#✧ lexi howard. musings / on the outside always looking in | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hunterxschafersxbitch · 2 years

Text

chasin’

in response to @taylorkellyreporting‘s post:

“kay so who’s going to bite the bullet and write a fic where lexi follows fez out the house after he beats the living shit out nate? i think it’d be so good bc he’s sure he’s lost any chance with her, right? but here she is, checking to see if he’s okay and telling him how to heal his hands”

my sleep-deprived ass saw this at 5am and spawned this lmao

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at this point, it seems to just be a known fact of the universe that nothing ever happens to lexi howard.

she’s the quiet, helpful, responsible one.

however, she finds herself chasing down a (kind, gorgeous, azure-eyed) drug dealer after he just beat the shit out of nate jacobs on new years.

and she doesn’t quite know why, or even what she’s doing.

she's just running after him.

_____________________________________________________________________

lexi doesn’t even realise that she’s following him outside until the night air hits her face. fresh and cold, the breeze brushes her lightly as she runs after the retreating figure in the white t-shirt.

fez.

for a split second, she considers returning inside, helping untangle the chaos there.

she had watched nate go down, watched familiar shapes and faces forming a crowd of tangled limbs on the floor. cassie, maddy, mckay, kat.

lexi had just let them pass by, rooted to the spot. she wasn’t concerned for nate in the slightest. she didn’t know how to feel about that.

it was another face she silently sought out in the throng of people. she caught a glimpse of a chain and a white shirt in between onlookers, and her feet started to move of their own accord.

cassie, drunk as she was, would undoubtedly need a shoulder to support her stumble home (or to lexi’s car, but getting cassie up the stairs to their shared room is always lexi’s least favourite part of the night).

someone had to clean up, get the bloodstains out of the carpet. someone had to be responsible. and always, always, always, that someone was lexi. sometimes she internally joked that her name should be ‘she who remained to help hide the evidence of teenage antics whilst everyone was filtering out or fucking or falling asleep’. she’d figured that it was a bit of a mouthful. no way she could print that on a business card, she’d muse. she was a ghost. the help.

but she thinks of fez’s eyes and the way her smiled at her. lexi can hardly remember the last time anyone - let alone a guy - paid attention to her like that.

her thoughts seem to unconsciously propel her forward, until she’s almost caught up to him.

he turns towards the sound, of course. his face goes through a myriad of expressions that lexi can’t quite place (anger? fear? resignation?) as she comes to a stop in front of him. his hand reaches out to steady her, but stops short at the last second.

a beat passes.

“you-“ lexi starts. “I’m sorry-“ fez says simultaneously, then cuts himself off. “you first.”

“i- i just meant to ask, are you okay?” she asks, taking in his expression. he’s looking at her oddly, like he can’t quite believe she’s there.

“I’m all good,” he says, his eyes still intensely meeting hers.

what the fuck was she supposed to say to him? ‘good that you’re good?’ ‘thank you for beating the shit out of nate jacobs?’

“i’ve been wanting to do that for years,” is what comes out of her mouth in a slightly higher-pitched tone that doesn’t quite sound like it belongs to her.

fez’s face almost curls into a full grin and he lets out a small chuckle. “yeah? what else you got goin’ on up there in that head of yours, lexi?”

he sounds playful, and if lexi were any other girl, she would be sure that fez was flirting. but she wasn’t. she was plain ol’ lexi howard. faithful. naive. responsible.

lexi blushes. “sorry. i don’t know why i said that. it’s not like it isn’t true, but its just not something i thought i’d ever say out loud. nate - he’s just been a fully-formed dick since like, birth.”

“what, like, he popped out and jus like, told the nurse she was a cunt or somethin?” he chuckles again, and lexi can’t help but sneak a glance up at him for a second.

fez is illuminated by streetlights, and the stark shadows they cast on his face make him look like a tragic hero from one of her novels. despite the comparison, his expression is kind and he’s back to being the fez she met, holding little trace of the way he looked when he was beating nate jacobs, local douchebag extraordinaire, with a beer bottle and his bare fists.

she looks down quickly, realising that she’s staring, and blushes. “yeah, something like that,” she laughs quietly, not quite able to meet his gaze out of sheer embarrassment, eyes trailing down to look at her shoes.

that’s when she notices his hands.

“you’re bleeding,” she frowns, and before she can stop herself, she takes his hands to examine the mottled shades of red and brown and violet and blue.

