Chapter Text
“Can we please call it something cooler?” Fabian whines.
“The goal here is not cool,” Adaine protests.
“The goal of this club should always be cool.”
She debates flinging her crystal at his head. But they’re in the library.
“It’s not even a real club, it—”
“Like what about… Patricide Partners?” He really punches in the ‘p’s, jazzing it up.
“The Oedipal Complex,” she says.
“Adaine. That’s gross.” He makes ‘gross’ a five syllable word. She grins in satisfaction. She’d been hoping for three at least, five was decisive victory.
“Can we really even call it a club if we’re just two people?” he continues. He’s being Particular now, that Fabian way like there’s some proper way to do this and she’s being impossibly pedestrian. It’s particularly infuriating as this was her idea to begin with.
“It’s not a real club,” she says again. In case he forgot.
“Not to mention the phrasing. It’s too ambiguous. It sounds like I killed your dad or you killed my dad. I don’t know.”
“Fine,” she says with a huff, dropping her crystal to her lap. “Fine. We’ll just leave it as Fabian and Adaine, it’s fine. It’s easier that way anyway.”
In the six factorial permutations of their party’s group chats for various planning and surprising and gossiping purposes, specifically naming most of them had been incredibly important for identification. The responsibility was usually gleefully taken on by Fig or Kristen, also usually centered around group chats of three or more. Direct message conversation didn’t get bogged down in a list of other names. There wasn’t a need for it. But she’d seen that Riz and Gorgug had named their chat “Not Easy Being Green” and felt inspired.
“No, no,” Fabian says. He snatches her crystal up, his hand brushing against hers. He starts typing with a nod. “It’s… I like it.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she says. “It doesn’t matter that much.”
“And besides, I would have killed your father if the opportunity arose,” he says, so easily. Even two years on, it’s a sentiment so validating and kind it makes her throat tighten.
It seemed like such a good joke when she’d first thought of it — something she and Fabian have in common which was a limited list, but funnier than “Recovering Rich Kids”— but shifting it ever so slightly does remind her that she’s referencing some of the worst moments of their respective lives.
“Well, I probably couldn’t have killed your father,” she says, swallowing hard and taking her crystal back slowly when Fabian holds it out. He doesn’t look as affected by the sudden energy turn to the traumatic, just grins at her. She thinks maybe she should feel patronized, but she doesn’t.
“We can always change it later,” he says. “When we come up with something better.”
It takes a beat longer than it should for her to let go of the heaviness, to re-embrace the joke of it all. There is an unusual comfort to meeting Fabian’s eye across the library table and knowing that there is someone who knows a little bit of the heaviness of it. Different circumstances, different complexes, and yet the same scarlet letter, an awkward bloody P.
“When,” she echoes, rolling her eyes. It’s just a joke, they remind each other. It can be a joke. “Let’s see you come up with something better.”
—
It’s not an official club.
But for the first time in four years she and Fabian end up with a regular hang out time. It’s strange. He’s one of her closest friends but they’ve never shared something just the two of them, not a band or a sport or a side project.
It’s senior year and Tuesday afternoons sees Fig and Gorgug with a weekly jam sesh and Kristen with GSA meetings and Riz putting in hours at his heaven work-study. When everyone breaks at the end of the day to head off to their activities, it’s Fabian and Adaine with nowhere in particular to go.
They don’t have to spend the time together. But the first week of the year when everyone’s schedules settle, he stays behind with her in the library, playing games on his crystal while she studies, and offers her a ride home after.
And then they do it again. And again. And again.
She oddly does like having company while she works. And she knows that Fabian doesn’t like being alone if he doesn’t have to. She doesn’t pressure him to do his homework and he doesn’t make fun of her for starting assignments weeks in advance.
They end up getting shushed an inordinate amount of times, between Fabian playing videos out loud in his phone like a heathen and her getting distracted by something in a reading and falling into a rant. It’s a couple weeks before they start skipping the library entirely, forgetting why they even chose to stay there in the first place. Fabian drives her to his place, where she can study in the Seacaster’s library, which she loves. It’s full of eclectic tomes from origins unknown, odd in shape and color and content, and has wide windows overlooking one of the verandas in the backyard.
Fabian now has no discouragements to playing videos out loud, but other than that it’s a wonderful set up.
She likes spending time with Fabian. She likes the reminder that they’re actually friends.
