Chapter Text
“Tonight’s the night.”
Briar looks up from her phone. Apple’s sitting at her vanity, preening and primping as if she doesn’t wake up more perfect than she looks with her hair curled and lips glossed. Briar doesn’t know why she insists on doing her makeup in Briar’s dorm instead of her own — maybe to spend time with her. Maybe to get away from Raven, even though she insists she’s happy with her as her roommate. Maybe she just likes showing off in front of someone so clearly infatuated with her. Briar could say any of this, all of it. Instead she raises an eyebrow. “What night?”
Apple finishes painting her lips the blood-red no one but Briar knows isn’t their natural color before answering. “I’m going on a date with Daring tonight,” she says, as if that explains everything.
Briar waits a moment for Apple to fill in the gaps. She doesn’t. “Yeah. So?”
“So we’re finally going to…” She quirks her head, widening her eyes in an attempt to communicate… something .
Briar blinks at her. “I have no idea what you’re trying to say to me.”
Apple huffs. “We’re going to… make love.”
Briar gapes at her. “You’re going to fuck him!?”
“Briar!” Apple looks so mortified it would be funny if she hadn’t just said she was going to have sex with Daring fucking Charming. She clears her throat, straightens her posture. “We’re going to make love. It’s a beautiful thing, really. It’s natural. There’s no need to describe it with such… vulgar terminology.”
Briar doesn’t see how this is anything resembling “beautiful” or “natural”. She swallows. “Sorry. Um… I thought you weren’t… ready for that.”
Apple’s poise falters, just for a moment, slightly enough that anyone other than Briar wouldn’t have caught it. “I changed my mind!” She beams, big and bright and phony, and Briar knows this is code for “Daring talked me into it.”
“Oh.” Briar looks back down at her phone, buries herself in her MyChapter feed so she doesn’t say something she’ll regret. He doesn’t give a shit about you. He’s just fucking using you. He doesn’t care about you or what you want or your feelings or anything. He doesn’t love you, Apple. Not like I do.
“It’s good! It’ll be good, you know, for us. For our destiny.”
“Mm.” Briar tries not to let her discontent show. Destiny is bullshit, she’s pretty sure of this after everything that’s happened — Raven, Hunter and Ashlynn, Darling kissing Apple awake instead of Daring. (Briar tries not to think about that as much as she tries not to think about Daring, so of course she thinks about it all the time. Why wasn’t it me why wasn’t it me why wasn’t it me will start flooding her thoughts, and she already thinks about Apple too much.) No one does denial better than Apple White, though, and she does everything 100%. She doesn’t just pretend Darling Charming didn’t give her true love’s kiss — no, that’s not enough for Apple White. She has to go and fuck Daring about it too.
“Do you think it’s a bad idea?”
Briar looks up. “I… what?” Why does it matter what I think? You’re just going to do it anyway.
Apple bites a perfectly red, perfectly plump bottom lip. “I just… you don’t seem very enthusiastic, is all. Do you think I’m… making a mistake?”
Briar stares at her. Of course I think you’re making a mistake. Did you really think I’d be excited that you’re fucking some self-obsessed prince you know I don’t like? Are you really that oblivious, that in your own head that you can’t tell I’m in love with you? “Apple, I — ”
A sharp rap at the door cuts Briar off and Apple jumps up to answer it, all anxieties forgotten. “Daring!” Apple’s voice is bright and bubbly and her smile is ear to ear. Briar wants to kill herself.
“Are you ready? You weren’t in your dorm; Raven said you’d be here.” There’s a hint of annoyance in Daring’s tone that pleases and angers Briar all at once. She was with me, not you. Suck it. It’s stupid, because who’s the one being left alone now?
“Yeah, I always get ready in Briar’s dorm.”
“Right.” Daring pokes his head in. “Hey, Briar.”
Briar gives him a terse smile. “Daring.”
He turns back to Apple. “You ready to go? The Multi-Hex closes in three hours.”
“Mhm!” Apple grabs her purse off Briar’s vanity and squeezes Briar into a tight, quick hug that Briar savors every millisecond of. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” Briar murmurs.
The door slams shut, leaving Briar alone on her bed. She stares at her vanity for a moment, the untidiness left from Apple’s use taunting her like a ghost, haunting her with the memory of Apple in her room. I’m gone, it seems to say. I always leave you. I always will.
