Chapter Text
I’ve hoarded
your name in my mouth for months. My throat
is a beehive pitched in the river. Look!
Look how long this love can hold its breath.
-Sierra DeMulder, “Your Love Finds Its Way Back”
The first assignment of their Freshman year Honors English class is to write a letter to themselves.
“I want us to capture this very moment – who we are, what we love, what we hate, what we want,” Mrs. Allen announces with a grand flourish, and he thinks that maybe she would be better suited for drama kids in Theatre than for neurotic, type-A students of this Honors class. “I want us to trap it in amber – preserve it so that in four years, I can give you back those very same letters and we can marvel at who we were!”
He sneaks a glance over at Devi and can immediately see they’re both thinking the same thing – it’s ridiculous and cheesy, but they’re both willing to go along with it without any fuss.
English teachers tend to have some kind of corny getting-to-know you activity, and despite this overly sentimental first assignment, he’s only heard good things about Mrs. Allen’s class.
So, that night he loads up his printer with his 32 pound bond paper (to show that he takes this assignment seriously) and goes to work trying to capture this moment of his life in amber.
Even saying it in his head makes him want to roll his eyes (he thinks Devi must be thinking the same thing, then immediately thinks about how he can make his letter better than hers).
He knows what Mrs. Allen said – that this isn’t really an assignment inasmuch as it is a time capsule; that it isn’t a resume, but just a friendly letter so she can get to know them.
But Ben Gross hasn’t gotten this far with his GPA and academic transcript because he’s taken teachers at face value.
He doesn’t lie – he honestly doesn’t need to, really. His list of extracurriculars and hobbies take up nearly half a page on their own, and his write-up about his pathway to becoming a diplomat is incredibly detailed and specific.
It’s only when he gets to the final question that he hesitates.
What’s one aspect of your life that you think would make a fun movie and why? Describe it to me!
He re-reads the question, then re-reads his letter and frowns. He clearly comes across as competent and confident – which is what he was going for – but also a little dry. This question is obviously designed to see if he has some personality.
Which, you know, of course he does. He’s just not sure how to put that on paper so that Mrs. Allen will see that he’s a well-rounded, intelligent but not overwhelmingly dull honors student.
He thinks about writing about his Bar Mitzvah and Blake Griffin – that would be pretty cool to see in a movie – but a voice that sounds suspiciously like Devi’s pops into his mind and calls him lame. He thinks about the time he sat next to Drake in first class on the way to Toronto with his dad, and this time an image of Devi rolling her eyes pops into his head.
He leans back in his chair and wonders what Devi is writing about. She probably has half a dozen stories to choose from, each one more exciting and endearing than the last, and each one bursting with the kind of personality that teachers – for the most part – seem to find charming rather than obnoxious (which is what it is).
He’ll never admit it out loud, but even though he knows that he can be charming when he needs to be, there’s an easy charisma to Devi that he’s never been quite able to replicate.
He frowns at that thought, then scowls at the rather wide tangent his thought process has taken.
The cursor blinks at him as an idea slowly takes shape in his mind. He writes about the long rivalry between him and Devi – the back and forth exchanges in class that became back and forth exchanges of first prize and first place and ‘best of’ certificates. The sixth grade disaster of their competing Oregon Trail projects, which almost got them both suspended and lead to a long enough truce for them to divide up any extracurricular and project they might ever take part in.
By the time he’s done with his fictional movie, it’s overtaken his letter; the answer to that one question as long as all the rest of his answers combined.
He reads over it and edits a word here and there, rearranges a couple sentences. Not to toot his own horn, but there’s now a buttload of personality in this letter in addition to proof of his competence, confidence and intelligence.
He ignores the smug-sounding voice of Devi in the back of his mind telling him that he couldn’t have done it without her.
Mrs. Allen takes all their letters with a smile on her face and gathers them close to her chest.
“I can’t wait to get to know you better! Reading these letters is the best way to start my year, and in four years, you guys are going to love reading them back to yourselves.”
She turns and puts the letters in a filing cabinet, which gives him the chance to roll his eyes without her seeing.
She turns back to the class and claps her hands together.
“Now this second one – it’s not everyone’s favorite, but I personally love it because it lets me see everyone in a different light.”
He groans inwardly, basically sure that she’s going to announce some kind of partner or group project, which he absolutely loathes. It’s way too early for someone to dull his shine in this class (or, in the case of Devi, threaten to eclipse him).
Unfortunately, the second assignment is much, much worse than a group project.
“This assignment isn’t for you,” Mrs. Allen says as she starts to hand out the assignment sheet. “It’s for your parents!”
Anxiety gnaws at the pit of his stomach the minute she says it.
“For homework, I need your a parent or guardian or uncle or aunt or grandparent to write a letter about you to me. It doesn’t really matter who specifically it is, it just should be someone who has helped raise you and shape you to become the person you are today. I give suggestions on that sheet about what I’d like them to write about, but really, those are just suggestions.” She smiles brightly at the class. “Basically, I want to see a different perspective on you. This helps me get to know you better and whoever takes care of you at the same time.”