“Of course we’re actually friends, Adaine, what does that even mean?” His voice pitched up ridiculously in his indignation.
She shrugs. “My anxiety has a lot of unproductive ideas. Like if we would be friends if we weren’t an adventuring party.”
Fabian scoffs, oddly conspiratorially, like they’re on the same side, derisive of her anxiety.
“Obviously we would, that’s why we are an adventuring party,” he says.
“I meant you and me, specifically,” she says, turning back to her notebook with her best air of casuality.
“Oh,” he says and shifts slightly in his seat, sitting up more from where he’d been sprawled lazily against the armrest.
(There are two huge sea blue armchairs in front of one of the center windows in the back of the library. The view is perfect and the cushions are the softest things in the world. She loves curling up in them and sinking in deep, and wonders sometimes how every single item of furniture in her parents’ home managed to be uncomfortable.)
“Sorry,” she says, ducking her head slightly, scribbling a little nonsense on her page. The back of her neck prickles. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
He waves her off. “You’re fine,” he says. “We are friends. We can talk about stuff like this.”
She nods absently, stares down at the page, tracing the shapes of letters absently. “I think I projected a lot onto you freshman year. I think you reminded me a little of my family sometimes.” She winces again. This is going horribly. It’s no wonder she’s never been emotionally honest with Fabian. “Except of course you’re not evil and horrible and I’m really glad you’re my friend because you’re great, and I guess sometimes I get frustrated that I might not have gotten to see past all those things I thought at first.”
She digs her pen into the page so hard she’s surprised it doesn’t tear, just leaves an egregious ink blot in the middle of her notes.
Fabian hums. “Yes, well, I was also a bit of an ass our freshman year,” he says. It’s a testament to his growth that he would even admit it. “It’s just as likely that I would have written you off as a huge nerd. And I would have regretted that a lot.”
“Only I am a huge nerd,” she reminds him.
He snorts. She laughs lightly, shoulders relaxing back down.
“Maybe so, Adaine,” he says. “But you’re also… of our friends, you’re maybe the best at being a friend. If that makes sense. It’s an honor to be cared about by you.”
Her nose wrinkles. “I don’t—”
“You are,” he insists. “You were in freshman year as well.”
“I was a brat in freshman year,” she says. In the throes of unbelievable levels of anxiety, angrier than she’s ever been in her life.
“You held everyone to account,” he adds. “You were and are very sure of what it means to be a friend, of how to remedy injustice, of how to treat people well. I hope that in any world I’d be able to get over myself and see the value in that.”
Tension roils in her again. She’s never been good at receiving compliments. Not when they’re unearned.
But she’s been working on that. Compliments don’t have to be won fiercely. Love can be freely given.
“Thank you, Fabian,” she says instead of protesting. “That’s very kind of you to say.”
He claps her on the shoulder. “Besides, what point is there in imagining things that didn’t happen?”
She huffs. “It’s important to learn from past mistakes,” she says. “So you don’t make them again.”
Which is true. But it’s also something her anxiety preys on, clinging to concepts of mistakes and correct choices to grade herself again, perfectionism like a poised precision weapon dissecting everything she’s ever done to break her down in any decision.
“The past is the past.” He shakes her shoulder lightly. “Eyes on the future, right?”
She decides to let the light force of it loosen and expel that anxious line of reasoning, brings a hand to her temple jokingly. “Always.”
—
Club meetings tend to follow the same agenda. Fabian drives them to his house, she unpacks her books and gets to work, he crashes artfully somewhere nearby and fucks around on his crystal. They break for snacks about an hour in. Sometimes scattered throughout they’ll have some deeper conversation, the persistent overhanging dread of graduation, the predictable upcroppings of old traumas, the inevitable dissection of Kristen’s latest situationship. Sometimes they just work next to each other in silence.
This time, their peaceful parallel play is interrupted by Fabian swearing like a sailor and chucking his crystal to the table top. Adaine’s pen jerks across her notebook.
“What the fuck, man?” she demands.
“Sorry!” he says, running his hands through his hair. “Apologies.” He groans and reaches for his crystal again.
“What happened?”
He shakes his head. “Just this… stupid crystal game. It’s absolutely rigged, there is simply no way to pass this level.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Sounds like a skill issue.”