Briar jolts up, goes straight to the door. She doesn’t know where she’s going, just that she can’t be in here anymore, not when Apple’s gone and she’s haunting her and she’s going to fuck Daring and Darling gave her true love’s kiss and Briar’s in love with her and she will never love her back and —
“Whoa, Briar!”
A pair of strong hands stop Briar in her tracks, clasping her shoulders before she barrels into — Darling. Fucking great.
“Are you okay?” Darling’s eyes are big and concerned but their blue is too light and their shape is too sharp. “You seemed kind of, um. Focused.” It’s a nice way of saying Briar looked insane. She almost appreciates it.
Briar swallows. “Yeah, I’m — I’m fine.” She pauses. “Thanks.”
Darling nods and lets her hands fall from Briar’s shoulders. Briar grabs her wrist before she can walk away. “Briar? What are you — ”
Briar slams her mouth against hers before she can finish, rough and hard and quick.
Darling stumbles back, a hand to her mouth and eyes blown wide. “B-Briar…”
“What?” Briar doesn’t let herself apologize, doesn’t let herself feel shame. “You don’t like me like that? I know. I don’t like you like that either. But that felt fucking good, and I want to do it again.”
They stare at each other for a moment, air thick with things unsaid and the ghostly presence of a girl with red lips and blonde hair. Then, Darling kisses her.
Briar threads her hands through platinum and imagines gold. She nips at pale pink and pretends it’s blood red. She stares into light blue eyes and in her head they’re cerulean. Darling kissed Apple and now Briar’s kissing Darling, and if Briar closes her eyes tightly enough, lets her mind drift far enough, she can almost imagine she’s tasting Apple on Darling’s lips, that she’s kissing her instead.
She presses Darling against the wall, attaches her teeth to her neck. Darling yelps, grabs a fistful of Briar’s hair. “Is Rosabella home?” Briar whispers.
“N-no.” Darling gasps.
“Good.” Briar grabs Darling’s hand and drags her to her dorm with purpose. She’s hot all over and thinking of red lips, pale skin, gold hair, blue eyes. Darling unlocks the door and immediately Briar’s lips are back on hers.
Teeth clash, hands pull too hard — it’s rough, rougher than Apple would be, rougher than Briar would ever dare to be with her, and she can’t get enough. She backs Darling onto her bed and straddles her hips. “You sure you want to do this?” she murmurs.
Darling’s flushed, a faint pink barely tinting her golden tan, so unlike the bright red that colors Apple’s almost-white. Her chest heaves, collarbones sharp and angular where Apple’s skin is plush and soft, and Briar wants to clamp her teeth down and bite, just to see a bit of red on her. “Yes,” Darling whispers.
Briar kisses her, lips and tongues and teeth crashing together in a blur, three girls becoming one in a moment. Darling doesn’t taste like Apple, but Briar doesn’t mind. She tastes like a bridge, and like fire destroying it, like rebellion and like revenge. The exhilaration is almost as good as if she were actually kissing Apple.
Almost.
She undoes Darling’s dress, peels off her layers and takes in what’s underneath. Tanned, toned skin. Slim, hard body. Scarred, freckled flesh. So unlike Apple’s soft, milky curves. Briar hovers over Darling’s chest.
For the first time, Briar is tentative. She teases — just the tip of her tongue on a dark pink nipple. Darling shudders beneath her. Briar lets out a low, breathy laugh. “So eager already?”
“Fuck you,” Darling bites through gritted teeth.
Briar hums, waiting a moment before fully encircling Darling’s nipple with her mouth. She palms her other breast with her right hand — it’s small, much smaller than Apple’s, able to fit perfectly into Briar’s hand. She’ll never be enough for Apple. This, though — this she can do.
She sucks, bites, squeezes, kneads. Each moan, each whimper, each cry from Darling gives her another kick, another hit of adrenaline till her head feels hazy with it. This is what she’s needed for days. Some people — people like Apple — crave validation through grades, through “good job”s and A-pluses. Briar gets it through sex, she craves breathy moans, she craves wetness between a girl’s thighs.
This is the side of Briar Apple doesn’t — and will never — know. The side of Briar that’s filthy and corrupted, the side of her that wants girls, and not the way she’s supposed to. The side of Briar that wants to taste them, to feel them, and the side of her that wants it first and foremost with Apple.
