Hatchet is just shamelessly showing off. Look! She can spin this one on the back of her knuckles! And the other one? She can toss it up in flippy acrobatic twists and catch it again like it's nothing. Cool, right? Yes. She's very cool. Be impressed. They turn in circles around the trash can as Hatchet busts out every cool stick-trick in her arsenal. Once she's done taking advantage of the moment to flex any impressive feat she can think of, she gets back to the plot: "Xena wants me to steal this actually." "Ha." The Amazon Queen dismisses the statement outright. "Let me guess: that came to you in a dream? One where a rival warlord made you fabulously wealthy for presenting her head?" "Not quite. It's more of a... possession situation." "I've had enough of this," Leo growls, swinging her stick at Hatchet. Ducking down so the attack soars harmlessly over her head, the King of Thieves pops back up to appeal the ruling. "I mean it!" Turning her head to reveal the bright red mark on her cheek, she flourishes a hand at the inflamed skin. Presenting: evidence! "Do you think I'd punch myself in the face?" "Wait," Leo breaks character, face flickering with concern, "are you okay? I didn't realize you hit yourself that hard." It's all Hatchet can do not to drop everything and bait Leo into inspecting her face the same way Leo did earlier after getting bopped on the head. One little glance at the ground or wobble of her lip and Leo wouldn't hesitate to run a gentle thumb across Hatchet's cheek, checking to make sure there's no cut and oh-so-carefully testing the sensitivity of any potential bruising. If Hatchet whined a little when Leo pressed down on the skin, then she'd probably insist on finding ice and helping to hold it to Hatchet's face until long after any threat of swelling had passed. But then they might lose the day in that. Then they wouldn't get to Leo's favorite part. "I'm possessed by the warrior princess!" Hatchet makes a note to play up her next bruise instead. It's too important to keep going, to remember the bigger picture instead of getting distracted by how nice some of the details are. Or could be. It's the first day of spring. Today is bigger than how she wants Leo to touch her face in this small moment. "Of course I'm not okay!" Taking the exclamations as a signal not to worry, Leo picks back up where she left off. "Anything could've hit you in the face. Do you really expect me to buy that you're stealing the body of my beloved traveling companion just because you walked into a tree branch?" "...yes?" "Despicable." Making a reckless attack, the Amazon Queen lunges around the trash can with a jab predictable enough that Hatchet could have blocked it with her eyes closed. Parrying with her off-hand dagger, she swipes her other stick up to press against Leo's throat. Frozen in the sudden close combat, neither of them move. Eyes locked with their faces only inches apart, Hatchet's breath catches. Now they've both got each other by the throat. Something flutters in her stomach as seconds tick by slowly, the corner of her mouth hooking itself up as Leo lets the moment drag out twice as long as necessary. "It is you," she finally gasps and Hatchet nods. Of course it's her. As if she wouldn't drag her soul out of the afterlife to get back to her girl. They lower their weapons. "How...?" Pure gay determination, obviously. But she's not supposed to say that out loud. Nudging the trash can with her foot to get out of telling on... Xena's feelings, Hatchet tries not to dwell on how staring into Leo's eyes for that long has her brain whirling into overdrive again. There's not much left now. It's just the two of them and: "— the former Amazon Queen!" Leo proclaims, on high alert over the sound of rattling garbage — er, the distant thudding footsteps of an army. "She must be trying to overthrow me. It sounds like she has a lot of warriors with her." "We should go." Dropping her King of Thieves antics, Hatchet pushes the hood of her cloak back and takes Leo by the hand. Fingers intertwined, they waste no time running for the dilapidated gazebo across the park. The gazebo has been a lot of things before. The splintered railing makes for an authentic tavern bartop and the structure as a whole often stands in for entire villages or grand castle spires. Despite how bad it is at being a gazebo, it's pretty