He sputters in indignation. “I am an elite athlete, Adaine. My hand-eye coordination is incomprable. I can guarantee it’s not a skill issue.”
She glances down at the spread ahead of her, readings that aren’t due until Friday, an essay due two weeks from now.
“I bet you fifty gold I can beat it.”
The rest of the afternoon sees her and Fabian squished into the same plush armchair in the library, passing his crystal back and forth.
The game is some cooking theme tap fest, half hand-eye coordination, half time management. Adaine enters a flow state with it fairly easily, the speed mashing ideally with the anxious energy that still sometimes sits beneath her skin. She taps away, taking orders and filling them as fast as she can against the speeding clock.
Despite honor and gold on the line, the energy of each round is slightly intoxicated, she and Fabian eagerly watching and cheering each other on as they trade off attempts at this one impossible level. In between attempts, the smack talk gets near degrading, but more often than not ends in hiccuping laughter.
Here’s another thing she and Fabian have in common: competitiveness.
Maybe it shouldn’t be encouraged, these feelings that come from a place of having something to prove, of having to be perfect, maybe even of having gotten, through wildly divergent paths, to the same point where the only option was to kill their respective fathers. Maybe this would be concerning to outsiders, their grinding teeth, their hunching shoulders, the feral animalistic determination they throw at this stupid crystal game. But there’s an understanding here, between the two of them, that the fire of it is fun.
When she punches in the last order of pizza, a fraction of a second before the clock timer hits zero, a wave of euphoria explodes in her and over Fabian.
“Yes, Adaine!” he cheers, grabbing her around her shoulders and shaking. They’re pressed up tight in the seat to begin with, not to mention craning over one small crystal, she wonders briefly if they’ll simply fall out of the chair. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
There’s no mention of the 50 gold or superior skill, just pure celebration as she punches the air, almost elbowing Fabian in the face, as he flips off his own crystal and hoots their victory.
“Your turn,” she says, tossing the crystal back to him for the next level.
He grabs it eagerly and hops back in.
One victory fuels another fuels another. They’re making far too much noise for a library but it’s Fabian’s big big house and it’s nice to fill the space with sound, with manic laughter, with explosive cheers.
They stop keeping track of wins, because ultimately, the competition of it is more fun when they’re on the same side. And she thinks, fanning herself during a short break, it’s a good the only thing they’re up against right now is a stupid little game.
Because they make a bloodthirsty team.
Club meetings start to include a surprising amount of Cooking Crash.
—
“You know, I had quite a crush on you our freshman year,” Fabian says one afternoon weeks later. They’re in the Seacasters sprawling kitchen, taking a snack break from the latest level of the game, and Adaine nearly chokes to death on an almond.
“Christ, Adaine!” He pats at her back while she hacks up half a lung.
“I’m sorry, the same freshman year you made out with my sister?” she demands as soon as she can breathe again.
“I think if you remember correctly your sister made out with me,” he says, like that’s a defense, like that’s anything.
“Semantics,” she sputters, squinting harshly at him. She feels deeply bewildered, caught off guard in a way she almost never is because of her anxiety. Her brain scrambles for any light of reason in the dark and finds nothing. “This… this is a weird thing to lie about, why are you lying about this?”
He scoffs like he’s offended. “I’m not lying,” he says. His gaze catches on her for a second and his expression softens. “Look, I didn’t think this would make you uncomfortable, I just thought it would be funny. I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” she says, not sure how to soften the way he is, never sure how to stop sounding like she’s an argumentative child.
“You seem uncomfortable,” he points out, unhelpfully.
“That just doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “Freshman year, I—” Freshman year… freshman year she was a mess. She was worse than a mess, she was a mess’s mess. She threw up more times than she laughed that year. She had more panic attacks than full nights of rest. Freshman year was a mess.
Fabian shrugs, like maybe it is no big deal, like maybe it is something that’s real.
“You were… very cute,” he offers easily. “And… I don’t know, it was a crush. I had a lot of crushes.”
She bites her tongue hard. Fabian catches it though, raises his eyebrow, gives a small encouraging flourish.
She turns away slightly, fully facing the snacks on the table in front of her.
Is there any way to put it into words? Not succinctly. Not conversationally. She imagines pages and pages, notes like she’d take in class or reading a textbook, half method half madness, the inside of her brain in splattered ink. She’s never put words to it before. It’s sat in looks exchanged with Riz and moments with her friends of fond or frustrated alienation.
