thirty-one

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˗ˏˋ fragility and heartsease  'ˎ˗

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˗ˏˋ fragility and heartsease  'ˎ˗

They're both pink-cheeked and avoiding each other's eyes when Amoli steps back.

She tucks her hair behind her ear, and Mahika looks away when her fingers yearn to replace Amoli's. She silently stares at the wall over Amoli's head for a few seconds, contemplating. Definitely overthinking a little. Mentally trying to pinpoint what it is that makes her feel so out of her element when she's close to Amoli.

It just doesn't make sense that she's so worried all the time. Because there's so much; so many things she can think about that she wants the two of them to do together: Play board games. Try a different restaurant every week. Visit museums. Do face masks. Dance in the kitchen. Check out bookstores. Bake cookies. Go on road trips. Create a photo album. Read to each other. Sit on swings. Watch cheesy movies. Hell, she wants them to draw together and she doesn't even know if —

"Can you draw?" Mahika blurts, and then feels her cheeks turn even warmer when Amoli looks up and blinks at her in surprise.

She then spends a good ten seconds staring at Mahika with her eyebrows drawn together like she's trying her best to unravel what's going on inside her head.

"Only in like... Uno," she replies eventually, no expression on her face whatsoever.

Mahika's embarrassment melts into amusement, even as her first thought is, Uno, huh? That's another thing added to the list. She puts her hands on her hips, bends down a little, and raises her eyebrows. "This is a very important question."

"Well, my artistic abilities end at drawing stick figures," Amoli says and mimics Mahika's position, seemingly unaffected by how much closer it brings their faces together, earlier timidity almost forgotten amidst the beginning of their usual banter. "If you hold a gun to my head, you could maybe get a cloud out of me. Why?" She tilts her head to one side, Mahika's eyes following the movement. And then Amoli raises her eyebrows, corners of her lips twitching with a smile trying to make its way past. "You want me to draw you like one of my French girls?"

Mahika feels her own smile widen a smidgen at the terrible joke, but she clears her throat and wipes it off her face in favor of raising her eyebrows at Amoli. "If you've already got other girls lined up, why are you here, exactly?"

Amoli lowers her eyes and rolls her bottom lip between her teeth, as if in thought. Mahika tries not to follow the gesture with her eyes, moving her gaze to fix it somewhere between Amoli's eyebrows. For a second, she looks like she's about to say something serious, and Mahika braces herself in case Amoli is about to surprise her with another one of her 'lists'.

But then she looks back up at Mahika from beneath her lashes and murmurs, "I don't know either, really."

So Mahika leans back with a roll of her eyes and throws the shirt at Amoli's head, watching it unceremoniously slide down her face and into her hands.

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