good at being anything else they want it to be. In this moment, it's the astral plane. In this moment, with the trees blooming white and blue sky sneaking in through holes in the roof, it's the nicest spot in Rockfall. Making sure not to step on any of the broken parts of the floorboards, so she doesn't get her foot stuck again like last summer, Hatchet reaches out for Leo's other hand. They stand facing each other, fingers hooked together, just like Xena and Gabrielle do in the comic book. For them it's a big reunion. For Hatchet and Leo it's — Maybe Hatchet should have kissed Leo months ago, back when she sat down underneath the mistletoe and made it obvious that she wanted to be kissed. Maybe she should have kissed her lots of times by now. Maybe it's stupid that she didn't. "You let yourself be killed," Leo says, the words spilling out of her mouth a little too quickly. "You left me. Why?" Sometimes Hatchet can't help being stupid. It's just the way she is, the way she's always been. "I couldn't face up to the horrible things that I did in the past," she replies, brow furrowing. "You're not a warlord anymore. You... you've done a lot of good since then." "I know that now. That's why I chose to come back." Maybe it is stupid, but it just seemed worth the extra time to get this right. It didn't have to be all this. They could have kissed in the murder basement back in January, transforming it into a space they'd always remember as being a hundred times less horrible than it actually is. There wouldn't have been any regrets about it. It could have even become their makeout spot and, honestly, it's kind of a good one. No one would bother them there unless they really, truly had to be down there for some unavoidable reason. But the murder basement — as one might guess by the name alone — isn't very nice. When ranking potential first kiss spots, it even loses out to stuff like the tire pile. And, like, that's just a pile of tires. Being next to a bunch of sun-cooked rubber doesn't inspire kissing any more than basements do. Neither of those are places that prompt people to want to kiss, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen sometimes anyhow. Because the place doesn't always matter. Even now, the gazebo doesn't matter. How much of the railing is laying on the ground doesn't matter. The fire damaged posts don't matter. None of that is anything that Leo and Hatchet are paying attention to. "I..." Hatchet can tell that Leo's getting nervous again even before she blanks out, just by the way she's overthinking her pronunciation and with how her hands are suddenly a little sweaty. It's obvious how much she cares about getting this right too. Even though there's no getting it wrong so long as it's them. "I... uh..." Without her stick, Hatchet doesn't have an easy way to distract Leo from being nervous, but that's okay. Right now she doesn't want Leo to stop thinking about kissing her. It feels nice to see it so open and tangible on her face, to hear it in her stuttering, to feel it on her palms. Undeniable. "Um..." The corners of Hatchet's mouth keep twitching with a muddled combination of sympathy and delight over the shared awkwardness. Half of her wants to do anything she can to help Leo relax, but the selfish half of her wants to revel in this for as long as she can get away with. Her stomach keeps twisting in on itself and she feels a little dizzy. It's such a weird feeling to like, but she does. "Skip it?" She finally offers, her voice a hoarse whisper. Leo nods. She's red in the face and fumbling with the loss of her voice, but her grip on Hatchet's hands only strengthens. As if Hatchet might leave. As if this is a situation Hatchet wants out of. Yeah. No. She's not going anywhere. For all of the scheming leading up to it, the kiss is a simple moment. They both lean in. They both wonder if they're doing it right. They both mean it. Rockfall has to be the worst place on earth, but today — peering up through the holes in the gazebo roof to catch a glimpse of impossibly far off sky — Hatchet catches herself thinking that maybe Rockfall isn't entirely bad after all. Being here doesn't suck at all right now. She turns her face back to her best friend; Leo's cheeks are still flushed red, but she's wearing the most earnest smile. In this moment, there's nowhere Hatchet would rather be.

