Chapter Text
mikha lim is many, many things.
she is, first and foremost, highly competitive. it's what makes her such a great athlete. at least, if the numerous articles and think pieces about her blossoming college football career have anything to say about it. she's only a sophomore but has already been declared captain for the upcoming season, has a championship under her belt, and has been named by sports journalists as one of the most promising figures in Filipino sports in recent years.
mikha's not one to brag—but it's just fact at this point. she works hard and she knows it, and there's nothing wrong with having something to show for it. people often describe her as being cool and composed on and off the field, but she is driven, and she tends to have a bit of a one-track mind when it comes to things she's passionate about.
and that's really the second thing: mikha lim is nothing if not passionate.
about anything. about everything .
“mikhs!” colet calls out from across the bar. the music is loud, the crowd even louder, and mikha feels right at home. colet gestures to the drink in her own hand, her grin lopsided as she walks over. “gusto mo isa pa?”
“maybe later,” mikha replies. she takes another sip of her drink, a fruity cocktail that she just knows would send her crawling home after one too many.
“bakit, wala ka sa mood?” colet laughs, throwing an arm around her shoulder. “bago ‘yun ah.”
mikha shakes her head, chuckling to herself. a group of girls pass by in front of them, waving shyly, and both she and colet smile back. tempting , mikha thinks. it would be almost too easy to fall into familiar patterns, to find a girl and flirt lightly and maybe wake up somewhere else.
but tonight is different. for a variety of reasons, but also, if she were being really honest, for one reason that matters.
“no naman,” mikha says, smirking slightly. she keeps her voice steady, her gaze focused. “i just have other things on my mind right now.”
colet's eyebrows furrow almost instantly. she tilts her head in question, then follows mikha's line of sight. when she sees the object of mikha’s attention, her eyes widen in disbelief.
“tangina,” colet exhales, half-amused, half-concerned. “maybe you are more drunk than i thought.”
“what?” mikha asks, looking far too innocent to be sincere. “i didn't say anything.”
colet groans. “mikhs, wag ‘yan. she's not going to take the bait, the way everyone else does when it comes to you.” her friend grabs her by the shoulders, looking decidedly more serious than she was earlier, and mikha grins. “you can play all the games you want, but with aiah? you're not going to win.”
and deep down, mikha knows she's right.
because it's the aiah arceta. university scholar, star of their pep squad, sends girls and boys reeling when she so much as smiles at them without even trying.
aiah arceta, who has never been caught slacking in literally any aspect of her life, who seems to have everything and everyone figured out before people can even begin to question it, who remains lightyears ahead of her peers.
aiah arceta, who at the moment, is seated several booths away with her friends, laughing politely at some joke one of the guys made. her light brown hair is in loose waves tonight, and she's wearing one of those black satin dresses with infuriatingly thin straps. as if her tanned shoulders didn't attract enough attention on their own.
this isn't the first time they've found themselves at the same party. mikha knows it won't be the last either. they're both athletes, which means they both run in the same social circles. they have more mutual friends and acquaintances than they could count, colet being one of them, and really, mikha can think of about a hundred ways this could all go wrong.
just then, aiah's eyes meet hers. it's fleeting, but there's a flash of something there. aiah looks away just as quickly, her jaw clenching. it's a small, almost imperceptible movement, but it's enough to send a thrill right through mikha’s spine. she can hear the gears in her brain clicking into place—she knows she can't back away now.
mikha finally turns to colet. she downs the rest of her drink, and smirks, slow and lazy. “who said anything about playing games?”
there’s a reason for this, mikha justifies. it begins, as all things do, with a question:
“what the fuck, aiah?”
mikha knows she’s probably causing a scene, confronting the other girl like this in the middle of a crowded hallway. but right now she could not care less.
aiah turns around, obviously annoyed and apparently less comfortable than mikha was with the lingering stares of passing students.
“what do you want, mikha lim?”
“what do i want?” mikha asks, incredulous. “you took my name off our paper! and you’re not even going to explain yourself?”
