i told you —

Jaxon + Cassidy

jaxonw:

“No, I don’t know French. I barely passed English… huh.” So in her world, they’re speaking French, but in Jax’s it’s English. Weird, but it makes sense… kind of? Jaxon’s an adaptable guy but this isn’t normal, it isn’t scientifically possible. He may be more of a math guy than a science guy but he knows reality and this is something out of a movie. Someone’s going to yell cut and the scene will end, right? The world will go back to normal where he doesn’t show up in a stranger’s apartment to help with math homework while being halfway across the world.

“I’m-” And then there’s another arm on his shoulder and Jaxon nearly jumps out of his goddamn skin as Kaicee wraps her arm around him. He looks up and mystery girl is nowhere to be seen.

“Babe, you okay?”

“Yeah.” Jax answers with a shaky laugh. He casually looks to the right and left, but she’s gone. Not a bad trip. Not a day dream. It was real. She was real. And he didn’t even get her name. “Just spaced out. My head hurts.”

“Oh no,” Kaicee says with a pout, reaching up to place a kiss on his cheek. She ruffles his messy hair and hooks her arm through his, directing them back towards the car. Thank God.

“We’ll get you some food on the way home, ‘kay?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Jax turns to look over his shoulder, expecting mystery girl’s bedroom to be there, just out of view. He’s almost disappointed when all he sees is the Ulter store and some young girls heading inside.

Cassidy blinks a couple of times, then glances around her room, now sans cute-nameless-American-guy. It’s like a scene out of a bad Lifetime or Hallmark movie, getting interrupted right before she could learn his name.

Someone had come up to talk to them — a pretty girl that Cas only caught a glimpse of before she was back in her room — and then the guy she’d been talking to was gone.

Just to be sure, Cas spins around a couples of times, slow and steady as she surveys her room for any trace of her — intruder? guest? — who is nowhere to be found.

“Merde,” she curses, tapping her fingers on the textbook. At least that’s real. Shaking her head, Cas settles back down in her chair.

No more cute boys. Time for math. Her current worst enemy. One that she feels she just might be able to conquer this time.

Shaking her head, Cas settles back into her chair, crossing her ankles and reaching for her pen. As she presses it against the paper, striking out her previous mistakes, she sees it.

Her hand, stained with lipstick a few moments ago, now clear.

Jaxon + Cassidy

jaxonw:

“French.” Another dumb realization said out loud. Jaxon is batting zero for two today as he realizes the main difference in the textbook in his hand. She must think he’s a fucking idiot.“Your textbook is in French…. Am I speaking French or English?”

The headache is building, growing far too quickly to be normal. Is any of this normal?

“I swear to god if Josh spiked my drink again…” he mutters, low, placing the textbook back down on her desk. Halfway through the motion he realizes there’s freaking lipstick in his hand. It’s the exact one she was just holding a second ago. Or was Jax holding it? He can’t remember. Her smile is very pretty but it doesn’t shake the confusion or fear of the entire situation.

“Chic,” Jaxon repeats sounding like a goddamn parrot today. He shakes his head and puts the lipstick back, his hand shaking a little bit. Jaxon moves to brush his hair off his forehead and nearly hits himself with a shopping bag. Right, he’s back at the mall now. Were the bags on his arm in her apartment? Fuck.

“Are you real?”

“Are you?” she counters, raising her eyebrows. She’s definitely real, that’s for sure — and he sure has hell looks real. He looks just as confused as she feels, and — honestly, it’s kind of cute on him.

Maybe she wasn’t stuck in some weird limbo between a high end makeup store and her room, she’d ask him to explain that math problem to her, though — for some reason, she just knows it now.

What was challenging at few moments ago now feels like child’s play. Math has never come easily to Cas, but she feels like she could breeze through that assignment now.

It’s unnerving, to say the least.

“You’re speaking French, mon ami. We both are, yeah?” And his French is just as good as hers, though heavily accented. American. He’s American, and he’s in her room in Paris, speaking French, holding her textbook and cursing someone called Josh.

But he’s also in a very brightly lit high end makeup store, clutching shopping bags and looking at her like he’s seen a ghost — and maybe he has. Maybe she has.

Maybe they both have.

“Maybe we’re both real,” Cas says quietly. And, well — there’s really only one way to find out.

Calm down. On three, Cassidy.

She counts to three in her head. Licks her lips. Then reaches over and curls her fingers around his hand. Brushes her thumb over the lipstick, and nearly freezes when it smudges. Spreads over his skin.

“Who are you?” she asks again, barely a whisper this time, tearing her gaze away from their hands — both stained with the same smudge — to lock eyes with him.

Jaxon + Cassidy

jaxonw:

“Woah, this isn’t the mall,” Jaxon breathes out, sounding like an idiot as he takes in mystery girl’s apartment. It’s small and cute - and once again not the freaking mall - and the panic that’s building in Jaxon’s stomach builds a little bit. Did someone spike his drink last night? Everyone knows that Jax doesn’t like to trip during the school year, and if someone messed with his beer there will be hell to fucking pay.

“It’s the mall,” Jaxon says like she should know. Well, she should because she’s there with him. But also, they’re still in her apartment? His head is starting to hurt, really badly, and it’s not from the beer he had for breakfast. This is a head-splitting kind of feeling, starting at the base of his skull. In a matter of minutes it’s going to be bad.