_{new emotion by the aces.}

^{freshman year. november.}

When there's no padlock on the door to the school's rooftop, Hatchet assumes it just hasn't been replaced yet. Sometimes the janitor puts a new one on every week, but other times they give up and don't bother for a while. This isn't unusual. What's unusual was the lock that she cut last week. It was already chewed up with unsuccessful bolt cutter marks before Hatchet got to it. That was Leo. That had to be Leo. No one else comes up here. No one else knows that Hatchet keeps bolt cutters stashed behind the emergency fire extinguisher and even if they found them by accident, they certainly wouldn't hide them away again after the (many, obviously) failed attempts to chop the lock. Hatchet hasn't been able to stop thinking about it. Since Leo returned to school, everything has been... complicated. After three weeks of failed attempts to reach out, pleading with Leo's locked bedroom window to let her in, Hatchet didn't know what to think. Except maybe that she fucked up too big this time. Bigger than Rockfall Public's principal said. Bigger than expulsion. Bigger than juvie. The idea of being locked up is starting to sound better than being locked out. One day Leo waited at Hatchet's locker for her between every class. The principal played hall monitor all day to ensure that Hatchet couldn't find out why, watching her watch Leo from the far end of the hall and questioning her about it at the end of the day as if Hatchet wasn't the person who understood least of all. She hasn't understood anything this whole time. The only person who ever told her anything about what actually happened was Coach Q and that stopped after the week of tryouts. The principal only tells her not to fuck up again or that the date of her disciplinary hearing is being postponed once more, before wishing her good luck for that week's exy game because that's all she's good for. Leo won't talk to her. Not alone at least, where they could actually have a conversation. But they could talk on the rooftop. Usually Hatchet dumps the cut locks in a pile on the roof, but this one went into her pocket. She's been fidgeting with it for a week, running her fingers over the sharp dents in the shackle and obsessing over the meaning of the burrs of cut up metal as they scratch at the pad of her thumb. The lock bites at her skin, chewing at her thoughts. Over and over. It's the only thing worth thinking about these days. She's desperate for whatever hope she can get because otherwise — Otherwise she just spirals with loss. She knows that she did a stupid thing, a million times stupider than she'd realized at the time. Obviously she didn't know the battery acid would do all that, like, fucking obviously she didn't know. But her intentions not being as bad as the actuality of things doesn't make Leo's hand any less mutilated. It doesn't change anything in any real or tangible way. It's just... god, it's starting to feel so dumb to admit it, but she didn't think that Leo would hate her for it. No matter what, she didn't think Leo would hate her. Hatchet doesn't know why she felt so sure about that anymore. It's not like things were perfect between them before the acid. Like, just because Hatchet was happy doesn't mean that Leo was. Maybe something has been horribly wrong between them for a really long time and that's why Leo always made sure to interrupt Hatchet's attempts to ask her out. Hatchet doesn't know. She doesn't know anything. Maybe her confidence about the two of them has been misplaced for years. When she pushes the door open, the paper bag is impossible to miss. Situated on the exposed air vent that they always sit on — immediately visible from the door's line of sight — it's perfectly framed by sunlight. Hatchet's pulse thrums in her ears and she has to clench her eyes shut for a moment. Taking a deep breath, she squeezes the lock in her pocket before tightening her hands into determined, white-knuckled fists. This is it. The corner of her mouth twitches with a smile before she can stop it. It's been two months. Two extremely shitty months. Two months of being out of her mind with worry for her best friend while waiting to find out the verdict on just how badly she fucked up her own life, swallowed up by the loneliness of being back in the Dugout with her mom and the other deadheads, all while being cut off from the only person who makes her not hate everything about her life. It's all been too big for Hatchet to change. Suddenly she's caught up in the world of adults and lectures about consequences for growing up wrong — for having the wrong mom and the wrong address and the wrong idea about what's possible for herself, in trouble for trying. Bouncing on her heels, once then twice, Hatchet takes a step forward. Then another, faster than before. In her rush of impatience she doesn't notice the details until they're right in front of her face. Crouched down next to the air vent with her brow furrowed and her breath panicked in confusion, air hisses through her teeth as she grimaces at what's been left for her. It doesn't make any sense. Emblazoned with the Bingo Diner's train car logo, the brown paper bag is undeniable. The corner is weighted down with a cut padlock to ensure that it wouldn't get blown away by the breeze, emphasizing that it was left here intentionally. Leo wanted Hatchet to find this, wanted Hatchet to know that this had been left for her. It's not just a piece of trash accidentally left behind from Leo's lunch. It's a message. Back on the day they met, Leo gave Hatchet a bear claw donut. It took a while for Hatchet to realize that there was a code to the leftover diner donuts that Leo would bring to school, but when she finally did, the pattern was obvious. Food is Leo's love language and bear claws are for Hatchet. No one else. They're her favorite — it was the best thing that she had ever eaten in her entire life — and Leo knows it. That's why bear claws mean I like you. The rumpled bag is empty except for a few crumbs and a single almond sliver. It's just enough to make the absence of the bear claw unmistakable. This wasn't just any donut. If bear claws mean I like you, then bear claw crumbs mean... Hollowed out, Hatchet wraps her arms around her knees in an effort of self-preservation, like maybe she can hold herself together physically to counter being emotionally unraveled. Tipping forward, her head thunks against the metal ductwork as she tries to keep her breathing under control. It doesn't work. Erratic and gasping, she hyperventilates. Unable to bring herself to touch the paper bag, much less hold it to her mouth like she knows she should when the tingling numbness in her hands escalates into stabbing pain and her vision tunnels, she cries. She just curls up and fucking cries.