“why should i?” aiah crosses her arms, and mikha scoffs at the sheer audacity of the other girl to look unimpressed. “our paper was due today, i did all the work—it made sense to me. i didn’t think that needed to be explained.”
“you’re unbelievable!” mikha is fuming. cool and collected reputation be damned, she would strangle aiah arceta right there and then if there weren’t so many potential witnesses to her murder. “i had to beg our professor to extend the deadline so i could pass my own paper, just so she wouldn’t straight up fail me from this class.”
“why is this my problem?” aiah sighs. “look, you didn’t contribute, i was just honest when our prof asked. why is it suddenly my fault that you almost failed?”
“because i did contribute!” mikha exclaims. she feels like she’s about to combust, and aiah’s passive-aggressive bullshit was going to be the nail in her proverbial coffin. “i worked on my part, you told me to revise, i said i’d do it today!”
“and again , our paper was due today ,” aiah repeats slowly.
“yeah, at midnight,” mikha retorts. “you couldn’t even give me until the afternoon to work on the revisions? you just had to erase everything i wrote, rewrite it, and then say you did all the work yourself?” mikha shakes her head, laughter dripping with sarcasm. “you seriously need to get your head out of your ass, because the good girl act is not working.”
that seems to strike a nerve, and anger flares on aiah’s face, mirroring her own. “i don’t know what to tell you, mikha. the truth is your work was mediocre at best, and you didn’t even seem like you cared enough to try. you show up to class late all the time, and then you expect to just breeze through things like you always do.” aiah doesn’t back down, her words every bit as cutthroat as mikha’s. “i’m not going to bend over backwards waiting for you to put in some effort into something that’s important to me .”
mikha clenches her jaw. that hurt , of course. more than aiah realizes. more than mikha would like to admit, even though she’d never let it show. “you don’t even know me.”
aiah shrugs. “i don’t have to.”
and she just walks away.
mikha stands there, humiliation burning through her from the inside out. the students who were seemingly invested in their argument are long gone, but it still takes a while for her to turn around and run off to her next class.
her little incident with aiah hangs over her head like a storm cloud for the rest of the day, and by the time she gets to training, her teammates know better than to get in her way. she pushes and pushes until she’s exhausted, her muscles sore from the workout, and when colet invites her to go drinking, she gets in the car without another word.
colet doesn’t ask questions. just offers her a bottle of beer, which she nurses for the rest of the night.
when mikha gets home at 2 in the morning, she had already made up her mind.
because despite her posturing and her carefully maintained image, anyone who spends more than five minutes with mikha knows how hard she tries. she tries until her knees are scraped and bloodied, she tries until her veins are filled with practically nothing but caffeine, she tries until she has absolutely nothing left to give.
so to have aiah arceta, someone who has always been so effortlessly good at everything she touches, tell her that her work was “mediocre at best”?
mikha would, quite frankly, rather die than take that kind of thing lying down.
because mikha lim is many, many things. you can call her competitive. passionate. driven. even arrogant. unbearably attractive. full of herself.
but the one thing she isn’t?
a fucking loser .
it’s how mikha finds herself, one week later, standing in that bar with aiah just a couple steps away. it’s how she finds herself walking over to the woman who has very quickly cemented her position as the bane of mikha’s existence, who now sits there joking around with her friends like she hadn’t almost ruined mikha’s entire semester for the sake of proving a point.
it’s enough to make mikha’s blood boil. enough to make her hands clench into fists, knuckles going white at the pressure, and it takes everything in her to loosen them into something more relaxed.
mikha stops right in front of their booth. behind her, colet hovers, looking nervous and exasperated all at once.
“ladies,” she drawls playfully. she puts on her most charming smile. “didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”
“mikha!” stacey exclaims delightedly. “you guys are here din pala.” she turns to the girl in the thick-rimmed glasses beside her, narrowing her eyes accusingly. “jho didn’t mention you guys were going out.”
jhoanna gasps in protest. “how was i supposed to know? wala naman silang sinabi during training.”