“We should—” Fabian starts, but she does want to put some words to it, she does want to understand, she does want someone else to understand maybe.
“How did you know?” she asks the almonds.
The silence is swallowing, makes her feel like she’s drowning in the ocean at night.
“Adaine,” Fabian says and that drop of concern in his voice that sounds like condescension is like gasoline on that fire that burns in her. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s okay, you know, that you don’t—”
“It’s not that I don’t,” she snaps. She knows that’s what everyone thinks, and she knows that it’s close but it’s also not all the way there. She glances over at Fabian, searching for the shock.
“It’s not?” he echoes. He’s leaned back in his kitchen stool like this is so casual. She could be mad about that but also she wants this to be casual.
“Well, it is don’t but… it’s also more like… can’t.”
Fabian tilts his head. “Why can’t you?”
She snorts. “Because… everything.” Maybe if it was anyone else, she’d look away at this point, but it’s Fabian and this is the one thing she thinks she’ll always be able to trust him with. “I took the first real breath of my life the moment my father died.”
It’s not the same for him, she knows. But he does understand it.
His hand comes to rest on top of hers for a moment. His eye follows but she keeps looking at his face, now in profile.
“So like you couldn’t.”
“Yes,” she says, because maybe that’s closest. “But… not couldn’t because they would have been upset with me if I had, which they definitely would have.” She could almost smile thinking about how apocalyptically pissed her parents would be if in freshman year they found out she had a crush on any of her friends. On anyone at all, maybe, any deadbeat adventurer from Aeugfort. “It was and still is like… the way that it felt, when I was home, when I killed my father, everything with Aelwyn. The amount of feeling that was, the stress and the fear and the anxiety my whole life. The hurt of it all.” She holds her breath for a second, blinking and breathing against the sudden threat of tears. Fabian’s hand squeezes tight. “How could I ever feel as much just worrying about if someone at school likes me back?”
How could it ever feel as much? How could she ever feel more hurt than a million moments realizing her parents did not love her? How could she ever feel more loved than Aelwyn ready to die for her?
She pictures Skrank for some reason with a bouquet of flowers at her locker and tries to imagine a world where that feels like anything.
Fabian must picture something equally ridiculous because he snorts the same time she does. The tightness in her throat eases.
It’s ridiculous. It always has been.
“I have never thought about it that way,” he concedes. There’s a smile in his voice, bolstering, fond.
“And I know that it’s different still,” she says, shrugging half heartedly. “I know that it’s not like that for others, that it can be both at the same time for them. I mean, Kristen was going through a lot of similar stuff and it was completely different for her. But for me, it’s still a little bit don’t and a little bit can’t and a lot of couldn’t .”
A spectrum, she knows but doesn’t say. It feels crazy that this is the most she’s ever articulated it before, that she’s saying the unsaid that’s existed in her for so long to Fabian in his kitchen over almonds and Fanta.
Somehow she’s glad it’s this though. She’s glad it’s Fabian, who’s listening intently and holding her hand and likely lightly gifting her some inspiration to make it through this, to put it all together, to get it out.
“Well, seeing how these things go for Kristen, it’d seem you dodged a bullet, by not,” he says.
“I think even for high school, how it’s been for Kristen has been… a lot.”
“Freshman year, it was… just a crush,” he explains. “Just a little thing, butterflies and such.”
Butterflies.
Adaine tries and fails to imagine that kind of nervousness, fluttery and light, butterflies instead of bees and spiders. What would it be to have an anxiety that doesn’t consume her entire being, that isn’t a cold crawling consuming tingle along her entire spine, that doesn’t make her feel like she’s going to die.
“I understand a bit, I guess,” he says. “After Leviathan, it did make… certain things feel silly, less important.”
“Like making out with my sister?” she asks, instead of letting him dance around it. (He’s a good dancer, he can try fucking harder.)
He squirms. “Well, I… you… I mean… y-yes, like making out with your sister.”
She grins sharply and sits up straighter.
“No… offense,” he says slowly, even more cautiously than he had with anything earlier. Fair enough. Everything with Aelwyn is a field of landmines always. “But in retrospect, that was… pretty much the first time someone had been interested. So it felt like the thing to do.”
Adaine swallows a comment about Aelwyn and her interests, especially three years ago. She pushes thoughts of those who have been interested in her even farther away.
