#ThingsUnsaid

It was that easy.

Honey checks her follower account to make sure it’s exactly the same number it had been that morning and it’s not. It’s nearly tripled.

Her smile grows.

Even simpletons like The Midnight Fight spectators knew to worship an idol when one appeared in their sad, miserable lives. Her name is now taking The Rankings by storm and causing a swell in interest for hunnie.bunnie143.

Took the brainless idiots long enough.

Comments come streaming in over her new post, her and her lovely face, glittering through a screen like a whole light show. She basks in their praise and their compliments.

You have such a pretty face.

Charlotte used to say that.

Her hand tangles in her fringe.

Suddenly, Honey’s smacked over the head with a toy mallet. It squeaks upon impact.

She forgets she’s spoiling another weekend with two idiots.

“Yikes, that makes six today.” 

The hair clip wearing freak marks another point for himself on a scrap of paper. Misha tore it out of one his stupid notebooks and had been abusing it the entire week.

Honey’s ready to take that piece of paper and shove it down his throat.

Instead, she suffices by snatching the toy mallet out of his grip with such force, the air whistles from the swing of her arm.

“I’m getting real tired of your ‘training’ methods,” Honey spits.

Some public library patrons pop their heads out of their textbooks to catch the commotion, the nerds probably had nothing better to do on weekends aside from their relentless studying. And Honey’s not one to dismiss attention, but she lowers her voice.

The creeps should mind their own damn business.

Misha shoots her with a toy water gun.

Honey stares in disbelief at the wet splotch on her pastel sweater.

“The Knight, Drunken Serpent, is an unpredictable individual, we gotta keep you on your toes before you can face him.” Misha marks another point on the paper.

Honey could flip the table over on top of him and crush him. She could. She absolutely could and really he’d have no way of stopping her.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” Elias tries, weakly like he always does when they quarrelled, tugging at Misha’s sleeve to get him to at least cut down on the incessant ‘attacks’.

“Oh relax,” Misha sighs, “it’s just water, I could’ve put vinegar in it and it would be a different story.”

“If you ever shoot me with vinegar, I’ll separate your pretty little hair clip head from its puny shoulders and mount it on my Christmas tree this year,”

Misha laughs, setting down his firearm and leaning into Elias with how much he finds his own surmise funny. Elias gives him an exasperated look.

More heads peak over bookshelves like prairie dogs. Honey’s not getting anything beneficial out of these two, she was promised training, not a heinous assault to her perfectly coordinated outfit.

Her thoughts yell at her to leave, but her feet remain in the same spot.

Why? Why doesn’t she want to go?

She seems to ask herself this question a lot when she’s around Misha and Elias. And Gray too. Suddenly, she’s eating lunch with them at least once a week, accompanying Elias to pick up Gray more often than not, talking with Misha during her breaks between classes.

And it’s not always about The Midnight Fights.

Sometimes it’s not about anything really.

Honey doesn’t get it.

They mean nothing to her. She means nothing to them. Right?

She still hasn’t told them about the police station either, they already knew law enforcement was involved, but what good would telling them more be? It won’t be her problem once she takes the King’s position.

They’ll part ways once they realize she’s not in it to destroy this opportunistic hierarchy. Once she betrays their trust. 

She plays with her bracelets to ignore the feeling.

“Alright, alright, we are here to study after all.” Misha resigns, still wiping at tears and reclining against Elias’ shoulder like he’s part of the chair.

Now she wants to leave.

“Honey, here you can have one of these,” Elias lightheartedly shoves Misha off him to hand her one of those expensive mathematic workbooks you’d stand in the bookstore and study just so that you didn’t have to buy it.

Honey’s never seen someone actually purchase one of these before.

Let alone gift it to someone. They’re both pitying her poor grades and giving her notes and study items as charity. Like she’s too dumb to figure it out on her own. 

The straight A nerds.

Naturally, she scowls.

“I’m only here with you idiots for the weirdo’s ‘training’, but obviously I’m wasting my time.”

Why did she spend another weekend with these losers?

“Well, statistically you’re doing better than when you first started,” Misha shows her his scrap of paper and the marks against her have gone down considerably since the beginning of the week.

But that doesn’t convince her it’s helping with anything important.

“According to my sources, Drunken Serpent should appear after midterms. They say he comes around most often after test seasons.” Elias points out.

“Which means we should focus on studying first,”

Honey throws the hammer back at Misha so hard, it smacks him in the chest and makes a resounding squeak that fills the entire library. He doubles over in pain. She doesn’t look to see how many students turn around this time.

Honey’s not having it. She’ll be at the skate rink if anyone needs her. She won’t respond to anyone who needs her, but she’ll just be there anyways.

She gets up to leave.

“Wait, wait, wait, how about if I get you a coffee and we all cool down a little,” Elias offers, already out of his seat and reaching for his disgustingly cute sticker-decorated cane.

It had to be Gray’s ingenious design. Deducted by just the sheer amount of glittery and extravagant stickers. 

Honey huffs.

She won’t say no to free caffeine.

When she drops back into her seat, nose scrunched and displeased, Elias lets out a sigh of relief. He doesn’t make it more than a single step, Honey’s about to tell him she’ll get it herself, before Misha is in front of him, easing him to sit again.

“It’s my fault, sorry Honey for the water gun. I’ll buy, what do you want?”

“Iced latte, two pumps of vanilla and caramel with foam. Less ice and topped with cinnamon and nutmeg.”

Misha makes a face still rubbing his chest where the hammer hit him, “Are you ever not high maintenance?”

A spark and her anger flares up again, nails digging into the wooden table. He turns to Elias before she has the chance to speak any vitriol.

