lost girl

lestari zhu . 23 . not your problem

[quotemadness]

“Solitude is dangerous. It’s very addictive. It becomes a habit after you realize how peaceful and calm it is. It’s like you don’t want to deal with people anymore because they drain your energy.”

— Jim Carrey

[starizhu]

ellexreynolds​:

It wasn’t uncommon to find Elle sitting at a table at Java Junkie, a coffee in one hand and a book in the other. While Marie’s was obviously a favourite, it just wasn’t a good place to sit and read. It was easier to drown out the rest of the world at Java Junkie, and sometimes that was something Elle just needed to do.

She’d lost track of time, how long she’d been sitting at that table as other people came and went was a mystery. A good book would do that to her, and honestly it was something she was thankful for. Especially as of late.

At first, she didn’t even notice when the empty seat across from her suddenly became occupied. It wasn’t until she heard a familiar voice that she was pulled back to reality with a jump. “Huh? Oh, hey Stari.” She greeted the other woman. It was safe to say that the pair weren’t friends, but they’d always been somewhat friendly (with a couple of exceptions).

“Uh, I don’t remember. Why?” Elle shrugged as she placed her bookmark in the book and closed it.

.

"Just as I feared..." Stari said gravely, shaking her head with a look of Serious Concern. "You're a bit like fine china, aren't you, Reynolds? Gorgeous and precious but never taken out except to be dusted off. Only ever to be looked at. Don't you ever want to like... join the party?" Stari was infamously bad at metaphors, but she liked this one. She might run with it. "See, I'm a plastic plate. I get messy and tossed around and crumpled sometimes, and I've admittedly spent most of my life silently wishing I were fine china too, but every single barbeque, without fail, I'm there." She didn't really know where she was going with this, but she was getting bored with her own life, so she could only imagine the boredom and loneliness one acquired at the top of an ivory tower. "You wanna come be a plastic plate with me today?"

[starizhu]

rabbxtdotsasha​:

Sasha watched as Stari was starstruck over the lizard. Since he got Zeep he dropped just about everything to tend to the little guy. When his roommate left to go back to California, he felt devastated. He was lost in ways he didn’t know how to understand yet. 

Things had been up in the air since before he could even remember. He was mentally in an awful place, bouncing back and forth between moods, trying to maintain a higher attitude while slumping down into depression. He couldn’t figure out why he had lost just about everyone who was friends with him before California. Talking with Damaris about his sexuality had only opened more doors as he started to question his gender, maybe thinking that he wasn’t exactly male. He had been solid in being gay and newly owning it until the woman across from him. Sleeping with Stari seemed to shake that up just as much. Now that he was looking at her in a different light, he wasn’t sure if she was a special case, or the possibility of being sexually, or romantically, attracted to women. 

“No, getting Zeep is totally the best thing I’ve ever done. Fuck all my other accomplishments. Look at that face,” he laughed. “Move in with me. We’ll get you a pet or something once you’re settled and shit. He eats like…sometimes bug treats but I hate bugs so he mostly eats fruits and seeds and shit. They have these powder mixes. Everything basically gets made into applesauce like shit,” he waved his hand around. “Wanna feed him?”

.

"Aww, like a little lizard smoothie," Stari smiled. "You eat healthier than I do, little buddy. Not that that's saying much." She had heard Sasha, when he'd asked her to move in, but he'd thrown it so casually into the middle of talking about gecko food that she didn't think he'd mind if she took a second to process it. Moving in with anyone was a big deal. More so than anyone thought. People had a tendency to see Stari as a pet. She was cute and small and they wanted to keep her as long as she was quiet and tidy and not too much trouble. But she was rarely quiet and never tidy and always too much trouble. Which was why she'd never stayed long with anyone to begin with. Even people who claimed to love her got bored eventually. And even if one looked at Sasha as a special case, it seemed like a bad idea. She knew that she'd confused him when they'd slept together, and she didn't want to make things even more complicated. So she took her time answering, just agreeing to feed the gecko in the meantime. But she was too quiet, and Sasha knew her too well, and she knew him well enough to know that he was just about to ask again, so she spoke before he could. "Are you sure that's what you want?"

[quotemadness]

“Your soulmate is not someone that comes into your life peacefully. It is someone who comes to make you question things, who changes your reality, somebody that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone has idealized but an ordinary person, who manages to revolutionize your world in a second.”

— Unknown

[mcblings]

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU 1999, dir. Gil Junger

[draumas]

[baebyboy]

I’ve already seen this before

[thistributeisonfire]

Light as a Feather (2018) - “Fresh as a Daisy “ 2x09

[cammiegoodes]

[starizhu]

who: @rabbxtdotsasha​ where: sasha’s place what: in which stari falls in love

“I love you,” Stari said. “And I will always love you, and I will always protect you, and we will always be best friends. I promise. Do you promise, too?”

