Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In hindsight, the confusion started quite early.

Joel never knew what his mother meant when she made dishes “rainbow”, they didn't look any different to him than how they usually do. Still the same shades!

He really tried hard to look for the lighter and darker bits she was trying to show him. His trying didn't result in much, he could only put together and recognise a “rainbow” as such when it was in the assorted row of shades he learnt to memorise. Outside of this order some of these shades were nearly identical.

Of course little Joel never said anything about his difficulty with distinguishing them and he did so well at pretending there wasn’t a problem that no one picked up on it. Not the babysitter, not the teachers, not his parents.

So it comes to be that at the ripe age of 23 he is wandering the hallways of a furniture store searching for “green”. He’s moving in with someone for the first time after living by himself for nearly four years. Joel really did not care enough to bother decorating with any specific purpose. The wardrobe went where the wardrobe goes, the couch where the couch goes, the…

Usually people still do like living in nice places and Joel found himself looking forward to it when his new roommate turned out to be an aspiring interior designer. He’d let him do all the planning and decorating and just profit off of it. Easy.

Well, hm. Yes, Joel knew Bdubs prior to their new living arrangement, they have mutual friends and hung out a couple times (enough times to go “sure, ok” when the suggestion to live together came up), but Joel had no idea Bdubs was SO specific.

Right now Joel is on the search for a couch in the colour “moss green” for their living room. Bdubs sent him a picture of the colour, a hex code and gave him a verbal monologue on it before he sent him out here.

Joel’s problem isn’t that he can’t find it, his problem is it’s too abundant. Every other couch matches and if Bdubs sent him to do this work for him it probably shouldn’t be that easy to find. Why should this furniture store carry 11 couches of this super specific colour Bdubs insisted would not be easy to find.

Okay, alright. What now? Joel can’t just approach an employee, show the picture and ask. That would be embarrassing and he is not here to embarrass himself.

With the phone in his hand Joel sinks into the cushions of one of the yellow couches to view the selection in front of him. Turn on the analysing eye! All 11 couches matching the overall shade of the picture at first glance are in front of him. Looking closer Joel can disqualify 4, two lean too blue and the other one too yellow. 

Seven left. Maybe they’re all options he could pick from? Good idea. Joel pats himself on the back with the hand not holding his phone and pushes himself back out of the cushions to inspect the new selection.

Three are out instantly, too scratchy. Now it's down to four, reading the tags for the exact dimensions lets him narrow it down to two couches which match shape, size and the exact shade Bdubs wanted of him.

Out of these two, after a couple very well spent minutes deliberating, he picks the one with the wider L shape. Bdubs would surely appreciate his genius decision later when they watch a movie and both of them have enough space on the corner without being too close to each other.

This is the one! Joel rests his hands on his hips, mighty proud of himself.

One quick talk with an employee later and the couch is now reserved for them to pay and pick up later this week. To celebrate Joel already grabs some matching pillows from a large basket of various pillows nearby, pays and takes them home.

———————————————————

“Joel, what are these..?”

”Pillows for our new couch,” Joel parks them on their mattress. “Picked one out, I made sure it’s exactly what you wanted.”

”So why these pillows? That’s not our colour scheme,” Bdubs grabs one and turns it over to view it from every angle.

Joel can’t really place how Bdubs feels about them. Is he upset? Is there a problem? Why is his face turning into this amused expression then? Is he going to make fun of him?

He begins impatiently rocking back on forth with his feet, from his heels to his tiptoes. “They match the couch though, that’s the colour you sent me. So what’s the issue?”

”Joel, this is bright red.”

”And?”

Now Bdubs’ jaw drops. He’s sitting on their mattress on the floor with that pillow and an expression like Joel just told him he’s never seen colours before.

”Isn’t that just a different name for the same thing?” Joel grumbles and puts his hands in his pockets. He is beginning to feel made fun of.

”Oh heavens to Betsy..” The pillow is tossed aside and Bdubs squaks out a laugh, “Are you trying to… to trick me? gaslamp.. gaslight? Gaslight me?”

”No?? You are laughing at me!” Joel pulls his hand back out of his pockets and reaches over Bdubs to get that pillow back. He opens up the image of the colour he was sent and holds them side by side. A perfect match!

Trying to prove his point Joel wiggles both his pieces of evidence around in front of Bdubs’ face, “Look at this and tell me they’re not exactly the same.”

“You’re not joking?”

”No??”

That’s when Bdubs just starts laughing and now Joel is starting to get pissed. He drove all the way to that furniture store, put in all this work to select the perfect couch, got the matching pillows and everything just so Bdubs could have his interior designing fun.

Instead of reacting to Joel’s disgruntled expression, Bdubs scooches over and pats the space next to him, “Come sit down. We’re going to do something.”

Joel really has to consider it. After this reaction to his effort he’s really not feeling like following his stupid roommate’s orders, but when Bdubs just keeps looking at him expectantly he reluctantly gives in and drops down to join him.

A couple minutes later his eyes follow the mouse icon on Bdubs’ laptop screen. It clicks on the google search bar and as the keyboard clicks and clacks words pop up in it, “colourblind test”

”I’m not colourblind,” Joel instantly insists before Bdubs even managed to click on the first link shown. He can’t be! He sees colours, they’re all around him after all, he definitely knows there’s a difference between black and white movies and his colourful reality. 

Sure, sometimes the names get a little confusing, but people get confused with that all the time. What normal person would know the exact difference between… bright red and firetruck red. Or strawberry red and leaf green. It’s all just names.

”Just let us do this, okay, I’ll let you go right after.”

”Ugh, fine.”

A circle made of many circles in various sizes and shades shows up. The colouration of some circles forms into the clear shape of the number seven.

”What number do you see?”

”Seven, obviously.”

Bdubs subconsciously nods as he clicks on ‘7’ and Joel already takes this as proof that he’s fine.

The next few are easy as well, some do blend in a little more, but overall Joel feels confident in his answers. Well, until…

He doesn’t know what to say. That’s just a circle.

”Joel? Which number?”

”I don’t know.” 

Bdubs purses his lips, “No number?”

“No,” Joel looks at him and Bdubs doesn’t say anything more, “Is this a trick question and there’s no number??”

”If you look really hard, which number would you go with?”

”Dude there’s nothing there. Three or something, I don’t know. Next one.”

Bdubs selects three and when the next image does the same trick Joel gets impatient again. “I don’t want to do this anymore, this is dumb.”

”Only five more, geez. We’re done soon.”

”Uh huh.”

One more blank followed by two easily visible numbers, the last two numbers teeter on the edge of dissolving into the large circle.

After the last one Bdubs moves his mouse to the ‘generate results’ button to view what the test figured out.

60% accuracy. Protan colourblindness.

”What?”

Bdubs looks up from the screen and makes eye contact with Joel, “You’ve been colourblind for what, 22 years? 23? 23 years and you had no idea??”

”No??”

”This type of deficiency affects the red cones,” Bdubs begins reading out loud,“In the complete absence of red cones, red and purple may appear brown or even black. Green and orange look yellow. If only lacking, red and orange appear to be a green colour and many colours such as red, orange, purple and green are not as vibrant.”

The website also offers a selection of images with a slider to move back and forth. Moving the slider leaves a filter on the image to display how a colourblind person with that particular colourblindness would see the picture.

”This is the green I asked you to get,” Bdubs points at leafy greens on the photo first and then at a bell pepper, “This is the red you got us.”

They’re literally identical.

”There’s zero difference.”