“grabe naman ‘tong magtampo,” colet chimes in all of a sudden, smirking. “‘wag kang mag-alala, jho. sa susunod na lakad, kahit ako pa sumundo sa ‘yo eh.”
jhoanna's cheeks turn a darker shade of red, and stacey cackles at the sight of her friend. it was no secret that the younger girl, who had just recently joined their team this year, has a bit of a crush on colet. it was cute, and mikha would normally join in on the teasing, but tonight she was here for something else.
speaking of.
aiah is uncharacteristically quiet. her eyes are fixed on her drink, and mikha almost revels at the feeling of knowing that she's getting under her skin.
and she's only getting started. naturally.
“anyway,” jhoanna says, in a desperate attempt to bring the attention away from herself. “kayo lang ba tonight?”
“oh, yeah,” mikha replies. “gwen's out with shee.”
“we know.” stacey clicks her tongue in mock indignation. “date night daw.”
“ayun nga.” mikha laughs. “so, you know, it was kind of getting boring with just me and colet. thought we could join you guys, if that was okay?”
“of course!” stacey, ever the social butterfly, agrees enthusiastically. she scoots over, making room for both mikha and colet, and quickly begins chatting them up about the approaching game season.
the conversation is easy. it always is when you have someone like stacey. mikha had met her as a freshman since they were both taking the same course, and had become fast friends despite their seemingly contrasting personalities. they were there at each other's try outs —mikha was there when stacey joined the pep squad, and stacey had been cheering her on when she was accepted into the football team.
if anyone asks, they're both candid about the fact that they dated for a few months. at least, before things fizzled out and they realized they were better off as friends.
still, mikha has a soft spot for her. and judging by the way stacey's smile still lights up the room whenever mikha's around, anyone who knew them understood they were always going to be special to each other.
“ayun, muntik pa tuloy ako magka-tres,” stacey sighs, after lamenting about one of her GE profs. “iba talaga kapag may mga minor na feeling major. ikaw, mikhs, how's your sem going so far?”
there it was. the perfect opening, handed to her on a silver platter by none other than stacey sevilleja.
mikha could barely contain her unabashed joy.
“well, you know,” mikha starts, feigning nonchalance. “we actually just finished a paper.”
aiah freezes.
“how'd it go?” jhoanna asks. “mahirap ba? terror ba ‘yung prof?”
“‘di naman,” mikha says. “mabait nga actually. she extended the deadline pa for me when i said i needed more time to finish.”
next to jhoanna, aiah looks like she could break the glass in her hand. mikha would feel bad if she wasn't having so much fun .
“pwede pala ‘yun? unfair talaga 'yung amin!” stacey whines. but then she looks at mikha, curious. “pero why did you need more time to finish ba?”
mikha almost shakes with glee.
“oh, my groupmate removed my name from the paper, kasi.”
“what?” stacey frowns. “bakit daw? you're not the type naman na magpabigat sa groupwork.”
“i don't know, i think maybe i did deserve it this time.” mikha waves it off, grinning easily. “apparently, my work was ‘mediocre at best.’”
and mikha contemplates it. really, really thinks about it. summons all the angels and saints that she had prayed to as a child in an effort to maybe dissuade herself from continuing on whatever devilish path she's on right now.
she looks at aiah, her gaze dark, body tense.
mikha goes for the kill anyway.
“no hard feelings naman, di ‘ba, aiah?”
a pause.
“huh?” stacey looks even more confused for a split second, before realization dawns on her. “wait, si aiah ‘yung groupmate mo?”
for a moment, it’s like the whole club goes quiet. then aiah closes her eyes, inhales deeply, and looks right at mikha.
“yes,” aiah replies, voice remaining even. “ako ‘yung nagtanggal ng name niya sa paper.”
the silence that follows is painfully awkward. colet is mortified, stacey looks concerned, and jhoanna seems to be wary of where the conversion was heading.
aiah appears as if she's about to throw the nearest drink onto mikha's face.
and mikha? well, mikha's just all too happy to ruin aiah’s night.
“hey! like i said,” mikha chirps. “it's really not a big deal. lesson learned, and all that.”
