Chapter Text
Luis Madrigal considered himself a reasonably observant person.
Not exceptionally observant. That was probably Max, who could sit silently in the corner of a room for twenty minutes and then walk away knowing who owed who money, who had failed their last exam, and which teacher was most likely to quit.
But reasonably observant.
Which was why he was pretty sure Chloe Charming had been avoiding him.
It had started with their morning runs.
Every Tuesday and Thursday since their first year at Auradon Prep, Luis would meet Chloe outside her dorm at six in the morning. It had started as training for their respective sports. They both offered each other a challenge: Chloe was faster and more nimble; while Luis was stronger and had better muscular endurance. Somewhere along the way, however, their runs had evolved into increasingly petty and ridiculous competitions involving stairs, hills, improvised obstacle courses, and one memorable incident with a wheelbarrow that Fairy Godmother had made them both swear never to repeat.
It wasn't even really about training anymore.
Somewhere between first year and now, Tuesday and Thursday mornings had quietly become Luis's favorite part of the week. Six o'clock was too early for most teenagers, which meant the campus belonged almost entirely to them. They would race the sunrise through the eastern gardens, argue about whether downhill counted as "cheating," complain about undercontributing project partners, and more than occasionally spend an entire run just in comfortable silence. It was difficult to stay stressed when your biggest problem was Chloe Charming insisting a staircase was a perfectly reasonable shortcut.
There had been traditions, too. Chloe always insisted on finishing with one last sprint back to the fountain, even when they were both exhausted. Luis almost never won that one. Every few weeks one of them would invent some ridiculous new challenge that Fairy Godmother would likely describe as "absolutely not an acceptable use of school property" if she ever found out (but being some of the most well known HK’s on campus had its benefits). The wheelbarrow incident had technically been Chloe's idea. Luis had merely supplied the wheelbarrow. She maintained that distinction was important.
It was just... normal. One of those routines you never really thought about because you assumed it would always be there. If someone had asked Luis what he'd be doing at six o'clock on a Tuesday, the answer would have been obvious. He'd be outside the girls' dorm, stretching his calves while Chloe inevitably ran up to him, somehow completely awake and limber, despite the early hour.
Then Wonderland happened. And Chloe stopped showing up.
At first, Luis hadn't thought much of it. She'd been through a lot. They all had. But especially Chloe. (He still didn't fully understand what had happened with her outfit change).
So after a few rest days, he decided to go get her. After all, maybe a run is exactly what she needed.
Auradon always felt different before sunrise. The usual chaos of students rushing to class hadn't begun yet, leaving the stone paths quiet except for birds arguing somewhere high in the castle towers. Dew still clung to the lawns, the morning air crisp enough that Luis could see his breath for a moment whenever he laughed. He'd always liked this version of the school best. It felt less like a kingdom and more like a place waking up. It felt like maybe Chloe needed this slice of peace.
He'd barely knocked twice before the door opened.
Red stood on the other side. Her hair was a complete mess with red curls stuck up awkwardly on her forehead. She was wearing black sleep shorts with little red hearts and an Auradon Prep training shirt that looked suspiciously oversized on her (and since when did Red play sport…) She stared at him with the bleary resentment of someone who considered being awake at six in the morning a personal attack.
Luis grinned up at her, always happy to start the day with the sun. “Morning, Red.”
“It isn't.” Well not everyone could be a morning person.
“Is Chloe–”
“Luis?”
Chloe appeared behind Red.
Her hair was pulled into its usual ponytail for whenever she was exercising, and she had one shoe on, looking about ready to go for a run. She looked her usual alert and excited morning person. But then something strange happened to her expression.
Chloe's eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you here for Red?”
“What?”
Red looked over her shoulder. “What?”
“I mean–” Chloe hopped forward while trying to pull on her other shoe. “She's busy.”
Red looked down at herself.
“I am?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
Chloe reached the doorway.
Luis opened his mouth.
“Actually, Luis, we'll see you in class!”
And the door slammed shut. Luis stared at it.
From the other side came Red's muffled voice.
“Princess, what the hell?”
Then Chloe said something he couldn't make out.
Then Red: “Why would he–”
Then silence. Luis waited another few seconds. The door did not reopen. Luis stood there for another minute anyway.
Long enough that someone from down the hall walked by and wished him a cheerful good morning. Long enough that he wondered if maybe Chloe would realise how strange that conversation had been and open the door again.
She didn't.
He looked back at the closed door, replaying the conversation in his head. Had he said something wrong? Asked at a bad time? Chloe had looked genuinely happy... right up until she'd looked past Red to him. Then something had changed.