This is the side of Briar Apple can’t know. But Darling? Darling’s just as fucked up as Briar is. She wants girls too, the same way Briar does — Briar can feel it in the way she trembles underneath her, in the sounds she makes when Briar bites on the slight plumpness of her breasts. Darling can know this side of Briar, and she can feed it, too.
So Briar dives into her headfirst.
She grips each of Darling’s thighs around her head. “Have you done this before?” she murmurs, staring at soaked blue fabric.
“Only given,” Darling answers. Her voice is so soft. It makes Briar feel a little bit like she’s about to break her. She hates how much she likes the idea.
“Mm.” Briar raises her eyebrows — a private reaction, buried between Darling’s legs. “Well, you won’t be doing that tonight.”
“You don’t want me to…? ”
“I don’t let people touch me,” Briar says curtly. There’s only one girl Briar could ever be touched by, and Darling’s hair is too light.
“Oh.”
Briar feels like she should say something else. “Are you ready?” she asks instead.
“Yeah,” Darling whispers.
Briar presses a kiss to Darling’s clothed cunt and she gasps. “Sensitive?” Briar teases.
“You fucking suck.”
“Not yet.” She hooks a finger around Darling’s waistline. “You’ll need to take these off for that.”
Darling’s only response to that is wide eyes.
“I won’t if you don’t want me to,” Briar says, voice as soft as it’s been all night.
“N-no, I… I want you to.” Darling swallows. “Please, Briar. Please.”
Briar grins. She’s always liked it when girls beg her. “Okay, Princess.” She pulls Darling’s underwear down her legs.
Darling doesn’t shave — thick dark hair covers a slick, shiny cunt, answering a crude question whispered in hallways when she walks by. Briar licks a stripe up her labia and Darling shudders. “Fuck.”
Briar kisses again, building Darling up before attaching her mouth to her clit and sucking gently.
Darling cries out. “Oh, God!”
Briar flicks her tongue, slowly at first, gradually increasing in speed as Darling’s moans grow louder and more consistent.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Briar, oh my God,” she’s gasping, and Briar eats the praise up along with her pussy.
“You like that?” she asks, low and breathy, staring up at Darling from above her stomach.
“Oh, fuck you,” Darling says through pants. “What do you think?”
“Tell me or you don’t get any more,” Briar says sweetly.
Darling’s mouth drops open. “Fine. Yes, I liked it, and I want more. Please, Briar, please keep fucking me.”
“Thank you.” She goes back down and sucks Darling’s clit, hard, earning herself a loud, high-pitched moan. Briar looks back up. “See what happens when you’re a good girl for me?”
“Oh, fuck, Briar, please don’t stop.”
“Only because you said please.”
Briar guides Darling to her climax through a series of hard, quick flicks to her clit. She revels in the way Darling comes undone, face and chest flushed and sweaty and hair mussed all around her. “Ah, ah, Apple!”
She says the wrong name as she comes, but it sounds like the right one — it makes warmth pool in the pit of Briar’s stomach that she knows she’ll have to take care of on her own, and she’ll be Apple then too. She’s confusing like that: sometimes she’s not sure if she wants to fuck Apple or be her. Right now she’s pretty sure she wants both at once.
Briar slumps back in the bed next to Darling, both of them breathing hard.
“So…” Darling finally speaks, voice quiet.
“Yeah.” Briar sucks in a breath. “You’re in love with her too?”
Darling looks over at her. “Too?”
“Why did you think I wanted to do this in the first place?” It’s the wrong thing to say, but she says it anyway. Briar’s pretty good at that.
“Right.” Darling looks back up at the ceiling. She sighs. “So. What now?”
“I don’t know. We could forget it happened.” She waits a moment. Darling says nothing. “Or we could do it again. Keep doing it.”
Darling shifts to face her. “Like… friends with benefits?”
“Yeah, I guess. Stress relief, or whatever.” Apple relief, is what she really means, but she doesn’t say that.
“Okay.” Darling bites her lip. “Yeah, um. Let’s do it.”
Briar nods curtly. “Okay.” She gets up off the bed and straightens her dress. “I’ll see you tomorrow night?”
“You aren’t staying?”
Briar shakes her head. “I… shouldn’t. Rosabella will be back, right?” She’s making up excuses, and she can tell Darling sees through her.
