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jcmorrigan · 4 years

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Little Coincidences

The F/O? Giovanni Potage from Epithet Erased. The S/I? Rachel Scribere - mundie, writer of much fanfiction, independent contractor supervillainous minion who has also given up on adulting. (Most of those things apply to me IRL!) This is the one where I’m REALLY banking on no one who went to high school with me following me on Tumblr right now, because I get into some personal-ish stuff here that was very specific to my graduating class. I just...wanted my current f/o to show up a ghost from my past. And what are f/o’s for, if not that?

***

It started when Giovanni ran past me, pressed a marker into my hand, and yelled, “MARKER FIGHT!”

Yes, there is context. I wanted to simulate the exact sense of confusion for you that I felt when he did that.

To be clear, it was during down time in the “evil lair” that our sector of Blasters had taken over – a public library that had been defunded by the city but never torn down, so really, it was a bunch of empty bookshelves (where you could occasionally find an old and really weird book they’d missed on the clear-out) where no one would think to look for us because this entire building was basically a health hazard. We were only about ninety-five percent sure there wasn’t asbestos in the walls.

Also, if I’ve talked before about the mall incident, or the kiss before the skyline – this was before that. A lot before that. Back when I knew I liked Giovanni in the romantic sense, but he wasn’t exactly aware of that, nor did he really like me in that way. No, this was when I was a pining idiot and we were just friends.

At which point he shoved a marker into my hand.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“MARKER FIGHT,” he repeated, as though that explained everything.

The worst part was that it actually did.

See, I hadn’t wanted to say it at that time, but it frightened me. I’d seen this done before, in one very specific place. How had he known? “Just to be clear,” I said deliberately, “this is that game where each of us wields a marker of a different color, we LARP it out, drawing on someone is a ‘wound,’ and we tally the winner by who has the most of their color on everyone else?”

“Good. I was worried I’d have to explain the whole thing to you. Now we can skip the tutorial phase and go right to the EVERY-BOY-FOR-HIMSELF RIVALRY!” He let out a raucous and malicious-sounding cackle for about thirty solid seconds before telling me, “You get a ten-second head start.”

I wasted no time bolting away from him, darting at random zigzags through the shelves to avoid any other Blasters who were playing. Then I heard the triumphant scream of “TIME IS UP, COMPOSER!”

At which point I almost ran into Ben.

“Oh, SWEET!” he cried, raising a red marker high. “Maybe this is how I finally get the nickname ‘Stabby’!”

I screamed as he put a red mark across my forehead. I then retaliated, drawing a line of cobalt-blue down his ear as though lopping it off.

“MY EAR!” Ben screeched. “SHE VAN-GOGHED ME!”

I used his cries to dart away around the shelves…right into the same area as Crusher.

“So,” he growled, raising his lime-green marker. “It’s come to this…ROMANTIC RIVAL.”

“Don’t try me right now,” I warned, showing him my deep-blue pseudo-dagger. “I’m armed and dangerous.”

“I think the only way to settle our mutual affections for the Boss is to duel to the death.”

“So you have chosen death, then.”

It was rather obvious why Crusher and I didn’t really get along most days. However, for a few minutes, we kind of forgot that we were supposed to hate each other. I managed to leave several long blue lines up Crusher’s arms, screaming “SUBMIT! SUBMIT!”, until suddenly I was pinned down, getting green scribbled down my entire face as Crusher roared, “SURRENDERRRRRR!”

From a row away, Ben groaning, “Come onnnnn, you know I have dibs on ‘Stabby’! Don’t ruin this for me!”

Suddenly, Crusher’s eyes widened; “I’VE BEEN HIT!” He rolled over onto his back, making exaggerated, dramatic death noises.

“COMPOSER!” Spike, the one who’d perpetrated the fatal silver blow, extended a hand to me. “TEMPORARY ALLIANCE!”

I let her help me up just in time for Flamethrower to skid into the area, striking several cheerleader-precision poses with flair as he brandished his fire-orange marker.

“AVENGE MEEEEEE!” Crusher yelled.

Flamethrower’s cheerleading practice was put to good use. Spike and I combined couldn’t stymie him; he danced circles around us, and our skin displayed orange marks of his prowess. Meanwhile, Crusher changed “death” positions five times, making louder groans each time to try and get attention.

