Girl Fight
Chapter ten
Dex
So, Cya was in a mood. Granted, they were usually in a mood, but tonight was different.
They arrived late, shoving through the lecture hall door right as the professor finished reviewing the homework.
Squaring their shoulders, they ignored the stares and snickers from other students as they hurried to their seat beside Dex.
“Apologies, professor,” they said quietly. “My tram was late.”
“Just take a seat,” Professor Myls said, and Cya obeyed.
“Thought you were playing hooky,” Dex said in a hush as they hunkered down in their desk. “Figured I’d need to track you down and—”
“For once in your life, can you just leave me alone?” they hissed waspishly, and Dex’s teasing grin faded.
Their eyes were bloodshot, and the normal bronze warmth of their complexion looked waxy. They wore no makeup, and their still damp hair was piled into a messy bun on top of their head. Even their usual drapings of gold chains and shiny jewels were absent from their arms and fingers.
He’d never seen them like this, so pedestrian, so… normal? They weren’t hard as ice, not even a little. They were soft and warm and real. And they were sad. Shit, they were so sad. The sour acidity of it stung Dex’s nose.
Anger burned, like ash and cigarette smoke. Joy smelled fresh and light, a spring breeze full of flower petals and honyl. Arousal was thick and spicy and heady. But sadness stung; it made his eyes water and sent a whine scraping up his throat.
“Hey,” he whispered gently, placing the pads of three fingers on their shoulder, “you okay, Cy?”
“Fuck off, Dex!” they practically snarled, fangs descending, oval pupils thinning to dangerous slits.
Tail curling between his legs, he leaned away from them, hands dropping to his lap. For a moment, something akin to regret pinched their pretty features, and he swore a glossy sheen settled like a film over their eyes, like they were about to cry. Or maybe they’d already been crying.
Elbow on their desk, they rested their head in their hand and faced away from him.
He could practically see them freeze over again, the ice webbing over them until even he felt the chill.
They didn’t move for the entire class period.
Except for the rattled-tip of their tail.
It twitched and flicked every few seconds, a chaotic click against the floor.
They hadn’t brought their usual supplies. No computer bag. No purse. Not even their coat, like they’d run out of the house in a hurry, forgetting everything but the phone in their tunic pocket.
Since they were clearly not taking notes or even listening to the lecture, Dex doubled his effort to record the professor’s directions and explanations. He’d have to spell it all out for Cya later, and he wanted to make it as easy on himself as possible, given the stormy mood they were in.
After the professor finished and assigned homework, she’d barely returned to her desk before Cya was up and out of theirs, rushing out of the lecture hall.
Dex scrambled up after them, crumpling the notebooks in his backpack as he jammed his laptop in and zipped it shut, all while jogging to catch up with the Sypent’s surprisingly quick momentum.
He’d always assumed Sypents to be a slow species, but Cya could really move when they wanted to, apparently.
“Cya, wait!” he called after them, stopping to fix the zipper where it had caught on the canvas material in his haste. “Yo, Cy, can you just—for deities’ sake.”
They were halfway down the sidewalk by the time he stumbled out of the STEM building, and he ran them down as they marched—slithered—determinedly toward the campus gates. Spinning around to face them, he walked backwards as he studied their stony expression.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” they said stiffly. “I don’t want to study; I don’t feel well.”
“I mean, yeah, I figured. You’re looking kind of…”
“If you value your ballsack, I suggest you think very carefully about how you end that statement,” they warned.
Since he did, in fact, value his balls, he swallowed the word shitty and replaced it with, “Pale. I was gonna say pale.”
“Sure you were.” When they tried to dodge around him, he side-stepped to stop them, hands up but not touching them. They finally stopped their enraged charge, arms waving wildly in frustration. “Oh my gods, what do you want?”
“Okay, whoa, can you take it easy for one second?” He stopped too, hands lowering to his sides.
They folded their arms over their torso, but the position was different than it normally was.
