#yeah y 'all i know nothing of harry potter my knowledge is zero

[sparethcsympathy]

// also question what's a popular movie/ show / book / game -- that everyone else loves, but you just can't get into ? like you hear so many great things but it's just not your cup of tea ?

[aty-altiria]

Three sneaky neighbors

No 25. I THINK I’LL JUST COLLAPSE RIGHT HERE, THANKS Disorientation | Blurred Vision | Ringing Ears

Word count: 1669

Universe: Harry Potter, MCU

Pairings: Fem!Harry/Steve Roger’s

Themes: Ringing ears, CA:TWS, pre-relationship

Summary: Holly’s next-door neighbour was a spy. She had been looking for the quiet life and she’d moved next door to a spy! Who gets shot at when she’s standing right there and starts up the pursuit of some masked vigilante like figure. Well, who was Holly kidding, she hated the quiet life and she very much was interested in the spy.

@whumptober2020

---

Steve heard the quiet cursing as he ascended the stairs to his apartment. As he approached, Steve quickly realized that it was his… admittedly stunning, neighbour. Her door was opposite Sharon, and besides Steve; though she had a bit of a nocturnal schedule, Steve often caught her when Steve was finishing his missions. He knew her name was Holly from his brief glimpses, and he knew that she was rather petite with black curls, green eyes, and possessed worker's hands filled with calluses.

As Steve rounded the corner, he found Holly glaring at her front door. She had a righteously unhappy expression across her face; it was almost frightening how furious she looked. Steve approached with caution.

"Are you alright?" he asked both because he was concerned and because he had to step over her to get to his own apartment.

Holly's head jerked up, and she grimaced: "I'd love you tell you 'yes,' but I've had better days honestly."

The British accent nearly caused Steve to flinch, almost, he hadn't heard one since Peggy, and he hadn't realized she was British like his first love. Though, if he was honest with himself, it was because of the accent that he stepped forward with a touch more confidence.

It had nothing to do with Natasha's earlier comments about his lacking love life.

"Can I help?"

"Uh…" she made a face, "it's not so much a 'help' thing." Holly made air quotes, and Steve was quietly thankful he'd seen Tony do the same, or it would have gone over his head.

"Then an ear to vent to?" he offered instead.

He saw the struggle on her face, then surrender filling in a moment later: "yeah, I think I might like that. But… can you maybe help me with my lock?"

Holly accepted Steve's offered hand, and he pulled her to her feet, then shot a look at the door. "You got locked out?"

"I forgot my key, and… well, these electronic locks hate me." She grumbled under her breath, and Steve caught the words, "-electronics just break around me, sometimes-"

Steve felt a measure of kinship form with Holly then, "Gotta agree with you there, I can barely get my cell phone to work." It was due to lack of knowledge, but he certainly understood where Holly was coming from, or well, he did in a manner of speaking. "I think I have a tool that could help; let me grab it." A tool would be a decent cover story. Steve, after all, wasn't about to use his bare hands to burst the lock right off her door to get her in - even though he was capable of it. "Give me a minute."

"Mhm, oh, and you might want to turn off your radio. You left it on, I think."

What?

He blinked, and something in his stomach sank.

He hadn't.

"Of course, just… wait here, alright, I'll be right back?"

"Sure," she settled against the wall to wait, "I'll be here. Nowhere else to go, really." And laughed lightly.

Holly watched Steve leave, watched his door close and waited for precisely three minutes till she heard it; a thud and a cry of pain. Holly instantly shoved off from the wall and grabbed for her wand. She moved toward the door- only to be abruptly pushed aside and ordered back by her and Steve's other neighbour, Sharon. Who, Holly may like to add, was holding a gun. Not that Holly could judge, she was in America, and her wand was technically a weapon as well, but still- Americans.

Holly, regardless, was massively curious about what was happening; she was a Gryffindor after all. Holly quickly followed despite Sharon's order.

She wasn't quite in the door when Sharon spoke up, and Holly halted her steps to eavesdrop like a proper Weasley.

Sharon introduced herself as Agent Carter and spoke to 'Rogers' about her protection duty. Holly covered her mouth to that, blinking in surprise. Her neighbours were spies? That was wicked. The twins would be massively jealous, and Hermione endlessly smug. Because clearly, Holly couldn't possess an everyday life even in the Muggle world. Not with spies as neighbours.

