This was just a sad invention, it wasn't real, I know

Dani and Vivian didn’t spend their morning playing cards in a hobby shop.

They spent their morning getting pampered by the sweet caress of steam and the soothing water of the hot spring.

Once it was clear that Nick and Morgana were long gone, the two girls reclaimed the spring for themselves, and Vivian sank back into the water with a content expression on her face.

Dani noted, though, that she was still wearing a swimsuit.

“It’s bad manners to wear clothes in a hot spring,” she said gently, trying to coax Vivian into changing her decision. She didn’t personally have a problem with what Vivian was wearing (and it looked great on her, actually) but she was worried that the decision to cover herself stemmed from Vivian’s doubt and insecurity about her body as a result of Nick walking in on them.

The way she’d freaked out before… and the way she kept dodging the issue… Dani didn’t think that was healthy for her.

“What’s the matter?” Vivian asked coquettishly, glancing over her shoulder at the tomboy and wiggling her eyebrows. “You don’t think it looks good on me?”

Again, Dani did, but that wasn’t the point. And she didn’t miss the way Vivian masterfully dodged the question, either.

Sighing, Dani rubbed her forehead and scooted closer to the heiress in the water.

“Nick’s not coming back, you know,” she pointed out. “We spent enough time in the sauna to run the clock; he can’t use the hot spring for the rest of the day.”

Vivian didn’t react to that the way Dani had been hoping. She expected something, a twitch of the eye, a flinch, a shiver, something, but… Vivian just calmly accepted what she had to say as if it didn’t even matter to her.

Perhaps the hot spring was doing its job TOO well and relaxing the heiress to the point where she didn’t even care? No, Dani didn’t think that was it.

More likely Vivian was responding to the way she’d let her guard down earlier by overcorrecting, and masking any trace of her emotions through sheer willpower.

It was impossible to tell just by looking at her, though, which was the infuriating part. Vivian remained as difficult to read as always, with her eyes shiny and mischievous while her lips were parted into a faint, plump grin.

“You look great, actually,” Dani said with a beaming smile. “So much so it’s actually a bit distracting for me!”

Fine, Dani could play her game. If a straightforward **** wouldn’t breach the heiress’s defenses, Dani would go with subterfuge instead. She could be subtle when she wanted to, right?

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“Wow, Dani, what would Carly say, if she walked in and heard you talking like that?” Vivian teased her, lightly splashing some water at the tomboy. “Sorry, but you had your chance when I offered the other night!”

Dani sighed and rolled her eyes. Well, so much for subtle. “…Look, Vivian, we both know you were bothered by Nick seeing you naked, you TOLD me that. So we don’t need to try and pretend like that never happened, okay?”

Still no response. Dani had to admit- she threw up a good guard.

“…Yeah, you’re right,” Vivian conceded with a shrug. If talking about this bothered her, Dani couldn’t see it. “I guess maybe I was a little too sensitive before. It’s just my body, after all.”

Uh-oh. That was exactly how Dani didn’t want her taking this. Instead of admitting that she’d been ****, Vivian was going too far the other way, and pretending that what had been a very big deal to her wasn’t a big deal at all.

Well, just because Dani no longer cared if Nick saw her naked, that didn’t mean it was the case for Vivian.

“Just stop, okay?” Dani sighed, rubbing her temples in frustration. “We both know it bothered you, Vivian, and it still bothers you. So cut it out, okay? You might be fooling yourself, but you’re not fooling me.”

Vivian leaned back against the lip of the hot spring, and pretended like she didn’t know what Dani was talking about.

“You’re right,” she admitted. “It did bother me. And maybe I’m just trying to pretend like it didn’t. That so bad?”

With her defenses down, Vivian was switching to offense. But Dani was prepared for that. It was dirty, but she knew that she was going into this little confrontation with an advantage.

Because Dani knew that Vivian would be pulling her punches. Dani’s friendship meant a lot to Vivian, and she was terrified of losing it, even if she seemed not to care on the surface. Which meant that every time Vivian said something, she was weighing her words against her fear that if she went too far, Dani would decide that she was too troublesome of a friend and would break things off.

