They saw him first. It was usually Cleo who would point him out and exclaim quietly about how blessed the day was when Kiss appeared, but not today. Today, their attention was off. Everything was just a little off. So of course Kiss showed up, in all his mottled grey glory, to bask in the rare sunshine and preen around the high school kids whom he so delighted with his presence. Usually, they would’ve forced a smile onto their cracked lips, or leaned down to pet the finicky creature despite the protests from their prematurely-aged body, but not today. Today was off - that was the only way they could describe it.

“Cheer up a bit, Jey. You beat me to noticing- wait. What’s that?” She hadn’t changed a bit. They anticipated the fingers, tapping and curious, and turned a little, so that she couldn’t touch the splotchy thunderclouds growing along their collarbone, just below their neck, only exposed a little by the large neck of their too-large school shirt. “Do you need more concealer? Should I get T?”

“Good luck with that.” A small, new addition to the group, just passing the two by after lavishing a great amount of attention onto Kiss, caught onto the end of her last question. “He’s gonna be in Ice for longer now. Someone said he punched someone, but I dunno.” Shrugging, the child moved on, leaving the two older students to themselves in a corner of their area, around the back of the Arts building.

“Fuck…” The word fluttered between their lips, as their teeth moved to nip the skin, worry creasing their forehead. “Not again…”

“Who?” She caught the kid by the arm, hauling him over to them, with a quiet viciousness behind her doe-eyes and relatively calm voice. “Who did he punch, Thomas?”

“I can’t remem-”

“Try. Was it a teacher? A kid? Kiss? Who did he attack?” They saw her hands, rougher than she ever was with them, forcing Thomas to look her in the eyes, even as he squirmed and attempted to look away.

“Someone said- okay, look, someone mentioned something about Mr. Chancer, ‘kay? That’s all I know, I swear. Just lemme go, Cleo; I don’t wanna end up like Lex.”

That seemed to be her trigger - she released him, and he trotted back over to one of the small clumps of high school kids admiring Kiss, while she turned to them instead, not reaching out with those curious, secretively-dangerous hands but keeping them in her deep blazer pockets, hiding the perfectly-painted blush-pink nails from view. Despite her not touching them physically, her eyes managed to pierce a particular spot in their skull, until they were forced to raise their gaze from the cracked concrete flagstones and let it roam over the soft-looking skin of her cheek, to the cheekbone, then across to the artificially blackened eyelashes, until it finally caught the iris, painted in the light shades of Autumn, with an ornate black bead as the cynosure.

“It’s happened again.” She didn’t bother with a questioning tone - it wasn’t needed. “Or… no, it’s been going on for a while, and T’s only just found out, so now he’ll be in ‘destroy everything’ mode, because that’s the only way he knows how to deal with guilt, because he wants to be your saviour but you refuse to tell us about these things.” Sighing a little, she reached out with one hand, letting it find their shoulder, the fingers fitting into an almost preset position, as if they found grooves in the skin, from them being in this position so many times before. “I know that sounds cruel, but it’s the truth, isn’t it?” They didn’t even need to nod - their head dipped slightly, but their eyes didn’t move from her pupils, ink-black, dilating and shrinking by tiny amounts to adjust to the outside light. “I’ll wait for T to get out of Ice with you, by the benches - you’ll be having a sleepover. This shit hasn’t changed since Year Seven.”

“I… I know. Thank you.” Finally, their eyes flickered back down to the concrete ground. “I wish… we weren’t here again.”

“Me too, Jey. Me too.”