“That I don’t get at all,” she says. “Sometimes it seems like it’s more important to be in a relationship whether or not you're even enjoying it.”
Fabian shrugs, eye dropping away from her. “I mean… wouldn’t it be nice to know that you mean something special to someone?”
“That’s stupid,” she says before she can catch herself. “I have that. It’s called my friends and family who love me.” It’s true and she believes it, but she is far too fervent and probably too loud as well. “Sorry I—”
“No,” he says, tapping his arm against hers. “You’re right, of course. Big surprise there.”
A smile unfurls across her face, something warm and contented settling in her chest.
“You’re very special, Fabian,” she says, and reaches for the almonds again. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“From you?” he demures. “Always.”
She pelts him with almonds and everything goes on, normal again but also a little more.
—
Knowing about Fabian’s old crush doesn’t make her uncomfortable.
It just ruins everything.
It starts to haunt her at all hours of the day. When she’s getting dressed in the morning and she stares at her bed head frizz in the mirror. He thought you were cute. When she takes her meds and he had a crush on you.
Previously the category of people who had crushes on her have been suspect. Biz, who’s attention had been insidious and unsettling. Oisin, who… god, she doesn’t want to think about Oisin. (Oisin who hadn’t seemed suspect at first, who’s attention hadn’t felt insidious and unsettling, who had made her feel stupider than she’s ever felt before in her life.)
Adding Fabian to that bunch disproves the rule, upends everything, makes the problem detach itself to her and relocate. She hadn’t even realized that she thought that only bad people were attracted to her until Fabian makes her realize that maybe there wasn’t a pattern at all.
Now that it’s not a pattern, it’s all she can think about.
When she’s sitting in class and suddenly scans the room to see if anyone is looking at her. When she’s walking down the hall and suddenly straining for any whisper in case it’s about her.
The world is different, knowing that not thinking about romance doesn’t preclude her from being thought of, knowing that romantic attention can be directed at her and not be something warped and ominous and threatening.
When she’s at lunch, her eyes keep darting to Fabian. He’s the same as always, picking at his snacks and talking with his mouth full and snorting milk at their friends’ jokes. She studies him, but retains no information. If there’s a test she’s doomed.
When he drives her home, her hands sweat. When she works on homework, her pen stalls and she stares unfocused at her notebook pages. When she lies in bed and tries to trance, she replays it all in her head, the conversation, every single moment she’s spent with Fabian, any new moment from the day.
When they spend their Tuesdays together, everything goes in overdrive. She swims in details, the short distance between their shoulders, the number of times his knee bumps into hers, the heat she can feel when he leans into her space, the movement of his hair, the length of his eyelashes, the angles of sunlight through the big big back window of the library that hit his face.
Fabian acts like everything is fine, like nothing has changed. Maybe nothing has. Maybe it was just a funny little story: he had a crush on her in freshman year.
The problem is evidently her. Because she’s not uncomfortable. Because Fabian is her friend. He wouldn’t make her uncomfortable. If she was, he’d do anything to rectify it. There’s no reason for this to be anything significant.
But it is. But she can’t stop thinking about it. But she’s starting to get comfortable with the thought of it.
And that is going to ruin everything.
—
“Would you be mad if I kissed someone?” she asks Riz.
He turns from the pinboard on the back wall of his office with a frown. Traces of pale Saturday morning light slants through the gaps between his blinds, but his face looks like it’s 2 in the morning.
“Is this a riddle?” he asks, taking a big gulp of coffee from his metal thermos like he’s already raring at the starting line for it.
“No,” she says. He let her have the swivel chair— he does most of his work standing anyway— and she twists it in a quick oscillation back and forth and back and forth.
Riz rubs his chin, like it is a puzzle and she’s just pointed out a new piece.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“Would you be mad?” she echoes.
“If you kissed someone,” he finishes with a nod. “I heard you.” He tips his head. “A particular someone?”
“Well… no,” she says, face heating up. She’s being embarrassingly presumptuous, as she doesn’t know necessarily that… any particular someone will want to kiss her. This just feels like the necessary step to take to start the process, something that has to be done first before she even starts to think about that.
“How am I supposed to know if I’d be mad if I don’t know who you kissed?” Riz asks.