Luis frowned. He wasn't entirely sure what.
Maybe Chloe didn't want to run with him anymore.
That was fine. A little weird. But fine.
Well... mostly.
Wonderland had left everyone a little off balance. Robbie had barely slept for a week afterwards (and had therefore kept Luis up with him). Pink had thrown herself into organising absolutely everything, which generally meant she was worried about something. Even Max had been quieter than usual.
Chloe had changed most of all.
Luis couldn't quite explain how.
She still smiled. Still laughed. Still beat everyone at sparring. But sometimes she'd get this distant look, like she'd started thinking about something nobody else could see. Other times she'd look at Red, and the two of them would manage to have an entire conversation without saying a word.
Luis didn't really understand it. Maybe he wasn't supposed to.
He did think about asking again. He nearly brought it up after English Literature on Wednesday, but Chloe was halfway across the courtyard before he'd packed his books.
Then after Swords and Shields, except she'd disappeared into a Student Council meeting.
On Friday she and Red walked back to the dorms together deep in conversation, and interrupting just felt... wrong.
By the following week, Luis wasn't even sure what he was trying to ask anymore.
Why don't you want to run anymore?
Did I do something?
Are you okay?
None of those felt fair. Or quite right.
Chloe had been through more than anyone understood. If she wanted space, then maybe the kindest thing he could do was give it to her. So Luis, being the considerate friend that he was, stopped asking.
He missed their runs. But missing them seemed like a much smaller problem than whatever Chloe might be dealing with.
He decided it was best to give her space and give her the morning runs. He could live with running in the evenings instead.
Three weeks later, Luis decided evening runs were terrible.
Not because he disliked evenings.
In theory, running in the evening gave him the whole morning back.
In practice, his five pm run had been postponed because Max wanted his opinion on something, which turned into a forty-minute conversation. Then Robbie asked if Luis could help carry several bundles of arrows from the practice field to storage. Then there had been a cat stuck in a tree. (Technically two cats - Luis wasn't sure how the second one had gotten up there while he was rescuing the first.)
By the time he finished his History of Auradon essay, the clock on his desk read 10:27 pm.
Luis stared at it. He desperately wanted to just go to sleep. But his muscles were tight with energy and he knew he needed to get some exercise in.
“Twenty minutes,” he decided. He could do twenty minutes. If he ran fast, he could do almost the entire campus in twenty minutes, he bet.
Five minutes later, he was crossing the eastern courtyard at a sprint.
The campus was almost completely deserted. Most dorm windows were dark, the paths illuminated by enchanted lanterns and moonlight.
Honestly, Luis thought, this wasn't so bad. It was quiet, cool, peaceful even.
The cool air settled pleasantly in his lungs, each breath easier than the last. His legs had finally stopped feeling heavy from sitting at his desk all evening, falling back into the familiar rhythm he'd known since he was old enough to chase his cousins around Casita. This was why he ran. Not to win anything. Just because everything in the world seemed to make a little more sense once he was moving.
But then something moved above him. Luis slowed. A shadow disappeared over the edge of the library roof.
He stopped completely.
“…Hello?”
Nothing. Probably a bird. Or a large cat. ...with red hair. Luis frowned.
Yes, he didn't dream it. Red was sprinting full tilt across the roof. The narrow roof. That was multiple stories in the air. With stone and concrete beneath her.
Luis had spent enough years around athletes to know the difference between confidence and recklessness. This looked like both.
Chloe was no stranger to obstacle courses from her Knight training with her father. Robbie could scramble up a tree like he'd been born with claws. Pink even occasionally forgot that ordinary people preferred both feet on the ground (she was from Wonderland after all).
But this...
This wasn't an obstacle course. There were no padded mats beneath her, no instructors watching from below, no carefully measured distances. Just old stone rooftops, open air and a fall that Luis really didn't want to think about. One missed footing, one loose tile, one badly judged landing– His stomach lurched and his mouth fell open.
She reached the edge.
Didn't slow.
And jumped.
“RED!”
She cleared the gap between the library and the adjoining classroom building, landed hard on the opposite ledge, rolled once, and came immediately back to her feet.
Luis stared. Holy gods.
Red took off again.
Naturally, Luis ran after her. He wasn't sure when it became a competition but yet he was compelled to chase after her. Maybe it was his family - 18 cousins and counting created a very competitive childhood.
Red didn't appear aware that they were competing, which Luis decided was probably an unfair advantage.
Red was fast. Chloe was faster in a straight sprint. Luis knew that from extensive and humiliating experience. But Red didn't move like Chloe.
