Author's Notes:

Here's a special college send-off.

Special thanks to Ragga for the art!

“INK! WHERE'D YOU PUT MY BRUSH?!”

Ink barely glanced up from the book she had been reading—a trashy paperback of unspecified origin she had found hidden on one of her bookshelves. “How the hell should I know?” she shouted back.

Gaige emerged from the bathroom, wearing her signature skull sweater. Her hair was, in Ink’s opinion, not a mess, but then again this was Gaige who was prone to going off her rocker whenever she felt like it over the smallest of things—and that was when it wasn’t the girl’s monthly date with the devil. She was not smiling as she marched over to Ink.

“You’d know,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Ink, “because I loaned it to you at the last sleepover at my house!”

“And I gave it back at the end of it,” Ink replied steadily. She turned another page of her book. The sunlight was coming in through her bedroom window and was providing excellent lighting, but Gaige’s shadow quickly moved over the pages. “Hey! Move it! You’re in my light!”

Suddenly the book was ripped from Ink’s hands and thrown against the back wall. “Where. Is. It?!” Gaige demanded, placing both hands next to Ink.

Ink pushed Gaige away. “What the hell is your problem?!” She walked over to retrieve her book, and saw that the spine had been severely bent. “Damn it, Gaige! You ruined a perfectly good book!”

“Oh, wah, wah, wah!” Gaige mimed tears. “The great Ink, beset by woe over a shitty rom-com from some discount Fitzgerald!”

“I’m not the one throwing a hissy fit over losing a stupid brush!”

“No, because you’re the one who lost it!”

It was summer (by the way), and it was during one of the hottest heat waves of that year. No hair was left unwelcomely curled; no strand, no follicle, had gone unaffected by the massive hotness that had pervaded all about the land. Ink’s short but rather thick hair had the misfortune of standing stubbornly up even when copious amounts of water and hair product were dumped on it, and so privately it was her opinion that she was suffering worse than Gaige, whose pigtails had grown back and whose hair looked the same as ever.

The summer had been marred by impromptu sleepovers, mostly because the girls needed time away from their families, and because air conditioning was a blessing that seemed to periodically shift in possession between the two. But the summer also meant an increase in flaring tempers, and so Gaige’s childlike tantrums (“Hey!”) were common. They were also grating to Ink, but she never had to say that.

“I didn’t lose your brush,” Ink said, turning to face the other girl. “Maybe Hazel did.”

“Bullshit! I’d never let Hazel touch any of my stuff!”

“You let her touch Deathtrap!”

“Deathtrap let her touch him, and you know it’s the 21st century and robots have free will and are sentient and I’m not his parent!”

“You built him!”

“Don’t change the subject!”

Ink huffed, blowing a strand of hair away. “What? Did Aunt Flow make a surprise and sudden visit today?”

“No!” Gaige stomped up to her, and jabbed a finger into her chest (conveniently between her boobs, ehehehe). “It’s actually Mister Lie Detector, and he’s telling me you lost it!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Prove it!”

Gaige paused. “No u,” she said (somehow saying that “u” part without the full word).

Ink threw up her hands, dislodging Gaige’s finger from her bust. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Neither does lying about my brush!”

Ink let out a disgusted noise before she marched past Gaige and back over to her bed. “Have you tried looking for it in Flash’s asshole? Lord knows you love inspecting that thing! They should call you the Cave Explorer!”

Gaige gasped. “You did not just say that!” She marched up to Ink and grabbed her by the shoulders, spinning her around and pinning her to the wall. “Listen! It was just a one-time thing, and just because he liked it—”

“It was more than a one-time thing and you know it!”

“Yeah?! Well, I can still smell Mac in your breath!”

Now it was Ink’s turn to gasp. Her face turned red, heated. “I kissed him, damn it! That’s all!”

“Uh huh? Then how do you explain what I found in your trash this morning?!”

“Why the hell were you going through my trash?!”

“I was looking for the brush that you lost!”

(Now, you may be wondering: how the hell are these two able to survive in a room together? How are they even friends? They’re here arguing like an old married couple {squee}, so how does their friendship survive? How should I know? I’m their friend author, but that doesn’t mean I know everything!)

Ink pushed Gaige away. Gaige pushed Ink away. Now they were standing a fair distance apart, breathing heavily. “You should go,” Ink said, glowering.

“You know what? I will,” Gaige said. She turned around. Ink faced her back to her.

“OC reject,” Gaige murmured.

“Town bicycle,” Ink murmured.

“What was that?!”

As it tends to be with all old married couples, real or otherwise, they said—or rather, shouted—this at the same time. Now they ran at each other, and their voices were quick to rise. Gaige stood on her toes, and was actually a bit taller than Ink at that time.

“You got a problem, grape juice?!” Gaige shouted.

“Yeah!” Ink exclaimed. “It’s four feet tall and speaks Japanese!”

“Jerk!”

“Meanie!”

“Butthead!”

“Fart face!”

“Asshole!”

“Bitch!”

“Wench!”

“Wretch!”

(And of course a bunch of other words that I can’t put here because that would be not family friendly)

Now, it’s not quite known how what came to pass, came to pass, but legends say that the last exchange went something like this:

“Screw you!”

“Screw me? How about I screw you!”

“Not if I screw you first!”

Their lips mashed hungrily against one another before any one of them had a chance to think. Lightning exploded in miniature fireworks. The world rocked and tumbled, and there was an earthquake out in Las Pegasus that split the earth with the force of this one, singular, soul-defining action.