“I didn’t kiss anyone,” she protests, arms crossing tightly over her chest. “And… I don’t know, I’d be mad if you kissed someone.”
“What? Why?”
“Because of the thing we never talk about,” she says. “Where our friends are super horny all the time and we’re not.”
Riz rubs the back of his neck. “Oh.”
“We don’t ever talk about it,” she says. “But it’s always been nice to know that you understand. I think it would have been horrible if you didn’t, if I felt alone in it.” She smiles shakily at him. “I don’t want you to feel alone.”
Riz’s eyes drop to his feet, his shoulders hunching up. “That’s… that’s really nice, Adaine,” he says, clearing his throat.
She wiggles the chair around to kick lightly at his ankle. “You’d do the same for me.”
He nods, leaning his hip against the desk.
“Yeah… except,” he says. “I don’t want to kiss anybody right now. And you do?”
She buries her face in her hands and groans. “It’s not like that,” she protests.
“What do you mean it’s not like that? It’s literally like that.”
“I'm curious,” she says. “I’m considering running an experiment.”
Something excited sparks in Riz’s eyes. “An experiment?”
She shrugs. “I don’t really know how much of it is a no to me, you know?”
“It’s a spectrum,” he agrees. “Ace stuff.”
It’s the first time either of them have said the word out loud. It’s been floating around in the air for years now, a tangible thing summoned by Jawbone’s sex ed assemblies and the Thisslespings’ encyclopedia. And just like that he’s plucked it out of the air, like a bubble popping and showering them in little soapy sparkles.
She exhales and he does too, at the same time.
“I want to try it out,” she says. “Some of it at least. See what it’s like.”
Riz nods. “I think… I super don’t,” he says. “Right now at least.”
“I might hate it.” It feels important to say. It feels good to say to Riz, who will understand, who will believe her. There’s so much baggage everywhere else. She hates the assumptions from all sides, both that she is completely uninterested in anything or that she’s some late bloomer. She doesn’t want to prove any of them right or wrong, she doesn’t want to feel doomed to be anything anyone expects of her.
Why do you always have to be so difficult, Adaine?
She’s not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that the voice in her head still sounds so much like her parents. It makes it easier for her to tell it to shut up, so there’s that.
“You should make a list,” Riz says, tapping his nose.
“I should make a chart,” she shoots back.
Riz points at her. “Yes!”
—
It takes her two weeks still after talking with Riz, after getting her charts together, after deciding definitively, yes she is going to do this, to actually say anything.
It’s the third Tuesday of roiling with the tension of it just beneath the surface, of studying Fabian obsessively out of the corner of her eyes searching for an in, of missing half of what he says while talking herself in and out of this. They’re in the library, at one of the tables because she has an essay to write due Friday and she’s gotten down maybe ten words since starting because her fingers keep unconsciously going to type his name every time his knee brushes hers.
It’s untenable. She has homework to do and she can’t because of this distraction and that is unacceptable.
She huffs and pushes her laptop away and sits up and stares directly at Fabian for the first time since his stupid confession.
“I think that you should kiss me,” she announces, jutting her chin out like declaring a thesis statement, like the opening argument of a debate.
Fabian freezes absolutely still in his seat, tinny noise of a video on his crystal playing over and over again as he looks across at her unblinking.
She swallows. A wave of emotion, of procrastinated anxiety, of humiliation, of all the things she hadn’t expected when pragmatically writing out lists with Riz and silently evaluating the pros and cons of picking Fabian for this, crashes over her head and leaves her gasping for air.
She wants this. Not with that amorphous hot teenage want that she’s heard described so many times. But wants it just the same. She wants to try this, wants to know what it’s like to kiss someone, wants to know what she’ll feel about it, and does actually want it to be Fabian who she tries this with because he’s her friend and he had a crush on her even though she was at her absolute lowest and told her about it now because he trusts her.
It would hurt to be rejected, even if she’s maybe more detached from the want of it than others would be.
“I’m sorry, I don’t—” Her eyes widened and watered in horror. Liked , she thinks. Had a crush. Past tense. What is she doing? Why did she let herself want something this ill-advised even abstractly?
Fabian’s hand moves over hers on the table, warm skin and rough calluses. It’s the first time they’ve touched in weeks.
“Hey,” he says, his voice soft in that way that always surprises her. “Adaine.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I don’t know why I said that, I don’t know…”
His other hand, just as warm, just as rough, is on her cheek, is guiding her gaze back up to his, storm on storm, high pressure and low pressure fronts about to collide.