"I'm in pursuit," said Steve before there was a crashing sound, and he was darting past her. Steve caught her eye as they glanced at each other in shock before he was racing past, unable to stop. Holly didn't much mind; the thrill-seeker in her thought her day had turned for the better.

Superspies and a villain! This was wicked!

"Yes!" Holly pumped the air with her fist and quickly darted after Steve. She left Sharon in the dust but was hard-pressed to keep pace with Steve, Merlin above he was fast. The man went crashing through doors, glass, and walls without a care or even slowing. Holly herself had always been the fastest of the people she knew, but Steve was greatly outrunning her.

Holly caught up to Steve in time to watch him hurl a large circular shield at the runner who had apparently gone running across the bloody roofs. Not that she could judge, she'd followed Steve across those same roofs and through two destroyed walls.

Holly darted forward, she got herself instantly involved as the man caught the shield, and then she was rushing past Steve. Holly ducked under the shield as the man tossed it back. She heard Steve's sound of surprise as she slid across the ground and kicked out at the unknowns legs. The man twisted to avoid her as Holly came up, his metal fist slammed into her shoulder. Holly didn't bother dodging it, but she should have. The sheer force of the blow struck against the shield she'd layered over her jacket, and a loud bang went off.

Holly swore instantly and staggered back; her ears were ringing like mad after that. She hadn't expected so much sound from that. True, she hadn't been hurt, but the volume had been brutal.

Shaking off the ringing, Holly lifted her wand as she shot several spells toward the man. He didn't look surprised by it like Steve currently was; the man didn't react at all, really. Still, Holly didn't care that he wasn't, not as her spell made contact with his fake arm, which he was using it to block her. That was stupid. She wasn't using a gun. He was wrong if he thought he could just deflect or block her magic with his unique arm, except he was wrong. The spell hit him, hit the metal of his limb, and he dropped on the spot.

"Hah!" Holly yelled happily, and straightened flipping her hair over her shoulder, "Me: one, weird masky guy: zero!"

"H-Holly?" Steve called, and she glanced over as he joined her.

"Oh," she blushed, ducking her head, "Sorry, I just thought you'd want some help? Honestly, this is so much better than talking. Taking down a masked villain and working with super spies!" she squealed a bit, "So what are you then? CIA?" she leaned in eyes sparkling, "can I join?" Screw the everyday life; this was so much better! The rush was fantastic.

"Y-you aren't an Agent?"

"No?" she answered with a tilt of her head, "plain old Holly Potter." Lie, that was such a lie; she was anything but plain. "I'm a civilian at least," because she hadn't been allowed to become an Auror, all thanks to Umbridge. Blasted woman.

"Right… well," Steve dropped it for the moment and looked to the stunned man. "What did you do, shock him?"

"Not exactly?" Holly hedged, rubbing the back of her neck, "it's a stun… sort of, it should work till I reverse it."

"I… see…" Steve stooped and grabbed for the mask covering the man's face, "Well, let's see who we have." Steve pulled the mask away, revealing a rather handsome face in Holly's opinion. She frowned curiously and turned to Steve… who had frozen in sheer shock. "Bucky?" he asked, horrified.

"You know him?" Holly asked blankly; she didn't.

"I did," Steve tried to say calmly, tried, "but he's supposed to be dead… he should have been- why is he here. No, I need to… this is too public. Let's take him back-" Steve hesitated, "to your apartment if that's alright? Can you keep him secret? and stunned?" He was planning at a mile a minute. Shield was compromised; Bucky was Fury's assailant and hadn't reacted to Steve at all. Sharon was a spy and had been spying on him. While Holly was clearly a bit more than human, was she a mutant?

"That's fine, but the door is still locked." Holly mused as Steve picked  Bucky up and hefted him over a shoulder. "Should we tell Agent Carter? Also! I can't believe she was a spy too! That's wicked."

"I didn't know either," Steve admitted unhappily, "and no, we're not telling her. I don't think I can trust anyone right now." Except for Holly, it seemed, because he was giving her that trust. It might be a mistake, but he hoped not. She appeared genuinely uninvolved, and Carter hadn't reacted to her. Had treated her like a civilian just like Steve had.

"Are you witness protection?" Holly trotted after him as they headed back to the apartment.

