#oc: zahra | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

briannaswords · 8 months

Text

It hit you like a shotgun shot to the heart

(@the-world-is-a-poem you said to tag you the next time I post anything I wrote so uh here haha. enjoy?)

The first time Zahra realised she loved Dawn

Zahra isn’t nervous that Dawn’s at her house for the first time. No! Not at all. Why would she be nervous? It’s just her stupid old house. She shouldn’t care what Dawn thinks of it. Doesn’t care.

Sure, she spends twenty minutes cleaning her room and the living room….and longer cleaning the dining room and the kitchen but that’s just because she doesn’t want Dawn to think she lives in a pigsty.

Though, Zahra doesn’t think Dawn would judge her, even if she did live in a pigsty. Dawn’s the only person outside of her family who’s been genuinely supportive after the whole…Chris mess. And she barely knows her.

Their friendship feels weird. Weird in a good way but…still weird. Zahra knows how Dawn’s breath evens out when she sleeps, knows exactly how to hold her to get her to sleep, knows how to calm her down after a panic attack, knows intimately about her recurring nightmares. Zahra knows that Dawn’s gay and her parents aren’t supportive of it or her at all, she knows that Dawn plays violin, she knows that Dawn’s sister inspired her to play guitar but she doesn’t know what Dawn’s favourite colour is, her favourite song or even when her birthday is. In some ways, Dawn feels like Zahra’s best friend. Other times, Zahra feels like she barely knows her at all, that this alliance they built up over the Christmas holidays is fragile, dependent on both of them having nightmares and waking up too early in the morning because of them.

Maybe that’s what this is. They’re walking a tightrope between true friends and almost-strangers and this, Zahra cracking her knuckles and shyly inviting Dawn to her house over the weekend, is the cut that will force them to one location.

If Zahra was nervous, this would be why.

But she’s not nervous. Not at all.

She runs to the door when she hears the bell rings. It’s early, early enough that Dad and Jessica haven’t left for the dance studio yet.

“Who’s that?” She yells, from the kitchen. Zahra doesn’t bother to deign her with an answer as she pulls open the door.

“Hi.” Dawn’s wearing a dark green flannel (which Zahra is starting to suspect is her favourite item of clothing because of how often she wore it at camp), a light-green t shirt and baggy jeans.

And Zahra’s not nervous but Dawn must see something on her face because her small smile fades into something concerned. “Is…is it okay that I came this early?”

“Yeah! Yeah, it’s fine. Come in.” Zahra tugs Dawn inside just as Má comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a paper towel. “Má, this is my friend. Dawn.”

“Nice to meet you, Dawn,” Má smiles but Zahra can see the surprise on her face. Zahra rolls her eyes. She hasn’t really mentioned Dawn too much to her mum, just said vaguely that she made a few good friends at camp, because talking about Dawn means talking about school which means thinking about Chris and Zahra never wants to think about him ever again. He takes up enough space in her nightmares. “Where did you two meet?”

“We shared a dorm at camp—“ Zahra starts to say but Jason pushes past her, running like wild animals are chasing him. In reality it’s just one wild animal, Jessica, who’s screaming like a madwoman.

“Jason! Give me back my shoes I’m going to be late!”

“Say sorry for calling me a butthead!”

“No! You are a butthead!”

“Ay dios, guys! Can you stop acting like circus animals for two seconds of your life!” Zahra snaps, grabbing onto Jason’s arm as he tries to sprint around her again.

“Tell Jason that!” Jessica retorts, curls falling in her face. She’s going to have to redo her ponytail—there’s barely any of it left. “He’s the one acting like a butthead!”

“Stop calling me a butthead!”

“Stop acting like a butthead, then!”

“Stop saying butthead!” Zahra yells so, of course, Jason and Jessica turn to her and, at the top of their lungs, yell: “BUTTHEAD!”

“Mechi onu!” Luckily, Má can yell louder. “We have neighbours! It’s too early for this argument. Jason, finish your breakfast. Jessica, get your things, your Dad is waiting.” She pushes Jason towards the kitchen, snatching Jessica’s shoes back as she does so. “Lovely to meet you, Dawn! If you need anything, let me know, okay?” She adds, in her normal, cheerful voice. Zahra will never understand how she fluctuates between Angry Mother and Gracious Hostess so quickly.

“Sorry about the chaos. Sometimes I think my parents adopted Jessica and Jason from a farm,” Zahra says, as they go up the stairs to her room. Dawn laughs, loud and sudden.

