The Last of Our Kind (A Jon Kent/Superboy Fanfiction)

Chapter Two: Lapis Lake Eyes

Her father's first studio album, Hellhound, topped the charts years ago. 

Charvi sits in the hallway of a Hell's Gate apartment building, a bottle of vodka-mixed pop in one hand, a signed vinyl record of Osairus' album in the other. 

The hallway is filled with people. Some she has known all her life, others she barely recognises. If she isn't at home, the club or the Demon world, she's here. Across from where she is leaning against the wall, the door to the closest apartment is open. It belongs to her childhood friend, Zack. He lives there with some of her other schoolmates; Ella and Maya. Down the hall three other boys from her time Metro High, Reggie, Liam and Bikash, also live.

They're not at a party, this is just where people their age come to hang out in Hell's Gate.

"Why do you still have this?" Charvi asks Zac, who is sitting next to her writing lyrics on his worn notepad. "He's a has-been."

Zac shrugs, "Maybe so but, he came from here, feel like I should honour him."

Charvi snorts, "He does everything he can to forget he came from here."

She tosses the record like a frisbee back into the apartment. 

"In his whole career he's released four albums and sold 6.5 million of them," she mutters, taking a deep gulp of her vodka mix, "Our piece of shit song on The Beat did that in two fucking days!" 

The surrounding crowd of ten cheer and raise their bottles. Charvi wants to tell them all to shut the fuck up.

"You mean this piece of shit?" Ella, on her other side, turns her laptop towards Charvi to show her Luna Jorj's page on The Beat- Luna Jorj being Charvi's stage name.

"Mellow hit 120 million streams this morning!" She chirps excitedly.

"And," Zac continues, "Mellow is really your song. You wrote it, you sung it, I just mixed it."

Though she's pretty sure Zac did much more than her on the track, Charvi remains silent, leaning her head on his shoulder.

Since elementary school, Zac has been the calm and quiet voice in Charvi's life. He helped her through her parents neglect, she helped him through coming out. He's gorgeous, with rich dark skin, his signature well-kept afro, always wearing a hundred wrist bands and with his notepad in hand.

"How's things with Reggie?" She asks quietly, so only he and Ella can hear.

"To be expected," he responds. Charvi looks down at the lyrics Zac is writing. "How can he come to terms with who he is knowing his family would disown him?" In neat penciled poetry on a page bordered with doodles, he writes out a song about forbidden love. 

"Does he still go to church on Sundays?"

"Every week," Ella smiles painfully.

"You would know that if you came by like you used to."

Maya appears at the apartment door with her arms folded, looking upon Charvi with a grimace.

"The fuck is that supposed to mean? I was literally at a party with you three nights ago."

"Oh you mean the party you left us at?"

"Yeah, the party I didn't want to go to. The party you made us go to for your 'networking'."

"Our networking."

The two glare at each other intensely, tension filling up the hallway.