OPEN STARTER
Location: Wherever tf you want
Everything had been going so well, until certain people.
Claudio sat, at the edge of their seat with a plate balanced in their lap, eyes big and wide, caught staring. Every so often, they lifted another fresh raspberry to their mouth, mindlessly chewing their a decent handful of them already.
Hattie. Just seeing her now, caused their heart to sink into a miserable depth. There was no denying a certain allure, despite a severity to her somehow. Sharp, dark features flattered by equally dark clothes; the dress was amazing on her. Better than anything would ever look on them. She never really smiled. Didn't exactly have happiness spewing out of her. Asher and she couldn't have been more different than the moon and sun, and Claudio thought, doleful, that might be why they made perfect sense. Why the sun sought the moon's shadowed glow. Opposites attract, as they say, like magnets.
The longer they stared, the more forlorn their features twisted. Unaware, even, that they were pressing the raspberries against their lips firmly, squishing them, their fingers painting the red stain across their full bottom lip. Lipstick but not. They wanted to be pretty like that. They wanted to be wanted like that. Hattie was so unapologetically herself, she didn't care what anyone thought. Or, she certainly gave the perception of such. Claudio couldn't stop letting in the doubts, the fears, the negativity. The comparisons of everything they weren't and would never be. Wetting their lips, tongue wiping away the carcass of that fruit, their lips stained pinker for it. As did their fingertips.
Finally, their gaze shifted just some.
March had showed up. For Ashton. And Ashton... He looked so happy. Claudio could imagine the tears in his eyes from where they sat, only a spectator now. A certain nostalgia tugging inside because, at one time, he used to look at them that way. And that all just made things heavier somehow. It was okay he didn't anymore. That kind of pain had lessened years ago. It was more a sense of loss, of what could have been, that they truly mourned over. If only these insecurities hadn't eaten them alive back then, too. Inwardly, the dichotomy of genuinely being glad this person they cared for so much was finally moving on, and yet feeling left behind somehow, warred.
They inhaled deeply, wistful, only breaking their stare when they felt their plate tip and slid off. "Oh, crap," taking straight from their melancholy, Claudio bent forward, picking up what was dropped until they noticed a pair of legs there. "Uhm.." They looked up and gave a weak chuckle, scooting the ruined plate of fruits onto the table's surface. "Oops? That was embarrassing.." Stating the obvious was the only way to keep themselves from melting into the floor right then and there.