_{lost on you by lp.}

^{summer before sophomore year. june.}

It's pouring today. About ten minutes after they arrived at the park, the sky opened up and unleashed a torrent of rain on Rockfall. Claps of thunder echo off the granite quarry walls, which have turned into veritable waterfalls from Shear Hill's runoff. Water collects twice as fast here as anywhere else in Two. Thanks to the flash flooding, even the mad dash to the gazebo is risky — Leo nearly turns an ankle when the clay mud grabs her foot and refuses to let go; she stumbles, hitting the soggy ground for only a moment before scrambling back to her feet and onward towards shelter. When she makes it under the ramshackle structure, the rain's already washed half the mud away. "You good?" Soaked to the bone, scrapes on her palms and her knees from the battle against gravity, heart pounding from the race against the elements, Leo grins wildly. "Uh-huh." Leaning into the gazebo's least-unstable railing, she stretches out her foot, assessing for injuries. Feels fine. "I'm good." "Cool. I was worried I might have to feel bad for leaving your slow ass in the dust." Leo raises an eyebrow. "Oh yeah?" "If you drowned I'd be stuck here all alone until the rain let up." Grinning, Bea reaches out to take one of Leo's hands. "That would be really boring." "Yeah." Planting against the rail, Leo runs her index finger across Bea's palm. "You'd miss me," she declares, with an upwards nod of her head that dares the boxer to disagree. She doesn't. Instead, Bea takes a step forward, leaning in for a kiss. Leo holds up her other hand to stop her. "Wait —" The warning comes too late; her foot plunges through one of the broken floorboards. Leo laughs, ducking down to rescue the snared Shear Hill kid from Rockfall's nicest pitfall trap. "Good thing you didn't drown," Bea sheepishly reaffirms, "or I'd be stuck here until I starved to death." "Nah." A loose nail hooked one of her shoelaces, complicating the extraction effort, and the force of busting through has all of the sharp splinters angled downward and ready to drive themselves into the boxer's ankle if she makes the mistake of trying to tug herself free. Honestly, the Cad Park gazebo could be a first-string combat scout all on its own. "The geese would eat you first." "I could take a goose," Bea scoffs. "One goose, maybe," Leo concedes, manipulating her workout buddy's foot through the maze of rotten wood, "if you got a good punch in or something. A gang of Rockfall geese would tear you to shreds." The boxer does not find this convincing. "Are Rockfall geese supposed to be worse than other geese or something?" "Oh yeah. Rockfall everything is worse." Finding the right series of angles and turns, Leo finally manages to free Bea from the gazebo's trap. She pops back up with a smirk of self-satisfaction. "Saved your life." "My hero," quips Bea, deploying an exaggerated eyeroll to offset her charmed smile. Bea has a nice smile, especially when she tries to pretend it isn't happening. Pleased with herself, Leo beams, bigger and cheesier — the words still count, even if they're a little sarcastic. It gives her a good excuse to turn her face when Bea leans in for another kiss, accepting a peck on the cheek instead. Leo eyes the clouds; the rain has abated somewhat from its initial deluge, but the storm shows no signs of stopping. "Looks like practice is cancelled. Cad Park's already a swamp and it's only gonna get worse." She glances over at the bank of weeds that conceals the quote-unquote pond and exhales a sigh of relief to see it hasn't overflown. Yet. "We should get out of here before the pond floods — you might be able to take a goose, but when the garbage island goes under, the swan rampages." Bea laughs like it's a joke, so Leo laughs along with her because it feels nice. Still, considering how much time the boxer spends in the park, the swan safety lecture is crucial. "Daisy Duke Nukem sends at least one person to the hospital every summer. Last year it was three." "Noted. Everything in Rockfall wants to fuck me up." "Well..." Smirking again, Leo