“You want me to kiss you?” he asks, even, unassuming. His expression gives away nothing, or maybe she’s still blinking too much.
“I—” Her hand twitches beneath his on the table. “I want to know what it’s like.”
“Alright,” he says. Before she can process, before her anxiety can grab more ground, before she can talk herself out of it again, he pushes up in his seat and presses across the table and kisses her.
(It feels like that, like a fluid quick thing, like him kissing her. But burned into her brain forevermore is the moment when he gets close enough that they’re sharing air as he inhales, enough that she can feel the heat radiating off his skin, enough that she can make out every single articulated color in the pattern of his iris. He pauses and she knows that it’s a pause and not a hesitation. She knows that it’s for her. To change her mind, to pull away, to be in control of this moment. Only it’s barely a moment, not a pause but the faintest little stutter, the whole thing is fluid and quick because she closes that little inch of distance and kisses him.)
His lips are impossibly soft, she notices first.
Her eyes are closed because she knows that’s what she’s supposed to do, so really all there is is feeling his mouth with hers. The smooth feel of the chapstick he applies throughout the day, the smell of mint from the gum he usually chews after lunch, all these pleasant sensory details like he’d prepared just for this. Her lips are chapped and she tries to remember if she brushed her teeth in the sleepy blur of the morning. Too late now to do anything to fix it. His hand squeezes hers. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, halfways between a hum and a moan. He doesn’t pull away so she doesn’t either.
It doesn’t feel like fireworks or sparks, no rose blush filter or spinning camera.
It feels like the first time Fig grabbed her hand and squeezed, like the first time Kristen full body hugged her, like the first time Riz made her tea, like the first time Gorgug loaned her a hoodie. Like Jawbone making her pancakes the first morning she stayed with him. Like Aelwyn looking her directly in the eyes and saying “I love you, Adaine.”
Which is to say it feels good.
She likes that the table is fully between them. Likes that Fabian is only touching her cheek and her hand and her lips. Any more and she thinks she’d be overwhelmed.
She likes the way his nose feels poking against her cheek. She likes the way he moves his mouth against hers but keeps it closed. She likes the way his hand slips down to her neck and the scrape of his skin against hers. She likes that it’s Fabian and that she can tell it’s Fabian the whole time, that it’s her friend and she knows she’s safe.
She likes it.
She pulls away with a smile. Fabian opens his eye slowly, glancing down at her mouth and swallowing.
“That was nice,” she says, turning her hand over to grab his.
He nods for several seconds, blinking like he’s waking up. There’s a heat in his eyes that she knows is beyond her. But for the moment, she thinks that’s okay.
“That was, uh, what you were looking for, I hope?” he says, clearing his throat.
The formality startles a laugh out of her.
“Yes,” she says. “Thank you.”
His hand is still gentle on the side of her face. She leans into it and watches as his gaze slides across her again.
“Um, anytime, Adaine,” he says.
She sits up taller in her seat and kisses the corner of his mouth as a thank you and maybe some residual curiosity. It’s chaste, less skilled and smooth, but just as sweet and pleasant, she hopes.
She keeps her eyes open to know where she’s going, and takes in the way his brows furrow together, the way he seems to melt forward into her, the way his fingers twitch eagerly against her cheek.
Her hand uses his chest for a moment for balance, and that’s very nice too, the soft fabric of his gym shirt beneath her fingers. He’s warm and smooth and familiar even in all the newness.
She sinks back into her seat, beams up at him and his stunned expression. She feels satisfied, satiated.
But she can imagine the swell of how this is supposed to go, the heavy string music and yearning piano. Something more should go here: passion, confession, drama.
A soap opera version of her with tears in her eyes, a quiver in her lips or her voice or somewhere worse, “Oh, Fabian, I think I’ve always loved you, I’ve just been too blind to see it.”
Some equally melodramatic response that makes her cringe.
This is not any of that. It’s not quivering or burning or anything overwhelming. That would be terrible.
She just feels satisfied. Contented. Grateful, to Fabian, for a lot, for being her friend, for indulging her, for that pause, for not questioning her then or now.
Maybe an explanation is warranted, but she’s not sure yet how to explain it, this weird half state of interest she’s in. It’s an experiment, in physicality, but also in emotion.