Usually, they crossed their arms tightly like a shield, hands fisted, shoulders taught.
This time, their hands cupped their elbows and their shoulders were curled inward, like they were trying to disappear.
They weren’t armoring up for a fight; they were holding themself together, as if their arms were all that was keeping them from imploding.
Another whine clawed at Dex’s throat, and he shuffled toward them half a step. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” they lied.
“Pretty sure something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s—” They bit off the word with an audible clack of their molars. “I’m fine.”
Still cradling themself close, they tried to get around him again, and, again, he headed them off, hands hovering in the space between them.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” he said, and their tail gave a warning rattle. “It’s okay to not be fine, sometimes.”
“Why do you even care?” they demanded, and the tiniest spark of temper flickered to life in Dex’s chest.
“Because friends care! That’s, like, the whole point of friends,” he barked, immediately lowering the volume of his voice when Cya flinched. “Friends care about other friends, especially when those other friends are clearly upset.”
They scoffed something in the neighborhood of a laugh, but it was too cutting to truly live there. “Well, you’re off the hook for two reasons. One, I’m not upset. And two, we’re not even friends.”
“Okay, now, you’re actually starting to piss me off,” he huffed in aggravation. “We are friends, Cya.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are,” he insisted, and they swelled, rising up higher on their tail until they were actually taller than him.
“No, we aren’t!” They loomed over him, fangs practically dripping with venom, drenching every word they shot at him.
“You are a parasite. You’re a tick, a flea.
A fucking infestation that I can’t exterminate.
Everywhere I turn, at school, at work, there are you, with your backwards ballcaps and your muscles and your showboating and your ‘high-five, bro! Boom!’
“And no matter what I do or what I say, you just keep coming back. Is it your overinflated ego? Or are you really so stupid that you can’t comprehend the fact that I don’t like you?
” They paused their tirade—not to give Dex an opportunity to answer the cruel, clearly rhetorical questions—but to finally take a breath so they could deliver the last three death blows with vicious accuracy.
“I don’t want to be your bro. I don’t want to be your destiny-bff. I don’t want to be your friend!”
Cya punctuated every barbed rejection with a jab of their finger to his chest, and Dex physically stepped back with each one. Not because the Sypent was bigger or stronger than him. Not because he was in any way afraid of them. Not even because their sharp fingernail hurt all that much.
No, he stepped back because he was nine years old again, sitting in the principal’s office as the teacher told his parents that he might have to redo the school year because he just wasn’t on the same level as the other kids.
He was eleven, watching his father pick up a suitcase that held a lifetime of memories and disappear without a backward glance as his baby sister wailed in his arms.
He was fifteen, promising his mom that he’d get his GPA up, just please! Please, Mom, don’t pull me from the dyscus team. I gotta play, okay? It’s all I got; it’s the only thing I’m good at. Please, don’t take it away.
Dex had never been overly smart. He’d never been clever or witty or particularly gifted. So he’d chosen to be strong and kind instead, hoping it would be enough. It hadn’t, at least not when it mattered most. Hell, he hadn’t even been enough to make his shitty, deadbeat father stay.
So he stepped back, heart aching from a familiar, scabbed-over wound that still cracked and bled when hit just right. This pain was an old friend, the kind that knew how to make itself at home; the kind that pulled out a chair and took a seat at the table.
“Okay,” he said, facing the pain head-on. “Okay.”
“What?” Cya asked, voice cutting through the memories.
Dex blinked, and the Sypent came back into focus, no longer shouting but still looming over him, chest heaving. Students passed by, whispering, gawking. Some stopped to blatantly watch the show. Unfamiliar embarrassment warmed him under his fur, and his tail lowered, tucking between his legs.
“Okay,” Dex repeated, and Cya cocked their head, nostril slits flaring. “Sorry for bothering you.”