“CRUSHERRRRR!” this from Darkstar, who’d just skidded onto the scene. “NOOOOOO! WHO DID THIS TO YOU?”

“THEY DID IT!” Flamethrower jabbed his marker at Spike and myself.

“HE DID IT!” we yelled, pointing back at him.

“FLAMETHROWER!” Darkstar accused. “HOW COULD YOU?”

“ME? BUT – “

“THIS MEANS WAAAAAAR!”

As Team Composer finally got the upper hand on Flamethrower, Darkstar paused to whisper to me, “I know one of you two got him, but I’ve been waiting for WEEKS to get Flamethrower back for eating my pudding out of the staff lounge.”

We didn’t argue.

Behind the shelf, Ben yelled, “Oh, where was this when you found ME stabbed?”

We all froze when the sound of a running motor alerted us to the impending horror.

“…Please tell me Boss decided to bring his Vespa into this to spice it up,” I said, voicing what we were all thinking. “Please, please, please tell me it was NOT hijacked by – “

Our worst fears were confirmed when Car Crash came driving Giovanni’s scooter around the corner at top speed, his marker taped to the handlebars; “BEEP BEEP, FUCKERS!”

All of our rivalries were gone. We screamed and ran as one herd of panicked cattle, trying to get as far away as possible from Car Crash on a stolen motorized vehicle. At some point, Ben ended up in our crowd. I didn’t bother asking.

As it turned out, we were all playing right into the hands of the enemy. We hurried to the circular area around the children’s info desk only to find the area quickly filling up with a thick mist. Mist that smelled…suspiciously delicious.

“NO!” I screeched. “MISSION ABORT! MISSION – “

It was too late. We were trapped in the Fog of Lost Souls.

“BOSS, NO!” Crusher dropped to his knees. “SPARE ME! PLEASE! I LOVE YOU!”

“I LOVE YOU MORE!” Spike screeched. “SPARE ME INSTEAD!”

I couldn’t even see either of them. Somehow, we’d all gotten horribly separated. The distinct sound of Car Crash running the Vespa into the info desk and groaning, “Aw, man!” resounded.

The maniacal laughter I’d heard earlier when gifted my weapon sounded again, but louder, and from on high – he was standing on top of one of the bookshelves. “YOU POOR, SIMPLE FOOLS! …WhoIloveverymuchandhateinsultingbutthisisaroleplay. YOU WALKED RIGHT INTO YOUR OWN DOOM! Alliances and loyalty mean nothing in this bloodthirsty war! NONE OF YOU SHALL BE SPARED! TELEPORTS RAPIDLY BEHIND EVERYONE!”

I’m half convinced he actually did teleport this time, because the screams sounded from everyone right in order of one another; somehow, Giovanni was able to locate each of us within his fog and strike out, drawing glitter-gold wounds on each of us in strategic locations. I could feel the cool ink swipe hard across the back of my neck.

I did the only thing one could do, which was to drop to my knees and scream in faux anguish. Then slump to the floor as if well and truly decapitated.

When the fog cleared, it turned out all of us had had the same idea, lying strewn about like a murder scene. Even the Vespa had been drawn on in metallic gold ink in the confusion and was lying toppled.

Atop the info desk, Giovanni laughed triumphantly, hoisting his marker to the ceiling. “YOU ARE DEALING WITH NO MERE MORTAL! THIS WAR WAS LOST THE MOMENT IT WAS BEGUN!”

“Would it be foul play to act like we were all just playing dead and then rush him at once?” I muttered.

To my surprise, it was Crusher of all people who answered back, “No, it wouldn’t.”

We all knew what we had to do.

“Hey – “ Giovanni nearly fell back off the desk. “Boys – no – YOU’RE ALL DEAD – “

I yelled “FAKEOUT!” at the same time that Spike yelled “MUTINY!” and Ben yelled “ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!”

We charged, climbing up onto the desk. It was your standard library info desk – at least standard to all the ones I’d seen – meaning it was semicircular in design. Giovanni fell back onto the floor right in the middle of the circlular area. After a brief pause in which he assured us, “I’m fine; please continue,” we vaulted over the desk en masse and drew on every bit of exposed skin to the sounds of his tortured screams.

It was the most fun I’d had on the Blasters since becoming a Blaster-adjacent independent contractor villain. However, I still couldn’t shake how haunting it was that I had already known the rules of marker war. There was no way – I hadn’t gone to school with any of the Blasters, and my family hadn’t even started out in Sweet Jazz City. And I wasn’t sure at all how to address this.