She wanted it to be Fabian. She likes that it was Fabian. She knew the whole time that it was Fabian and that made it all the better.
She tries to say all that with a smile.
Fabian smiles back, the one that makes him look young and small and soft.
Her face feels a little hot, and she ducks her head, reopening her laptop and feeling a new sense of focus and invigoration, like the next sentences of her essay are finally in her reach.
Fabian spends another couple seconds halfway on top of the table, leaning over her setup. He slowly shifts back into his seat, and even as she gets sucked into this essay, brain electric and fingers flying, finally satisfied and clear, she can feel the weight of his stare.
His knee brushes against hers again and then settles against it, unassuming but present. He picks up his phone from the table top and fiddles with it one hand. His other slides across the table and brushes her elbow, the pooling fabric of the cardigan she’s wearing. She doesn’t quite feel the pressure of touch but can tell that his hand is there, and that feels right. This all feels just right.
Something in her buzzes but for once it’s not anxiety, it’s the success of this experiment, a good grade in trying new things.
The essay pours out of her. Fabian complains less than he usually does when she goes to read parts outloud. The afternoon passes casually and simply.
When it’s time to drive her home, he stops her at the library door, a hand at her elbow again.
“Is this…?” he starts slowly. His eye holds a trace of those things she’s far from: the sweeping piano, the tight close ups, the brimming melodrama. But Fabian has always been one for the dramatic. It’s not surprising, it’s not off putting. It makes her feel fond. “I mean, was that… something…?”
“I liked it,” she says. Which she’s said before. “A lot. Thank you.” Which she’s said before.
She hasn’t gotten further than that yet. She had to work on the essay. This has been added to the pile of things to study, and maybe there should be more urgency attached but urgency is always a step away from anxiety and actually kissing Fabian has been none of that.
“Are you… I mean, is this… Any time?” Which he said before.
There’s heat in her face, even if there’s not heat anywhere else. She must be so red.
She nods. “Yes,” she says. “That sounds… I mean, if you liked… if you were interested in, um, any time, then… I mean, I might not every time but…”
Fabian cups her face in both his hands. They’re cool against the heat of her cheeks. She closes her eyes and tips her chin up, and when he kisses her, it’s calming. No urgency, no burning, no drama at all.
She exhales slowly through her nose at the way their lips slot together for a second, for two.
Fabian doesn’t push further or deeper. His mouth is gentle and light, but he kisses the curve of her lower lip, and then the bridge of her nose, the space between her brows, the center of her forehead.
It feels like turning on the fairy lights in her bedroom. She remembers to unclench her jaw and relax her shoulders for the first time all day.
Fabian clears his throat. “I, um,” he says. Each word gusts across her forehead. “Any time that you’d, uh, want to, I… yes.”
“Great,” she says. “That’s… great.”
Climbing onto the back of the Hangman feels the same, except she presses her cheek against the center of his back. He doesn’t say anything about it or when she sits back up a block away from the manor.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Adaine,” he says, when she climbs off. His voice is softer, threaded with something sweet, something like his inspiration but a little to the left.
“See you tomorrow, Fabian,” she repeats, and wonders if she sounds different too.
It feels okay though, that maybe some little things have changed right now, that there are these new little things. Because it doesn’t feel like some dramatic shift, like everything is different, like she’s in a brand new world.
She follows the same path up to the steps of the manor, hears the Hangman rev and peel away the same moment she crosses the threshold, kicks her shoes off at the door and takes in the bustling sounds of her loud warm home.
“Hey, kiddo,” Jawbone says when she treks through the kitchen. “How was your day?”
“Good,” she says, same as always. “I finished my enchantment essay. I think it’s really good, but do you have any time to read it over this week?”
It feels like she could say “I kissed Fabian.” in that same tone and feel the same about it, just an update about the variety of projects she’s working through. The only reason she doesn’t is because she knows it wouldn’t be that casual for everyone else, that it would be this big important world-changing thing in their eyes, that if Fig or Kristen are within earshot it will explode and be every bit of the melodrama she doesn’t want it to be.
“Aw, kid, I can give it a pass, but you know your old man can’t make heads or tails of that high level theory stuff.”
She smiles and leans her elbows against the counter, slouching the way she never was allowed to growing up.
“You give better notes than Fabian.”