Chloe ran the way she fenced: every movement economical, deliberate, practiced until it was almost impossible to improve. Even when she looked spontaneous, Luis knew she'd already thought three steps ahead.
Red seemed to make decisions in midair.
She didn't flow around obstacles so much as challenge them to keep up. She trusted her body in a way that was almost unsettling, throwing herself into jumps before Luis had even finished calculating whether they were possible. Half the time he couldn't tell whether she had a plan or whether gravity simply hadn't caught up with her yet.
At one point she disappeared over a rooftop and Luis was certain she'd fallen, only for her to swing around a drainpipe and drop onto a balcony below.
Luis almost ran into a bench watching her.
“Okay,” he panted. “That's ridiculous.”
He sped up.
Red finally stopped atop one of the old administration buildings. Luis slowed beneath it. For the first time since he'd spotted her, she was completely still.
She sat on the edge of the roof, one knee pulled to her chest, staring upward. At the moon.
For the first time all evening, Red wasn't moving. She looked... peaceful.
Not bored. Not restless. Just quietly content, as though the entire sprint across the rooftops had merely been the price of earning five uninterrupted minutes beneath the stars.
Luis smiled to himself. Maybe everyone needed somewhere they could breathe.
“RED!”
Red nearly launched herself off the roof. She spun around.
“What the–”
Her eyes found him below.
“Clocks, Luis!” Red pressed a hand to her chest. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“You just jumped between two four-story buildings.”
“It was the fastest way across” Red shrugged like that was a valid answer, before ducking out of view. A moment later, a red boot appeared over the gutter. Then a black one.
Red caught the drainpipe, shimmied down several feet, swung onto a windowsill, dropped to a lower ledge and jumped the remaining distance. She landed beside him and brushed her hands on her pants. Luis just stared.
The ridiculous part was that she wasn't even breathing particularly hard.
He'd known she was quick, of course. Everyone knew Red was quick. He'd just never realised she was this good.
Which, now that he thought about it, was strange.
They'd all been at Auradon together for years. Luis had played enough games, sports and ridiculous dares with Red that he should have known if she could do... all this.
Weirdly though, he hadn't.
“What?”
“What do you mean, what?”
“What?”
“You were on the roof.”
Red glanced upward.
“So?”
“Running.”
“Yeah.”
“Across roofs.”
Red shrugged. “Quick evening stroll.”
“That was not a stroll.”
“An aggressive stroll then.”
Luis laughed.
Red started walking and he fell into step beside her. “Since when do you do that?”
Red's shoulders tightened for the briefest second. Luis almost missed it. Then she shoved her hands into her jacket pockets.
“Sometimes I get jumpy," she mumbled.
“Jumpy?”
“Too much energy.” She kicked a pebble from the path. “If I don't burn it off, my leg does this thing when I'm trying to sleep.”
Somewhere in the distance came the splash of the fountain near the main quad, while the wind stirred leaves through the old oak trees lining the path back to the dormitories.
Luis just nodded slowly, happy to just listen to Red.
“Chloe says it shakes the whole bed.”
Luis stumbled.
Red kept walking. “Apparently it's ‘extremely distracting.’” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “Personally, I think she's just being dramatic.”
Luis looked at her. There were several follow-up questions he could ask. Several he wanted to ask. Several he definitely did not want to.
Before he could decide which one, the bell tower chimed.
Luis's eyes widened. “It's almost eleven!”
“Congratulations.”
“Curfew is at eleven!”
“I am aware.”
“We have fifteen minutes!”
Red looked completely unconcerned.
Luis was already stretching his calves. “We'll need to run.”
Red snorted. “Now you're worried about running?”
“Red!”
“Fine, fine.” She rolled her eyes, although she turned toward the dorms. “I should get back anyway.”
“Exactly.”
“Chloe doesn't like it when I'm out too late.”
Luis paused.
Not “Uma doesn't like when I'm out late.” Not “I'll get detention.” Just “Chloe.”
He looked sideways at her.
Red caught him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Your face says something.”
Luis started jogging backward.
Actually…
“Hey, speaking of Chloe.”
Red groaned. “Dangerous start.”
“Do you know why she stopped running with me?”
Red stopped.
Luis took another two steps before realizing. He turned.
“What?”
“Our morning runs,” he questioned, more as a statement.
Red stared at him.
“You were coming to get her to run with you?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Used to be each and every Tuesday and Thursday. Like clockwork.” He nudged her with the clock reference, trying to make her laugh but she didn’t seem to react to the pun – more focused on the routine that used to exist between the Latino and her roommate.
Red's expression changed. Only slightly. But Luis knew Red. Something had clicked in her brain.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Every week.”