“‘yun naman pala eh,” colet pipes in, trying to ease the tension. “okay naman na pala si mikhs. ikaw, aiah, okay ka lang?”
“i'm fine,” aiah says through gritted teeth. and as if trying to regain her composure, she sits up straighter and sips from her drink. “besides,” she adds. “i'm not the one who almost failed the class. so you don't have to worry about me .”
aiah raises one of her perfectly sculpted eyebrows in challenge, and mikha falters ever so slightly. she had a feeling aiah would put up a fight, had expected it even —it wouldn't have been aiah if she didn't. still, it's a little different when those piercing brown eyes seem to see right through you.
mikha clears her throat and leans back against the booth. “got me there,” she says, chuckling and shrugging offhandedly. she spots the nearly empty glass in aiah’s hand and speaks up before she could even think about it. “tell you what, let me get you another drink as a peace offering.”
“no, thank you,” aiah replies curtly.
“c’mon, just one? i wanna make it up to you,” mikha says. she rests her chin on her hand, pouting and mustering the most sincere expression she can possibly do. “i don't want any bad blood. just want a clean slate with you.”
the truth?
mikha doesn't know what she's doing. she has to hand it to aiah—the girl is relatively unfazed. other than the brief show of irritation, she’s been handling things better than mikha thought she would.
and mikha needs more than that. needs something, anything, to satisfy her itch for vindication, no matter how admittedly petty it may be.
the table waits with bated breath. aiah still looks like she wants to reject mikha in increasingly devastating and excruciating ways, but she exhales slowly and relents when she sees that she might not be getting out of this so easily. “fine,” she says, voice clipped. “just one.”
“great!” mikha says too cheerfully. “let me go and get you one right now.”
to everyone's surprise, including mikha's, aiah stands up too. “i'll go with you.”
the two of them walk over to the bar, weaving through the crowd. which proves to be more difficult than it sounds, given that there is a huge mass of bodies dancing to whatever remix the DJ is blasting through the speakers. aiah is right beside her, and she looks like she's about to be swallowed whole by a group of very drunk, very uncoordinated girls and boys, so mikha places a hand lightly on the small of her back to guide her out.
she does it without a second thought, of course. she might not like aiah, but she's not an asshole. she has manners , her mother taught her better.
(granted, her mother wouldn't have liked everything else she did and said to aiah just a few minutes ago, but mikha’s going to sweep that under the rug for now.)
aiah stiffens initially, but accepts the touch as they walk across the dance floor. they make it to where the bartender is expertly flipping bottles and entertaining customers, and when they're about to order drinks, mikha leans casually against a bar stool and faces aiah.
it's the first time she gets a good look at the other girl tonight. aiah is even more stunning up close, which isn't surprising per se, but isn't any less annoying either. her lips are pursed as if considering something, her gaze sharp and intense, and mikha feels its weight settle over her more heavily now that she’s only inches away.
fortunately for mikha, aiah is wearing heels tonight. which does put a bit of distance between the two of them and lets mikha think more clearly.
unfortunately for mikha, this also means she has to crane her neck a little higher to look her in the eye, because it makes aiah even taller than she usually is.
she files it away as one more thing that irrationally pisses her off about aiah arceta. in the meantime, she'll have to grin and bear it for a little longer.
mikha should really add acting as one of her many talents.
“so,” mikha says, breaking the stretch of silence between them. “your drink of choice?”
aiah doesn't respond right away. instead, she regards mikha for a minute, eyes flickering over mikha’s face. mikha would find it uncomfortable, but she didn't go this far to give anything away.
finally, aiah speaks. “gin tonic.”
mikha releases a breath she didn't know she was holding.
“two gin tonics, please!” she calls out to the bartender, who raises a thumbs up in acknowledgement. he mixes the drinks and slides them smoothly towards mikha and aiah, with the latter mumbling a soft thanks .
mikha's about to make her way back to the table when she notices that aiah has stayed rooted to her spot. then, she turns to look at mikha completely, and mikha once again finds herself a lot closer to aiah than she had anticipated—so close that she can smell aiah's perfume, a sweet, almost floral scent that washes over her with very little warning.
