•flawed with benefits•

Violet looked at him with her dusty eyes as she lay next to him, sheets pulled over her body once more. Savoring the moment of vividness, she shifted closer to him. Cal folded his arm across her body, pulling her closer. And in that moment they were their own poetry.

But their moment of tranquility was shattered as the door slammed open and Harry came striding in, stopping mid-sentence when he sees them wrapped up together. "What the fuck, did you two?..." He trailed off, rubbing his neck awkwardly.

His discomfort is made worse when Violet sat up, the sheets being the only thing covering her. She smiled at him whilst Cal scowled. "We did, but we're just friends, Harry," Violet told him without missing a beat. The lack of hesitation stung.

"Friends with benefits?" Harry seemed confused. He glanced at Cal with question, but he gets no response from him.

"Yes, now get out so I can get my clothes on," She said and glanced down at Cal with her murky eyes that hid too much, not only from him, but from the world. Her self-confidence was immense. It forced a presence to follow her wherever she went, swirling around her, caught up in the whirlwind of Violet. A violent path to follow, but irresistible.

Harry left, shaking his head. As soon as he left, Violet rose from beneath the sheets and began pulling her clothes on once more.

Cal sat up and brushed a hand through his hair. "Do you have to go?" He asked, making her stop midway as she was pulling her shirt down.

The way she looked at him when he'd asked her that was almost as if he'd amused her. She pursed her lips. "I do." She stepped into her dungarees, fastening the buttons at her shoulders. "But I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," He replied, watching her leave with a heavy heart. She paused at the door, looking back at him with the same old expression wrapped across her face. Cal stared right back and found the remarkable want to hold her once more.

She let out a low laugh before breaking the locked eyes and leaving him alone once more to edit his videos with nothing but her playing on his mind. Again and again his thoughts returned to her like a broken record.

Callum poked his head around the door, cracking a joke about being glad he didn't walk in on anything, before asking. "We're going to Nandos, wanna come?"

"Do you even need to ask?" Cal laughed, pushing his chair back and slipping his jacket and shoes on to follow Callum out.

-

Cal laughed along with everyone as they ate. There was nothing he could have been more grateful for. They took his mind off her and her perilous lips. Friends were something everyone needed in their life. They were there for you in ways they didn't even know.

From the way Harry kept looking at him, Cal sighed heavily. "Stop looking at me like that," He said jokingly, grinning at Harry.

"I can't believe you and Violet, man," Harry said, leaning back against his chair with a genuine appearance of confusion. "Of all the people."

Cal shrugged his shoulders loosely. "It just happened."

"It happened twice. Not once, twice," Callum cuts in, earning him a look from Cal.

"Wait, what happened?" Josh questions and everyone else looked up the table waiting for the answer, which Cal does not deliver.

Luckily for Cal, Callum was on hand to answer for him. "Him and Violet had sex," He told them like it was breaking news, but in reality they'd all known it would happen eventually.

"So you're a thing now?" Simon piped up from the other side of the table.

"No."

"They're friends with benefits," Harry added, remembering what Violet had confirmed earlier that day.

"Oh," Simon said, rubbing a hand over his face to hide his chuckle. "That's not going to end well." Cal laughed it off and retaliated with a joke about how he was getting more sex than Simon.

-

The conversation seemed to dissipate to a point as the meal was coming to its end. Cal gazed out of the window almost choking on his drink when he sees her stumbling down the street with her iconic leather jacket and a bottle in her hand.

"Is that Violet?" Harry asked, leaning closer to the window to peer out.

"Yeah," Cal breathed, watching her go. With a sigh, he pushed his chair back and hurried out of the restaurant after her. Leaving his friends clueless.

Her hair was curled around her face in webs of dark brown and her eyes were dulled. As she walked she took a long drink from the bottle and smiled against the rim as the alcohol trickled down her throat.

"Violet!" Cal shouted as he jogged after her. She spun around when her name was called. His eyebrows twitched up a little at the sight of her usually immaculate lipstick smeared across her cheek like a stain, a scar. She stopped walking when she saw him.

He stepped up to her. "What are you doing?" He asked, frowning at her. "You're all on your own." He took a hold of her arm, pulling the drink from her lips ever so gently in fear that she would snap at him. Beneath his fingers, her skin was cold, but that was Violet. Violet Griffin was cold and beautiful like the snowfall in the depths of winter's hour.

"I was out with the girls, no big deal," She slurred. "Go home, Cal." Violet tries to lift the bottle to her lips again, but Cal holds her arm still. "Let go, I want to drink," She whined, trying to pull her arm away harder.

"I'm taking you home," Cal told her. He let go of her arm and wrapped his arm over her shoulders, trying to guide her with him as he walked.

"No, I don't want to go home," Violet said sternly, resisting Cal and stepping away from him. "I just came from home."

"You said you were out with the girls." His eyebrows knit together. Either she was very drunk or was trying to avoid something.

"I was." She took a swig, sighed as the cool liquid hit her tongue. "But it wasn't an all-girls club because where there's girls there's always boys. And where the two mix, one night of intimacy can blossom."

Then it hit him. She'd slept with a guy from the club. That was why her lipstick was a mess, that's why she was out here and not at home. She never hung about after sleeping with someone she didn't feel a swell in her heart for. Cal swallowed. "Is he still in your flat?"

"Passed out, yeah," She said simply, not making a big deal of it.

Cal rubbed a hand across his face. "You can stay in mine if you don't want to go back to him," He offered, trying not to sound eager to have her with him.

She laughed and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him, bottle still in hand. He held her just like he always did because he was her friend, that's what friends do: they look out for each other. "I'm glad I have you, Cal," She said and nuzzled into him, the scent of alcohol wafting to his nose. No longer did she smell sweet and pure like the violets of the garden, she smelt like a broken youth with a tendency to overdrink to forget.

He pressed his lips against the top of her head silently, wanting to take her face between his hands and tell her that she was an idiot for coming out here alone, but he didn't have the heart. Instead, he wrapped his arm over her shoulders and walked her all the way home to where they fell asleep side by side, heart by heart.

-

When the sun shone through the blinds, sparkling in its delight, Cal awoke alone once more. This time there was no smudge on the pillow, but there was a lipstick kiss on his hand. A thank you in the strangest of ways, but he knew that she was grateful and that was all that mattered in the end.

The end was all that mattered, the journey forgotten.