Suddenly they’re back in the mall and there’s a middle-aged guy looking at Jaxon like he’s fifty shades of crazy. Jaxon shifts all of the bags on his arms and stands up, abruptly, motioning with his head to mystery girl with her not-so-mystery french accent.

It gives Jaxon a chance to look her over and damn, she’s pretty. The accent’s kind of hot, too, and if he wasn’t so confused he might have paid her a compliment. He hides in the corner of the makeup store - Altra? Ultra? something like that - and sucks in another breath. And suddenly, they’re in her apartment again.

“Where is this?” Jaxon repeats her question, even though technically he didn’t answer hers first. Jax lifts the textbook off of her desk so he can see the cover, marvelling at that strange ghost sensation again. Like his brain knows he isn’t really there. It’s comforting in a way. Possibly means he isn’t going crazy. But Jaxon’s brain is scrambling to keep up as he looks back over at her again.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, fuck,” Cas echoes, looking at the pristine lipstick display, then back at her desk — as if she’s in two places at one — at the very tall, very tan, very muscular guy holding up her textbook.

“I — this is my apartment,” she says, but as soon as she does, she’s staring at a row of Kat Von D liquid lipsticks instead of her math assignment. Cas reaches out to touch one of them, and as her fingers curl around the tube of Lolita II, she opens the cap to swatch the product on her hand, to see if she can really feel it — and she guesses that she sort of can.

It feels — it feels hazy, like passing through mist or fog. Like bubbles at the top of a glass of champagne. Here one moment, gone the next.

“I don’t understand,” she says quietly, looking at the guy’s hand, holding her textbook. The hand where he has a swatch of lipstick identical — absolutely, completely, one hundred percent identical — to the one on hers.

Before she can stop herself, she reaches out, but stops herself before her fingertips can brush against his skin. Because — what if she doesn’t feel anything? What if he’s not really there?

And — what if he is?

“It’s — it’s your color.” Cas lets her hand fall. Gives him a small, lopsided grin. “Very in right now. Very, uh. Chic. Tres bon.”

Jaxon + Cassidy

jaxonw:

They’re out shopping. Well, Kaicee is out shopping. Jaxon’s stuck in a crappy ‘80s movie, the dutiful boyfriend carrying around two arms of bags with a begrudging look on his face. Kaicee has been bugging him about the mall for weeks. Truthfully, Jaxon’s cash funds are a little low right now. He takes odd jobs around campus whenever he has the time, but a busy social life, fraternity responsibilities, a full class load, and party central leave little time for a job. Jaxon budgets his money, giving himself a sort of allowance every week. And right now, he’s broke as hell.

But Kaicee really, really wants to go, or at least she whines like it’s the end of the world so they compromise. And by compromise, Jaxon goes without complaining to an entire day of window shopping with his fiancee.

He lets out a sigh when she goes into some shop that’s blinding to look into. It’s all jewelry and make up and Jaxon parks his butt on a bench, head lolling back in exhaustion. There’s a million places he’s rather be. Setting up for that night’s kegger is at the top of the list, for sure. But the number one item is studying, because he’s just barely ahead of his professor’s chapter and he likes to read ahead and get the homework done.

There are only so many equations in advanced Calculus but Jaxon actually likes his classes. A lot. Whenever his buddies see his books they make Einstein jokes so Jax rarely studies in the common areas. He tells his brothers he’s majoring in sports medicine, because there are math requirements. He’s not; it’s just easier to mislead people sometimes. He’s so stuck in his own head, in formulas and ideas, that he doesn’t realize his surroundings changing. Suddenly he’s not in the mall, surrounded by house wives and teenagers looking for sales with the smell of stale pretzels in the air. He’s leaning over an unfamiliar chair, looking down at messy notes scrawled in the margins of paper. It’s not Calculus but it’s advanced mathematics, and Jaxon sees the problem right away.

“You’re doing it wrong,” he says out loud, eyes still on the paper. Why the hell is the date written backwards on the top? “You’re substituting in the wrong variable right there.” Jaxon’s finger presses against the paper, but it doesn’t feel real. Rather, it feels like the ghost of a memory, like he should know what the paper feels like but he isn’t actively touching it right then and there.

Math isn’t exactly Cassidy’s strongest subject, but she’s got elective spots to fill up, and a future doctor should be good at math, right? It’s kind of expected, after all. Once you’re a doctor you’re automatically supposed to be at least decent at math.

Cas knows this, knows the material well enough, but that doesn’t make it any less tedious. And as an additional fuck you, apparently her answer’s wrong — according to the answer key, anyway. Which is fucking bullshit, because she used the right formula — she checked twice.

When her mistake is pointed out, though, it just seems to click into place — becomes obvious, which would be great if she hadn’t been corrected by some guy with an accent, in her locked apartment.

If this is one of her roommate’s new hookups or one night stands, she’s going to rip Viola a new one.

“Who the fuck are you?!” she almost shrieks, shoving her chair backwards, grabbing her mug off the desk brandishing it at him. A quick once over tells her that, nope, she’s not going to be able to take him. As if his height isn’t bad enough, he’s stacked as hell too.

So, fight is out. Flight is it.

She’s about to toss her now lukewarm coffee at him and sprint for the door until — until they’re not in her bedroom anymore. She’s sitting next to — who the fuck is this dude — the guy who was in her bedroom on a bench. Pandora, Macy’s, Sephora — they’re in a shopping mall of some sort. “What?” she says, looking at him for an explanation. “What the hell is this? Where is this?”