He is the only boy.

Okay, well, maybe sometimes there was this boy from her math class.. but he didn't really count. She's 90% sure he's gay and just talks to her because she's good at math. It was natural to have a bit of a crush on one boy at a time.

But there was something about Kris that made her belly do somersaults worse than anything.

Thea clutches the book to her chest, suddenly self-conscious when he rounds the corner to join her. His nonchalant, confident lean is cute, but she does her best to refrain from staring at anything other than his face. Mostly his cheek, was eye contact weird? He has such pretty green eyes..

And now he's coming closer, and she's fumbling the book in an attempt to pull it away from her to show him. She's so awkward.

"It's.. uhh.. it's an action fantasy novel. About a treasure hunter. It's really good, I hope they make a movie out of it someday."

kris flynn-edwards

She loves the library.

And she's been walking slowly, up and down the same aisle, tapping her chin thoughtfully. She's read almost every single book in this section, some of them two or three times. But she was looking for something.. different. Something exciting.

Something..

"Oh!" she gasps, having plucked a book off the shelf to find a beaming face staring back at her. "Kris, you startled me."

She's blushing, but she can't look away. Thea can already feel warm eyes on the back of her neck, her girlfriends waiting impatiently for her to return. They'd seen the stolen glances between she and the dashing Kris Flynn-Edwards, and they teased her endlessly.

"How did you know I'd be here?"

kris flynn-edwards

You're good to go.

But she isn't. She wasn't. She hadn't been. Once discharged from the hospital, they'd given her the equivalent of a pat on the back. A tiny bandaid on the gaping wound that was her heart.

This wasn't the same though. She needed to remind herself of that.

It wasn't Rory's fault and it wasn't hers, either. It wasn't anyone's fault.

Somewhere in the house, Thea's Mimikyu begins to weep.

Rory Faust

Somehow, in the midst of all of this uncomfortable silence and anxiety and strain, Rory finds it in him to laugh a little bit. Perhaps it should have bothered her, but instead she holds onto the breathless noise he makes.

She watches him, emotions conflicted on her face, as he sets to work on cleaning her cut and wrapping one of the smallest bandaids around it.

Its kind of pathetic, really.

And yet..

She steps closer to him, voluntarily placing herself in his arms. She buries her face in his chest, with the optimal position being the space between his shoulder and neck.

He is warm, and he smells like.. home.

Rory Faust

I don't want your help. I don't want anyone's help.

These thoughts are chanted in her head like an ultimatum. They scare her because she knows that isn't true. She needs help. She wants help.

She wants him.

"I've ruined movie night."

Thea pulls her other hand away from the cupboard, allowing him to grab the kit himself. Slowly, the hand whose finger is punched by Rory and the napkin awkwardly tries to squeeze his fingers in return.

Rory Faust

Her hands are shaking and she can't seem to catch her breath. His attention lingers and she can feel his doubt, she can feel his concern and it is so heavy. The burden of guilt, of his worry, it's too much.

And then he grabs hold of her hand. He's warm and stable, latching onto her finger. The napkin is stained with her blood but with the pressure the bleeding stops. It was never a deep cut.

Thea sucks in a breath, pulling herself out of autopilot to follow his hand up to the first aid kit. She doesn't even realize how badly she's shaking.

"It's just a scratch, Rory, please. The--the pizza is getting cold."

Rory Faust

Mechanically, Thea moves to replace the lids on the Tupperware. One of them is slightly misaligned, just enough to make things worse. Just enough she can't fix if, she can't fix it, she can't fix anything.

Her breath catches in her throat and she struggles with it. The force of her grief and her attempts to maintain control veer out of control. Her fingers slip and she manages to cut herself on the plastic.

It isn't deep, but its enough that shes gotten blood on what remains of the peppers.

"No, Rory, I don't. There's nothing to talk about."

Rory Faust

This is a burden she's been carrying for over eight years, a crippling insecurity, guilt, torment. She carries it naturally, as if it is the easiest thing in the world. He should be concerned, because this is the first and only time he's ever heard her mention it.

Two plates clink softly against the countertop and she slides them closer to him. His blade crunches through the crust and he lifts and places. At first, she almost doesn't hear him.

"Yes. It was a really long time ago."

Her thumb strokes along the edge of one of the slices. It is too hot and she pulls her hand back, lifting the sauce to her lips.

Rory Faust

Thea stands off to the side, using her hand to fan away the smoke that rises off of the pizza. It looks otherwise fine, other than the fact the crust is a little crispy. Perhaps the bottom, too.

Certainly still edible, though.

"Looks perfect to me, my dear."

As if nothing had happened and the puffiness around her eyes didn't exist, the woman moves across the room to sift through the kitchen island drawers. She plucks a pizza cutter, setting it next to him, before leaving again to find plates. She does all of this without another word, refocusing her worries on finishing dinner prep.

Rory Faust

He doesn't really need to say anything. There's nothing he can possibly say to heal the hurt in her heart, at least, nothing that she hasn't already heard before.

The smell of the pizza in the oven catches her off-guard, and as if practiced, Thea's crying ends abruptly.

"Rory.. th-the pizza. I think it might be burning."

Her voice hitches partway through, breathless. She pulls away from him to peek over her shoulder. It isn't by any means unsavable, but it is certainly a little crispier than either of them probably anticipated.

In the other room, the television continues to play the movie.

Rory Faust

Piece by piece, little by little, Rory peels back her layers.

Two years, and she'd kept so much from him. Kept it bottled up and hidden because she was too afraid of him seeing the kind of person that she was: selfish, unstable, unlovable.

And yet he pulls her into him anyway. He says he's sorry, like any of this is his fault.

He wasn't the one who had told her that her child was dying. He wasn't the one in the hospital room when she had been only a month or two pregnant, warning her that she should let the baby go.

But she knew a part of him blamed him anyway. How fucked up was that?

Thea exhales warm air into his chest, burying her cheek in the soft fabric of his shirt. He smells like their laundry, like pizza sauce, like their home. She sobs, surrendering that pain for just a moment, because selfishness is the only thing she knew.

Rory Faust

She nods, her throat tight and her emotions turbulent.

"I told you that I was married before I met you. What I.. didn't.. tell you, Rory, is that I'd.."

Nausea forces her to take a breath. She inhales and exhales, trying to gather her thoughts. It doesn't really occur to her that he might have jumped to separate conclusions.

"I had a baby with him, but.. Noah was really sick. He was barely a year old, and the doctors said there was nothing they could do, nothing I could have done."

She chews the inside of her lip, blinking away tears. Guilt gnaws away at her, guilt surrounding her sons suffering, guilt for not telling Rory. Since losing her son, she'd never tried again. She hadn't heeded the doctors warnings the first time, that she was unfit to carry and there could be complications.

But she was listening now.

Rory Faust

Guilt rises like a tidal wave, threatens to drown her, threatens to spill over and drown him, too. It's too real. It's too strong.

She sucks in a sharp breath, barely staying afloat. Her fingers bite into his arm, holding onto him like a lifeline. His words echo in her mind, repeating themselves over and over and over.

He couldn't imagine what it must feel like to lose a child- but she could. She had.

Losing Noah never got easier because she wouldn't let it. Not that there was any linear path to recovering from something like that, that there was any right or wrong way to grieve.

But what she was doing certainly wasn't ideal.

"... I do."

Her voice is quiet, strained. It feels like she's fighting for air.

Rory Faust