***

The second incident was also in the library, a few days later. I was heading into the employee lounge (which had originally, when it was a functioning library, been…an employee lounge) with my phone so I could make a highly sensitive business call about appraising a hijacked load of game consoles, followed up by a dentist appointment I’d been putting off.

One minute, I was strolling into the lounge, strutting like any villain would, phone in hand. And the next, I was sitting on the floor, heart racing with adrenaline, someone’s scream ringing in the air.

It took me a moment to realize that scream was mine.

It was followed up by laughter – a slowly building wheeze into an outright chortle. “Composerrrrrr! I knew you’d freak, but not like THAT!”

I replayed the events in my mind. What had happened in that missing flash was that someone who’d been hiding behind the door frame had leapt at me and jumpscared me while I had been on my way into the lounge.

Not just any someone. No, one very specific fanged, pink-haired ball of energy.

“GIOVANNI…POTAGE,” I growled, slowly turning my head to regard him.

He had tears in his eyes now from laughing so hard. “You should’ve seen your face,” he squeaked. “It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

Well, I’d always wanted to hear that from him, but not in that context.

“I…am going…to kill you,” I growled.

With an “Eek!”, Giovanni realized he needed to run, and he did so.

I needed a weapon. The fridge was the first thing I saw. Throwing open the door, I saw a pack of pudding cups labeled “DARKSTAR’S (don’t touch, Flamethrower!!!”). And nothing else.

I did not feel sorry for Darkstar one bit.

Armed with chocolate pudding, I barreled through the rows of shelves, looking for my wayward boss. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t entirely angry. I wasn’t that angry at all. But when your crush jumpscares you, that is just not something you let go without having some fun.

I happened upon him behind the first-floor stairway, where I backed him up against the underside of the stairs. “NOT THE FACE!” he screeched as he put up both arms.

And I lost resolve.

When a few seconds had passed and Giovanni found himself not pelted with pudding, he asked, “Hey, what gives?” as though legitimately frustrated with me. “You caught me! Now you gotta dish out what I gave to you! Geez, did you forget everything I told you about villainy and revenge?”

“This isn’t right,” I muttered. “Sorry for wasting your time. I’ll go now.”

I hadn’t meant it to sound that melodramatic. Anyway, I turned on a heel to return the pudding to its home.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” Giovanni seized my wrist as I turned away, and I felt my heart flutter. “Composer, this isn’t like you! Where’s the vicious femme fatale I mentored into villainous perfection?”

I froze. “Actually doing anything about the jumpscare is more effective at scaring people off than the scare itself, believe it or not.”

“What the hell? What even is that crap? Just get me back already! Stop being weird!”

Maybe, just maybe, I’d gotten this all wrong.

So I started slowly and deliberately unwrapping the lid of the first pudding cup right there in front of him.

“Now RIGHT IN THE FACE!” Giovanni encouraged.

I gave him a quizzical look.

“Come onnn, Composer! I don’t have all day!”

So I slopped the pudding onto his face halfheartedly.

“Seriously?” he sighed. “You can do way better than that.”

“You’re right,” I realized. “I can.”

So I smacked the second one onto his nose, full stop.

“Now THAT’S what I call some DELICIOUS VENGEANCE!” Giovanni laughed. “But seriously. I have things to do. Important, evil things.”

“Okay. I still have to make those calls.”

“In the lounge?”

“Yeah.”

“…Could you do me a favor and get me a soda from the gas station across the street first? I’m thirsty and decaffeinated.”

I shrugged, rather confused but not about to be rude about it. “Sure. Be right back.”

“I’ll come pick it up from you in the lounge.”

It wasn’t until I was repeating my steps that I realized the ruse. “Oh, no fuckin’ way,” I muttered as I approached the lounge.

I shook the plastic soda up good and hard. Then chucked it into the lounge.

“HYEEEAH!” Giovanni yelled as he revealed himself to scare an inanimate bottle of soda. “…Wait.”

“REALLY?” I groaned, rolling my eyes.

“It was hilarious!” Giovanni argued. “You’re the best person to scare!”

“I do need to actually get some work done today, you know.”

“Fiiiiine,” Giovanni sighed. “I’ll leave you alone. Just – “ His eyes widened as he thought of something. “Hey, you don’t mind me hanging out in here while you make your calls, do you?”