"No… you really don't know who I am?"

"Should I?"

"No." Steve and Holly climbed back into their apartment, "its better this way." Refreshing in a way.

"If you say so…"

[panda-noosh]

Bad At Love {P3}{Photographer!Keith x Prodigy!Reader}

Words: 5633

  Summary: Keith Kogane was known for being the good-boy-gone-bad. You were known for being the emotionless prodigy that only ever showed up to school to stop her foster parents from getting arrested. Whenever you two are put together on a school project after briefly meeting during detention, you find your world tipping upside down as you realise that there’s more to life than science and logic.

Pairing: Photographer!Keith x Prodigy!Reader

Notes: p1 – p2 - p4 - p5 - p6 - FINAL ; so… we finally got some angst. But I swear this story won’t be overly-angsty. It’s actually more of a fluff story than anything else, so don’t fear.

   Chapter 3

   “You really should smile more.”

   His voice comes out of nowhere, startling you just enough to make you look up from the volume you are reading. A thick, leather bound book that you borrowed from the library only days before – the library of the school you were currently sat in.

    You had never before seen Keith step foot in the school library – especially not before school hours. It was rare that he was even in the building on time, so the fact that he had pulled himself out of bed nearly an hour earlier to come trotting into the library was a shock to you.

    You narrow your eyes when they meet his. He has a bounce in his step as he approaches you, his camera raised and his backpack flung carelessly to the side of the door. The librarian doesn’t miss her chance to shoot Keith a dirty look, clearly not enjoying the bad-boys presence.

    “What are you doing here so early?” you ask.

    Keith sits down on the green, plush chair that is pulled up beside your own. You look over his shoulder as he does so, catching only a small glimpse of his camera screen – a picture of you is pulled up on it. You have your head down, absorbed in the large book which is sat in your lap. Your head is resting on your hand whilst your other holds the book steady on your knobbly knees.

    You blush at the sight of the picture, narrowing your eyes.

    “I got dragged out of bed early so my parents could go shopping,” Keith replies, clearly unaware to your knowledge of the sneaky picture he had taken of you. “And I knew you liked coming to the library, so I thought I’d come and find you.”

    “How sweet of you,” you reply. “If you don’t mind, I’m gonna go back to reading.”

   “Well, this is no way to treat your visitor,” Keith mumbles. “What are you reading?”

    “A book you’ve most likely never heard of.”

   Keith rolls his eyes, leaning his weight onto the arm rest to get a look at the scribbled mess of words that you are currently reading. He takes a moment, his eyes widening whenever he sees the complexity of the language used, how small the print is and how thick the book is.

    “No pictures,” he mutters, and it’s not a question. It’s a statement that is littered with mild disbelief, and you can’t help but chuckle at the sound of his voice.

   “No. No pictures,” you confirm.

   Keith hollows out his cheeks and pulls back, leaning against the other arm rest so he can get a good look at you as you flip through the pages. “I read Harry Potter once when I was, like, 7 and that’s about as far as I’ve gone with reading.”

    “That explains a lot.”

   He pouts, nudging your foot slightly with his own. You smile over at him, the gesture unusual to you and you aren’t exactly sure where it came from but the way Keith replies with a cheeky smile of his own makes it seem like the right thing to do.

    You still couldn’t pin point what he was doing here this early on a Wednesday. The snow this morning had forced you out of the house earlier than usual due to Ann-Marie’s anxiety that the roads would only grow worse as time went on. She would never even dream of letting you have the day off, meaning you were being shipped out of the house at 7:15am and you had arrived at the school gates by 7:30am. It was a little earlier than usual, but you were early most days anyway.

   Keith, on the other hand, was quite the opposite.

   Some days, he just simply didn’t show up, so seeing him now, huddled up beside you with a grin on his face even though the sun had barely risen and his sleepiness had barely been shaken – it was weird and you weren’t sure what would have prompted him to put himself through such a sudden schedule change.

   “You’re staring at me,” Keith says. It’s only then that you realise you are, in fact, staring at him, though that statement alone doesn’t make you turn away.

   You simply nod towards his camera, searching for anything else to say to him other than admit that you were wondering why he was here in the first place.

    “I saw that picture you took of me,” you say. Keith immediately frowns, clenching his camera firmly in his hand. “It’s a crime to take pictures of people without their permission.”

