Acting Out [Student/Teacher, GxG]

AKA Claire Lane

A/N: you guys asked for claire's perspective, so here it is! just a warning, this chapter deals with some heavy subjects that i know not everyone will be comfortable with. let me know what you think! i love reading your comments.

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Rowan Harris was a conventional beauty with plush lips and catlike eyes. Claire hadn't yet concluded whether they were blue or green, but their colour wasn't nearly as puzzling as the fact that she often found herself staring unabashedly at the younger woman, trying to figure it out. Thick, chestnut brown curls framed her delicate features in such a way that Claire, having spent more than her fair share of time having her own hair painstakingly styled, could tell was as unnatural as her impossibly long lashes and acrylic nails.

On more than a few occasions she'd caught herself wanting to ask why she went through all of that effort just to spend all day in a classroom (god knew Claire never did), but something about the way she carried herself — everything from the confident roll of her shoulders to the upward tilt of her chin deliberate, as if she knew exactly what she was doing at all times — made the question seem silly and somehow beneath her. Claire decided that it would be almost insulting to ask, so Rowan showed up to every 5am lecture doe-lashed and sparkling, and Claire grew fond of her pressed slacks and impractical heels.

She was precocious, by all accounts brilliant, and carried the calculated graces of a woman raised with an iron fist. These qualities were admirable to Claire, but also quite worrisome. That, she supposed, was why she had been drawn to the reclusive, and often quarrelsome brunette — there was something about her that reminded her of herself many years ago. They shared the haunted detachment of someone who'd lost something substantial early in life. Too early, even, to register the trauma, and Claire often found herself wondering if Rowan could ever understand what her mother so clearly hadn't — or hadn't cared to.

In the oppressive darkness of her bedroom, late at night, her insomniac thoughts would drift to uncharted territories. on the nights she gave into the cold embrace of grief and cried herself to sleep, she wondered if Rowan carried the same darkness deep within her. On those nights, she wished for the girl's presence, and in her dreams she would come to her, haloed in shining gold and silver, obsidian wings protruding from her shoulders like a jilted angel. In these dreams, she confessed her sins one by one to the seraph, until her soul felt clean again, and awoke with an ache in her chest. A longing for an absolution that would never come.

It was entirely by chance that she crossed paths with the mysterious girl outside of the classroom — a premiere she'd been dragged along to with the promise of free drinks and an escape from her surprisingly hectic work schedule. Rowan had been weaving through the red carpet like a girl on a mission, the epitome of a fille fatale in her ruby gown. After that night, their run-ins became more and more frequent, and it hadn't taken long before boundaries had started to blur.

It was shocking at first, the way Rowan's unrelenting curiosity — bordering on nosiness — had at once repulsed and intrigued her. She was stubborn to a fault, and rarely let a question go unanswered. It may have been the way she faltered when Claire divulged something unexpected that caused her words to flow freely. It was in those brief moments — when Rowan would reach out for her with shaking hands, as if afraid that she'd recoil from her gentle touch — that Claire began to see beyond her hard exterior. She began to notice the barely-concealed dark circles under her eyes, and the way her breath hitched when she was nervous. She noticed the hesitance in her voice, and the pauses she'd take when she was lying. She lied quite a lot, but never about anything cruel, more like a knee-jerk reaction to any probing questions, as if she weren't quite used to the idea of sharing much of herself at all. She was more sensitive than she let on, and whether it was the several years that Claire had on her, or her own reclusive nature, Claire clocked that side of her earlier than she'd ever admit. Rowan liked having the upper hand, and Claire would let her have it.