Just me and the object of my affections hanging out alone in a room? What was he playing at?

“See,” he went on mischievously, “if you’re in here making a call like nothing’s wrong, and another Blaster sees you from the outside of the door…”

“They’re going to assume there is absolutely no one waiting to scare them behind it,” I realized. “You’re a fucking genius, Boss.”

“I know.”

“Deal.”

As I took my seat, bringing out my phone, Giovanni had retrieved the soda bottle. “I am pretty thirsty, though – “

“BOSS, DON’T – “

The minute he opened the cap, it exploded into a geyser that soaked him.

I couldn’t make my call for a solid fifteen minutes due to laughing too goddamn hard.

***

The camel’s back broke when we were alone together at the strategy table, going over some reconnaissance notes I’d brought back from a surveillance mission.

“So anyway, I think we have the best chance from one of these three windows,” I explained, cycling through flash cards I’d taped photos to. “We could test for alarms by chucking a good old-fashioned brick through the glass.”

“Or a bottle of soda that was shaken up,” Giovanni teased.

I laughed. And also flushed. I hated that he was so goddamn oblivious, sometimes.

“I mean, it’s practically your specialty!” he argued, leaning back in his chair and setting his ankles on the table, crossing them, one over the other.

The problem was that it was Casual Friday. Which was not an official Blaster protocol, but rather something that Giovanni himself had developed for this specific faction. He’d thought it would improve morale, and he was right. I myself had resorted to a pair of sweatpants and a band T-shirt that didn’t match. He was wearing a pair of battered jeans and a favorite gray sweater of his, edged in white faux fur. That much I had known.

I hadn’t seen his shoes yet.

And right before my eyes, one over the other, he crossed a pair of red Converse high-tops.

The strategy meeting was abandoned. I slammed my flash cards on the table, rising up and yelling, “WHO TOLD YOU?”

“OKAY, I ADMIT IT!” he screamed, looking like I’d gotten him with his hands in the cookie jar. “BEN RATTED HIM OUT BECAUSE BEN’S A SNITCH!”

“HOW. DID BEN. KNOW ABOUT HIM?”

“BECAUSE HE WAS IN THE LOUNGE THAT DAY AND SAW HIM TAKING IT!”

I flinched. “We’re not on the same page, are we?”

“You’re…not asking me about how Ben ratted on Flamethrower for taking Darkstar’s pudding, and I told Darkstar because I thought it would be funny to start shit?”

I wasn’t really sure where to take that. “…No.”

“Thennnnnn what are we talking abouuuuut?” His voice rose a little bit on every word to express his utter confusion.

I sighed heavily. “So you didn’t hear anything about my high school?”

“No.”

“Nothing. Not a thing.”

“Composer, I have no idea where this is going.”

I sat back down. “This is a complicated story. You don’t wanna – “

Instantly, Giovanni had repositioned, leaning across the table excitedly. “IS THIS WHERE I GET TO FINALLY HEAR ABOUT THE DARK AND TRAGIC PART OF YOUR BACKSTORY THAT DROVE YOU TO A LIFE OF CRIME?”

I found myself smiling. “I mean, my parents aren’t dead ghosts. I gotta have some raison d’etre, right?”

“Tell me. Tellmetellmetellme.”

I couldn’t look him in the eye. “So…when I was in high school, there was this…guy.”

“Ooh. This sounds promising.”

“And I really wanted…”

Oh, God. I couldn’t tell Giovanni that I was acting this way because of someone I’d had an obsessive crush on. Then he might make the connection that I had a similar one on him. (I had greatly overestimated how canny Giovanni could be about such things. This was back in the day when you could tell him upfront you loved him more than life itself and he wouldn’t get it.)

“…to be his friend.” And sadly, that was probably the heart of it, more than the romance aspect itself. “He was very loud and weird. But in a good way. Or so I thought, anyway. Not like I was alone, either. Everyone in my school wanted to be near him. EVERYONE. When he changed school districts our last year, there was literally a CROWD of girls around him at his locker begging him to tell them contact info. While I sat several feet away, pretending to read my book, hoping that he’d notice me for NOT being part of the crowd. What a load of bullshit. Then, of course, there are so many guys who claimed to be straight and hung around him just a little too closely…he was that pretty. He was REALLY pretty. And he was smart and he was charismatic and he was fun and…he just…he never wanted to interact with me. He’d throw me just enough of a bone to keep the flame alive, and then act like I wasn’t even real. Probably because I was super dumb and immature back then. Like, way super dumb. I would try to play along with his stunts and he’d blow me off. I finally became disillusioned when he…broke a rule, later on. It doesn’t matter. It was dumb. But I told myself he’d crossed a moral event horizon. I let myself believe it was that one incident for years. …It was never about that. It was about how I wanted to be close to him for years, and he wouldn’t let me in, and he wouldn’t completely shut me out, either. Though maybe that’s my fault for not just…walking up to him and asking him to be my friend. I’ve always been chickenshit.”