“You came to our room.”
“Yeah," he nodded.
“At six in the morning.”
He nodded again, slower. “That's generally when morning runs happen.”
Red ignored that.
“And you asked for Chloe.”
Luis frowned. “Yes?”
Red looked away. Then she rubbed a hand over her face. “Oh, you've got to be kidding me.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Red," he prodded, while trying to re-make eye contact.
“Don't worry about it.”
“Did I do something?”
“No.” She was almost too quick with that answer.
“Did Chloe say I did something?”
“No.” Slower this time.
“Then why did she stop running with me?”
Red looked back at him. For one strange second, she seemed almost embarrassed. Then her usual smirk returned. “I wouldn't worry about it too much, big guy.”
That was not an answer.
“Red–”
The bell tower chimed again. Luis's eyes widened. “We've got to go!”
He took off. Red's laughter echoed behind him.
Then, seconds later, she flew past. “Race you home!”
“You had a head start!”
“Sounds like a you problem!”
Luis stared after her. Then grinned and sprinted to catch up with her. She might be nimble, but Luis' hamstrings weren't that size for nothing.
The next Thursday morning, Luis decided to go back to his morning runs. Talking to Red had reminded him that some routines were worth holding onto, even if the people you shared them with changed around you. (Or somehow learnt parkour)
The sun had only just begun climbing above the eastern hills, painting the castle windows in soft gold. Groundskeepers were already out tending flowerbeds, waving cheerfully as sine early risers jogged past, while somewhere across campus the kitchens had started on making breakfast. For the first time in weeks, the morning felt familiar again to Luis.
He was stretching outside his dorm when someone slapped him between the shoulder blades.
“Ready to lose, Biceps?”
Luis almost fell over. He turned.
Chloe stood behind him in running clothes, blue curls tied high, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet. Luis blinked.
“Chloe?”
“Yes?”
“You're here to run.”
She frowned. “That was the plan.”
“With me.”
Now she looked uncomfortable. “Oh. Right.”
Luis slowly smiled.
Chloe noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you smiling like that?”
“No reason.”
“Luis.”
He stretched one arm across his chest. “It's good to have you back.”
Her expression softened. “Yeah.” She smiled. “Sorry I've been…busy.”
“Sure.”
“I have.”
“I didn't say anything.” Luis laughed.
Luis believed her.
Well... mostly.
There were still questions sitting quietly in the back of his mind. A few weeks' worth of them, if he was being honest. Questions about Wonderland. About the awkward morning outside her dorm. About why she'd suddenly stopped showing up without ever really explaining why.
He could have asked.
Instead he looked at Chloe beside him, cheeks pink from the cold. She looked more like herself than she had in weeks. Somehow, that felt like enough.
Chloe shoved his shoulder, breaking him out of his headspace.
“Come on. Before I decide to run alone.”
She started down the path. Luis followed.
For a minute neither of them said very much.
They didn't have to.
Luis realised, with some surprise, that they had automatically fallen back into the same positions they always ran in. Chloe half a stride ahead whenever the path narrowed, Luis drifting alongside whenever it widened. Years of shared runs had turned it into instinct. Neither of them seemed to notice they'd done it.
He grinned a little to himself, it felt good to feel normal again.
As they passed the girls' dormitory, movement in one of the second-floor windows caught his eye.
A curtain shifted. For just a second, he caught a flash of red hair. Then it vanished.
Luis looked at Chloe.
Chloe was very deliberately staring straight ahead.
Whatever had happened over the past few weeks, whatever strange orbit Chloe and Red seemed to have settled into, Chloe looked happier than she'd looked since Wonderland. Luis couldn't really argue with that.
His smile widened. Interesting. Finally some gossip Max would value... But that could be for later. Now, he finally had his training buddy back.
“Race you to the bridge?”
Chloe's eyes immediately narrowed.
“You're going to lose.”
She took off. Luis watched her disappear around the bend for exactly half a second before shaking his head.
There she was.
Three weeks ago he'd been standing outside her dorm wondering if he'd somehow lost one of his oldest friends without even knowing why.
Now she was cheating at races again.
And you know what, that almost just felt like progress.
Luis laughed and sprinted after her.
Their footsteps echoed over the old stone bridge just as they always had. Chloe still accelerated too early. Luis still thought she underestimated how much ground he could make up over distance. The rhythm returned so naturally that, for a few precious minutes, it almost felt as though Wonderland had never happened at all.
Maybe Chloe Charming hadn't changed quite as much as he'd thought.
Red of Hearts, on the other hand?
Luis wasn't so sure.