puts a hand on Bea's waist and pulls her a little closer. Bea knows where she's going with this and covers Leo's mouth before she can finish the thought. "Don't say 'I dunno about up'," she preemptively groans. Smiling into the hand pressed over her mouth, Leo waggles her eyebrows in response until the boxer finally relinquishes her grip. "Your words," she says airily, "not mine." Ignoring the flippant remark, Bea returns to the issue at hand. "I'm going to stay off the stairs until the rain lets up. Let's do something today — what's fun around Rockfall?" "Come back to my place," Leo suggests with another upwards nod, "we can get you out of those wet clothes." A playful shove immediately sends her staggering backwards out of the gazebo and into a puddle. "You are such a fuckboy," Bea laughs. Making a melodramatic show of splashing around before clambering out of the muddy pothole, Leo keens, "Ahhh, nooooo! I'm gonna drown!" This earns another round of laughter before Bea reaches out a hand to pull her back under the gazebo's dilapidated roof, ending her exile. "Don't drown yet," the boxer demands. "You still haven't told me what to do for fun in the rain around here." "Yeah I have." "Other than that," Bea complains. "C'mon. We've got the whole day. Rockfall has to have at least one date spot." "Date?" Leo didn't think they were really doing dates. It's been casual. Having a training buddy has been great: Since Leo stopped letting Bea think she couldn't keep up, they've both set new personal bests on their laps around the park. When she asked, Bea was really excited to show her some boxing basics — how to stand, how to throw a punch without breaking her hand, and especially the right-uppercut-left-hook combo she likes for close fighting. In return, Leo showed her how to hold an exy racquet and cradle the ball and have a catch. They've even been helping each other train, too. Leo holds up focus mitts and waits until after the boxer is done throwing her practice jabs to shake out her hands and complain about how hard Bea punches. Bea stands in front of the goal outline Leo chalks onto the quarry walls and waves a racquet around while the striker targets the corners. It's been a useful arrangement. And their post-training routine has been even more fun. Most days, Bea comes over for lunch afterwards, usually followed by making out, usually followed by hooking up. Bea heads home. The next day they do it all again. Keeping it simple has kept it fun. Bea's her workout buddy. They're jocks with benefits. Dating is different. Dating means expectations, feelings, and labels — Leo doesn't think she wants that. Just because she likes hanging out with Bea doesn't mean she wants to be her girlfriend. She doesn't want to be anyone's girlfriend. "Yeah, dummy. Where do you Rockfallers go to kiss your girlfriends?" Leo shoves her hands in the pockets of her gym shorts, trying to cover her obvious squirming. "You're standing in it," she finally admits. There's a lump in her throat; she manages to swallow it down, but it gets stuck at the knot in her stomach. She pats one of the more rickety railings, the wood swaying to emphasize how much the structure is crumbling. It makes it sound more like a joke when Leo confirms: "This is the nicest spot in Rockfall." "Between the trick floor, the flooding, and the army of evil waterfowl, I think the nicest spot in Rockfall wants me dead," Bea quips back. Leo forces a laugh. "Yeah. It probably does." The reasons why Leo doesn't want Bea to kiss her in the gazebo are suspiciously similar to the the reasons why she doesn't want to be her girlfriend. Those reasons are also why Leo can't come up with any other date spots in The Cad. "There's..." She knows she can't stall forever, because the longer it takes her to come up with a better answer, the more likely it is that she'll have to get into those reasons. She really doesn't want to. That isn't what she wants to think about at all right now. "...the Corner Value Store?" Bea raises a skeptical eyebrow. "What kind of dates happen at the Corner Value Store?" Wincing, Leo