Bdubs moves the slider, the image doesn’t change to Joel. The change that is apparently happening though makes Bdubs nod in acknowledgement, “ah, aha.. hmm…”

”Are you telling me there is a whole colour I literally can not see.”

”Not just one, thousands. Red, orange, purple, blue, any vibrant colours…” Bdubs keeps moving the slider in growing fascination.

Joel shuts the laptop, ”Stop it!”

Bdubs laughs and Joel crosses his arms.

”I just like green so much, I don’t need to see red,” Joel defends, “Green is my favourite colour!”

”Isn’t it also like… your only colour-“

Bdubs is promptly hit in the face with the bright red pillow. Joel would argue green.

”HEY! What I’ve gathered is you’re not allowed in our interior anymore.”

”I’m gonna get up now and go for a walk with my cool vision, you…” Joel moves off the mattress, “You. Just you. I’ll think of something mean on my walk.”

”Alright. Call me once you discover the sky is blue!”

Smack, the pillow is back in Bdubs’ pretty face.

Chapter Text

The sun is out, of course he’s outside to play instead of inside doing homework. It’s too hot to sit at the kitchen table and sweat it over their new stupid topic at school: fractions. Eugh. He would much rather get his hands on a cool stick and play in the shade of the woods behind his house.

One foot carefully in front of the other he balances on a tree that fell over in a storm some years ago. Unlike last week it’s no longer wet and slippery and he manages to go all the way to the end and back without falling off.

His next mission is collecting moss, which he gathers in a small clearing between trees to create a carpet on the forest ground. The moss bits are small and lumpy and he manages to make a circle the size of his dad’s homemade pizza before he gets bored and moves on.

Whenever his friend played with him they insisted they had to stay near their houses (His friend’s mom had done an excellent job at preventing them from getting lost by telling scary stories), but now it’s been nearly a week since his friend moved over to that stupid other town. What’s holding him back now? He didn’t believe in the spooky stories of the wolf or ghosts anyway.

He’s a big kid!

The decision is made and with brave steps he ventures further into the forest than he’s ever been. Which direction was home again? Whatever. He’d just figure it out later by looking at the sun, like his big brother!

It doesn’t take long for him to get cold. He even begins to shiver, only wearing a green shirt and new red shorts, the warm sunlight that had been shining down through the leaves is barely present. Has he been out for so long? Is the sun setting??

He stops walking and looks straight up at the sky. Nope. Still daytime! Small gaps in the thick, grey clouds that have formed reveal glimpses of the big, yellow ball at the ceiling of his world. Well, it’s not nighttime yet, but he had no idea it was going to rain.

Maybe he did, thinking of it. His dad had warned him to not stay out too long after all, maybe this was what that was about. Who can blame him? He hasn’t changed the batteries in his car themed watch since they ran dry. How was he supposed to know how long he’s been roaming around here…

Okay. What now? He would hate to stand in the rain and get wet. If he was his big brother now… his big brother would try to look for shelter… like a cabin!

About ten minutes later the little boy is standing under a tree, still holding the sticks he gathered to build one really quick, getting rained on. The weather is way worse than he expected, it’s pouring buckets and it’s so, so dark.

The ground is muddy and everything is becoming foggy. He has no idea where the sun is, where he needs to run towards to go home, where’s home? Where even is he? Nothing looks like anything he recognises, it’s cold and he’s freezing in his shirt.

Don’t cry.

He breathes in and it’s shaky. He wants to go home.

Before a sob can escape him he presses his lips together really tight. Be cool, be a big kid! Big kids know the way, it’s right.. There!

Of course he would never admit the decision was arbitrary, he would say it’s simply his gut telling him the way. So, without really knowing where he is headed, his short legs begin to run. Neglecting any caution he chases the invisible trail through the woods, rain continuously pouring down and making his brown hair stick to his forehead.

There it is!! He was right, he was right, he was-

Okay. Maybe not right with this being the way home. But he did it, he did find shelter! Vaguely in the distance he can see a soft light shine out from between the trees. His feet go faster to get closer and escape the storm.

As he approaches the silhouette grows clearer. Slotted in between strong branches of a very large tree, probably millions of billions of years old, is a treehouse. The light he saw is coming from the windows.

This must be something magical to find. It’s nothing like the rundown treehouse his friend had in their yard. This treehouse here is a masterpiece. It actually looks like a small house with a porch, real windows and a roof. He wishes his dad had this much time to make a treehouse like that for him.

Admiring it longer is for later though. He’s too busy hurrying towards it, catching himself before he falls and scrapes his knees, all he wants is to get inside and try to not think about how hopelessly lost he’s gotten.

Fortunately there’s a ladder up the treehouse, not one of these stupid ropes that just burn your hands when you try to climb them. The wooden rungs are slippery, too, and he gets his hands wet holding onto them.

All that is forgotten though once he reaches the shelter of the roofed porch and he feels the flat, partially dry floor underneath is dirty shoes.

The next step could be opening the door and going inside, maybe it’s warmer, he’s so cold, but the light is on, so someone might be inside. “Do Not Enter” is written on the doorway.

For now he’s content standing on the porch and shivering… hm. Without moving, the cold is getting worse.

His full body flinches when something wildly knocks on the window from the inside.

With the scared expression still written on his face he turns around and sees a boy looking at him, gesturing.

Oh no. He looks.. upset?

He doesn’t know how to react. It’s so rainy, he doesn’t want to leave the porch, but before he can think of much else the wooden door opens and the other boy pokes his head out.

“Are you going to stand there like a dummy or come in??”

Oh, okay, uh, “ Can I come in?”

The boy rolls his eyes, “Can you? Hurry up!!”

He’s almost too stunned to move. Him not going for it immediately is apparently already taking too long for this kid to wait for, the boy simply reaches out, grabs him by the arm and pulls him in before shutting the door after them.

Woah. Now he doesn’t even know what to say, so the second option is to stare. The boy has a green streak in his brown hair, how hasn’t he noticed this when he saw him in the window?

“Stop staring at me, you’re weird.”

“Your green hair is cool.”

The boy looks caught off-guard, but his stance stays… closed off.

So he reaches out a hand to the boy. It’s dirty, he notices, he wipes it on his shorts and goes back to holding it out towards him, “I’m Bdubs!”

“Cool. I’m Joel.”

What is probably awkward silence in the singular room of the treehouse spreads, but Bdubs is far too busy exploring to notice it. The inside is infinitely cooler than the outside. Wooden planks line the walls, they’re the kind that doesn’t give you splinters when you touch them, there’s a mattress on a wooden palette and a table just big enough for a kid their age to still fit. Bdubs wouldn’t be able to touch both opposite walls at the same time if he tried.

Most notable though is the temperature inside. While it’s not warm like his room at home, it’s far warmer here than it is outside in the rain. This treehouse has ‘insulation’, Bdubs knows, he picked up the term for it when he watched his dad repair a pipe in one of their walls last year.

The boy, Joel, sits back down on his mattress.

“What do you think of my treehouse?”

“It’s awesome!!”

“I built it,” Joel brags, “That nail over there, I hammered it in myself!”

Bdubs makes an impressed noise. Not even his big brother can build something like this, this boy must be really cool.

“Do you want to read a comic book?”

“Which ones do you have?”

Joel scoots over and Bdubs decides to join him, it’s really comfortable on the mattress. His new friend uses his foot to pull a box out from underneath them, it’s one of these square baskets that fit into the white Ikea shelves. The box is filled to the brim with comic books and magazines, some have been flipped through so often there’s more dog ears than undamaged pages.

One has lost all of the metal clips that keeps it together in the center. Joel grabs one of these loose pages and hands it to him, “Hold that.”