    Keith shuffles up in his green plush chair, rolling his eyes as a way to soften the embarrassment he was no doubt feeling right now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

    “Oh come on, Kogane!” you nearly exclaim. “I didn’t expect you to be the type of to play stupid.”

    “I’m not playing stupid!” he objects. “I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t take pictures of people-“

    “Did your finger slip or something?”

    “Y/N, there is absolutely zero pictures of you on my camera. I can guarantee you that much. You’re not exactly photogenic.”

    You raise a brow, taking his comment as a joke. Judging by the way Keith tilts his head as he speaks, avoids your eye contact and keeps his grip tightening on his camera, it’s clear that he’s lying. Spending years learning human emotions, Keith wasn’t about to be let off easily.

    He catches your sceptic eye and immediately shakes his head, raising a hand in your direction. “Drop it, okay? I’ve had a hard enough time actually getting out of bed at the crack of dawn – don’t make the day worse.”

    You chuckle slightly, keeping your gaze locked on him. It was weird how easily flustered the boy got at such a simple call out – one he still insisted on denying even as the bell rang to signal the start of the day. You had spent months truly believing that Keith was nothing more than a sleezy, woman-using high school kid who didn’t know right from wrong – that was what the rumours had led you to believe, and yet here he was, flustered by a simple statement made by someone whose social abilities were far less superior compared to his own.

    The two of you stalk out of the library together, you trudging behind him and continually commenting on how, “I can pose next time if you want.” Keith had decided to ignore you, giving you a small, “Oh ha ha,” before he was putting his headphones in his ear and waving goodbye to you from halfway down the hallway.

    You walk into maths class with a smile on your face that day, an expression which has even the teacher, Mr Boyle, doing a double take. You ignore him, setting up refuge in the back of the classroom, feeling bubbly and excitable on the inside.

   What a way to begin the day.

       Apparently, sitting on your own at lunch had become a reflex after six years.

  You hadn’t even thought twice as you got your food for lunch and sat yourself down at your usual spot – a small, circular table at the back of the cafeteria that was rarely sat at by anyone other than you. The odd time, a first year would sit there to wait on their friend from the food line, but they would scatter as soon as the seniors started jeering at them for sitting at the ‘loner table.’

    You would then happily take their place, simply glad to have your table back.

    It was only whenever a grumbling, clearly frustrated Keith started making his way towards you that you realised your mistake – you were meant to be sitting next to him today.

    With a mouthful of chicken, you say, “Oh shit, sorry.”

   Keith doesn’t even reply. Instead, he slams his tray of food down in front of you and sits down, immediately resting his head in his hands and tugging on the black hair that his fingers are wound through.

    You swallow the chicken in your mouth slowly, keeping your eyes locked on the bothered guy in front of you. He looked more exhausted than he did this morning – you hadn’t seen him since then due to your lack of classes together. His hair was a ragged mess and his jacket had a fresh new hole in the sleeve. His eyes were smaller, his lips chapped.

    “Everything okay?” you hesitantly ask.

   Keith looks up at you through the gaps in his fingers before promptly going back to tugging at the strands of hair that fall limp against his forehead. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”

    It doesn’t take a psychology record to know he’s lying.

   “I mean, it’s not,” you say, using your good-old-fashioned blunt method. Keith looks up at you again, narrowing his eyes as if to dare you to continue.

   You do.

   “Judging by the way you’re tugging on your hair and the way you stormed over here with particularly heavy footsteps, I’ve come to the scientific conclusion that you-“

    “There is no scientific conclusion,” Keith scoffs, letting his hands drop. “I just – I had a bad day. That’s all you need to know.”

   “Correct,” you mutter, placing a leaf of cabbage in your mouth. “I don’t need to know much more than that, but I’d like it if you indulged. Maybe I could help you.”

    Keith smiles softly at you. “I’m afraid having an IQ of 160 isn’t enough to help me with this one. Thanks, though.”

    You frown. What problem couldn’t be solved with science and math and common logic? You had yet to come across one.

     “I don’t mean to be – uh – nosy or anything, but what exactly is the issue?”

   Keith takes a moment to reply. He has his arms folded over his chest, his eyes cast to the table in front of him where his untouched salmon sits. You find yourself leaning slowly across the table, trying to catch his eyes with your own but he seems to be doing everything in his power to avoid the eye contact you find yourself wanting so desperately.

