a/n: whos the master at getting things done before bed emilys the master of getting things done before bed haha this was done v quickly i apologise

~

Joy sighed as she made her way across the college hall, all soaps and towels in her hand. She had always hated the shower blocks here. It had been over a year of her first arriving and experiencing the horrors that were the shower blocks for the first time, and yet she still dreaded the experience every damn time. Still, one had to make sacrifices to stay clean. Though Joy liked to push boundaries, she wasn’t about to push the one into general poor hygiene. Gross.

She pushed open the door and was immediately slapped in the face with humid heat, wrinkling her nose a little as she stepped further inside. Girls with very similar expressions to hers were dotted around the place, tiptoeing on their bare feet gingerly. This was why I brought sandals, she thought as one particularly unfortunate girl stepped in a dubious black clump of what seemed to be hair and miscellaneous goop. You never know what you will find in places like these.

Alright, disgust aside, she needs to get clean (as clean as she could be in such a grotty place). She picked a shower with minimal disgusting material in it and stepped inside, stripping off her comfy clothes and flinging them over the top of the door where they came to rest comfortably. She tied her strawberry blonde hair up with the hair tie around her wrist in a few smooth motions, the long hair resting atop her head in a topknot. She took a deep breath, and turned the cold metal dial, awaiting her grim fate.

“Ffffff-“ Too cold, too cold. She jumped away from the stream of ice coming from the showerhead, reaching forward one reluctant hand to play with the dial, pressed up against the shower door. Her slippery wet hands fumbled with the contraption uselessly for a good few minutes. “... Fu- Ha!” She secured her grip on the best of a shower, fiddling with it carefully. Ah, it was getting warmer. She slowly stepped back into the water with a small content smile on her face, enjoying the feeling of the warm water, feeling truly grateful for its presence after her run in with icy death. Warmer... Warmer...

Too hot. She almost screamed as she jumped out of the water again quickly, as if she was stung. This time her hand came up all too quickly, her wrist flicking sharply as she turned the device back towards the blue end. Literally anything was better than this. Literally anything.

She sighed in relief as the temperature finally started to normalise, hesitantly stepping forward again. Ah, that was better. She bent down, picking up her bottle of shower gel, pausing to feel the rush of warm water on her back. Yes. When showers actually worked, they were the best things in the world.

As she was squeezing the gel into the palm of her hand (it was gingerbread flavoured with golden sparkles. Joy liked sparkly things), she heard a voice. She immediately stopped, her head snapping up to face the tiled wall adjacent to her. It was a girl singing.

She didn’t know what had attracted her to the voice in such a way. It was partly the quality of the voice, the soft and sweet sound, melodic but quiet, reserved, as if there was more to it than that. It was a lovely voice, like drizzling honey. Was she a part of the music department? If she wasn’t, then Joy had to question why. The other part that had grabbed her attention was the fact that this girl was singing High School in’ Musical.

Joy bit her lip, grinning wildly as she continued to listen to the girl idly sing. “You know the words “once upon a time”, make you listen, there’s a reason...”

“When you dream there’s a chance you’ll find, a little laughter, or happy ever after...” Joy chimed in at the end of her line, her voice barely above a whisper. Nevertheless, she heard the other girl gasp sweetly at the sound of the foreign voice, listening as she sung the line.

As Joy began to sing the next line, to her surprise, the other girl joined with her. “Your harmony, to the melody, it’s echoing inside my head...” Holy hell. They were harmonising. This girl was harmonising with her, taking the higher part as Joy sung the lower, and she sounded like all things delicate and pretty, like a fine china cup with intricate patterns on top of her voice. Joy thought she was a little in love with her already.

As they moved onto the split part, Joy physically felt herself falling deeper for the anonymous girl as it was soon discovered that she also had incredibly extensive knowledge on how HSM songs go. As far as duets in the shower go with strangers, this one was being pulled off without a hitch, Joy’s voice chiming in perfectly after the other girl’s.

She could feel the smile on the girl’s face as she plunged into the chorus. Her voice getting louder and more full of energy. Joy smiled right back, despite the fact that the girl couldn’t see her. She gripped her shower gel bottle with both hands, belting out her line.

“Yeah, it’s living in all of us-“

“Shut up!” Joy jolted, shower gel dropping to the floor and rolling unceremoniously across the tiles, slowly making its way toward the small gap between hers and the girls stalls. Her eyes widened, hurriedly trying to grab the bottle.

“No, no, no, NO!” She watched it roll under with a final cry, watching it go with a look of grief on her face, hand still outstretched. Damn it. “Hey, uh...” She spoke hesitantly, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly. “Mind if I get that back at some point?” She heard the other girl hum lightly, her stream of water shutting off.

“I’ll be waiting for you outside.” She said, a hint of mischief in her voice. Joy was suddenly incredibly nervous about meeting this girl, despite having sung a pretty solid duet with her just a few minutes ago. What if she goes out there and the girl goes “wait, never mind, I regret singing with you” and just leaves? What if Joy disappoints her? Although she considers herself pretty hot, she doesn’t know this girl’s preference. She took a deep breath, turning the dial off and grabbing her towel, drying herself off a little before facing the girl. She faced the door, in another breath and opened it quickly.

Wow.

She instantly feels her heart speeding up as her eyes fall on the girl, dressed in only a towel, holding up her prized bottle of sparkly shower gel with a playful grin. Her voice definitely matched her looks, her limbs lithe and pale and fragile looking like china, her face smooth and soft looking, her lips all pretty and pink, her chocolate brown eyes sparkling with humour. Her hair was in a loose bun, blonde strands falling into her face and sticking to the droplets of water on her face. It felt like Joy was falling in love all over again.

She was snapped out of her thoughts when the girl presented her with her bottle, which she took with a quick utterance of gratitude, not missing how their fingers brushed as she took from her hand and how her hand almost seemed to follow hers for one second. “I-I’m Joy, by the way. Nice singing.”

The girl cheeks flushed ever so slightly pink at the offhand compliment, and her face broke out into a full grin, her eyes sparkling even further and her straight white teeth shining attractively. “Thank you. You’re not too bad yourself. I’m Yeri.” She spent a short moment looking Joy up and down appreciatively, before bringing her eyes back up to meet hers. “Well, I’d best be going. My dorm’s the second one on the right from here, if you feel like stopping by. I hope I get to sing more shower duets with you in the future!”

Joy would be sure to take her up on both those offers.