Bdubs does and waits as Joel digs around. His eyes wander around the room again, there are fairy lights everywhere that aren’t plugged in. After tracing them through the treehouse with his eyes they end up back on Joel, staring at his hair.

He has never seen anything like it, it’s oddly beautiful.

“You can have this one.”

“Hm?”

Joel takes the page from Bdubs and replaces it with an old looking comic book with a mean looking face on the cover. It has sharp teeth and stares at Bdubs with small pupils. Right in front of the thing’s forehead it says “GREEN GOBLIN”.

“He fights against spiderman,” Joel, the expert, explains.

Bdubs nods and looks at it from another angle, “Do you read a lot?”

“Yeah,” Joel shrugs, “I’m usually more by myself.”

Bdubs nods, flips open the first page and begins reading.

———————————————————

Bdubs ends up staying for quite a while. Joel has an awesome collection of comic books, there are three or four Bdubs has already read, the rest is new to him. About half an hour after rainfall stops they decide to go outside and look for worms.

The boys find a total of seven and take the longest one back up to the treehouse to become their worm pet.

“We can feed it dirt and apples,” Bdubs suggests.

“We have apples in my kitchen, do you want to get one?”

Of course he does, so they climb back down the ladder and Joel leads him through the trees. Now that the fog has subsided Bdubs can see a house not too far away and some more next to it. This is probably the neighbourhood next to his own.

Joel’s house is the one at the very end of the street, closest to the treehouse. They try to enter through the backdoor, it’s locked. At the front door Joel rings and Bdubs inspects the decor. A handmade ceramic place has “Smallish” written on it and dangling from it are six smaller ones, each with a different name. Only one boy name, Bdubs observes, and that name is Joel’s.

A brunette woman in a blue apron opens the door. Her hands and clothes are full of yellow paint and she smiles upon seeing her son, “Hey, had fun? Who’s your little friend over there?”

Bdubs meets her eyes for no less than two seconds before he can see something in her expression change and she repeats her question, this time directed right at him. “Who are you?”

Only because her tone is so soft and she looks at him like she’s glad to see him does Bdubs smile back and proudly introduce himself, “My name is Bdubs!”

“Oh goodness-”

He’s confused. Joel is, too.

“Come inside, both of you. Grab yourselves some water or juice, I need to make a call.” She looks Bdubs up and down once and then steps aside so they can enter.

Joel’s mom directs them towards the kitchen and then turns back to stand in the kitchen doorway, phone pressed to her ear. Bdubs isn’t paying much attention to what she’s saying to the person she’s calling, but he can hear that they’re talking about him.

That he’s safe and well, currently at whatever street name she said Bdubs didn’t fully pick up on and that his parents can come pick him up.

Turns out going into the woods and disappearing for about six hours is a pretty big deal. 

Bdubs’ mom cries when she hugs him at the front door of Joel’s house and she profusely thanks Joel’s moms for finding him. Maggie, the one who had the paint stained apron, passes the thank you down to her son who shares that he gave the missing boy shelter in the rain earlier.

As a consequence for running off Bdubs isn’t allowed to play outside without supervision for a week. Anything could have happened to him, his mom monologues, they thought he was kidnapped or injured in the forest with no help nearby.

That night he goes to bed tired and feeling guilty for causing so much ruckus while he was away. But still, a small smile forms on his face as he falls asleep.

Since Bdubs isn’t allowed to play outside, Joel promised to just come over tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Beep. Beep.

“Would that be cash or card?”

The customer wordlessly holds their card against the card reader and Joel selects that payment option on his monitor. A sound plays, the screens show a green checkmark and after bagging up their groceries the customer heads towards the exit and leaves.

Those are the types of customers Joel loves.

Quiet, quick, not difficult, they’re here to pay and he’s here to take the money and put it into his register. 

Not more, not less.

Of course, there are also some that don’t fully understand his focused, quick work is not open to smalltalk about the weather, but he lets them. It’s short, once they’ve paid he can send them along  by nodding to the person next in line and the interaction is over with a smile and a, “Have a good day!”

Joel would just rather like to save his energy for his friends and hobbies at home instead of spending it being chatty at work. Work is purely for earning the income he needs to get by and buy something cool as a treat every once in a while.

Once his shift is over Joel likes to change his cashier uniform in the employee bathroom as soon as possible. It’s supposed to be a full grocery store chain branded outfit with black trousers, but he’s… efficient, wears only the uniformed shirt and substitutes the trousers for a pair of black jeans he doesn’t have to swap out.

That whole process takes only a couple minutes and he’s out of the back of the store before any coworker could manage to talk to him about literally anything. As soon as he is in his car he breathes in and out and every time it feels like the first real breath he’s taken in eight hours.

The next day he is back at it. Some of his hair is styled to fall over his ears to hide his small in-ear headphones. Mirroring displays, and restocking the shelves before the store opens would be so incredibly boring without his podcasts and audiobooks playing. Now it’s seven more hours to get through until he gets to go back home!

———————————————————

“Joel, your favourite customer is here,” Cleo is wearing a shit-eating grin and Joel flips them off.

“I saw.”

“He’s asking for you, you should go help him.”

“I’ll give you five bucks if you tell him I just broke my leg and can’t help him right now.”

Cleo raises one eyebrow and shakes their head, “Not enough compensation. He’s all yours to deal with.”

“Wow you’re such a good friend,” Joel lets out the most pitiful groan he can fake and heads down the hallway where he knows their most beloved regular to be. He already saw the man came in a couple minutes ago, that’s why he was hiding in the first place.

It’s not that he has many customers he struggles with, not at all, yes, a couple of them are entitled or hard to deal with, but overall Joel will put up with anyone. Out of the entire staff he’s the best at hiding his deep annoyance with some people.

But this one guy? This one guy broke him.

He. just. won’t. shut. up.

Joel purses his lips once to reset his disgruntled expression and straightens his back before turning the final corner. An unstoppable force is about to meet an immoveable object.

“Hark, Joel, there you are! Oh heavens to Betsy, finally someone will help poor me, I’ve been wandering these halls for minutes, searching!”

“Sure,” Joel has to purse his lips again to stop his inside thoughts from becoming an outside view, “Hmh. What can I do for you today?”

“I’ve been looking everywhere for swiss cheese.”

Have you tried the cheese section in the dairy aisle idiot , Joel politely smiles and points towards the cheese section in the dairy aisle. “Right there.”

Yup, guy doesn’t move.

A million times they’ve been doing this. Every, genuinely EVERY Tuesday this regular waltzes in with no concept of a store layout just so he can claim some of Joel’s time. If it was just a little less entertaining and if Joel was just a little less indifferent to wasting company time he might be a little more eager to pass him off to a coworker to handle.

At least he knows the spiel and begins walking, his customer following. Before Joel knows it the man starts rambling.

“You know, I’ve been dying to try this recipe. It’s my great-grandmothers’, do you still have a great-grandmother? Stupid question, probably not, I don’t have a great-grandmother anymore either. She died in the 80s!”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you happen to also carry himalayan salt? From those mountains, is it actually from there? Do you know that?”

“No clue.”

“So you don’t have it? Maybe I can substitute it for sea salt… I’m worried this might be too different from what she intended. There has to be a reason for the recipe saying himalayan salt instead of sea salt. Oh, she had a shellfish allergy!”

This almost makes Joel snort. Keep it together.

“We do have it.”

“Fantastic!! Actually, I just brought the whole list. I will need you to go through everything with me so I can make sure I have all the right ingredients!”