“ain’ nothin i haven’t had before,” fez says gently. “no need to stress.”

brows furrowed, lexi lightly presses on each one of his phalanges, and to her relief, none appear broken. “its not broken, but you have to clean this up properly, fez,” she chides, not unkindly.

“i can’t go to no hospital, lex.” the nickname doesn’t go unnoticed, but lexi has more immediate things to think about. plus, she’s inevitably going to pick apart every part of this interaction when she’s alone in bed.

“you don’t need to. you need to clean this up with alcohol - not the booze kind, the sterilising kind - and wrap these with clean bandages. cold compresses too, for the swelling.”

“i’m fine,” fez attempts to repeat. but his hands don’t look like they’re fine.

“don’t say you’re fine, fez. this looks like it hurts. and these things can get worse if you don’t look after them. you might need a hospital if you can’t move your fingers anymore cause your knuckles swelled up.”

“forreal?” fez sounds slightly alarmed, and instantly lexi can’t help but wonder if anyone has ever taken care of his injuries before. of him before.

she resolves to put on a smile for him, tries to come off as reassuring. “but that’s not gonna happen, okay? you listen to me and you’ll be fine. now, do you have a first aid kit?”

“yeah, no,” he says quietly. “usually i just deal with it, yaknow?”

“i’ve got one in my car. do you want-“ lexi realises she might be crossing a boundary and trails off. she’s only met him tonight and here she is, for all the world ostensibly trying to lure him back to her car like a serial killer, spouting scary worst-case-scenarios and first aid nonsense. she goes to backpedal, but fez opens his mouth first.

“ash is s’posed to show up any second now,” fez starts, and lexi tries to hide the disappointment in her face, her doubts about fez’s interest seemingly confirmed. it makes perfect sense that he was just being friendly for the sake of being friendly, and her dumb ass just blew things out of proportion. “but you could swing by my place in a bit?”

lexi pauses.

she has two options - to go or to stay. earlier tonight, fez called her fuckin fearless, sounding almost awestruck. but she doesn’t feel fearless.

in her mind, she feels like a fucking idiot, falling all over some guy cause he paid the slightest bit of attention to her. he was probably just being nice, seeing as she was rue’s friend and all. just being nice, listening to her babble out facts and self-deprecating thoughts interchangably. she didn’t always notice when the way she felt about herself spilled into conversation for people to hear, but since when had anyone picked up on it, much less called her out on it like fez had done tonight?

come to think of it, when was the last time anyone had properly ever looked at her? just to see her? and not because she was cassie howard’s little sister or a source of clean urine for rue or a friend of maddy’s or kat’s or bb’s?

yet, an endlessly hopeful part some part of her replays their conversation, the way he said that talking to her was one of the best parts of his year and that he missed her when she went to go look for cassie. that part of her fills her brain with the way he smiled shyly over at her, the way he was careful not to blow the smoke from his blunt into her direction, the way he seemed genuinely interested in what she was saying.

an instant later, she makes up her mind.

“yo, you good?” fez looks at her, concerned.

“oh, yeah, definitely,” she flashes him a quick smile. she shakes her head slightly, as if to dispel her internal dialogue. “you should take my first aid kit, if you don’t have the time for me to patch you up now. i’ll come by sometime soon and check up on you.”

fez looks a little disappointed, but lexi is adamant that she’s just imagining it. “yo, forreal. thank you. i owe you one, lexi howard.”

lexi narrows her eyes slightly. “wait, how do you know my last name?”

“rue talks about you sometimes. i jus didn’t know how to start talking to you when you sat next to me cause you looked real pretty and-“ fez’s confession is cut short by the continuous blaring of a car horn being abused.

the aforementioned ash, lexi presumes. she doesn’t know what or whom she had been picturing (maybe something resembling the kid from pokemon?), but a kid with face tats and an urgent, angry expression is definitely not it.

“fez! get in the fuckin car!” the kid yells

lexi fumbles for her keys and runs the short distance to her car, yanking the door open and pulling out the first aid kit from the passenger side compartment. she slams the car door shut and hands the kit to fez.

“go, before the cops show up,” she orders him. he nods at her and jumps into the waiting vehicle, which speeds off as immediately as it arrived.

lexi stands there in the middle of the street, watching the shape of the car get smaller and smaller until it turns a corner and disappears into the night.

#lexi x fez #fez x lexi #maude apatow #euphoria #angus cloud #rue euphoria #jules vaughn #kat hernandez #euphoria fanfic

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