    You had never before felt what it felt like to care for somebodies wellbeing – somebody outside of your foster families. But sitting here in front of Keith, inspecting the distress on his face, this is what it must feel like to actually care about somebodies feelings.

   It was awful.

   It made you feel weird, like you had an obligation to do something that was completely out of your control. You hated things that were out of your control.

    Nevertheless, you can’t push the feelings away and you know there’s no point in trying. So you succumb to them, waiting patiently for Keith to reply to your question.

    But he doesn’t. He simply inhales deeply, leans forward and begins to dig into the salmon on his tray, leaving you half-speechless in front of him.

    “Is it really that bad?” you find yourself asking.

   Keith looks up at you finally, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head slightly as he holds a forkful of salmon between his teeth.

    “Did I say something wrong?”

    “Lesson one for Keith’s social classes,” Keith says, his words slurred by the salmon. “You don’t ask somebody how bad their problems are.”

    Your mouth shoots into a thin line, an embarrassed pink colour grazing your cheeks at the realisation that your lessons with Keith hadn’t even started yet and you were already messing them up.

    You stay silent after that, choosing to finish off the chicken wrap you had ordered before you messed up anything else and maybe made your friends day even worse. That was the last thing you wanted to do, and yet the question of why he was in a mood was still itching at the back of your brain. Having spent years being able to solve any question which popped into your head, you felt a bit weak being unable to do so now, because the answer was all down to Keith and he wasn’t willing to give it to you.

    Keith finishes his salmon before you’ve finished your wrap, even though you had started before him. Your appetite had shrunk with the curiosity coursing through your veins, and you had spent nearly the entirety of lunch time simply staring at Keith, trying to see what was wrong with him through silent inspection. Whether he noticed your gaze or not, you didn’t care.

    He sighed when he finished, leaning back in his chair and wiping his hands on the napkin that sat on his tray. “I should get going. I have some pictures to take for the schools website and I need to get them done before my next class.”

    You’re standing up before you know why, your wrap still in your hand. “I’ll go with you.”

   Keith raises a brow, looking up at you as he stays seated. “Are you allowed to go into sunlight without combusting into flames?”

    “Ha ha. Funny guy.” You stuff the finishing pieces of your wrap into your mouth, turn to Keith and say, “Let’s go,” through a mouthful of food, uncaring about how unflattering you look.

    You didn’t know that as soon as you turned around, Keith smiled.

    You knew you were never particularly good in social situations, but you thought that you could at least stand in the garden of your own school without feeling like the most stuck-out person within a half mile radius.

    You hovered behind Keith as he took the pictures, and judging by the way nobody seemed to pay attention to the sprawled out kid on the grass, Keith did this often. Some of them even went as far as to say hello to Keith as if they saw him here on a daily basis. A few tried to say hello to you, but you simply nodded with your usual, monotone look on your face and hoped the conversation wouldn’t grow further than it needed to.

    Keith lay in the grass on his stomach, camera pointed at the flower pots which lined the walls of the school. Benches were in the background, kids sitting on them and laughing as they ate the food they weren’t even meant to bring out of the cafeteria. Keith managed to capture the scene perfectly.

    You took a seat in the grass beside him, folding your legs over one another as you made a job of picking at the grass.

    “So you do this every lunch time?” you question.

   Keith grunts as he rolls over onto his side to get a better look at the picture he had just taken. “Most days. I find the cosy atmosphere of this place really inspiring.”

   You nod. “I mean, cosy atmospheres are usually created in small, dimly lit places. This is far from small, and it’s outdoors so there’s even more added space that the brain picks up on, even if you don’t realise it. Also, the amount of people in this place would make it seem more claustrophobic than cosy, so I have to-“

    “What do you do when you get home after school?” Keith cuts you off. You look down at him, eyes narrowed with one brow raised in mild confusion at his question.

    “Why are you asking?”

    Keith shrugs, going back to his task. “I was just wondering. Like, do you sit and watch TV with your parents? Does your mum cook for you? Is dinner already on the table when you get in?”

    “Dinner is usually on the table a few hours after I get home,” you reply. “During those few hours, I go upstairs and get changed, organise my school bag for the next day and play some music to myself. Oh, and I don’t have parents.”

