ficlets of characters you don't know

glow.

wheeee yume and esther i love these two ALSO MORE AUs LMAO I WRITE A LOT OF AUs
general tags: gay?

You're not supposed to ask someone why they're lying down on the pavement, alone in an empty parking lot three hours past midnight. Why, that's just plain rude.

Besides, it's not like Yume was trying to get hit by a car. How was she supposed to know people still used this place? It looks abandoned! For all she knows, no one's used this parking lot since 1993, and she just so happened to be there the same day as someone else discovered it.

It's a rather boring parking lot, if you cared to notice. In an out-of-the-way spot just off the road, there for no apparent reason, five lots in a row on one side, four on the other parallel to them. The asphalt was cracked and dirty, sand and dust covering the surface and blowing around her. It's cloudy today, too, which certainly doesn't help the drabness of it. But it does sit right beside this abandoned harbour. There's a tall hill that blocks the view to the water, and the sounds of the waves crashing against graffitied stone walls and the rotting wood of the pier fill the breath of night. A peaceful thought, to imagine what it would be like if the waters rose just enough to crash over her and take her away.

Ooh, a rather sad thought, isn't it?

Regardless, the person who was driving the car had screeched to a stop abruptly, a simple two metres away from hitting her before she stood up calmly to alert the driver of her presence. They meet Yume's bored gaze with wide eyes, hands gripping their steering wheel hard enough to turn their knuckles white.

(They're not from around here.) She raises a hand and smiles slowly. "What brings you here?"

The person kills the engine of the car and steps out into the dim yellow-orange lights of the streetlamps dotting a staccato along the road. Their eyes are pretty, framed by thin-rimmed glasses. Warm, like they glow. (Do they glow?)

"Why were you on the road?" they demand softly while ignoring her first question, hands in their pockets to hide fear. Still shaken from perceived near-manslaughter, she supposes. Or maybe their voice is soft because they don't want to disrupt the early morning winds. (Their voice, low and slightly raspy. Calming, even when they're clearly upset.)

"Why were you on the road?" she shoots back gleefully, an octave higher and a range louder.

"I was in a car," they state like it's obvious. Which, it is.

"What brings you here?" she asks again, because maybe they didn't hear the first time. Or didn't care enough to answer.

"I'm... looking." They frown lightly. A crease forms between their brows, and she has an urge to reach out and smooth it out. She doesn't. "Are you alright?"

"Looking for what?" Their question wasn't worth answering. It's a stupid question. She ignores it.

"I'm not sure," they say faintly. They're studying her, she realises. Wonder what they find, huh? Stark white braids, demon red eyes, wide smile that turns on and off like a light switch, that's what everyone else finds, and she can tell when that's what they find, because that's what they all find.

But this person... seems different, somehow. How odd. Their eyes don't shut off and go guarded, their lips don't curl in disgust. How odd. They don't cast her away, tell her to go back to hell where she came from. How odd.

How odd, indeed. Instead, their eyes (warm, pretty, do they glow?) fill with this sort of pity and Yume feels vile pooling underneath her tongue as her grin fades away. (They still glow even as their eyes drain clear of everything besides this one thought, suffocating.)

No.

She turns on her heel and walks away wordlessly, up the hill where she knows she'll find murky waters waiting for her. Unpredictable ocean, but it shall never leave this place, it shall never leave her. It does not show her disgust, or sorrow, or pity, or happiness. Sometimes calmness, sometimes fury, sometimes somewhere in between. Never does it make her throat feel like it's closing up, her insides eat itself, her mind implode with loud, loud silence.

No. How odd are they to do this to her? Unacceptable. No.

No.

They sit down next to her in the grass of the hill. Mute. (The tips of their hair are dyed a light violet, violet like the flowers outside her home, or at least where she was supposed to call home. She hasn't been there in a while. Too busy, drawing patterns in the stars with plain fingers in the snowless winter.)

Yume watches them watch the ocean. Pity? No, not anymore, it doesn't look like pity. Now, it's just...

Well, she's not sure. Perhaps this is what she looks like, herself, when she stares out into nature and wonders how it would feel to be part of its secrets.

The bitter taste of her dropped heart leaves her senses, and they meet her eyes. (Pretty, warm, doe-eyed and fit behind glinting glass and thin black metal, do they glow?)

"Didn't mean to," they whisper into soft nothing between them. "I'm Esther," they offer their name as if it could count as an apology for that, whatever that was.

"Yume," she whispers back.

A wave crashes against the stone. They both turn to look at it.

"I think I found it," they utter, low and breathy, still gazing out into the water, "what I was looking for."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

(Their eyes don't glow when turned away from the light. They're not so different from her, it seems.)