“whatever it is you're doing, just stop,” aiah tells her. “ayoko ng gulo.”
mikha stills. “what?”
“look, i get it. you're upset with me, you wanna get back at me, fine.” aiah seems bored, like she had a million other things to do and this was a waste of her time. mikha would be offended if she wasn't already feeling like she had been caught red-handed. “but i just wanted you to know, whatever game you think you're playing, i'm out. you're not getting anything from me.”
it's the exact same thing colet had said earlier that night. you're not going to win, colet’s voice rings in mikha’s head, and mikha bristles at the thought of aiah reading her so easily.
so, she steels herself.
because if she wasn't winning against aiah, then aiah wasn't winning against her either.
“i don't know what you think i’m doing,” she lies smoothly. “but i meant it when i said i just wanted to make things better between us.”
aiah rolls her eyes. “even if i were to give you the benefit of the doubt, i don't know what you expect is going to happen here. ano, magiging friends tayo?”
mikha smirks, wiggling her eyebrows. “would that be so bad?”
“a friendship would require a basic foundation of trust.” aiah scoffs and throws a pointed glance at mikha. “‘di nga kita mapagkatiwalaan as a groupmate, as friends pa kaya?”
mikha’s gasp is comically over-exaggerated. if aiah could roll her eyes any harder, mikha would think she was getting a seizure or something. “sakit mo naman magsalita!” mikha finds herself leaning even closer, tilting her head playfully at the other girl. “is it so hard to believe that i'm actually trying to do something nice ?”
aiah doesn't even dignify that with a reply, choosing instead to stare deadpan at mikha.
(mikha would find it cute if she didn’t find aiah so insufferable.)
“believe what you want, but i'm not the type to hold grudges.” mikha raises her glass to her lips, taking a long sip of her drink. and in a moment of thoughtless, reckless honesty, she adds, “especially not against pretty girls.”
if mikha weren't paying attention, she might have missed it.
aiah's lips part slightly, as if she were going to say something, but nothing comes out. her eyebrows furrow together, and she hesitates for a second too long, like she wasn't prepared for that response. in the dim lights of the bar, mikha thinks she can almost see a faint red dusting her cheeks.
a crack in the facade—barely there, but undeniable.
huh , mikha muses. interesting.
“whatever, mikha lim,” aiah mutters. she sips from her own drink and starts walking towards the direction of their table.
it takes mikha a while to catch up.
for the record:
this was supposed to be a one-time thing.
as mikha tosses and turns in bed later that night, she tries to remember how this all started.
failed groupwork. aiah refusing to get off her high horse. mikha's spectacularly bruised ego.
when mikha had walked into that bar and had seen aiah, all she thought about was making the other girl feel what she had felt. put her through her paces and frustrate her, even embarrass her a bit.
it's immature, sure, and it's definitely not one of her best moments, but mikha thought that it would have been enough to do it once .
she was being genuine when she said that she wasn't usually the type to hold grudges. she had wanted to get this out of her system, and then hopefully, ignore aiah and never have to deal with her again for the sake of her temper and sanity.
but—
there was something about the way aiah had reacted to her. aiah arceta was usually so composed, so perfectly put together, so unable and unwilling to make mistakes. she knew what she wanted and was unforgiving of the things she didn't want, even to a fault.
and yet, the way aiah had looked earlier that night, it was like her body had betrayed her. she had been caught off guard, and it made her seem more tangible. more real. it was the quiet unraveling of it all, the idea of someone like aiah giving in to something she knew better than to acknowledge.
aiah told mikha she wasn't going to give her anything, but, in a way, she did—and mikha was suddenly very interested in seeing just how much more she could get.
there are risks to this. mikha knows that much. you can't play with fire and not get burned, and aiah was always going to be the brightest flame there is.
still, there's a pull, an urge she couldn't resist even if she wanted to. to see aiah lose control, even just a bit. to see that fire burn even hotter .
to hell with the consequences , mikha thinks. she can always deal with them later.