   Keith immediately stiffens in the grass, his camera suddenly shaking slightly as his grip tightens around it. You continue to play with the grass, not entirely bothered about having an entire conversation on your history with the parents you never knew, or the history of the foster houses you had been jumping between for the entirety of your seventeen years on the planet.

     You can see Keith shooting you a small glance out of the corner of his eye, careful not to turn his head fully in fear of you catching him. There’s a concerned aura to him all of a sudden, as if he expects you to burst into tears at the mention of your parents – you find the mere suggestion absurd. You weren’t going to cry over people you didn’t know. That wasn’t how you worked.

    “I still don’t know why you entirely care, Keith,” you continue. “Your life has to be a whole lot more exciting than mine.”

    “I only asked so you’d stop spewing facts at me.”

   You frown. “Oh, right. Was that not socially correct?”

    Keith shrugs. “I don’t care so much about you being socially correct. You were proving me wrong. Nobody likes being proved wrong.”

    A soft laugh immediately escaped your mouth, getting wisped away by the wind which is sauntering around you and Keith both. The grass the two of you are sat on is soaked by the snow that had melted from earlier that morning, meaning your trousers and Keith’s shirt were bound to be damp for the rest of the day, but you found yourself not caring. There was something about watching Keith up close – this close – that made you want to stay like this, just to admire the way he did things.

    “Tell me more about your home life,” Keith asks, suddenly. Your eyes flick up to look at the back of his head, the only thing you can see as he presses his eye into his camera. He sounds almost timid as he asks you, clearly not knowing whether or not said question would be the thing to break the emotionless persona you had put on since the day he met you.

    And there was a side to your home life that you didn’t like discussing – mainly the side that made people feel bad for you. You hated sympathy. Guilt from other people over something they barely knew anything about, because you barely knew anything about it. Until you were eighteen, them records were shut off to you. The only information you could really spill was from the records you had stolen when you were five and memorised – anything new that had come up since then was hidden away neatly, in a hiding space so tight that only certain members on your foster team knew where they were.

    Either way, you find yourself feeling comfortable enough with your first real friend to tell him. You tell him about your parents, and how they couldn’t handle a child prodigy on their own. You had put them through hell from what you had gathered of the records – building things from scratch and making other children cry by telling them the science behind why the tooth fairy wasn’t real and making even adults cringe by explaining step-by-step how babies were made when you were only at the age of six.

    You explained your foster mother – Ann-Marie – and your foster brother – Patrick – and how you had only lived with them for two months but they had done more for you than any other foster family you had been shipped to. You explain to him that you had only ever been with three foster families before – nobody else was allowed to take you, because according to the government, you were prized goods. If the person taking you wasn’t tip-top and an overall perfect human being, they wouldn’t risk letting you out of the centres you had been trapped in your whole life.

    Which was why you were forever grateful towards Ann-Marie, for being that perfect person. She had dragged you out of centres that you used to get abused in, centres that held people who couldn’t care less about your mental well-being – most of them only left you alone because they knew you were smart enough to find some way to tell the police if they did anything bad to you or anything bad to anybody else in front of you.

    Keith is silent once you stop speaking and you find yourself messing with the grass even more vigorously once the information is out in the open. It doesn’t seem right to have put so much sad information on him all at once, but it was out there now and there was nothing more you could do except hope Keith didn’t expel you from his life completely.

      “But it’s all okay now,” you add on, just to soften the blow. “I’m good now. All good and stuff. Dandy.”

    “That’s really fucking sad, Y/N,” Keith comments, finally looking into your eyes. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

   You shrug. “I mean, I didn’t really. No, I did, but, like, I don’t remember it well enough to – to care.” Why were you getting flustered?

   Keith sits up, placing his camera in his lap. “No, I get it, but it must suck knowing the reason behind your parents leaving you was because . . . Well, because of that.”

    “I like to think of it as their loss, but my non-existent ego can’t do that.”

    Keith closes his eyes, a ghost of a smile playing at his lips as your words, again, are used to defuse any tension he may have been feeling due to the information you had just laid out for him.

