It's one of those days.

The ones where I find myself annoyed by nothing in particular, and everything that my eyes rest on makes the corners of my lips dip further down. Finding myself unable to pinpoint a solid reason for the way I feel only acts as a driving force for the bubbling frustration in my stomach, and everything in my line of sight blurs into nothing.

And ah, yes, my very own series of unfortunate events; glancing at the clock and getting hit with the realization that the tip of my pen has been hovering half an inch shy of the empty paper under my hand for exactly an hour and thirteen minutes, raising my head to first stare blankly at the wall, feeling the said stare slowly turn into a glare by the time my eyes fall on the window, followed by a wordless sigh.

Wordless, is what I naturally think, much like this sheet of paper, and frustrate myself some more.

It's funny, almost. The way writers seem to chase gloom before they consider themselves anywhere near inspired. I'm no exception to the ridiculous routine, and that's probably why the weather outside being pleasant on a constant only makes my nose scrunch further.

Like I said, no particular reason. The off-the-wall ones that somewhat go along the lines of, 'The sky's too clear for my liking' don't count, of course. Neither does the fact that I've gotten a little too used to working amidst all of the chaos happening around the house, and now that the catalyst to the said chaos is not home, the dead air seems to nip at my skin.

Most days, there's not much that I need to do to get my flair back. It's always something simple that helps—taking a break to eat something, painting my nails, sometimes washing my hair, too. Only on days like this is when I even consider going out on a stroll. Leaving the house isn't exactly my favorite thing in the world.

"Stare at that paper any harder and it's going to go up in flames," says a voice from the kitchen only seconds before there's the familiar sound of the fridge opening and closing, and I turn around just in time to glare at Layla, who sheepishly opens the fridge again and puts the half-frozen water bottle back inside.

"I thought we all agreed that you weren't going to mess up your throat anymore," I say right as Layla pleads, "Please don't tell Sean."

I try—keyword try—to raise an eyebrow at her and open my mouth to say something that would match the judgment on my face when someone else pads into the room.

"Don't tell Sean what?" Ved asks as he walks over to the couch, stretching his arms above his head and exposing a sliver of his toned, warm tanned stomach that would have both Layla and I giggling to ourselves like schoolgirls if this was a few years ago. Now we've grown woefully immune to it, so it's clearly not as fun anymore.

When Layla just shrugs in reply to his question, he turns to me, only to get the same half-assed response. "Don't know why I ask," he announces to no one in particular and sits down, now watching Layla begrudgingly getting herself some water from the tap. Only when she stands back and pulls the strap of her top back up while sipping on her glass do I notice her disheveled state. "Wild night?" Ved asks, beating me to it.

"Eh," Layla replies, sounding uncharacteristically irresolute, staring into space for a few seconds as she finishes her water and quickly washes the glass before setting it back on the shelf.

I turn to look at Ved the same second he turns to look at me, both of our eyebrows raised. He subtly points in the general direction of the kitchen with his thumb, and I shake my head, just as bemused as he is.

"When's Juni coming back?" Layla asks, back to her usual self already as she walks over and stands behind the couch with her hands on her hips. "I need them to help me dye my hair." Taking hold of a long, curly lock out of her high ponytail, she makes a face at it. "The red's beginning to fade out."

Ved glances at the clock on the wall. "Just about now, actually. Sean said he'd pick them up on his way so—" The sound of the door unlocking cuts him off. "That's definitely them."

The visible difference in Juni and Sean's personality was something that had taken me a long while to get used to, but now it's comical—almost normal—to see Juni step in first, take their shoes off in a way that leaves one near the door and the other by the shelf, and come bounding up to the couch to situate themself directly on Ved's lap (Ved, as always, barely has a hitch in his breath. Tallest out of the five of them, with broad shoulders and an even broader lap, he's pretty much used to letting Juni use him as their personal couch), while Sean closes the door behind him, and picks their carelessly-thrown shoes up to neatly set them on the shelf on the side without a word before he steps in. Replying to the echoes of 'hey' in the room with a silent nod, he makes his way straight to his room.