Like the wind had been knocked from their sails, they withered. They lowered back to their usual height, tail coiling tightly beneath them as their cheeks splotched with shame. For some reason, their next inhale hitched, expression stricken as they stared at him with wide, glassy eyes.
And it wasn’t fair. How dare they look at him like he’d been the one to eviscerate them on a public sidewalk. How dare they be the one on the verge of tears. They’d struck first; they’d drawn blood. He’d just been the unlucky sucker standing too close.
“Dex, I—” they whispered brokenly, but he’d never know what words came next because a pixie-bright voice shattered the moment.
“Ooh, lover’s quarrel. Trouble in paradise, Vysov?”
Tearing his gaze away from Cya, Dex studied the pastel-colored Spryte who’d stopped to witness the meltdown.
Her midriff was bare, her crop top tight across her perky boobs, and if she turned around, Dex was pretty sure he’d get an eyeful of her ass given how short her miniskirt was.
Small, glittery wings opened and closed lazily behind her back as she blew an obnoxious bubble with her gum.
She looked like a stuck-up, sticky gumdrop, and Dex low-key hated her immediately. Cya must have agreed, because they bared their fangs at her and spat out, “Oh, choke on a bag of dicks, Niki!”
The Spryte’s jaw dropped in affront, causing her bubble to pop dramatically.
Behind her, her posse—a group of plastic, forgettable snobs—mirrored Niki’s outrage with hisses and gasps.
A male Sypent who, in Dex’s opinion, looked like the living personification of a wet noodle placed a hand on Niki’s shoulder in support.
“Come on, Niki,” he drawled, heavy-lidded eyes scanning Cya, then Dex. “Let the garbage take itself out.”
Technically, the dig was aimed at Cya too, but Dex was the Mammylion from the lower districts, so the preppy asshole was clearly punching down at him. A growl rumbled in his chest, but it was Cya, surprisingly, who came to his defense first.
“The only garbage I see is you, Kent, you pompous piece of shit.”
“Rich coming from you,” he said as Niki took his hands and guided his arms around her until they practically melded into one person. “Exiled from this prime real estate, so you decided to take your chances in the slums?”
“Oh, so we’re being openly speciesist, now.” Dex puffed out his cheeks and nodded. “Cool, man. Real cool.”
Cya shifted until they stood in front of Dex, their rattle clattering. “How dare you, you conceited—”
“Ugh, I’m bored now,” Niki whined in a gross, baby voice, slouching back into Kent’s body. “Can we go?”
“Of course, babe,” Kent said, forked tongue flicking out to graze her ear, even as his eyes never left Cya.
A gag tickled the back of Dex’s throat. “Dude, gross.”
For a split second, Cya shot him a commiserating smirk, followed by an eye-roll, but then they seemed to remember what had transpired between them before Niki and Kent’s interruption. Their almost-smile faded, and they dropped their eyes to their hands and picked at a thumbnail.
As Niki’s entourage departed, the Spryte hesitated, dark eyes ping-ponging between Dex and Cya.
Instead of following her slimy boyfriend, she came to a stop in front of Cya, gum smacking noisily.
To their credit, Cya didn’t cower; they glared right back at her, straightening to enhance their height advantage.
“You want my advice?” she asked with a glance at Dex.
He scowled. “Not even a little.”
“Don’t waste your time with the ice queen,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken, plucking her gum out of her mouth and rolling it between her thumb and index finger.
“It’s not like it”—she smiled viciously at Cya as she pressed the gum into the fabric of their tunic and ground it in—“has a cunt you actually fuck.”
The second after her declaration stretched impossibly, and even though he didn’t fully comprehend the insult, Dex snarled furiously on Cya’s behalf. Cya, however—ah gods, Cya paled, then they flushed. Then their face filled with an unholy rage that burned Dex’s nose with ashy fumes.
With a shriek better befitting a banshee, Cya literally tackled Niki to the ground, and what followed was something Dex had only ever seen in porn—erm, movies—as someone behind him yelled, “Girl fight!”