    He shocks you whenever he sits down properly, folding his legs over one another and you’re even more shocked whenever he leans forward and takes your hand in his. The gesture is only small, but the feel of human skin on your own is enough to make your body flare up in a heat you didn’t think possible during mid-November. And yet here you were, cheeks firey red and your arms suddenly erupting into goosebumps and suddenly you’re almost sure you’ll never be able to breathe again.

    “I’m serious,” Keith says, opening his eyes to meet yours. You narrow your own.

   “You’ve become sincere.”

    “You’re spoiling the moment.”

   “I didn’t think we were having a-“

    “Just sh and let me talk!” Keith hisses, kicking your ankle with his toes. You nod silently, pursing your lips as you continue to gaze into his eyes. “What I was saying was – I’m serious about what I said, Y/N. You didn’t deserve that, and those two people you referred to as your parents aren’t your real parents if they treated you in that way and gave up so easily.”

    “Actually, going by biological history-“

    “I know at the park I made it sound like I wanted you to change when I told you I would help you become more socially adjusted, and I didn’t realise how bad it sounded until I got home. But I just want you to know that, even though I’ve only known you for a short period of time, I like you a lot and I don’t want you changing yourself because of me. Being an introvert isn’t a setback and you shouldn’t need to change it if you don’t want to.”

    You blink, desperately trying to cypher through the words he just said for any sign of sarcasm or any sign that this is all a joke and he’s actually planning on saying “Sike!” before kicking dirt up into your face and running off.

    But no matter how hard you try and no matter how much you investigate his demeanour in this moment, there seems to be absolutely zero menace in the words he had just spoken. He was being genuine.

    For once in your life, somebody was being genuinely nice to you, and it wasn’t just because you were intelligent, and it wasn’t just because you were the new foster kid on the block – he was being nice to you because he felt like you deserved it, and nothing had warmed your heart up quite in the same way.

    You aren’t sure how showing affection and gratitude works, so you try your hardest to swing a guess. You clench your fingers around his own, gently squeezing his hand and giving him a small smile of your own, but it doesn’t seem like enough. Nothing could possibly feel like enough.

    “Thank you,” you say, finally. “Thank you for – uh – reassuring me and being a – a good friend to me. I really appreciate it.”

    Keith smiles back, pulling his hand into his lap. He takes a second longer to gaze at your blushed face before the bell goes off, signalling next class. The two of you clamber up, rubbing the wet patches off of your clothing before you swiftly say your goodbyes and head to your separate classes.

   Suddenly, biology and ICT can’t come quick enough.

   “Alright everyone!” Miss Shaw exclaims from the front of the classroom, her round hips and small torso becoming very prominent in the tight beige dress she was wearing. She had slid her cardigan off mid-lesson, revealing a nice pair of toned arms that you didn’t realise she had. Her body proportions continued to surprise you as the years went on. “The rest of todays lesson will be spent planning out your research projects, and every lesson up until the due date will be spent in the same way. This is mainly for the partners who can’t get to each others houses to work. You can spend your class time wisely, and I hope you’re spending your breaks wisely as well. This needs to be tip-top people! Now, go sit beside your partners and get to work.”

    You pull your hood off of your head and straighten up in your seat as you watch Keith trudge up the steps to the row of desks you’re sitting on. He had put on his bad-boy persona once again, his hood pulled up on over his black hair and a scowl permanently etched on his features that softens whenever his eyes meet yours. You give him a warm wave that he repays by simply raising his hand in the air.

   And then he’s sitting next to you.

   “I trust you know everything we’re doing for the project already?” is the first thing he says, barely turning his head to look at you.

   You grin. “Just call me your personal computer.”

   Keith pouts, straightening up in his seat to get a better look at the map of ideas you had been working on throughout the entire lesson – you had basically created a textbook of facts on every animal classification, and even branching off to go into greater detail, that you could remember – and it was most of them.

   Keith shook his head in awe, tracing his fingers over the ink. “I still feel bad for only being the photographer.”

    You nudge his elbow with your own. “Is that why you were so huffy earlier on?”

   Keith freezes, and you silently curse yourself. Not even two seconds in and you’d already said something that you weren’t meant to. You hadn’t know, when the words came into your head, that they were bad, but going off of the way Keith suddenly begins to nibble on his bottom lip and the way he leans back in his seat tells you that they were, in fact, inappropriate to say.

    “I thought you forgot about that,” he replies, softly. “You should forget about that.”