“It makes things exciting, though, doesn’t it?”

“If by exciting, you mean ‘headache-inducing’ then, yeah! You’re right!”

Dawn laughs again and Zahra thinks it might just be her new favourite sound.

Dawn stops in the doorway of Zahra’s room. Zahra raises her eyebrows.

“What are you doing?”

“Just…looking.”

Zahra snorts. “Why? It’s just my room. There’s nothing wildly interesting about it.”

“I disagree. You are a very interesting person, Zahra Jiménez,” Dawn smiles. Something stirs in Zahra’s stomach. She ignores it, flopping down on her bed and leaning against the headboard as Dawn slowly traces her shelves.

“You won something?” She asks, pointing at the trophy. “Was it a music thing?”

“Nah it was—uh—dance.” Zahra had forgotten about it, almost hadn’t packed it when they left Aramoor because she’d thrown it into the corner of her small room in a fit of rage when she’d first expressed her desire to stop dance and Pa hadn’t taken it…amazingly. It was the last thing she’d achieved, dance-wise, before she quit and, as a result, it holds some rather bittersweet memories.

“You danced?” Dawn says, eyebrows raised because—right, Zahra hadn’t told her. It’s not a topic she loves talking about.

“Yeah, well. When you’re the daughter of the great Mateo Jiménez, there are some things you can’t escape.” Zahra looks down, picking at the hem of her joggers. “I stopped when I was eleven.”

“That’s when you started playing violin, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever won anything for that? For music?”

Zahra snorts, then clears her throat. “D’you want to watch a movie? I have Netflix on my laptop.”

Dawn hesitates, an unreadable look in her eye, but it’s gone before Zahra can try and decipher it. She nods, stepping forward but still straying close to the doorway. “Can we watch Pride and Prejudice?”

Zahra rolls her eyes fondly. “You’re obsessed with that movie.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing!”

Zahra shakes her head and reaches for her laptop. Dawn stays where she is, eyes swivelling around the room, never landing in one place for more than a couple of seconds. She looks restless in a way Zahra hasn’t seen since the first days of camp. When Zahra entered the dorm and Dawn’s smile was small and shaky, like she thought Zahra would reject her on principle, like she was worried about Zahra’s reaction, like…like…like….

Like she was nervous.

Dawn’s nervous.

So Zahra pats the space next to her and smiles as softly as she can. “You’re gonna watch it from all the way over there?”

And Dawn returns the smile, clambering next to Zahra on the bed. Halfway into the movie, she leans on Zahra, tentatively, as if Zahra will push her away if she gets too close. Instead, Zahra wraps her arm around Dawn’s shoulders, pulling her closer. She’s engulfed in that same, familiar scent from camp—something earthy and sweet and quintessentially Dawn.

She likes it.

And, afterwards, when the film ends and they spend half an hour bickering about what they’re going to watch next, all Zahra can think about is how she hasn’t felt this comfortable since…Aramoor. She can’t help but think about how natural this feels, when they go down to the kitchen and Zahra heats up the first thing she can find in the fridge for Dawn, when Dawn insists that Zahra eat too, when they go back up to Zahra’s room and sit cross-legged across each other on the floor. When Dawn smiles up at her, Zahra feels something warm burst in her chest because…the tightrope is gone. It snapped somewhere between Zahra inviting Dawn in and seeing her laugh at Jessica and Jason’s antics and asking so gently about the trophy, saying ‘you won something?’ but meaning ‘I want to know you, please dear god let me know you’ and Zahra being able to read Dawn’s eyes well enough to know the words she’s not saying and holding each other while Mr Darcy confessed his love for Elizabeth Bennett and ribbing each other for their taste in movies and now, sitting on Zahra’s bedroom floor eating leftover mac and cheese.

In the silence, Zahra feels it, that quiet certainty. They’re friends now. Proper friends.

It feels good.

She smiles back at Dawn. She says nothing but her eyes shine with all the words she wants to say: thank you for coming and I want you to come again if anything so I can give you a better lunch than yesterday’s dinner and I want to know you too and I hope we keep getting closer.

I love you. Please, dear god, let me love you.

#I was proud of it so here it is #otp: I never knew I could feel this much #oc: zahra #oc: dawn #bri writes #(haven't done that in a while lol)#title from getaway car by the legend herself t swift

7 notes · View notes