Joel chews on his bottom lip and wordlessly points at the swiss cheese.

Every Tuesday. Every single one.

Joel’s coworkers have made up every possible theory under the sun for why this regular is so persistent with receiving Joel’s attention. It’s not only Tuesdays, it’s Fridays as well. On those shifts Joel is at the register as the cashier and somehow the guy keeps finding the timeslot with the least people in line so he can entertain Joel with smalltalk and random conversations the longest. He doesn’t come in on any more of the days Joel works.

It’s such a routine part of Joel’s job that when he isn’t there to talk to Joel it feels odd. Listen, okay, if Joel was actually uncomfortable with the situation he has at least two coworkers who would bite (if it didn’t risk their jobs) any rude person or weirdo.

This regular is peculiar, but Joel figured he was simply lonely with no one else to talk to. They seem to be around the same age, Joel left his crisp twenties only a few months ago, and the guy has never made an inappropriate remark, ever. He’ll manage.

Later that same week on Thursday Joel gets an unexpected visit. It’s the regular, outside of his usual visiting times, accompanied by a tall, silver-haired guy wearing a mask. Joel’s regular looks ridiculously short in comparison and Joel ignores he’s as short as him.

Instead of entering the lane of the cash register with a shopping cart full of items his regular is carrying a basket of a couple select items. Baguette, tomatoes, provolone cheese, some more veggies and a small plastic container of strawberries. He’s far less talkative than usual and Joel is glad, he did not plan for a chatty day today.

Like Joel does with any of his other customers he begins scanning the items.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Would that be cash or card?”

“Cash,” the tall one says and nudges the short brunette.

Joel watches his regular fumble around with his wallet and pull out a folded £20 bill. He takes it and as he unfolds it to put it into his register a small piece of paper falls out and onto his till. Okay, weird. Joel decides to just finish the transaction and send them on their merry way.

After they’ve put everything into a red tote bag Joel finds a moment to pick up and inspect the piece of paper. Yup, it’s a phone number and a name. Was the silver-haired guy trying to play wingman or is it his? Which one of them most looks like a “Bdubs”?

A problem for future Joel, current Joel folds it up and pockets it in his black jeans.

Later that day while doing laundry he fishes it out of his backpocket so it wouldn’t leave jangled up paper fibers in his clothes. He leaves it on his kitchen table, but after holding it in his hands again it starts to take over his mind. Joel thinks about the number during an entire episode of his show.

About an hour before sunset he goes for it, types it into his phone and presses the call button with no plan or expectations.

Beep. Beep.

“Is this Joel? Hello Joel!! I was about to shreep, funny you caught me right now. I was wonderi-”

Yup, big mistake. Joel hangs up and puts his phone back down.

He’ll still need his ears, tomorrow is Friday…

Chapter Text

Joel is so tired he can hardly blink and now something is hissing in his ear. What a weird tinnitus, he thinks. Today is by far not the first time he’s doing long hours, his day starts late and ends late, he doesn’t even go to bed before 2am on a regular night, so there’s no way he’ll sleep earlier than 2:30 today.

There’s just still so much work to do and it can’t wait for tomorrow.

Okay. Maybe he can put his head down for a minute, just one. Joel leans forward, drops it and essentially just hits his head on the table with a thud. Ouch, whatever. He closes his eyes, yawns and feels the exhaustion in his bones.

He could fall asleep right now, just like that… if it wasn’t for this hissing. It’s still there.

Joel opens his left eye and looks at the direction it’s coming from.

“Oi! What the heck are you ?”

A tiny blue & grey man is standing on his desk, the source of the annoying noise. Joel lets out the most whiny, elongated groan.

“How did you get in here, shush,” he waves his hand in its direction and rolls his eyes.

“Excuse me???”

Joel blinks, “Oh my god, you things talk now? shut up.”

It promptly tries to bite him in his pinky finger. Joel fucking hates phantoms.

“Get out!! I'm inside, I have a right to be left alone,” he grumbles. 

He works from his home studio and doesn't have to set a foot outside to clock in and clock out. A setup that also aimed at reducing the phantom pest, small bug-like creatures that love to gather and harass anyone who dares to leave the house after one bad nights’ sleep too much, something like that. Not many people actually experience meeting them, one proper nap is enough to reset the sleep hormone imbalance that attracts them.

Easier said than done… In summary, they’re an insomniac's nightmare.

“I’m here for an important purpose!” The small phantom man announces. Joel can see how it puffs out its chest as if that made it look bigger and more imposing. It really doesn’t, Joel has never seen anything with less authority than that sky rat in front of him.

“Mate, what I do inside my house is none of your business, piss off.”

He tries to shoo it away once again and nearly knocks over his mug of cold coffee. Had it spilled all over his desk Joel doubts he would have had the energy to care. As long as it doesn’t touch his electronics it’s whatever.

Another yawn escapes him. He must be so tired that he’s hallucinating, there’s no other explanation for a talking phantom.

“I was sent by our authorities to take care of a major disturbance!” The phantom reasserts itself and begins to climb up Joel’s monitor. Tiny grey hands grab onto the border of it and its small feet barely find purchase to step on, so it flaps its wings a couple times to make it all the way to the top.

The resulting soft gust of wind is comparable to a paper fan one might fold out of some useless document during summer to cool down and it’s enough to irritate Joel even more.

“I’m not helping you, I’ve got nothing to do with your lot.”

“Oh no, no, no, you’re responsible for it all! The problem is YOU !!”

Joel lifts his head. Literally how is anything he’s doing an issue for the phantoms, shouldn’t his lack of sleep be awesome for them? He stares at it with his jaw open and a computer buffer icon loading in his brain.

“I am BdoubleO, representative for my flock of phantoms. I’m here because YOU are a major distraction and disturbance in our natural life cycle!”

Joel blinks and says absolutely nothing for a solid minute. Nobody can expect his brain to compute correctly (or even at all) in this fever dream of a moment. Continuing even further with the computer analogy, he just did a reboot and is ready to reply once the desktop in his head is done loading up again.

“Soooo…,” he shifts to rest his head on his hand and grins, “What you’re saying is I’m disruptingly attractive?”

The phantom hisses and as if Joel’s blunt comment skipped the monologue it was about to give it hops back down from the monitor, “Yes!”

They’re on eye level now, oddly enough. 

That’s only because Joel is hunched over instead of having his elbow resting on the table in a 90 degree angle to support his head. It’s squished and folded together, his hand is close to his elbow with how slouched he is.

The phantom BdoubleO can’t be any taller than 20 centimeters and honestly Joel isn’t sure if it's real or if he’s actually asleep on his desk right now and having the weirdest dream. It could be the latter. Maybe he has reached the limit of how much lack of sleep his human body can manage and this is the… punishment? Definitely feels like one. By the gods, what has he done to deserve being an insomniac in a world where an animal like phantoms are a thing.

“You are correct, that’s right!” It shimmies its shoulders to get its leathery looking wings into a more comfortable position, “You are too much of a good thing and it has to stop. Now, in all my power, it hurts me to say this: You need to shreep!”

Hah, this has to be a first. Joel snorts.

“A thing known for preying on tired people telling me to go to bed has got to be a new low. Damn. I’m so unrested that I’m too attractive for phantoms.”

“I will now personally accompany you to bed.”

“Ah, okay.” Joel stares at it some more, “How?”

It starts to screech . 

The most god awful sound that has EVER harassed Joel’s ears. Yeah, he’s as stubborn as a mule, but also he likes his peace and quiet. No animal on this planet earth should be physically able to create a sound like that with its mouth.