Now, if Vivian knew Dani at all, she would know that there was zero chance of that. It would take quite a lot of lines being crossed for Dani to stop being friends with her at this point, even if their friendship was a bit of a weird one. In fact, Dani was such a good person that she actually felt bad about “weaponizing” Vivian’s yearning for human connection this way, even if she wasn’t actually doing anything at all to exploit it.

And while Dani was sure Vivian probably knew that on some vague intellectual level, she also knew that when it came to fear, rationality was left at the door.

So Vivian wasn’t coming at her with her best.

“It’s not a bad thing to pretend it wasn’t a big deal,” Dani said gently, trying to mollify the heiress’s defensive response. “But do you think it will help you? That’s what I’m most concerned about, Vivian. Helping you.”

Vivian shifted awkwardly, suddenly finding the smooth rocks beneath her butt to be much less comfortable than they were a couple seconds ago.

She looked to the side and frowned. “What do you mean? How… how were you thinking of helping me?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Dani wasn’t really sure herself. But she could see the apprehension in Vivian’s eyes, and as she scooted closer to the heiress she noted that Vivian wasn’t pulling away from her.

Not a surprise, really. After all, Vivian was so **** for friendship that she could hardly make more than a token effort at pulling away.

Dani stopped just shy of touching her, getting as close to the other girl as she could without violating her personal space.

“It’s normal for a girl to react like you did when a guy you like sees you naked,” Dani pointed out. “Or any guy, really.”

“Oh yeah?” Vivian raised her eyebrow. Then she did something Dani didn’t expect- she stood up suddenly and started stripping off her skimpy bathing suit.

In a matter of seconds Dani was suddenly greeted with Vivian in full frontal nudity. Not a big deal at all after how long they’d been rooming together and after they’d spent so much time in the sauna, but it still caught her off-guard.

“See?” Vivian shrugged, causing her supple breasts to rise slightly on her chest before dropping down. “I’ve got no trouble showing myself off in front of a girl. I’ve changed naked in front of other women dozens of times on magazine shoots, Dani, it’s really not a big deal.”

“…But it’s different because it’s a boy,” Dani pointed out, finding it difficult to follow Vivian’s logic here. The heiress was making it sound like being naked with other women was some racy thing, but Dani had gone to public school; the showers at her high school were communal, so she’d been exposed to plenty of naked women before.

“Is it? Why?” Vivian stubbornly replied, plopping back down into the water with a splash. “The only reason I was upset was because I wanted to save Nick seeing me naked for when I could use it to maximum impact. It’s not because I have some anarchistic view of chastity when it comes to other people seeing my body.”

Dani could have believed that, given Vivian’s general attitude, were it not for what she knew about the heiress. The way Vivian carried herself did remind her a lot of Carly in many ways.

But Dani could smell the cope oozing off the flustered heiress.

“You’re a virgin, though, right?” She bluntly asked.

This time Vivian reacted.

“That-! …Well, yes, fine, I am,” Vivian said, trying to play it off as not that big of a deal. “I told you, stuff like that has never really been a priority for me. I’ve always just focused on myself, on having fun. The only reason I came onto this show in the first place-”

“Because you needed to marry a guy in order to get your inheritance, yeah, you told me,” Dani interrupted Vivian before she could seize control over the flow of the conversation. “And you picked Nick. So you don’t have any special feelings for him, then?”

That was the heart of the matter here, Dani knew. Vivian played her cards close to the vest most of the time, unlike Dani, who wore her heart on her sleeve. Coupled with the fact that, as a lesbian, Dani couldn’t exactly identify qualities in Nick herself that Vivian would find attractive, and it was no surprise that she couldn’t decipher the heiress’s feelings on the matter.

And right now, Vivian’s expression was as hard to read as it ever was. The question hadn’t thrown her the way Dani had expected- rather, she seemed almost comfortable with it.

“Of course I have special feelings for him,” Vivian said, giving Dani a straighter answer than she ever expected.

Vivian smirked in amusement at the stunned expression on the tomboy’s face. “…What, you didn’t see that coming?” She tittered, leaning forward in the water. Her eyes flashed like a lioness stalking her prey. “I guess I’m not as easy to read as you thought I was, eh?”