   His hesitance to tell you what’s wrong makes you even more uneasy. Of course, it made perfect sense for him to have secrets. Although you were never the type of person to hide things from people, finding no shame in anything you did, Keith wasn’t like you. He had healthy EQ levels, and that meant it was perfectly normal for him to thing of things he had done as shameful or unrepeatable.

   You slump back in your seat, taking a highlighter off of the desk so you can doodle on your knuckles. “Sorry. My tongue went before my head again.”

   “No it didn’t,” Keith scoffs. “You’re curious. I get it.”

    “I’m curious but you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. It’s none of my business what goes on outside of our friendship.”

    Keith inhales deeply. “We both know that’s bullshit.”

   You raise a brow, not looking up from the highlighter-yellow squiggle you had just traced down your knuckles. “We do?”

   “I do, because you shouldn’t have to open up to me in the way you did outside and me not do the same. It’s not fair.”

    “I opened up because I feel comfortable talking about what I spoke about. If you don’t, I completely understand.”

    And you did understand. You understood more than he would ever know – understood the science behind secrets and the feeling of pressure people often felt whenever they were faced with this kind of situation.

   But just because you understood, didn’t mean you felt any differently. You still wanted to know, wanted to be somebody Keith could go to whenever he needed to talk to somebody, but right now it seemed like you two weren’t particularly on that level.

   And again, you understood, because you had been through this so many times with so many different people. They were all okay with your knowledge until it went against them in ways you couldn’t control. You had numbed yourself to the disappointment of being the only one in a friendship who trusted the other person.

    Of course, you had hoped Keith was different. He had lasted the longest and he was definitely one of the only people you felt genuinely attached to, but if he didn’t feel the same way then there was nothing you could do to force him. If he wanted to hold some things back from you, then that was okay with you. It was only a matter of time before things crumpled and you went back to being the lonely-smart-girl that everybody spoke about.

    At least you were prepared.

   But until then, you would make the most out of your time with Keith and you would bask in the feeling of feeling things for the first time in a long time, because that was what you did – you made the most of things until your unexplainable brain ripped the joy out of your grip and made you feel numb all over again.

   Keith’s POV

   She was thinking.

   I could see it in the way her eyes twinkled and the way her hands worked with turning the highlighter over and over in her hand on a continuous loop. I could see it in the way she stuck her tongue out from between her lips every once in a while, or she looked towards the board and squinted, even though there was nothing written on it.

   She was trying to distract herself from whatever she was thinking of, but I had an idea that forgetting things wasn’t as easy to her as it was to everybody else.

   I found her so intriguing when I first met her in that detention hall. A smart girl, quiet and well mannered who knew the basics of everything, and yet there she was – slumped over in a chair for an after-hours detention. It seemed like the most unlikely of things, and I had become mildly hostile. I didn’t believe it to be true – she must have been a bitch.

   But she hadn’t been. God, she was far from it and it hurt me to think that I was hurting her with my lack of skills in opening up to people.

   She did it so well. She told me about her parents so monotone and easy and she simply shrugged it off whenever I comforted her on it – she just didn’t care, and maybe that was a bad place to be in. Maybe not caring was a bad mindset to lock yourself in, but it was one I craved in this moment.

   Things were getting harder. He was getting worse. She had disappeared all together and there was really nothing I could do about it. The phone calls were beginning to come through even when I was at school and I could no longer just ignore them – I would have to excuse myself from class to go and read his angry texts and I would reply back in low-caps and pretend to be calm when in reality I had a panic constantly clawing at my chest and making my heart race and my bones ache.

   And the one person I wanted to tell was her. Y/N. Sat beside me now, acting like she didn’t have a care in the world because perhaps she didn’t have a care in the world. Her mind was occupied with scientific explanations to the meaning behind every little thing and math equations and synonyms for words that weren’t even in the English language.

    Perhaps that was the reason I liked her so much – liked her more than I really should. She was intriguing and nice and care free, but at the same time she was this walking pile of surprises that I struggled to get out of my head whenever she wasn’t with me. She gave me comfort even if she didn’t mean to, because there was just something about the way she spoke to me – treated me like how I used to be treated – that comforted me.

    She put me in my place if I needed to be put in my place, and that was why I actually felt under control whenever she was with me, even if my life was crumbling around me.