“FINE, shut up! You’re unbearable, blummin’ heck,” Joel grumbles and hoists himself up from his desk. Woah, is the room supposed to spin?

His legs have definitely fallen asleep as well. That should at least count for something, hah! Can’t this thing acknowledge that and be happy with it? The tingly feeling does make it infinitely harder to navigate though, he clenches his jaw at the prickling sensation. Definitely not his favourite.

In the meantime the phantom takes off and flies towards Joel’s office door. That’s the one and only way to get into the office (Joel keeps all the windows closed once it gets late, specifically because of the phantom problem) and it’s locked until he opens it for them both. How did BdoubleO manage to get in here? Stupid question to ask a guy who’s wandering his apartment at 3am like a zombie. There’s not a single coherent thought in his brain right now.

When he arrives in his bathroom the phantom is already at his sink holding his toothbrush over its head to hand it to Joel.

“This is the weirdest nighttime routine I’ve ever done,” he notes and takes it out of the phantom’s hands without another question.

“Oh, trust me,” it sort of laughs, but more like it’s in disbelief over its own actions rather than amused, “me too. Me too.”

“Did you lose a dare or why are you doing this then?,” Joel begins brushing his teeth, pauses, applies toothpaste on his toothbrush and then picks his toothbrushing back up.

BdoubleO sits down, “It’s my duty!”

“Uh, uh-huh.”

In all truth, there is much more behind this for the phantom that is unspoken. One question is if sending Joel to bed tonight would even have an immediate effect. This has been going on for a long time, Joel is an avid night owl and workaholic and while he doesn’t leave his office and shouldn’t be able to affect phantom culture this much, he has caused severe damage.

Yes, they thrive off of it, he is their perfect target demographic, but in combination with him being inaccessible this has resulted in the phantoms being glued to his house without a way to feed. BdoubleO’s flock is starving.

They urgently need to move on to something they can actually harvest and live off of and this can’t happen for as long as Joel’s built up sleep hormone imbalance attracts them.

So what options are left for the phantom other than going against its nature and attempting to fix Joel’s horrible sleeping schedule? Exactly. Basically none.

It takes the two of them roughly half an hour until Joel is laying down in his bed, wrapped in his blanket and there is (after BdoubleO had to screech again) no phone to doomscroll on nearby.

“You gotta shreep now.”

“I’m trying!!”

The phantom is standing on Joel’s bedside table and guarding him like he is some sort of feral creature in a zoo with one zookeeper patrolling his cage.

“I’m not gonna be able to sleep if you’re here staring at me, mate.”

“Pretend I’m here to protect you.”

Joel closes his eyes and then subtly opens one of them to peek at the phantom.

“I can see that.”

“Oh blummin’ heck. Can’t you like, phantom away?”

“Fantastic, what a brilliant plan! Why don’t I just, woooosh, unexist!” It complains until Joel rolls his eyes, “Yeah, that’s right!!”

Slowly the sound of quiet, regular breathing begins to fill the room.

…

Joel ever so slightly opens one eye. Dammit. It’s still there.

The phantom takes notice and lets out a dramatic, insulted gasp.

“I thought maybe you’d leave if you thought I was asleep… worth a shot.”

“HEY! You do know I can detect your sleep hormones, right?!”

“Fuck’s sake.”

The next time Joel closes his eyes the exhaustion does finally take over and begins to pull him into a deep sleep. A mere second before he fully slips away he could swear he heard the phantom mumble something about having to do this all over again tomorrow.

Crap.

Chapter Text

Joel shows up in the doorframe to the living room. He’s not even looking around, he’s hardly trying to appear like he’s searching. All he does is stare directly at his roommate who’s lounging on the couch, “Where’s Etho?”

Bdubs looks up from his phone, looks Joel up and down and raises his brow, “He’s out? I thought you knew, didn’t you tell him goodbye when he left earlier?”

“Wow, I must have forgotten,” Joel says flatly and then claps his hands together, “Well, looks like you’re all that’s left. Get up, right now.” 

How nice! Ugh. Bdubs’ lips curl into a frown and he buries himself deeper into the couch as if that could make him disappear into it. It doesn’t really work (surprising) and within a few steps Joel is standing right in front of him.

With a strong grip and one powerful pull Joel hoists Bdubs out of the couch onto his feet. It’s just the right amount of force to get him to stand up without toppling over. Joel is so annoying with his… his… his way of being great at everything, even these stupid arbitrary things!

What a weird thing to overthink about, too. Did Bdubs really just waste a whole moment’s time thinking about how strong and great Joel is? Good grief. To think all this about a guy with such a stupid smug face!!

“Where are we even going?”

“The bathroom, come on. Have you ever bleached hair before?”

Of course he has, Joel knows that very damn well. Such a dumb question. But oh well, Bdubs is predictable, he smells what he thinks is a chance to show off.

“Sure I have! I happen to be pretty good at it, the best even! I’ve been bleaching Etho’s hair for the past ten years, spotless ! So have a little respect when you’re talking to the expert!!”

“Oh, perfect,” Joel sounds unimpressed, but he’s grinning. 

He’s dragging Bdubs all the way down the long hallway, past the purposeful decor Bdubs has placed in this house over the years of living here. There are no pictures of Joel here yet. He’s too much of a recent addition in the life of the two people who've been occupying this space together long before Joel even lived in this town.

Still, he’s left his marks. The green accents are his doing, Bdubs only allowed them because it’s his favourite colour as well, so it was basically his whole own idea and Joel only happened to be next to the items when he bought them.

Bdubs lets himself be led through the house and into the guest bathroom that has morphed into being Joel’s.

Ugh, it’s a mess. Stuff is scattered all around the sink, a toothbrush with toothpaste, a razor, hair ties (when Joel doesn’t even have hair long enough to tie it unless he wants to become a unicorn, or shrek), combs of varying sizes and, as Bdubs just notices, one of their plastic bowls, aluminium foil, a brush and hair dye.

Oh, so that’s what the bleaching question was about. Yeah, Bdubs should have guessed that. Joel’s brunette roots have been showing for a couple weeks, hah! That’s what happens when you have dyed hair and no Bdubs to maintain it as perfectly as he has maintained Etho’s! Well.. he supposes that’s what his purpose here is today.

At least everything seems to be appropriately prepared. A box of latex gloves is resting on the windowsill ready for use, right next to it a little jar of hair clips that could prove useful for keeping Joel’s brown hair away from the faded green streak they’ll be bleaching.

Beneath the window is a radiator that often also functions as a drying rack for wet towels or to warm up clothes on a cold day. Right now a grey shirt with various hair dye stains and bleached spots is draped over it. 

“Would you mind if I change?”

Bdubs looks back at him and notices how cold his wrist feels now that Joel isn’t holding onto it anymore with his warm hands. “I don’t care.”

Joel turns his back to him and takes off the old band shirt he was wearing to replace it with his hair dye shirt. Once he’s done he tosses his used shirt in a corner and Bdubs grumbles. Just why did Etho befriend a messy guy like this out of all people on earth…

Whatever. Without talking about any of the next steps Bdubs begins opening the box bleach. He’s done this a million times before anyway and it’s really not hard to guess what Joel wants to have done to his hair.

The green streak begins roughly at the center of the top of Joel’s head and spreads forward to take up a good chunk of the right side of his… bangs? The front hair bits, whatever their name is. Bdubs never claimed to be an expert on that , only on the bleach!

In the meantime Joel sits down on the lidded toilet so Bdubs can comfortably reach it. So far the energy in the room has actually been quite alright. It does wonders when Joel shuts up for once instead of talking non stop. Yeah, Bdubs isn’t any better, but he’s allowed, that’s the difference.

