𝓂𝒾𝒹𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 (𝒶 𝓀𝑜𝓉𝓁𝒸 𝑜𝓃𝑒𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓉𝓈 𝒷𝑜𝑜𝓀)

~Secret Code (Dexerella)~

I thought of this prompt while sitting my apartment pool, and thought it would be perfect for these two. So, here is another Dexerella oneshot.

________________________________________________________________________________

✩Marella's POV✩

The sound of sobbing drew me out of my trance, making me snap my head up from my notebook. I whirled my head around, checking if anyone was there. There was nobody in the dark corner I was sitting in, but at least now I could hear the crying sounds coming from my left. I turned the corner to see an empty room, littered with bottles of bubbling colorful liquid and alchemy posters of all kinds.

In the darkest corner of the room, a boy with tousled strawberry blonde hair and a skinny, small figure sat on the floor with his face buried in his hands. Frequent sobbing noises came from his corner until I cleared my throat awkwardly.

The boy sat up, and glared at me with the narrowest periwinkle eyes I've ever seen. "What are you doing here?" he said, the attempted edge in his voice softened by his pitiful sniffles.

"Um, I just heard you and I, um, just...came here?" I said anxiously, mentally slapping myself for being this awkward. I was hopeless.

Dex looked at me for a while, as if searching for something, before his gaze gave up on me and went back to his knees. I stood there for a moment, staring, trying my best to figure out what to do here. And then I-having no idea why my legs were moving when I never ordered them to- sat down next to him and stared until he meet my eyes.

His gaze looked tired, especially with the red, swollen areas under his eyes and the wet stripes of tears that ran down his cheeks. He sniffled again.

"What's your name?" he asked hoarsely.

"Uh, Marella," I answered instinctively, blinking at him. "Yours?"

He gave me what looked like an attempt at a smile, but it looked much more like a grimace. "Dex. Dex Dizznee."

"Why are you crying?" I asked him. He blinked at me, searching my expression again before responding.

"Stina Heks," he mumbled bitterly. A ghost of a smile traced across his lips as I scoffed.

"Ugh, tell me about it," I groaned. "If I had a stack of mallowmelt for every time I imagined setting that bitch on fire, I would be too sick to be even be here. I would probably be dead."

Dex laughed, a sound that somehow made me grin from ear to ear despite the fact that I was the one who made the joke. "Me too. She-" Dex glared murderously at his knees "-is the devil manifested into an elf. I would do anything, ANYTHING, to see her burn at the stake."

"Invite me, if that ends up happening," I chimed in. Dex laughed angelically again. "So, what did she say to you, anyway?"

Dex grimaced. "What you'd expect Stina Heks to say to a bad match."

My eyes widened. "Oh, you're that Dex!" I exclaimed. Dex turned to me with a hurt look.

"Shit, I didn't mean it like that, I swear," I said ernestly. Dex gave me that searching look again, but brushed it off in the end, to my relief.

"Yeah, I'm that Dex," Dex chuckled sadly. "The one and only."

"I'm sorry for saying it like that," I apologized. Dex smiled at me, a smile that was supposed to be  happy, but was laced with so much hidden pain it was hard to believe him when he said, "It's fine."

We sat in a mist of awkward silence for a while, as I started to look around the room. Nobody seemed to be inside the room (thank god, that would've been awkward as heck). In fact, nobody seemed to have even set inside the room for hundreds of years. Cobwebs decorated every corner, and the floor was coated with dust. Nevertheless, Dex was here, for some reason. Was this dust-covered hideout really that better than what he faced in the lunchroom with Stina and everyone else?

"I know," Dex said sadly, noticing the wrinkles on my nose as I looked around the empty classroom. "It's not the cleanest. But it's what I've got, and what I've made do with. That's life, I suppose." He sighed.

"I guess," I shrugged, looking down at my feet, then at Dex's. That when I noticed a face down paper in front of him, accompanied by an ink pen. "Hey, what's that?"

Dex blushed, and snatched the paper away from my outstretched hand reaching out to grab it. "Nothing," he replied quickly. I folded my arms and raised mye eybrows at him.

"Fine," he said, gritting his teeth. "It's a paper. About that new girl, Sophie Foster. I write these little notes about everyone I meet here, at Foxfire. But one time Stina stole one and read it aloud to the class, and it was the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me. So I write them in my own code now. And this is hers. I guess you can look at it, since it has to be translated to be understood."

Sophie Foster. I had heard about her from a few gossiping prodigies in the hallways. She was the human girl, right? Apparently Dex knew her.

Dex hesitantly stretched out the hand that was holding the paper to me. I slowly took it from him, gazing upon the neat notes written in small, printed handwriting.

Pink teal: unfortunately, but most likely yes.

"What does that mean?" I asked Dex, pointing to Sophie's first note. Dex's face flushed a light pink in the darkness of the room.

"If you tell anyone, I will murder you in your sleep," Dex warned me. I only grinned.

"Okay," I agreed. "I won't. Can I get my answer now, please?"

"Fine." Dex pulled a wrinkled piece of notebook paper out of his pocket, with plenty of code words to read about. Eventually I found the definitions for pink and teal, which made me squint to make sure I was reading them right.

"So pink means crush and teal means Fitz Vacker, so that means...oh." I blinked at Dex.

Dex blinked at me.

Then we burst out laughing. The awkward tension in the room long gone.

"Oh god, she's one of those," I cackled, banging my fist against the dusty floor. Dex laughed louder.

"Gross!" he managed to exclaim between hysterical laughs. 

"Okay, what's next?" I said after pulling myself together enough to grip the paper in my hands.

"Gears means me," Dex explained. "Sophie's code name is homosapien, because I guess that's another name for human, and Unicorn Poop is code for Stina."

"Wait, why are you Gears?" I asked him. Dex shuffled his feet against the dust on the floor.

"I like to make gadgets," he said nervously, fidgeting with his fingers. "It's kind of stupid."

"That's not stupid," I said honestly, making Dex blush slightly. "I mean-"

Dex chuckled. "Thank you. I think that's the nicest thing anyone has said to me all school year."

"Really? How? You're fucking awesome!!" I yelped fondly. Dex laughed again.

"Um, thank you," he said shyly. "I think you're pretty awesome too." Dex's periwinkle eyes twinkled with shiny glitter, like they were somehow being lit up from the inside.

"Does this mean I get my own code name and my own informational note page?" I asked. Dex grinned, flashing deep dimples across his face.

"If you'd like," he said with enthusiasm. "What do you want your code name to be?"

"Fireball!" I exclaimed brightly. Dex grinned from ear to ear, and proceeded to scribble something down on a new page of notebook paper.