“So…what makes you think I know about him?”

Giovanni’s tone struck me as strangely sympathetic. I chanced looking into his eyes –

Oh, God. Wrong move. How had I never noticed they were that brilliantly pink before? I mean, I had known they were pink, but this was like having a rose-colored spotlight turned on me. And were those little gold flecks in the iris? Or was my crush-filter just seeing things?

But once I stopped seeing the trees, I got a good look at the forest. I couldn’t remember having seen Giovanni so pensive. So concerned, yet in a way that wasn’t over an injury sustained by a teammate or the impending arrival of the police. He was genuinely getting sad off this story.

“…Because the little quirks I fell for him for are just weirdly similar to the stuff you’ve been doing this week,” I admitted. “He and his posse did marker war all the time. I think his was red? I always wanted to play in the marker war. It looked like they were having so much fun, and I wanted to face off against him. And then the jumpscare. He did that to me, once. Almost exactly the same way you did. That’s where I learned the tactic of throwing an inanimate object through the door. He got me good, and I got mad, and then we never talked about it, if he thought it was funny or what. I thought maybe he thought I was ACTUALLY mad, and that scared him off.”

“So THAT’S why you didn’t exact your chocolatey revenge.”

“Bingo. I was just terrible at talking about my feelings, so I just insulted him a lot instead of being honest. It was probably all my fault. And the shoes. He had a pair like that. Exactly like that. I used to try and get his attention by…” I let out a long, deep sigh. “Telling him they looked like they were run over by a ketchup truck.”

“That’s not a bad one-liner.”

“‘KETCHUP TRUCK’ ISN’T A BAD ONE-LINER?” I shook my head. “Anyway. I dunno. I can never figure out if he was just an ass or if I was just…” I sighed. “These are just coincidences, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” Giovanni confirmed. “They are. I thought I invented marker war. If you ever see this guy again, tell him I gotta sue him for the rights. And I wear these shoes ‘cause they’re devil-may-care and hot-rod red, keeping my aesthetic suitably edgy even when out of uniform. …They’re also comfy.”

“So I just told you all that for no reason. Like a dumbass. It isn’t even that great of a tragic backstory, is it?” I was laughing then, to try and cover up how absolutely sheepish I felt. “You didn’t need to know any of that, and nowwwww it’s all awkward.”

“Not awkward. Just…really confusing.”

“How so?”

Giovanni gave me a dramatic shrug; “Why didn’t he wanna hang out with you? You’re GREAT at marker war! You fit right in! And you’re honestly the most fun person I’ve ever scared! You think any of the boys freak out that hard? That was hilarious! You’d better watch your back now, because you’ve given me an incentive to try and do it SO much more.”

I wanted to make some kind of snappy retort about throwing soda bottles. However, it felt like I was receiving a catharsis long overdue. Maybe it didn’t matter who was wrong and who was right, back then. Because now, I had someone who did want to have fun with me.

Just as a friend, I thought. But maybe that was all that mattered, and the crush could be dealt with later.

“I was so much worse back then,” I tried to argue. “I was hyper.”

“So you mean you were even MORE fun?”

I almost wanted to cry.

“Whoa, hey, hey, hey!” Seeing the perturbation on my face, Giovanni rushed around the table, lightly putting his hands on my shoulders as he knelt beside my chair. “You’re plenty fun to hang with, Composer! Every day, I’m really glad I helped you get started in the villain biz and invited you into the lair! I mean…back when I was in high school and I tried to do stuff like that for fun, nobody really paid attention to me, either, and I would’ve KILLED for someone to actually think I was cool instead of just…some weirdo who wore capes to school and drew original supervillain characters for all my art projects.”

“You wore a cape?” I asked. “That is so cool!”