Dani recovered pretty quickly hearing that, and she got flustered. “S-so you’re just playing games with me, then,” she grumbled, shaking her head. “I should have expected you not to take this seriously, obviously…”

She felt like an idiot for thinking that Vivian was sincere in her confession just now. But she’d said it with such conviction…

“I wasn’t lying, though?”

Dani perked up, surprised all over again. “Eh?”

Vivian’s gaze was dead-serious as she looked Dani in the eye. “I meant what I said,” she stated sincerely. “Nick is special to me. I do have what you would call… ‘special feelings’ for him.”

Her words were delivered with such sincerity that Dani started to get suspicious. Vivian may have been opening up to her, but Dani still found herself anticipating the possibility that the other shoe would drop any second now.

“…Just not the ones you seem to think,” the heiress finished, confirming Dani’s suspicions.

The tomboy sighed in exasperation. “Right, of course… still just playing around, then…”

“I’m not!”

The sharpness in Vivian’s voice made Dani jump. For the first time since reentering the hot spring, she saw a trace of the real Vivian beneath the mask of the perfect teasing heiress.

But just a trace. And then Vivian was safe behind her walls again. Still, Dani could see the firm, pleading look in her eye, and she wondered…

“Vivian?”

“I’m not messing with you,” Vivian said sincerely. “Nick… is important to me. He is! I don’t know what you thought I felt for him, but… it’s not like I see him as just some faceless guy that I can tease and mess around with.”

Dani frowned. She’d never thought that, not really. Vivian had misunderstood her, no doubt.

I must have touched on a sore spot earlier when I was talking about her inheritance, Dani guessed, biting her lip. Apparently, there’s more to it than that.

“Look, I’m not gonna turn into some blushing schoolgirl with a crush,” Vivian said, snorting derisively at the idea. “I mean, could you imagine? Me, fawning over anybody? Please!”

Yes, Dani could imagine that quite well, after how Vivian had been fawning over her all morning. But she kept her mouth shut.

“Nick’s fun to be around izzall,” Vivian said with a shrug. “I like him just fine, as a fella. He makes me laugh, especially when I get his goat, you know?”

She was laughing right now, in fact, though Dani wasn’t sure if she was aware of it.

“Why’s it gotta be more than that?” Vivian questioned.

Dani wasn’t even sure if that question was meant for her, or if it was just something that the heiress had flung out into the universe.

But she addressed it anyway.

“…It doesn’t have to be,” she pointed out, sitting up and gesturing at herself. “Just look at me. My feelings for Nick are completely platonic. He’s just a friend to me. If that’s the kind of relationship you want with him, just as friends, there’s nothing stopping you from having that with him.”

Vivian looked stunned at the proposition.

“…You think he’d… really go for something like that?” She finally asked after one of the longest pauses Dani had ever heard from her.

Dani stared at Vivian, dumbfounded. “Uh… yeah?” She waved her hand in front of her face again. “Like, I’m right fucking here. Not to mention his stepmother is in the harem, which has gotta be all kinds of messed up. Trust me, if you just want to be friends with him, he’s not going to begrudge you for more, Vivian!”

She couldn’t believe Vivian, as perceptive as she was about other people, could have read Nick so wrong. That she would actually think a nice guy like him would try to pressure her into a romantic or sexual relationship when she didn’t want to, that…

Dani was actually getting angry at Vivian for thinking that way. For misjudging her friend so poorly! But when she saw Vivian’s face, all the anger she was feeling sputtered away and died.

The heiress had tears in her eyes.

“So he would really… still be my friend…?” Dani could hear how hard she was trying to play it cool, to keep her emotions at bay. How many times had she done that herself over the years? But Dani wasn’t half the master Vivian was, and even then Vivian was clearly using every scrap of willpower she had to keep from sobbing.

“Vivian…”

So that’s it. I completely misunderstood. I’m such an idiot, I knew how much friendship means to her, and even then I still-!

Dani had gotten it so wrong. And even with a lot of mistakes under her belt, she never felt quite as stupid as she felt right this second.

Vivian’s disbelief that Nick could treat her as a friend didn’t stem from any sort of concern that he would pressure her for more. She was so convinced that their relationship was troubled that she couldn’t even imagine them just being friends in the first place!