"Did you have a good day?" Ved asks Juni, the latter only letting out a hum against the side of his neck in reply. I watch him slide his fingers into Juni's dark, pixie hair and run them down all the way to their neck, massaging it for a second before repeating the motion. Soft eyes fluttering shut at the affectionate gesture, they snuggle closer to him like a cat.

The mere sight of the two of them radiates peace and calm, and I soon find myself scribbling random lines on the paper until it's no longer empty.

"Will you help me dye my hair again, Jun? I might go for—"

"Hot pink," Juni says, head swiftly whipping out of where it was hiding between Ved's shoulder and his neck to look up at Layla. "Do hot pink."

Layla blinks in surprise, but there's a grin already forming on her face. "I was thinking about going red again, but your idea sounds better."

"Hot pink," Juni repeats, dipping their head back to where it was resting, taking hold of Ved's hand with a grumble to put it back in their hair. "I'll help." And then they promptly go back to looking small against Ved's giant form.

Layla, well-aware that it's the most she's going to get out of them, walks over to where I'm sitting by the window. I look up to smile at her before going back to writing, and she puts her hands on the back of my chair to lean over and peek at the words.

She points at the words written in the left corner of the paper, "I like that. 'I wish we saw the sky in color' and 'I thought of this all the time but I was too busy being alive'. We should do something with those lines."

I look at the same words I'd been on the verge of discarding only minutes ago, then blink up at her. "You really think so?"

"Yeah! You should show them to Sean."

As if on cue, the said guy steps out of his room in fresh clothes, midnight blue eyes looking less tired than they did a while ago. Layla lets out an almost inaudible squeak when he goes straight into the kitchen and opens the fridge, muttering 'goddammit' under her breath when from the top shelf, he pulls out the bottle of water that she had been about to drink from.

He straightens and turns, holding the bottle up in her direction by its cap, face blank as ever.

"This isn't where I left it."

"I didn't drink it!" she defends quickly, and I immediately know it was a good idea to stop her before she could. Judging by the gravelly tone of his voice, Sean has definitely not had a good night's sleep.

And I'm sure that trying to reason with a tired Sean is on top of all of our 'Avoid At All Costs' list. Which is probably why Layla looks like a scolded child even before Sean has really said anything at all.

Surprisingly, he turns back around and puts the bottle back inside, muttering under his breath, "Only because someone stopped you." And then he pulls out the carton of milk, pours it in a glass, and downs it at once.

Now all four of us stare at him while he sets both the carton and the glass back in place, and then makes his way back into his room like he was never here. Everyone except Layla blinks in confused synchronization after him, and Juni is the first one to break the silence, the words directed at Layla.

"If Sean wasn't gay, I'd assume the two of you fucked and now things are awkward."

Ved groans in annoyance and covers his eyes as if to rid himself of the image Juni put in his head, and Layla lets out a noise of disgust. "Even if he wasn't, that's a weird thing to say, you asshole. You know we don't do that."

"We don't?" Juni asks, sounding genuinely confused as if it hasn't been an unsaid rule between the five of us since the very beginning. Don't date each other. Layla lets out an audible 'ugh' as soon as Juni turns to look at Ved, reaching out and caressing their finger down his cheek and tilting their head to one side before flirtatiously hooking their index finger under his chin. "Why is that?"

If zero to hundred was a person, it'd be somewhere between Ved and Juni. And well... Satan.

Because Ved is already looking down at Juni with hooded eyes, easing into their touch and leaning forward until the tips of their noses touch and they look like they're about to kiss.

"Nope," I announce loudly, standing up so quick I miss slamming my chair right into Layla's stomach by an inch. "They're doing it again. I'm out of here."

Before I disappear inside my room, I catch sight of Layla picking up a spare paper from the desk I was working on, crumpling it between her fist and chucking it right at the pair, their laughter echoing in the living room right before I shut the door behind me.

All of these years, and it's still impossible to put a finger on whether the two of them actually have something going on between them or if they just enjoy making everyone around them uncomfortable. Sean, Layla and I obviously haven't gotten used to the fact that none of us can tell, but we've learned to live with it. Sometimes with sighs. And sometimes with laughter.

