YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024 - BONUS ROUND 7

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For this round, we want to see prompts that are based on settings or locations! For your prompts, please provide a location or setting. It can be as specific or as abstract as you want, and can be in any medium you prefer!

POINTS - BONUS ROUNDS
For prompts: 10 points each (maximum of 150 prompt points per team per round)
For fills:
First 4 fills by any member of your team: 100 points each
Fills 5-10: 50 points each
Fills 11-20: 40 points each
Fills 21-50: 30 points each
Fills 51+: 25 points each

Comments

FILL: TEAM ACE ATTORNEY

[ghostvines]

This is all so stupid.

She doesn’t even care about Betty, she decides. Why should she care about Betty? It’s not like they’re dating or something. It’s not like what they do means anything.

James wraps her arms around her legs and curls into herself.

Still, she watches. She can’t help watching. Betty’s laughing, tipping her head back, eyes creasing in the way James knows is fake as the guy she was just dancing with — Tom? Thomas? — tells her a joke that can’t possibly be as funny as Betty pretends it is. James’s ribcage feels acidic.

This is a terrible prom. The streamers hung around the gymnasium — gaudy maroon and black, their school colors — look like dripping blood. People are milling about on the dance floor, socializing half-heartedly. The DJ hasn’t played a single song that James recognizes yet.

God, James hates crowds. Why did she come here in the first place? Why did she think she could handle this?

That’s right, she remembers now. Betty. Betty, knocking her shoulder into James’s as they sat together on her bed. She was wearing James’s cardigan and fairly drowning in it. She was the most beautiful girl on Earth or possibly in the entire universe.

C’mon, it won’t be that bad, Betty had said, grinning. Just stick by me and we’ll do fine.

I don’t even know how to dance, James had protested.

It’s not like you have to wear high heels.

I don’t even know how to dance in sneakers!

So Betty had taught her. They’d done a horrible approximation of a waltz right there in Betty’s room, James stepping on her feet practically every three beats, and James had never felt happier, until Betty’s mother knocked on the door and James had to dive into Betty’s closet.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. James shivers; the gym’s aircon must be broken, because she was on the ground just a few minutes ago and sweltering, but here on the alcove above the highest bleachers she’s freezing to death.

This isn’t Betty’s fault, to be fair. James was the one who had ditched her. The crowd was pressing in from all directions and the unfamiliar music was so loud and she couldn’t breathe, and before she knew what she was doing she’d shoved her way out of the dance floor and ran.

Not that Betty seems to mind, she thinks bitterly, watching her girlfriend/best friend/someone fake-laugh at another joke.

“Hey!” comes a voice.

Oh. Fuck.

“Inez,” James mutters.

“Jaybird! What’re you doing all the way up here?”

“Nothing anymore,” James says. She lets herself drop down to the bleachers. Inez is crosslegged and tilting her head. “I’m leaving.”

“It’s barely six in the evening!”

James checks her watch. It could not more clearly be seven-thirty.

“And besides,” Inez adds, leaning towards her, “don’t you want to take Bets for a whirl?”

“Why should I?” It comes out harsher than she intends. She winces. “She’s got someone else.”

“Aren’t you two—”

“We’re not,” James snaps. “We’re just friends. She doesn’t even swing that way. I would know.”

“I wasn’t going to imply anything,” Inez says. Her eyes are a little wide. Fuck, James’s said too much, hasn’t she?

“Okay, well, nice talk,” James says. “Have a good summer, Inez.”

“Wait,” Inez says quickly. “Listen. I came up here because Betty—”

You can’t believe a word Inez says. Ever. “Tell her I don’t care,” James says, and runs away because it’s all she ever does.

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a/n: sorry for writing taylor swift fic. i’d do it again