“Yeah, well, no one said that THEN.”

“But it was! Now I’m kinda wishing we could’ve gone in the same graduating class.” And also wishing that he would never take those hands off of me, ever.

“NOYOUDON’T,” he said hurriedly. “Because I was…ummmm…I was a juvenile delinquent, and you were obsessed with rules! Yeah! And I just…wasn’t the person you’d want me to be.”

I wouldn’t figure out until a later discussion what that meant, truly, and it had nothing to do with breaking or following rules. But that doesn’t have to be tread upon now. “Actually, you’re right. Better things happened the way they did.”

“So what else did that loser not do with you for fun?”

“He was the most popular kid in our entire school,” I muttered. “No one thought he was a loser except me.”

“Yeah, because you actually have a BRAIN in there! And I say he was a LOSER!”

I smiled at him. “I guess…I dunno, I always heard he was great at dancing. And I always wished we could dance. Probably just because of societal and cultural expectations. But I’m a shit dancer. Like, there was this whole movement dedicated to making fun of – where are you going?”

Giovanni beckoned for me to follow him; “Come on!”

“Wasn’t this originally a strategy meeting?”

“Don’t care! We’re breaking the rules, baby!”

I followed him back to the staff lounge, where I watched him struggle to push the table off to the side. He got it out of the way before I could offer my help, then flitted to the radio sitting on the counter by the sink. “Let’s see here…”

I could feel my face filling with heat. “Boss, I don’t think this is a great idea.”

“Shut up. It’s my idea, so it’s a great one.” He was cycling through the stations. “No, no, no, no, no, no – PERFECT!”

What he’d found was an anti-authoritarian anthem currently on the rock top 40. Not exactly what you’d think of as a dance number, but it had enough of a beat that I could work with it if pressed.

Which he would have to do a lot of if he wanted to see me make an idiot out of myself like that.

“Come on!” he encouraged. “Show me some moves!”

“I’ll look stupid!” I hissed.

“SO? You don’t see that stopping me from doing literally anything!”

“…Did you even hear how that sounded coming out of your mouth? Also, this isn’t a dance song!”

“Um, it’s a song, so you can dance to it.” He gave a long, drawn-out sigh. “Are you really gonna make me start this?”

“Oh, no, you don’t n – “

“Cut in whenever.”

I wasn’t sure how him starting to dance was supposed to encourage me at all. Because I’ll be honest: he was probably only an average dancer. But I was below average, and looking at him through the crush-filter. He looked like the most graceful living being I’d ever beheld with my two eyes, spinning and rocking in time with the heavy guitar.

I was not going to look good next to that.

Of course, this was not any ordinary man I was dealing with. It was Giovanni Potage. Meaning he had a contingency plan. Without any warning whatsoever, he seized my hand and pulled me into a spin with him, and then, well, I was already in motion, so I had to keep going.

By the third song, it didn’t even feel awkward anymore. I just felt alive. I know I looked like an absolute dork, but I had stopped caring, throwing out arms and leaping about to the hard tempo of every dark anthem. The fourth song was a personal fave of mine – with an incredibly complex guitar riff that just begged a person to go double-time. As I attempted to execute a series of spins to match, I simply lost balance and fell over, hitting the table on my way down.

Stupid. Idiot. Why was I doing this? I’d just made an ass of myself in front of –

Without even really pausing, Giovanni dipped before me, offering his hand. I took it on instinct, then rose, letting him reel me right back in, so glad he’d just hit resume where I’d slammed into pause mode.

At last, I collapsed into the pushed-aside chair, panting heavily. “No more,” I heaved. “I need…to catch…my breath.”

He hopped up to sit on the tabletop beside me. “Now THAT was some fun,” he remarked. “We gotta do that more often.”

This was the same pitfall I’d dropped into so many times back in the day, with the ghost of my past. Making up excuses to get near him. Taking casual opportunities to interact with him without making my real intentions clear. Maybe this whole time, I was afraid that would drive him away.

Maybe this whole time, I’d been thinking of him as a jerkass without actually acknowledging how hard he really blew me off for three fucking years. So what if I wanted to get closer to Giovanni? We were friends. And I liked him. Maybe that would go somewhere. Maybe it wouldn’t. And most importantly, he wanted to dance with me.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We should.”

#selfship #i'm at soup!#and if it turns out any of my classmates IS reading this #i'll eat my personal fan

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