“Cold brew, no foam, no flavor, right?”

“That’s me,” Elias smiles.

Misha pats Elias’ shoulder before sprinting around the maze of bookshelves and disappearing down the main staircase. Honey thinks it's not so bad to have an errand boy. Maybe she should invest in one at school, they all were beginning to dote on her anyways.

They could at least make themselves useful.

Honey’s about to ask if Elias has any errand runners at Cavalier, but the words fall silently out of her mouth.

Elias is wearing this look.

His eyes are intent on studying the direction where Misha took off and Honey has never seen anyone's gaze go softer than his hazel eyes do. 

It’s nothing new. 

Honey had noticed Elias with the same face, the same look, the same unintentionally warm smile creep over his lips many times before. Sure he flashed a grin at almost anything, but one as heartfelt and genuine as this only occurred when he talked to or about Misha. 

And the first time she really saw it was when he brought her to Reverie Tea at the very beginning of all this. 

Elias watched Misha through the glass window like nothing else existed.

Honey didn’t really understand it at the time (not that she really understands it now), but the realization hits her like a sudden epiphany from the gods themselves. 

“You’re in love with Misha.” Honey blurts out without warning. 

Elias’ head whips around so fast she hears the crack of his spine as he turns. 

There's an awkward beat of silence. His previous soft expression drains from his face, as does all the color, and he looks almost as if he's turned to stone. Unflinching. Unbreathing. Incapable of doing more than stare at her with eyes as wide as saucers.  

She'd never seen him make that expression before. 

She takes it as a confirmation.

Then the tension releases from his face and shoulders all at once as lets out a breath that sounds like he’s been holding for years. 

“I don’t want to complicate things,” Elias says with a half-hearted smile, opposite of the one he wore before. This one is just tired. 

He stares at his hands, which are splayed out in front of him on the tabletop, and wrings them red. 

Now that she knows, was it really all that surprising? They shared a lunch, they spent every free moment of their lives together, Misha clung to Elias like Elias was some sort of lifeline.

It sounds like a mess, the type of trouble that Honey usually tries to avoid because she has no advice to give. And not enough care to actually get involved.

Despite that, she still asks, “You already act like a couple, what's there to complicate?”

Elias hums, running a hand through his red hair so roughly, Honey’s afraid he’ll pull strands out. She hadn’t seen this side of him. A bit flustered, not entirely ready with words as he usually is.

“I think,” Elias still doesn’t look Honey in the eyes, “he still looks at me like I’m in a hospital bed. Like he has some obligation to fulfill because he thinks this is all his fault. If I tell him, I want him not to feel obligated to say yes.”

Honey tries to think of Misha’s face when he’s with Elias and all she can remember is the guilt in his expression. It’s there even when he laughs or smiles like a parasitic infection.

And all this talk about relationships goes way over Honey’s head, but it does pique her curiosity. She wants to know what happened to them, she deserves to know. Part because she doesn't want to repeat their mistakes, but also partially because she wants to know what about The Midnight Fights could change their moods so drastically.

Any little mention of the subject would throw them off for the day and it was beginning to nag at her thoughts until it became annoying. 

Though she’s asked many times before, they’ve never answered her straightforward.

“What happened-”

“Excuse me,”

Dammit. 

Some four-eyed freak stands ambiguously at their table, holding a small stack of books and adjusting his wire-frame glasses higher onto his nose like it'll help him see their flaws better. He’s lanky and abnormally tall. Looking down on them like a street lamp overhanging a dark road.

Honey wouldn't be surprised if he was some strict class president that acted like the school dictator.

“You got a problem?” Honey jeers, looking for the best place to grab his neat button-down shirt to bring him to eye level. 

“You three were causing a disturbance to some people who need to study, if you keep this up, we’ll have to report you to the library administrators.”

The imbecile had the audacity to butt into the conversation, act like her superior, and give her orders? Honey’s ready to toss him out the second-story window, without opening the glass panes for an easier flight. 

Of course, Elias wouldn’t let her do that, not that she has to listen to him, but he speaks before she can say anything herself. 

“We’re sorry about that, we’ll keep it down from now on." Elias apologizes for the both of them, although he knows Honey would rather walk over live coals than apologize.

“It’s a public library, not a prison,” Honey snorts.

“Honey,” Elias looks like he’d just shaved off ten years of his life.

The glasses brat blinks, leaning to get a closer look at Honey like she was some sort of study item, probably the only things he'd ever looked at. Maybe it's her incomparable beauty that keeps him mesmerized, but she doesn't like to be peered down upon. 

He's so tall that when he looks down, she feels like a bug scuttling at his feet. 

Her best attempt to keep the peace came in the form of a ‘light’ shove back, not even enough to make him stumble. A ‘cordial’ tap of her hand against his shoulder to demonstrate how far back he should stand from a piece of art. 

Misha would’ve been proud of her.

“You’re hunnie.bunnie143?” He asks, tucking his books under his arm.

“You want an autograph?”

His face doesn't change. It doesn't move at all really and when he talks, it's about as stiff as a block of cement. Tightass.

Luckily, he keeps his distance, but his presence doesn't get any less imposing. 

“No,” He trails off and turns on his heel to leave, “but I suggest you keep quiet from now on.”

Honey scoffs, flipping her hair over her shoulder. The boy must be terrified, her name has spread quite far already and he must have heard about her recent victories as The Midnight Fights' new Rook. She thinks he's trying not to incur her wrath by leaving. 

But then he stops walking away from their table for a moment, turning over his shoulder to look back at the two of them. 

At Honey most of all. 

"We'll be meeting again soon." 

His eyes were so narrow they almost looked like a snake's.