...She did not get an answer, of course, since she was, in fact, saying these things to a gecko, but she heard the answer in her heart.

“He said he promises,” she told Sasha, still beaming as Zeep crawled slowly across her wrist to the back of her hand. “Besties for life. I think getting this little guy is the best thing you’ve ever done, no offense to all your other accomplishments,” she smirked.

Zeep stuck his tiny tongue out and she giggled and squealed. She would deny that later if anyone asked, but she was too happily overwhelmed by cuteness right now to bother trying to seem cool and slightly scary like she normally did.

“I always wanted a pet. One day I’ll get a snake and it can be besties with Zeep. Unless it would eat him… I’ll look into that. What does Zeep eat? Bugs?”

[starizhu]

who: @ellexreynolds​ where: java junkie what: in which fine china longs to be plastic, and vice versa

Stari was basically a regular at Java Junkie now, if only because of the drastically smaller chance of running into Mack there than at Marie’s. The food wasn’t as good overall, but the coffee was delicious, and Stari had very few vices left nowadays, so she wasn’t about to deny herself a latte or three. She didn’t have the expendable income for this kind of habit, either, but coffee is cheaper than cocaine. Who knew, right?

So here she sat, with her second latte of the day and the cute little pastry she’d gotten, just as an excuse to sit here in the warmth a little longer. She was almost finished it when she spotted Elle. She didn’t know how long they’d been sitting just a table away from each other, but it wasn’t exactly surprising that neither of them had come over to say hi. They had friends in common, but they’d never exactly been friends, themselves.

Elle had always seemed a couple levels above where Stari could reach. Always just a little bit prettier and cooler and richer and more sophisticated than the type of person who would stoop to talk to Star. But Star had never made any effort, either, except for the occasional snarky comment. But why would she want to? It wasn’t as though they had anything in common, except for a few friends, and the exact same look of lonely longing when they thought nobody was looking at them. Stari noticed that look now, even if she couldn’t place where she recognized it from.

Maybe it was unconscious recognition, maybe it was the sugar and caffeine, maybe it was her own loneliness, but something picked Stari up out of her seat and dropped her into the chair opposite Elle. She sipped her latte and smiled, as though she’d been sitting there the whole time, and then leaned toward Elle a little, elbow on the table, head on her fist.

“When was the last time you had an adventure?” she asked.

[starizhu]

who: @oliverhayde​ where: oli’s place (also technically stari’s place currently) what: in which star can’t sleep so she paints a mountain

The sun was barely up. Stari could see it trying to peek in around the closed curtain, but she kept them drawn, not wanting to wake Oli up just yet. It was interesting, suddenly having to worry about waking someone up in the morning. It was never a problem at Charlie’s because he had his own room, and she got the whole couch, and there was lots of space. It wasn’t an issue at the shelter, either, because nobody cared about anybody else, at all, there. But Oli’s place had very little space and she did care about him (kind of a lot, actually), and so she was trying to be quiet as she rummaged through her bag.

After a moment, she found the paintbrush she’d been looking for, and snuck a peek over to the bed, to check if Oli had stirred at all. But he still looked peaceful, face smushed into his pillow, and she smiled as she turned to the canvas again. It was just a sketch so far, and she wasn’t sure how accurate it was given that she was doing this in the mostly-darkness of the morning, but it was an imaginary scene anyway. It was the mountains around Gravewood, a sight so burned into her memory that she often wanted to cleanse her brain from it, but she always figured if you took out the eyesores it could be beautiful. So she’d decided to paint it. The mountains, with no snow, and no ugly buildings, and no people, and no disastrous ski resorts. Just the natural beauty of them. How they should be.

She was just about to add the first hints of color to the page when she accidentally dipped her brush into her coffee mug instead of her paint-water mug. “Fuck,” she said, forgetting to be quiet for a moment as she got up to dump both mugs out and start again.

[draumas]

[howifeltabouthim]

“She was an alien among them, as she had always been alone among others.”

— Tanith Lee, from White as Snow

[starizhu]

who: stari & a stranger & greg (mentions of @sry-chrlie and @alec-flynn and @oliverhayde) when: january 6, 2022 what: the acquisition and loss of the most money stari’s ever seen at once

part one: the acquisition

Star felt a bit guilty for selling a gift. Especially because these boots were the cutest things she’d ever seen, and they fit her vibe better than anything she could’ve even picked for herself. It was like Charlie had found her in boot form, and gifted her little mini versions of herself. However, because it was Charlie, he’d also (somehow accidentally or unknowingly) gifted her something worth almost fifteen hundred dollars. One thousand, five hundred actual American dollars. 

