It started small.

An after-school session in the lab, with Arya cross-legged in her chair, hoodie sleeves pushed up to her elbows, hair a mess from yanking at it while she coded.

Jordan watched her, pretending to mess with his laptop, pretending he wasn't quietly fascinated.

The way she chewed on the string of her hoodie when she was thinking.

The way she muttered under her breath when something wasn't clicking, only to beam, actual sunbeam level, when she cracked the problem wide open.

He made a dumb joke about firewalls and arson.

She laughed so hard she knocked over her water bottle.

Jordan, for no reason he could name, filed the sound of her laugh somewhere deep in his chest.

⸻

Later, a different night entirely, he found himself out on the streets, hoodie pulled tight against the city wind, shaking a can of spray paint.

He didn't think about what he was doing.

Didn't sketch first, didn't plan.

Just found a blank wall, and let his hands move.

Black, white, grey, the only colours he could truly see.

A girl mid-laugh, hair tangled in the wind, standing with a stubborn tilt to her chin like she had dared the whole world to try her.

Before he realised it, he was carving three letters into the corner: Graea.

He hadn't always signed them.

But now, somehow, it mattered.

It needed to be known this girl existed.

That she mattered.

He shoved the can back into his bag and disappeared into the night, heart hammering too hard.

He didn't look back.

⸻

Two days later, Arya was cutting through the back alleys on her walk home from hockey practice, slinging her stick lazily over one shoulder, bag thumping against her hip.

The Phantom girls had long since left their old school team behind now they played for a private club but the city streets hadn't changed.

That was when she saw it.

The mural.

The girl.

Not a copy.

Not a caricature.

Real.

Wild and laughing and alive.

Standing like she belonged anywhere she chose to be.

Down in the corner, almost hidden, was the tag: Graea.

Arya stared, heart jackhammering against her ribs.

There was no reason for her eyes to sting but they did.

There was no reason for her throat to feel tight but it did.

She didn't tell anyone.

Didn't pull out her phone.

Didn't take a picture.

It felt too sacred, somehow.

Private.

She touched her fingers lightly to the edge of the wall, and whispered, "Thank you."

Like whoever Graea was had somehow caught a piece of her soul and made it permanent.

⸻

Library days blurred after that. "Study sessions" that dissolved into ridiculousness.

Arya passing Jordan notes doodled in the margins of her textbooks, stick figure wars, fake test answers, tiny hand-drawn trophies.

Jordan crowning her handwriting with tiny, messy sketched crowns.

Once, Arya dared him to crown the school principal's photo.

He did it without hesitation.

They got kicked out for laughing so hard, Arya actually fell off her chair.

Jordan had to physically haul her up by her waist, grumbling, "You're an absolute menace," while trying and failing not to laugh too.

Her hands lingered around his shoulders longer than necessary.

He didn't mind.

⸻

There were other moments, too.

Moments that almost weren't anything.

Until they were everything.

Like when Jordan tugged Arya out of a crush of people in the hallway, hand wrapping securely around her wrist like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Arya didn't pull away immediately. She squeezed his fingers once before letting go.

Neither said anything about it.

Or the time Arya fixed his dog tag necklace when it got twisted standing so close Jordan could smell the faint scent of vanilla on her and something else, something wild and bright and unapologetic that he didn't have words for.

Her hands brushed his chest as she untangled the chain.

Jordan forgot how to breathe for a solid thirty seconds.

Pretended he didn't notice when she smiled at him, just a little too soft.

⸻

And then there were the murals.

More of them, tucked into corners of the city like secret messages:

A laughing silhouette on a rooftop.

A figure standing steady in a thunderstorm.

A girl tossing paint across a broken wall, painting the ruins gold.

All signed with the now-familiar tag: Graea.

Arya found them, one by one

Heart racing every time

Feeling like she owed something to this faceless artist. Like they understood her in a way no one else ever had.

She never told anyone.

She just kept them like secret treasures inside her chest.

Kept them like hope.

⸻

One night, after a late Phantom club practice and a greasy diner dinner, Arya and Jordan found themselves walking home again — too close, shoulder bumping shoulder, laughing about something ridiculous.

"Race you to the corner," Arya challenged, shoving his side.

Jordan snorted, flipping his cap backwards. "You're on, Hudson. Prepare to lose with dignity."

They took off, sneakers slapping the cracked pavement, laughter breaking into the night.

Arya was faster, Jordan taller — but somehow they collided at the finish, both wheezing, both grinning like idiots.

Arya's eyes crinkled at the corners.

Jordan's hand brushed her elbow without thinking.

And for one heartbeat, the whole world tilted.

Just them.

Just here.

Just this stupid, beautiful almost-something growing between them.

⸻

Neither said it.

Neither had to.

They were already falling.

Almost without knowing.