“…Vivian, do you think Nick…? No, that’s crazy!” She lunged forward and grabbed the heiress by the shoulders, startling Vivian so much her tears dried up in surprise.

“Eh?!” Vivian squirmed beneath Dani’s fierce gaze, stiffening in her grasp out of fear that she’d done something to upset the other girl.

“Get this through that thick skull of yours,” Dani snapped, ignoring the hypocrisy of calling anyone else thick-headed. “If you want Nick to be your friend, then just say so. I guarantee he already likes you more than enough for that.”

Vivian’s mouth morphed a series of shapes in quick succession. If Dani had any talent at reading lips she would have seen the heiress mouthing the word “Really?”

Since she didn’t, she just continued barreling on through. “Is that what you want, then? For him to just be a friend?” She pressed, doubting that Vivian would really settle for that. No way would someone so **** for connection be satisfied with just friendship!

…Or maybe that was Dani’s Wingwoman transformation rearing its head, trying to get the heiress in bed with him. Later tonight she would grapple with that doubt, but right now, it was the furthest thing from her mind.

Right now, she was focusing on her irritation, because Vivian wasn’t giving her an answer.

“Vivian!”

“I-I want to be his friend!” She wailed, her walls tumbling down once more and her genuine feelings pouring out. “Nick, he… he’s the first guy I’ve ever… that I’ve ever really wanted to like me like this!”

Now that was interesting to hear. Dani settled down and let the heiress go, expecting Vivian to pull away. Instead, she actually scooted a little closer.

“…What do you mean?” Dani asked cautiously.

Vivian raised her head slowly and looked into Dani’s eyes. There was a vulnerability there that captivated the tomboy, but it only lasted for an instant before her strength returned.

“…I’m not an idiot, you know,” the heiress muttered, sinking back against the edge of the hot spring to give herself some space. “I’m a beautiful woman. I have more money than most people can dream about, and I’m also quite smart, very charming, generous…”

“Humble,” Dani tossed in. “And modest.”

Vivian stuck out her tongue.

“…Point being, I’m quite the catch,” Vivian scoffed, confidence returning to her voice as she inflated her own ego back up. “You think I haven’t had suitors before? I’ve had plenty. But not a one of them ever looked at me as anything other than a way to enrich themselves. And since they were all quite wealthy on their own, that’s certainly a comment!” She sniffed, turning up her nose.

Yeah, Dani figured it was probably something like that. “Well, Nick’s nothing like that,” she said, shaking her head.

Vivian laughed. “Certainly not! Considering how much money Teach has, you’d think he’d be used to wealth by now, no? But apparently he’s living rather modestly, if you can believe that.”

Dani shrugged. “He’s a pretty modest guy.” Back when she was in school with him, she’d never even suspected that Nick’s stepmother was some rich noble or whatever she was. She just knew that the woman practically glowed with class.

“…And that’s why the way he looks at me… it’s different, isn’t it?” Vivian asked quietly, raising her head to look Dani in the eyes. “He’s like you, he doesn’t care about my money or my status, even after throwing it in his face all the time.”

She felt a pang in her chest and winced. “He’s the first guy… I’ve ever met like that… so of course he’s special to me. Of course I want to be his friend! If… if he wants that…”

Dani wasn’t sure what to say. What Vivian was describing, it could just be friendship. But it sure sounded like something else.

Problem was, that wasn’t really Dani’s place to say, was it? If Dani said “It sure sounds like you have feelings for him, then” she had no idea how Vivian would respond. But she doubted it would lead to some sudden flash of epiphany if that’s really where her feelings lied.

…And even if it did, would that be the best way to go about this? To shock Vivian into having feelings for Nick by ****?

Dani hated problems that she couldn’t solve through straightforward confrontations like this one. Vivian’s feelings towards other people were so twisted and tangled up, Dani genuinely couldn’t tell if she knew how to distinguish romance from friendship from lust. And as someone with complicated feelings revolving those three things herself, she didn’t think she was equipped to help the heiress sort through this mess.

Really all she could do was try to be there for Vivian as best she could, and hope the heiress ended up coming to terms with her feelings on her own.