Anyway, he better get started now if he wants this to be over. Actually, how did Joel even manage to make him do this? He has no reason to do him a favour. Bdubs huffs and decides it’s simply because his skill is desperately needed. Before doing anything else now Bdubs reaches for the gloves and puts on a pair.

With meticulous precision he then mixes together the bleach (he just rips open the little bags, screws open the tubes and squeezes the contents into the poor bowl. Bdubs doesn’t really care enough to be precise with anything. It’s box bleach.)

A dang. He forgot to part Joel’s hair first. There is already some of the product on his gloved hands, he can’t touch the brown hair now.

“Expert, huh?” Joel teases, of course.

Bdubs rolls his eyes and watches as his roommate gets up to grab the hair clips and one of the combs. The way Joel so carelessly parts his hair and doesn’t separate the two differently coloured halves properly irritates him.

There’s some brown hair in the faded green streak and some of the faded green hair in the brown strands surrounding the streak. It’s the opposite of neat and tidy and Joel clearly does not give enough shits to be more precise.

“I can’t work with this.”

“It’s parted, that’s all it has to do.”

“How am I supposed to do my job when your groundwork is so… so sloppy!”

“Hmmm…” Joel looks in the mirror again and takes in the view, “You’re right, I need to make it look neater for Etho.”

Not what Bdubs wanted!! This is most definitely Joel trying to get under his skin, but Bdubs will never not react to this. He doesn’t care how much he’s falling for Joel’s setup of teasing him.

“No, you know what? Leave it. Great as it is, hm.”

Joel grins and sits back down, “Well, if you say so, you’re the expert after all.”

Ugh. Putting him into a tough situation! Should he fix the botched parting and worry that it makes Joel look better or leave it and have it be a dark stain on his white west of beautiful hair dye jobs? No, he will simply not take responsibility for this one! Joel made him do it, it’s not his fault if it looks bad in the end.

To show that he has made his decision Bdubs confidently approaches with the bowl of bleach and begins applying the product.

Joel has to admit that Bdubs really does have a system. Only logical honestly, considering how much practice he’s had. Back when Joel saw Etho from a distance at the bar the silver hair was one of the first things about him he noticed.

He patiently sits here now, in the bathroom of Bdubs’ house, and actually… enjoys the moment. While they do still bicker when Etho isn’t around to be jealous towards each other over, there’s significantly less tension.

In the end the bleaching part of this whole process doesn’t take long to do and finish. What’s important are the roots, the rest of the patch is already lightened and only needs the colour touched up.

Joel leans over the edge of the bathtub and lets Bdubs wordlessly wash the bleach out of his hair.

“Out of curiosity, have you ever dyed your hair before?”

Bdubs turns off the water, “No, I’d never do this to my hair.”

“It’d suit you tho.”

“Huh?”

“It’d look good on you. You should do it just like mine~!”

Bdubs rolls his eyes. For a second he thought he was actually getting a compliment there.

“No, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome.”

Bdubs turns the water back on, changes it to cold and lets it get on Joel’s neck.

“EEUCH!”

“Get your hair dry, I’ll be in the living room watching my show. Call me when it’s ready for the dye.”

“Actually,” Joel takes his towel and squeezes his dripping wet hair with it, “I can… nevermind. I’ll call.”

Bdubs makes an acknowledging noise and puts the shower head back where it belongs. One moment later he’s out the door and Joel is all by himself.

What Joel meant to say is that he can do this part on his own now (in all truth he could have done this entire process by himself like he’s done it before many times), but he’s not going to tell Bdubs.

They got off the wrong foot with how their whole situation happened and it’s a shame they spent so long fighting instead of getting to know each other better.

He does get it though. Etho and Bdubs have a weird, hard to define relationship towards each other. They’ve been living together in Bdubs’ house for some extended amount of time (Joel doesn’t really know how long exactly) and things seemed to go well for them until Joel came into their lives.

Joel moved in nearby and kept seeing Etho in the bar. It’s not his fault he developed a crush and was instantly head over heels when Etho eventually approached him for a chat. Everything else happened really fast after that.

Etho invited Joel to hang out some, Joel met Bdubs and figured out Etho wasn’t quite single? More confusing than that. Gem called it “Schrödinger’s relationship” when Joel called her to tell her about his most recent life events.

It’s not surprising Bdubs immediately saw Joel as competition and acted hostile towards him.

They’ve been getting along a bit more recently. Joel looks at himself in the mirror and watches the hairdryer blow his hair into all sorts of directions.

He’s been enjoying having Bdubs around. Bdubs is an intense guy, quite loud sometimes, but Joel can’t lie and claim he isn’t funny and good looking. They could have been an item had they met under different circumstances, Joel is sure.

But well, these are the cards they’ve been dealt. A bumpy start has never stopped Joel though.

He eyes the tube of green hair dye and the smug grin spreads on his face again.

“BDUUUBS, IT’S DRY.”

“ON MY WAY!”

Chapter Text

Joelene taps her nails against the table in a rhythmic pattern. The beat of one of her drumsets in an upcoming performance emerges without thinking and she softly bobs her head along to the music blasting through her headphones. They’re espresso brown and decorated with green stars that match her dyed streaks, jewellery and her acrylics.

In front of her is her laptop. 73 tabs open and eleven of those are dedicated to the paper she really does not want to be working on right now. “Go to a café!” her friend had told her, “The pressure of being watched will make you stop procrastinating, I promise it works!!”

Well, it’s been a whole hour and she has yet to get past the introduction. Honestly, it’s rude that uni won’t change the deadlines to be due after she’s done with her mini tour through the city. All the time she is wasting here is valuable, she should be practising on the drums right now, or at least be at the mall looking for additions to her amazing wardrobe!

Joelene sighs and rests her head on her hand. Her bangs fall out from where the headphones kept them tucked back and swoop back into her face. Is it time to bite the bullet and go home or should she get up and grab another cup of coffee?

Stupid stubbornness. She wants this paper done.

With a resigned sigh Joelene presses her lips together and looks around the café for someone who looks trustworthy. Only two tables over she can spot a person fitting the description: A young woman, about her age, with warm brown hair, the prettiest dress Joelene has ever seen and a laptop of her own. They could be from the same uni, she’s probably here to do coursework, too. Twins!

Joelene slips her laptop into her bag and gets up to approach her.

“Hey, can you watch my bag for a second?”

The woman takes one wireless headphone that Joelene didn’t see earlier out of her ear, “Hm? Yeah, sure!”

Their eyes meet and damn. This woman is really, really pretty.

Joelene smiles and hands her the bag, “Thanks.”

This allows her to finally use the restroom without worrying someone would steal her laptop or tote with stuff while she’s away. It already takes her a minute to find her goal location in this café, but it’s smooth sailing once she spots the unnecessarily tiny signage marking where to go.

After washing her hands she looks at herself in the mirror. Her hair is behaving so well today, it looks soft and lush with how it flows down her shoulders in big waves. The green strands and streaks are still vibrant (it’s been a week and two wash-days since she’s touched it up) and her eyes really pop with his new mascara.

As a last minute decision Joelene also applied some green eyeliner this morning, but she must have rubbed it off over the course of the day. It’s nowhere to be seen except from a few small traces of pigment in the outer corners.

In one practised motion Joelene grabs her phone to check for notifications. None. He hasn’t texted back yet, soon it’ll be six hours since she asked him about their date next week. Ugh. UGH. It’s on read! He literally saw it!