Then, just as quickly as they had come together, they split apart. Both were breathing heavily, and both had their cheeks stained red.

“WHAT THE F***?!” Ink was the first to say.

“You started it!” Gaige replied.

Then they were at it again—greedily, passionately, like the ocean crashing against the shore. Where there had been lightning, now there was thunder; where there had been fireworks, now there were stars going supernova, or perhaps the start of another Big Bang (ha ha, see that Ink, I can go poetic too). Las Pegasus was sent off careening into the ocean, where ancient stone monoliths from the elder time rose up and engulfed the city. The planets had aligned! The stars and the cosmos all had turned their attention to what was unfolding, to this one moment that everything had been leading up to, that everyone had been waiting for!

And then, their lips separated, and their faces moved away, and both were breathing even harder now. Ink’s eyes were the same as Gaige’s—dulled by the passion, yet tempered by its flame, half-lidded. There was a line of saliva connecting their lips momentarily, before it broke off into the eternal abyss.

Gaige was the first to regain her senses. She blinked, her cheeks still flushed. “Ink—”

And Ink shut her up in the most eloquent manner she knew.

It was slow, and deep, but most definitely of the sensual variety; and when Ink finally decided to let Gaige come up for air, the girl did so with a startled, almost pained gasp. They were looking at each other, now, eyeing each other up, like two felines about to see who among them was the true alpha female.

“Is your bedroom door locked?” Gaige asked.

“I locked it when we got in here,” Ink said.

“This is why Ragga loves you.”

Their hands dashed all over each other as Ink pulled them to the bed, and their hands became furious flurries of movements, and in no time at all those hands became full of clothes, and then the clothes were in the air, and the hands were grasping other things, and then the bed, and then hair, and then arms and then other things still, and then it was the two of them, the closest they had ever been—oh!—arm to arm, skin to skin, faces against one another and breathing in the same rhythm of up and down, in and out, slow and fast and big and small and they were now moving as one but their eyes were on the other, the other who was the center of their attention, and their lips met again and their hands were explorers of unknown territories and they cried out in that purest sense of ecstasy—

“HAZEL! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!”

Hazel bolted out of the bathroom, a toothbrush in her hand. She was about to reprimand Gaige for shouting when she saw that the girl and Ink were standing over a notebook. Her notebook. The one she’d been writing in for a while now, the one that had locked away her “notes” about a certain pair of “friends.” Something dropped from her stomach into her feet, then bounced up into her throat with a choked sound.

Gaige was angry—that was obvious. Ink’s face was so red she almost resembled a certain farmer boy toy. Hazel’s eyes cut back to the notebook, and she realized that they were near the end.

She paused. Well, she paused because she had to put her toothbrush down, and because Gaige was silently affording her that pause to explain herself.

Hazel put her hands behind her back and put on her most innocent smile. “So… did you like it?”

Gaige threw her brush at her. Then Ink’s pillow. Then the notebook. All of these missed because Hazel had ran out of Ink’s bedroom.

“I’m going to kill her,” Gaige muttered.

Ink didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. All she could think about was what had been written—and, distantly, she had to admit that some of it, in terms of writing, was pretty solid. She looked over at Gaige, and realized that there was no way they could look at Hazel ever in the same way.

When Gaige looked back over, Ink realized that that carried over to the pig-tailed girl as well—and perhaps, even to herself.

“Uh, Ink? You… you okay after reading that?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Both sat down on Ink’s bed. Ink’s hands were in her lap, while Gaige’s were out beside her legs. They sat close to each other, silent. Gaige was looking at her weirdly, thinking about what she had just said, what she looked like.

Then, Gaige’s mouth formed an “O” shape. Then she said, “Oh.”

“Please don’t say it,” Ink said.

“No, it’s… it’s flattering.”

“Not that it matters! Because, you know, Mac and I are together—and you and Flash are, too—and it’s nothing, really, I mean, after you and Flash became a thing, it sorta—”

Ink cut herself off. She was probably not digging herself a grave—this was Gaige, who took compliment to many odd things, and this surely wasn’t too odd—but she didn’t like it when she rambled. She couldn’t look at Gaige.

“Come on, Ink. I’m not that scary that you can’t look at my cute-ass face.”

Ink tried. She really did. But she couldn’t. There were strange mixtures of emotions in her—shame? Regret? Embarrassment? Fear? She didn’t know.

Gaige took her by the chin and turned her head. Then she let go, remembering what had just happened. Now was no time to bring up such weird memories. And so both were, at first, at a loss for words.

“Cute-ass is right,” Ink murmured after a moment’s consideration.

Gaige snorted. She bumped Ink on the shoulder. “Well, took you long enough to notice.”

And Ink managed a smile.

“Well… I mean, if you want, we could—”

“No.”

“But the fans—”

“The only fan we have is Hazel, and besides, this stuff is old. It would not do to kick a horse while it’s down.”

“Or kiss it, in this case.”

“Gaige.”

“Or, no, wait, do the hokey-dokey-pokey with it.”

“Gaige!”

“What? I’m just saying—”

Hazel was listening very intently through the door, and her mind was putting together the perfect play. She decided on a play, because now they had discovered her work-in-progress book—if only she had finished it, for now she was stuck with first-draft-shared-bad-luck. She would call this new play, “The Reign of Gaink.” It would sell millions. Maybe even billions.

Now if only her friends would sell her the rights to their names…