another CATRADORA WIP
adora grows up in a homophobic family, breaks her bestfriend's heart when they're in highschool by telling her hurtful stuff. five years later, that someone is back in town, living across the street just like good ol' times. except this time, adora got to make queer online friends (which she'll visit one day) who helped her through her gay breakdowns. she's still trying to make peace with herself and unlearn the homophobic bullshit she internalized. she also realizes she always liked catra -- oops.
You push your hair behind your ears, pull it up into a ponytail with practiced ease; you let your nose slightly scrunch up before you realize and you will it to just act normal, you know, like normal noses do – an easy enough task, considering that all it has to do is just be. It reddens instead and you forget not to pinch your eyebrows before answering: “Hey, Catra.”
“So… what’s up?” she asks and you notice just how bright her converse shoes are against the concrete and that they are not properly tied.
“You’re moving back in?”
She gracefully pretends not to have noticed your rude interjection and your refusal to engage in small talk. She smiles instead, like you remember she always did.
“Yep. Unfortunately for you. And your dog.”
“He died.”
“Oh…” she stops smiling. It wasn’t a happy smile but at least it wasn’t as sad as the face she’s making now. Even more worryingly: it wasn’t as concerned as the look she’s giving you now. “I’m so sorry about that. When?”
Something catches in your throat and you can’t swallow it down.
“Right after you moved away.”
A couple of seconds pass like that in complete silence. She won’t meet your eye... you think. It’s hard to know for sure when you won’t meet her’s either. But you know, even after all this time, that Catra Ismat never breaks eye contact, not even for a second, unless something’s bothering her. Why do you like that this is bothering her? You don’t know. You know that seeing her scuff her shoe against the road pavement, back in the space between your houses, with her university’s oversized sweater hanging over her frame, makes that something logged in your throat less harsh.
“I’m sorry.” and you’re not sure what it is that she’s sorry about.
A tentative smile on your part. “Not your fault.”
She sighs at that before smiling again, curling her lips into the same fake smile from before. The hey-hello-I’m-back-in-town-after-five-years-of-radio-silence smile. Not her fault, you remind yourself.
“What about you?"
She slightly rocks back and forth in her place, jumping up a little bit. You recognize it as one of her few unconscious habits and also a telltale sign that a witty response is about to come. It doesn't – one of her boxes tumbles down and its contents spill over her front yard.
"My bad! My bad." the stranger you didn't notice before, who's been trafficking inside the truck Catra's rented, yells out. "My worst." she tries and fails to whisper to herself only.
You wave at her, because you might be a bad friend but you're a damn good neighbor. The stranger has platinum blonde hair and a pout forming on her face as she gets to picking Catra's stuff up. When she catches the blur of your hand, she doesn't respond. You can feel her staring behind her black sunglasses. You get the feeling that this stranger dislikes you for some reason.
"Scorp, leave it for now. I'll do it."
"No, no! I'm supposed to help you, not make you clean up after me."
At first you think she might just be really nervous, what with her hands trembling uncontrollably. As Catra joins her you realize it's not that, it's something else and more permanent, so you try and sneak your way into the process of moving her boxes.
They aren't as heavy as they make it seem. Really! If you just suck it up and don't use your back instead of your knees it's not that hard. It's not your fault you're not a wussy like them and you can manage to pick up two boxes at once - is what you'd like to point out to the girl still staring you down with an unspoken and non understandable vendetta.
You figure her name must be Scorpia through her and Catra's back and forth. You tell her it's a nice name and she actually blushes, the hard facade immediately dropping.
"Aren't you an easy one?" Catra accuses her.
“I’m far from easy. I’m a rubik’s cube level of complicated.”
“Those things are easy to Adora.”
You realize from the lack of reaction or acknowledgement that she already knew your name. You think about Catra telling her about you, telling her that you’re blonde and slightly less tall than Scorpia, that you lived and live in the house opposite of her’s. Did they talk about the time Catra’s Halloween decorations actually scared you? Or about the many times she caught you lip syncing in your room, blinds rolled up? What about the time you beat her at a bike race on this same street? Because, if Scorpia already knew your name, she already knew that you broke Catra’s heart when you were sixteen. You just wish some context was given.
The midwestern emo mixtape playing in the background is Scorpia’s, whose glasses now rest on her puff of hair. She has brown and warm eyes and everything about her is soft, even the perfume she put on smells like it barely brushed her before she went out. You like her, even if she doesn’t like you. You learn that they met as foster sisters, Scorpia was adopted into their family before Catra came along; that they got a cat called Melog who is gray and disastrous, that they have a friend called Entrapta, that Scorpia prefers tea over coffee and that she and Catra painted over an entire wall in their hometown this summer.
Would you say your heart is aching? Of course you wouldn’t. But it is - so, so bad. The stuff you’re unboxing doesn’t help with whatever it is that is happening to your heart (you make a mental note to get it checked out soon): there are more art supplies than kitchen utensils and all that other stuff adult humans should pack when they move into a new place. The art projects popping out of these unsuspiciously plain boxes feel so light between your hands, so you are extra careful when setting them down, rolled up multicolored papers with intricate designs on them and fragments of hyper detailed portraits held together with some rubber bands.
Then you find a small karaoke machine.
“It’s Scorpia’s.”
“You like it too!”
“When it’s turned off.”
She’s already plugging it in, her emo mixtape on pause, but Catra immediately vetoes it. By the end of the day there’s going to be a sign hanging at the door, reading: In this house, we do not fucking sing, written in one of those WASP fonts.
Later that same night you hear them using the machine. It’s some 2000’s cheesy pop song with a nice bass and Scorpia, holy shit, she’s good. Like, she’s doing that vibrato shit with her voice and switching octaves like it’s nothing.
Catra is so off-key. But she sounds so much better to you.