Okay. She breathes in and out, purses her lips and looks back in the mirror. Maybe she should try a different mascara? Or put her hair in a ponytail. Hm.

A couple minutes after she initially left for the bathroom Joelene walks through the café and heads to the table she left her stuff at. The woman is now leaned forward, staring at her screen. It doesn’t take being a fellow uni student to know that whatever she is doing right now, she’s in the flow.

Joelene feels somewhat guilty to interrupt until she walks closer and catches a glimpse of what the woman is looking at. Moss…? The whole screen is taken up by various pictures of it, some that’s greener, some that’s fluffy, some that looks bone dry. Joelene watches her select one, download it (oh, this is Pinterest) and then add it to a collage.

She can only take a brief look though, she’s been noticed. The woman smiles at her and points at the bag that is now resting on one of the spare chairs at this table.

“I put it over here,” she adds.

“Thanks for watching it,” Joelene smiles back. 

Before she can think of leaving she just needs to take another look at the woman’s outfit. It’s brighter than Joelene’s usual colour palette, she doesn’t really wear florals either, but the fabric folds and stretches to create such a beautiful silhouette.

If she were to get her hands on it Joelene is sure she could get her friend Cleo to figure out the pattern. With some adjustments and a fabric that feels more ‘Joelene’ this could be her new go-to stage outfit.

“Your dress is really pretty.”

The woman’s soft brown eyes brighten, “Oh, thanks! I love your hair!”

“Really? Thanks, can you believe it’s natural?” Joelene begins to grin.

“Woah, It is??”

“Yeah, it grows green right out of my scalp!” She leans forward a little and lets her fingers wander through the dyed sections. The hair parts to reveal the brown roots she has not yet bleached (it’s only been dye touch-ups for the past month, she needed to give her hair some time to recover if she doesn’t want to go bald) and now it seems that the brunette still doesn’t get Joelene is joking.

“Omg, when it grows green again is it going to have stripes?”

The look on her face is genuine amazement and curiosity. Joelene can’t hold back a giggle that’s a smidge too loud. It only takes the pretty woman another second to join in.

“I’m Joelene, by the way.”

“I’m Beatrice!”

What a cute name. Not one Joel has really encountered before, but it really suits her.

“Is this seat taken?”

“None are except mine, do you want to sit with me?”

Joelene slowly nods, “If that’s fine by you?”

“Sure! I’ve been getting bored anyway, usually I have someone with me.”

The wooden chair scrapes on the floor when Joelene pulls it out to sit down. Her bag is still resting on the other chair and within reach. She totally could get her laptop out and pick up where she left off, OR she lets procrastination win so she can talk to Beatrice instead.

In the end Joelene decides to put her laptop back on the table and leave it closed in favour of using it as a bit of an ice breaker. The back of her screen is decorated in a whole bunch of stickers ranging from silly joke ones to ones of her band she designed herself.

She did a damn good job with them, but her favourite band sticker is a relatively large black & green one made and gifted to her by one of her best friends, Jimmy. He can’t draw for the life of him, but that’s what makes this one so special.

The stickers complete the goal of catching Bea’s attention. “I love the stickers! They’re arranged so neatly, how long did that take?”

Neat? Joelene wouldn’t have used that word to describe her decorated laptop, but at a closer look Bea is right. While there are gaps and overlaps, there is an overall flow which, paired with the harmonising colour scheme, makes for a pretty composition. The brunette seems to have an eye for things like this.

“I got this laptop forever ago and collected over time. Pretty cool, right? This one is the first one I stuck on here.”

Joelene points at a green star. Back when she was still doing music solo and with her bedroom as her studio it began to turn into her trademark. No matter what she wears now, her outfit would have at least one of them somewhere. Jimmy made green star hair clips out of air dry clay for her to accessorise with, she’d get stars on her nails, as pins, as decor on her shoes, absolutely everywhere.

Shortly before joining her band Cleo helped her dye parts of her hair this nice, bright but not neon green that matches the colour of the star. Her iconic look is now part of their branding.

Beatrice can’t see inside Joelene’s head and hear how her inner monologue circles back to the band and music every few paragraphs, but her passion for it is evident enough through all the band stickers on the laptop.

“I really like this one,” Bea reaches out to point to one of them, “Which band is this?”

Before processing the question Joelene takes quick notice of Bea’s nails, they’re longer, like hers, and decorated with greens and grey teals. So many things about this woman feel a bit unconventional but suit her a lot.

Now, back to Joelene’s favourite topic, “This is my band!”

She’s practically beaming with self-confidence all of a sudden and Bea’s jaw drops, “Really? You play in a band?”

“Yeah! I’m a drummer, guitarist and singer,” she explains and opens up her laptop, “I used to be the only guitarist until we got a new band member, now I can go back to being on the drums for a couple songs. We have a performance soon, you should come!”

“Depends on when, I’m headed straight into stupid exams.”

With swift fingers Joelene enters her password and pulls up the app she uses for organising her schedules and tasks. Of course she knows the dates off the top of her head, but she can’t expect someone else to have such a clear picture of the calendar month in their head like she does.

Bea takes a look at the schedule she’s being presented with. The next gigs are at the end of the week; Friday, Saturday and Sunday. At least one of these days Bea can see herself going to, as long as they don’t go too far into the night and she can get home early enough for a good night’s sleep.

“What kind of music do you guys make?”

“Mostly rock, but we’ve been dabbling into some other genres. Want to hear some of our songs?”

To be honest, if this was a guy who had joined Beatrice at the table to talk about his band, she would have gotten up and left. This here feels different. Bea finds herself being actually curious and impressed, maybe also because she got approached by this beautiful woman Joelene with her gorgeous hair and cool outfit and with the vibes she’s getting from her this could very well turn into a cute spontaneous date.

Yeah, Beatrice just left whatever weird talking stage situationship she was having up until about a couple months ago and was in need of this time alone, but she won’t say no when the universe is delivering a super pretty girl to her table after she had to deal with a frustrating man for so long.

“I’d love to! Would you mind if I got another piece of cake first? Do you also want something?”

Joelene smiles, but shakes her head. She can’t have gluten and for some reason she feels mentioning an intolerance would affect this super cool image she has probably built up of herself in Bea’s eyes right now.

Bea heads to the counter and returns about two minutes later with a piece of strawberry cake. This gave Joelene just enough time to pull up some pictures from gigs and select her favourite song of theirs. Yeah, it’s a bit braggy to approach a random person in a café and then making them listen to you talk about how cool and talented you are, but let a girl have hobbies!

They change their seating arrangement to now sit side by side.

The photos pulled up on the laptop look really, really cool. The band’s theme clearly is green, which Bea does enjoy quite a lot, and she’s surprised to see so many people in the audience. Joelene clearly has it in her to attract a crowd.

She’s front and center in almost every picture, the star of the show. Her hair looks wild in most of them, moments frozen in time where the brown and green waves move through the air like an untamed maine. A broad black leather band wraps around Joelene and attached to it is a striking green electric guitar.

Artificial fog and bright beams of stage light amplify how stunning Joelene looks. The remaining band members’ faces are hard to see, they’re either in shadow or the light overexposes their faces, making them glow as white patches.

Well, that is until Joelene pulls up a picture of the whole band standing in a row at the end of a gig. Now everyone is clearly visible and Beatrice nearly chokes on a bite of her strawberry cake when one of the members looks far too familiar.

“Omg, are you okay?”

Beatrice coughs and reaches for her coffee to take a couple sips. “That’s my ex.”

“Wait, your ex?”

“Well,” she coughs one last time, “We weren’t officially a thing, but dated for way too long, yeah.”