She’d just been looking them up to see what they were called, she hadn’t meant to find the price, and she’d given herself a heart attack when she’d found it. 

Imagine having fifteen hundred whole dollars and spending it on boots? Charlie was a level of wealthy that Stari would never, ever understand. She would probably hate him for it if it were possible at all to hate Charlie North. Fortunately, it was impossible, and he was one of the best friends she had, and so she figured he’d probably understand that fifteen hundred dollars was more useful to her than the boots would be, even if they did make her feel like a badass.

She met the buyer outside the bodega after her shift, and the tug at her heart when the stranger took the boots away was quickly relieved by the giant wad of cash in an envelope she’d gotten in return. It wasn’t fifteen hundred whole dollars, on account of Stari having worn the boots almost every day since she got them, but it was still more money than she’d ever seen outside of a cash register. She felt a bit nervous with it, like she’d stolen it, or like someone else was standing behind her, about to steal it. It was the way she’d felt with all of her belongings since the break in at her shelter locker, but amped up to a hundred. She put the money safely in her purse, which helped, but only slightly.

part two: the loss

Becoming a dealer-by-proxy was not on Stari’s initial To Do list for the day, but almost nothing was, besides work and selling the boots. Right now all Stari was doing was wandering around town, the envelope of twenties burning a hole in her bag, and making her slightly paranoid at any sudden movement. 

She’d found herself at the library, using her bag as a cushion to hide it from the world. She was texting Alec, who was complaining about the horrific lack of marijuana in his life, and she wanted to tell him to find his balls and ask Oliver himself, but she didn’t. And she wouldn’t. Because she knew better than anyone that sometimes, when things are just the right amount of complicated, you just can’t ask people for things, even if you know they’d say yes.

She threatened to charge him extra for making her a go-between, but he called her bluff pretty immediately. She joked about making him dance for it, instead, and something in the way he answered told her she might actually get her wish with that one. 

But then she had to try to figure out how exactly she was getting this weed for him. Any other time, she’d just buy from Oli herself and then sell it to Alec and Oli would never have to know. But starting tomorrow, she’d be living with Oliver. He might notice if the entire thing was gone by then and she needed more, less than 24 hours later. Asking him outright was obviously an option, but Stari just needed a single day where she wasn’t making things awkward for everyone.

And so, within about an hour, despite her own better judgement, she was heading to see Greg Craig - was that his real name? - to skip the middleman. She’d dealt with him before, and people much worse than him, but she’d had powder courage powering her then, and now she just had... well, not much. She was going to have to rely on the fact that Greg was a stupid man, and if there was anything Star could do blindfolded, it was get what she wanted from stupid men.

He smiled when he saw her, but Greg smiled when he saw anyone. It was a charming smile, meant to disarm his prey before he ate them or whatever the fuck he did with people. He was a creep, that much was obvious, but he wasn’t nearly as scary as she’d worked him up to be in her head. Even if he was about 7′4″. 

She smiled back, matching the level of charm, and was about to explain what it was that she wanted, when he spoke first.

“If you’re here to pick up Hayde’s supply, go back and tell him I’m not that easy. I need the rest of my money. I won’t forget about that just because he sends a chick in his place... even if she is hot.” His eyes looked her up and down in a way she didn’t love, but she was much more thrown by what he’d said.

Oliver owed him money? The charm had disappeared from Greg’s smile, and his whole face had shifted into predator mode. Suddenly, a million things that Oli had said - about why he was fighting for the Revenants, and why he couldn’t give her drugs when she’d been desperate - ran through her mind at lightning speed. 

“How much... was left, again? Of the debt? Just checking,” she asked.

“Twelve hundred,” he said.

Stari nodded, and got the envelope out of her bag, and started counting twenties. She added some extra to the pile, put her charming smile back on and asked for an eighth on top. Normally, it would have been much more difficult to get this guy to stoop to the level of a dealer... but the stack of cash seemed to loosen him up nicely, and he got it for her with a smile and a kind-of-creepy ‘pleasure doing business with you’.

Her purse felt lighter and her shoulders felt lighter and she wanted to run straight to Oli and tell him what had happened - but she was a businesswoman now and her work wasn’t done. She had a deal to make. And, with any luck, a dance to see.

[starizhu]

@oliverhayde​

[musingisms]

“men want to fix you save you or fuck you I can’t be fixed and I don’t care to be saved”

— Jeanann Verlee; “men” (via fypoetry)