offers, "Ranking their flavors of instant ramen, mostly." "That's the best you've got?" "We could... see how long it takes us to get kicked out of the liquor store." "Sounds like minutes of fun." "There's the laundromat," she suggests next. "People are always washing weird shit there. Ever wanted to see a bag full of action figures or a bunch of mops and sponges go around in a circle?" Bea laughs, because, no, obviously not — who would want that? "I should warn you, though," Leo adds, "the whole place smells really weird." "Watching weird-smelling laundry is hard to resist when you put it that way." "Laundromat, then?" "No, Leo." Leo thinks for another minute. "There's the pawn shop — it's got a lot of junk in it." When Bea looks doubtful, she lies, "Cool junk." "Alright, there's an option. Got anything better than pawn shop junk?" "Actually..." Leo facepalms. "The pawn shop's closed this week — the owner got stabbed." "Keep Rockfall shitty, though, right?" "Now you sound like a local." "Isn't that on Lodestone Ave? What about the pet store next door?" Bea asks. Leo's stomach lurches. "I always see it on my way home." Pinching at her leg through the pocket of her gym shorts, Leo struggles to think of any reason why the pet store would be a bad idea, other than the fact that she knows it's got all the same lizards as every other time she's been in there, and she still remembers all their names, and she doesn't want to have to lie that the basset hound fur is making her eyes water when the anoles get into a pushup contest. "That's definitely a front for something," she says. "No pets, then?" "Lizards, mostly." "Lizards are cute." "Yeah." Fuck. She didn't want to suggest this one, but it's better than bringing Bea along for a visit with King Joe and Mr. Anxiety. "There's also a metalworking shop down Old Quarry," Leo offers slowly. "My cousin is always trying to get me to go to their open workshop time... which is today." Bea should absolutely not meet Ilyich. Ilyich will reveal too much information about Leo without a second thought, and that will be awkward — Leo intentionally hasn't shared many personal details with Bea in her effort to keep things simple, casual, distant. She hasn't even mentioned Bea to Ilyich yet, which will make it more awkward — that pretty much guarantees that her cousin will immediately compare the boxer to Hatchet, and that will turn into several whole conversations that Leo doesn't want to have. The worst part is, Bea will probably like Ilyich. And Ilyich will probably like Bea. That would be great if Leo wanted to date her, but she doesn't, so instead this will substantially increase the amount of pestering to make better life choices that she already gets — and she doesn't want to. She's doing better these days, but Leo's not ready to stop being a self-destructive mess — she's not ready for people to expect any more of her than that. Besides, knowledge of Shear Hill's social fabric would make Ilyich way too powerful. "Welding and stuff?" "Yeah. Plus forging and metal casting. And there's an antique AFV with a turret-mounted spud cannon. The guy who's restoring it would let us fire it if we brought some potatoes." "Sounds hot." Leo laughs. "Yeah, I mean, who doesn't love a leather apron?" "I meant the forge — might be a little warm for June, don't you think?" "Ah." Shit. "I guess so." "Pet store, then?" Trying to conceal her grimace behind a grin, Leo offers the last slightly-less-bad option. "How about the arcade?" "There's an arcade?" Bea swats at Leo's shoulder. "Were you just starting with the worst spots so we'd spend the day at your place?" "No," Leo insists, and she can't really blame Bea for not believing her. "We should stop by mine first, though." "What for?" she asks, raising a dangerous eyebrow at Leo. The boxer only ever telegraphs her moves intentionally, so Leo knows that Bea wants her to see she's winding up for another shove of punishment if the response veers too crass. "Dry clothes and an umbrella," Leo answers innocently. "You can get kicked out of the arcade for anything. No refunds."

_{my body by lp.}