Joelene looks back at the picture and all the people on it. In the center is Joelene, of course, and the other members are to her left and right. Their keyboard player Oli, their new guitarist and sort of her boyfriend Etho who STILL hasn’t responded to her texts, their drummer Impulse and her backup vocalist and bass player Scott.

All of them are close with her, she knows of her members’ dating histories. Oli has been in a happy relationship for years, Impulse has been on and off with the same two people for a while and Scott is gay. None of them have ever mentioned anyone named Beatrice.

“Who?”

To Joelene’s dismay, Beatrice points right at the one person she did not want to consider. 

Etho.

How to interpret this now? Well, actually this could be a big ego boost! Joelene looks at her basically-boyfriend in the photo and then lets her eyes wander back to Beatrice. She’s gorgeous, if it’s true these two were once together, that must mean he thinks Joelene is at least equally pretty. A win in her eyes!

“Oh, I’m currently dating him,” Joelene says.

Whoops. Okay, she did not consider that this might not be the best thing to say to a woman about her ex, but what else is she supposed to do? Not talk about him?

Beatrice shifts around in her seat.

This… uh, this is surprising to her. From the moment Joelene asked to sit down and complimented her Bea assumed this was heading into a sapphic direction. Now she’s not only confronted with the fact this pretty woman wasn’t flirting, but also that she’s actively dating her deadbeat ex.

She presses her lips together. “I didn’t know he played in a band.”

“He joined it not too long ago. I knew him before then, I got him to join, but yeah. He’s pretty good.”

“I’d guess so.”

Yeah, it was a mistake mentioning him.

Beatrice folds her hands together and looks at the picture again. Joelene doesn’t deserve this, she needs to let her know what he’s like.

“I don’t know how he’s treating you, maybe he changed for the better, but I doubt it. His way of going about things has worked for so long that there’s no reason for him to stop, you know?”

Oh, okay. Joelene feels some relief, Bea doesn’t seem to be upset or jealous. “What exactly do you mean?”

“Etho and I have known each other for years and I instantly developed a crush as soon as I met him. For a while I didn’t make a move because I thought he was gay,” she explains and Joelene can’t help but laugh.

“Yeah I actually got the same vibes at first-”

This helped lift some of the awkwardness that did manage to join their conversation.

“When I figured out he’s not, or like, at least bi, I thought, hey, who’s perfect like me? I’m perfect like me! Of course he’d like me back! We started going on dates as early as February last year.”

It’s currently July.

“I actually wanted to take him out for valentines, but he…” Bea makes air quotes with her fingers, “didn’t want it to be too romantic.”

Yeah, sounds like him.

Bea continues, “I get it for the first, I don’t know, months, I do, but he never introduced me to his friends, never invited me anywhere unless it was only us, he wormed his way out of every single conversation about our relationship status and was just… just…”

The upset in her voice is bleeding into her expression.

“Just so stupidly non-committal.”

Joelene has grown quiet. This doesn’t feel good to hear.

Denial is a river in Egypt! And also a part of Joelene’s daily life. Bea is describing the same experiences she’s been having with him and up until now she’s always managed to put the rose tinted glasses on and excuse his actions.

Cancelling dates last minute? Maybe he got busy! Or anxious, hey, that happens, right? He must have been so sad missing out on spending time with her!

Kissing her in private, but refusing to do that when they’re out? Maybe he’s not ready to be public, she can’t force anyone to do anything. He was good at what he was doing whenever they were by themselves!

All pretty regular things. And Joelene even managed to get him out of his shell enough to join the band and perform very public gigs! So, actually, she might have gotten lucky and he has changed, actually loves her, is simply taking it slow and she needs to be patient!

Joelene’s long silence is telling enough.

“He’s leading you on.”

“No,” Joelene shakes her head, “He wouldn’t do that. Not to me!”

Beatrice reaches for her phone and starts scrolling through her messenger app. Then she begins reading out loud, “ I’m sorry I couldn’t come over, something got in the way. ”

Joelene has gotten that exact message at least five or six times in the past month.

“ Idk, I’m sorry I don’t have an answer. I need more time to figure out how I feel. ”

Beatrice briefly looks up from her phone and makes eye contact before returning to reading the chat.

“ hey can you come over ,” she makes a face, “This one was the first message he sent me after he ghosted me for about three days.”

“He hasn’t ghosted me once.”

“Yet, yeah. At first he also still texted me back, it started taking him hours pretty quickly.”

No, no no no no. Joelene thinks of how he has left her on read for the whole day so far. Nope, he’s just busy.

“Well, we spend a lot of time together, he took me to this one event, wait…”

Beatrice patiently waits for her to search through her picture gallery on her phone. When Joelene turns it towards her it shows a photo of Joelene and Etho, he’s facing into a different direction while she’s posing and taking the picture. In the background Bea can see the stage of a medieval concert.

That one concert… the one by the market… Bea bites her lip and now she can feel a pit of anger form in her stomach, “When did you take the selfie?”

“Uh,” with one tap on the information icon the date of the image shows up, “April 19th.”

“He cancelled on me that day! He literally, he went…” Bea can’t believe this. Using the search bar in the messenger app she jumps to that date in their chat, “ something came up, but I can take you tomorrow ”

That something was Joelene. While Bea was still dating him.

“Judas priest! I’m losing my mind. I’m looooosing iiit.”

“What’s wrong?”

It’s a stupid question, SUCH a stupid question, Joelene knows what is going on, there is just that one last part of her that can’t let go of the rose tinted glasses. This can’t be right.

Bea carefully wipes away an angry tear. “You know why he didn’t commit to me? Or to you, I know him well enough to know. Do you? Do you know?”

“I can guess, yeah.”

“Hear ye, hear ye, local absolute idiot thought relationships have a loophole!!”

Joelene has never seen someone so pretty be this angry. And someone so angry still remain so pretty.

“Fuck him!! Wait no, don’t. He can do that himself!!”

“When did you break up?”

“I ended things in May!”

They absolutely overlapped. What a…

“He started going on dates with me around January,” Joelene says, “And just like with you he never has the headspace to decide on what he wants.”

Bea huffs out a breath, “Leave him. He’s leading you on.”

Easier said than done! Joelene can’t just let go of him, he is exactly her type and while it is so frustrating how he evades ever being serious about them, she can’t dismiss all the fun they’ve had so far. Not even to mention that he is now part of her band!

At the same time, she can’t excuse his actions. Figuring out he was only deflecting and avoiding because he was trying to have them both at the same time (and who knows, maybe even more than just them) causes a feeling of disgust to spread in her stomach.

How is she supposed to forgive him?

Okay, to be fair, she’s not very hard to win back over. Unfortunately. When it comes to him she seems to have zero backbone.

Beatrice observes Joelene’s expressions. She can recognise herself in them and how she may have reacted had it been her in Joelene’s exact situation, making it all the more important to highlight that there is nothing about Etho Joelene can effectively change. It’s hopeless.

“May I give you a recommendation?” Bea leans back.

“Hmh?”

“Stop engaging with him and see what he does.”

“Honestly,” Joelene laughs and she feels a bit pathetic being honest with this, “I don’t know if I could handle it if he suddenly ignored me.”

“Give me your number,” Beatrice unlocks her phone and pushes it towards Joelene, “And call me. See what he does and then we can either navigate his lying together, or you drop him and we go grab dinner sometime. Sound good?”

Joelene smiles as she types in her number. When she hands it back Bea looks at the name she has given her own contact, ‘the pretty girl ♡’

“Sounds lovely.”