“Right.” Darling swallows. “Well. Goodnight, Briar. Um… thanks.”
Briar nods again, then turns swiftly around and heads straight out the door. Once inside her dorm, she sits at her vanity and stares herself in the eye for the first time since morning. Her hair is tangled and frizzy, her foundation is shiny, her lipstick is a pink mess around her mouth. She’s imperfect — if Apple were here she’d fuss and take a wipe to her face and try to fix her.
Apple isn’t here, though, so Briar has to be her. She grabs a makeup wipe and cleans herself up, wiping off sex and jealousy and Darling and herself. Then, bare-faced, she looks at herself again. She looks nothing like Apple — dark and thin and tall and perverted. She can’t pretend to be her when staring herself in the eye like this — though she was never good at being Apple to begin with. It’s like the Devil trying to impersonate God, some evil, treacherous entity trying to fool humanity by wearing a mask of the good and noble.
She tears her eyes away from herself and sees instead the mess Apple left from earlier. Pale foundation, dark mascara, blood-red lipstick. Briar grabs the lipstick in her fist and spreads it onto her lips. It tastes like cherry, not apple. Briar savors it, savors the taste of Apple (not apple), before wiping her hand over her mouth and smearing it all over. It’s almost like Apple got it on her now, like she actually kissed her and not the girl she kissed.
Briar pulls off her dress. She stares at her lips as she touches herself, pretends it’s Apple touching her, pretends it’s really Apple all over her mouth. She comes unceremoniously, not intensely like Darling, with a strangled cry of Apple’s name.
She wipes off the lipstick.
A knock sounds at the door. She frowns. Ashlynn’s supposed to be sleeping at Hunter’s tonight; that shouldn’t be her. “Just a minute!” She throws on a big t-shirt and opens the door. “Apple?”
Apple looks a wreck. Mascara’s streaked down each of her cheeks and her hair’s as wild as Apple White’s hair could ever get. Her clothes are disheveled, her bottom lip is wobbling, and her signature blood-red is smeared around her mouth. Briar’s gaze of course lands on that.
“Can I sleep here tonight?” Apple’s voice is wet and shaky.
Briar blinks, hesitating just for a second. “Yeah! Yeah, yeah, of course.” She leads Apple into the room and sits her down at her vanity, feeling vile at the memory of what she’d just done there. She doesn’t pry as she cleans off Apple’s makeup, waiting for her tears to slow before asking the question. “What… what happened?”
Apple’s throat bobs and her eyes refill. “I… I couldn’t do it,” she whispers. “I couldn’t do it and he told me he — ” Her voice breaks off; she buries her face in Briar’s shoulder.
Briar puts aside her rage and hugs her tightly. “Oh, Apple…”
“How am I supposed to follow my destiny if I can’t even have sex with my prince?” she sobs. “Everything’s falling apart, Briar; I don’t know what to do.”
“Apple, it’s going to be okay,” Briar says, because she doesn’t know what else to.
Thankfully, Apple doesn’t argue. She just cries into Briar’s t-shirt till her sobs subside to sniffling. “Thanks, Briar.” She rubs her face against her neck. Briar feels ill. “You’re a good friend.”
Briar swallows, squeezing her eyes shut so she can’t see herself in the mirror. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
Later, Apple nestles close into her side, wearing one of Briar’s shirts and sleeping in Briar’s arms. You’re a good friend. No, she’s not. She’s a horrible friend. She’s the worst friend. She fucked a girl just so she could imagine she was fucking her best friend, just because her best friend was going to fuck her boyfriend. She’s tainted, impure, and if she wasn’t so selfish she would tell Apple that, she would let her get far, far away so she couldn’t spread her sickness to her.
Briar untangles herself from Apple and stumbles into the bathroom, kneeling in front of the toilet and heaving till her stomach is empty and her mouth is bitter. She wipes her face and drinks water from the palm of her hand till the taste subsides, till the vileness is just her without the sting of acid.
She didn’t even fuck him. You did all that and she didn’t even fuck him.
Her phone dings.
Darling: hey, r u ok? sry if i did anything wrong. see u tmrw
She types out a response with shaky fingers.
hey!! yeah im good. u didnt do anything dw i just get like that after. yk. see u tmrw!!!
She sets her phone facedown and vomits again.