Aware that I have now completely lost my focus on whatever I was doing, I walk over to the wardrobe that Layla and I share and pull out a brown shirt that once belonged to Ved but now doesn't just because I told him so one day, and throw it on over my turtleneck. Pretty sure that I would lose the heart to leave the house if I waited a second too long, I slip on the first pair of sneakers I see and don't bother with the mess of a braid I put my hair in this morning.

When I step out of the room, Ved and Juni are back to having a respectful amount of space between them on the couch. They stare up at me with identical grins on their faces, and I raise my index finger in their direction.

"Don't," I warn, and go straight to Layla, who is now in the kitchen pouring herself some juice. "Do we need anything? I can run to the store on the way."

"You're going out?" she asks incredulously, pausing with the juice carton held mid-air, and I roll my eyes at her tone. When she realizes I'm serious, she lets her playful grin melt into a small smile and says, "Sean always tells me to 'go out' in this grumpy ass tone when I complain about not being able to focus."

"Yeah, figured I would take his advice for once."

"Take your time," she says, going back to the juice and waving me off with her other hand. "I don't think we need anything right now."

I nod and make my way to the door, but not before ruffling Juni's hair on my way solely because I know that annoys them to no end and sure enough, their exasperated groan is the last sound that I hear before I step out of the house.

-

Albeit a bit begrudgingly, I have to admit that Sean's advice is once again... not wrong.

It never is, but no one in the house needs to say it out loud for him to know that.

The second I feel the light of the day on my face without the protective layers of the windows of our house, I feel the itch of irritation in my chest turn into a low hum I could easily pay no mind to. So I tip my head back and close my eyes for a few seconds, breathing in the sunshine and letting it wash out the last few traces of frustration in my veins.

The world looks a bit clearer somehow when I open my eyes, and with a deep inhale, I begin walking without a particular place in mind. I could go around the block and figure where to go from there, because now that I've set my foot outside on the road, my legs urge me to just move.

And after that, it's kind of cliché, honestly.

I've never in my life, looked at a person and done a double take because of how attractive they are at a single glance. Neither have I ever paid enough attention to the people I'm surrounded by, nor have I ever thought too deeply about the kind of person I'd ever be interested in.

Yet, as soon as I turn around the block, my shoes come to a halt on the asphalt at the sight of a boy only a few feet away from me. 'Oh,' form my lips, but, 'This is ridiculous,' says my brain only a split second after, because I can't even see his face.

He's wearing a mask as dark as his hair, and if someone had verbally described his outfit to me, I would have laughed in their face. But in a plain black shirt that looks three sizes too big for him tucked into baggy jeans that go straight inside his stomper boots, he somehow looks better than any breathing being I have ever laid my eyes on. A blue and grey checked shirt hangs off one of his arms, a sleeve tattoo peeking out from the other.

This is ridiculous, repeats the voice inside my head, this time slower, as if trying to remind me that it is, indeed, absolutely ridiculous that I'm standing frozen in the middle of the road, staring at a stranger who is too busy looking at what I finally notice is a golden retriever sniffing a pole on the other side of the street.

The boy straightens, and I quickly look down and shove my hands in the pockets of my pants that seem a little uglier than they did before I left the house, but not before I get a glimpse of his doe eyes and feel an unfamiliar swoop in my stomach.

I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself back to sanity as soon as we pass each other by.

A whistle echoes behind me, and I almost stumble over my own feet before I hastily realize that it's directed at the dog, and turn around a little just in time to see it bounding up to its owner, tongue sticking out in a way that makes the dog look like it's smiling. Before I know, I let out a gleeful laugh under my breath at how pure the sight is.

After a few seconds, I see them both disappear around the corner I just came from, and I continue walking ahead with a sigh, the words, "Maybe I really should get out of the house more," echoing inside my head.

a/n: and it's here :')

thank you so much for reading <3 don't hesitate to tell me what you think about the story so far! it's been a while since i was this excited about writing, so it definitely feels very different from how it's usually been for me.

hope you're all having a good day!