The anxiety has eaten through his stomach and is now going to town on his liver.
“And I know that your parents are busy people, so they have until the end of the week to complete it.”
He slinks as far down in his chair without seeming disrespectful, trying to figure out a way to keep his anxiety from ravaging his lungs.
“What’s wrong, Gross,” Devi asks to the right of him. “Afraid your dad won’t be able to write anything nice about you?”
He shoots up in his chair and glares at her.
“More like I’m trying to figure out how to make sure my dad doesn’t go over the page limit because I’m so awesome.”
She rolls her eyes and turns back to talk to Fabiola, as he turns his attention back to the paper on his desk.
His parents are both out of town until Friday – his mom’s at some kind of rejuvenation spa and his father is brokering a deal with some artist named Clairo – so he knows he won’t be able to ask either of them. It makes sense – they’re busy and this assignment is stupid, and he should really argue about it except that Devi doesn’t seem to care about it in the slightest and has already put the assignment sheet in her binder.
Putting up a fight about it would admit to a weakness – his only one, really – and he’d rather drop out of the class or fail than admit that to her. Er. To anyone.
For just a moment, he considers asking Patti, who does meet all the criteria – she is someone who’s helped raise him and shape him to be the person that he is. He dismisses the idea in the next moment, because even if she technically fits the parameters, he can only imagine the kind of pity he’d get from Mrs. Allen when she reads a letter written by his house manager. He needs Mrs. Allen to be impressed by him, not feel sorry for him.
He thinks about that letter over the next few days and finally comes up with a compromise – he writes it himself, but from the perspective of his dad.
He then emails it to his dad, who signs it, scans it and sends it back as an attachment with an email that says Couldn’t have written better myself! You’re so smart! Love you!
He takes that as confirmation that all those things he said about himself as his dad were true, and tries to tell himself it feels just as good as if his dad had actually written them.
The following Monday, he overhears Mrs. Allen tell Devi that her father’s letter was so beautiful and heartfelt that it made her cry.
He doesn’t hear what Devi says in return – some just-right mixture of pride and genuine gratitude, he’s sure – just turns away and pretends to rifle through his backpack.
There’s a pang in his heart that he tells himself isn’t jealousy, and an odd sense of relief when Mrs. Allen passes by his desk without saying anything at all.
That assignment is the second thing he thinks about when he hears about Devi’s dad and the orchestra concert (the first thought is something that can’t be put into words – a kind of bottomless sadness shot through with a concern he doesn’t know what to do with).
He wonders if Mrs. Allen will give that letter back to Devi. If doing so would be an unbearable kindness or an unspeakable cruelty. If Devi would even open it if she did.
Mostly he wonders if Devi is ok, and what would make her feel better.
After hours of thinking about it, he realizes he doesn’t know. It makes him feel sad – or useless, maybe – that even though he’s known her for almost his entire life, all he knows is how to piss her off.
He briefly thinks about deliberately tanking a test this week to make her feel better, then realizes that he:
A. Is so smart that he probably wouldn’t be able to tank a test, even if he tried.
and
B. Devi would know – she always knows when he’s up to something – and it would do nothing but piss her off even more.
So he studies his ass off and gets a higher grade than she does on their Biology test. Her nostrils flare when she sees the grade on his test, and for a moment he really does feel bad – maybe he should’ve tried to tank the test after all.
But then her eyes flash with something that isn’t sadness for the first time in weeks, and he’s so absurdly happy to see it that he doesn’t even come up with an insult when she lobs one in his direction.
He tells himself it’s because having a nemesis who’s all in makes him a better student, but when she gives a full-on victory cry in class a week later because she’s beaten him on their English test by half a point, that same absurd kind of glee is back with it.
A small part of him thinks maybe he’s just happy that she’s happy, in whatever small way she can be right now. The larger part of him ignores that, and studies twice as hard for their upcoming Algebra test.
He thinks about that letter again on the way home from the Model U.N. trip, as he watches her freeze the moment an ambulance comes shrieking down the street.
His mind is a jumbled mess of emotion – anger at the way the conference ended, confusion at the way things have seemingly ended between him and Devi – but all that fades away in a wave of concern as he sees Devi force herself to take steady breaths.
He almost wants to ask if she’s ok, but in the next moment she catches him looking at her and snaps a question, and he’s so mixed up and off-balance that he falls back on what the two of them do best – insults and sarcasm.
It’s comfortable, but it doesn’t settle him, and for the first time (maybe not for the first time) he wishes he could be good at something that isn’t a way to hurt her.
He thinks about that again when he’s sitting across the dinner table from Devi, her insults still ringing in his ears.
Now would be the perfect time to hurt her the way she hurt him, to make her as miserable as he feels right this moment.
But then he remembers that letter, thinks about the girl whose dad loved her so much that talking about her made a stranger cry, about the look of misery on her face as the ambulance went by and how awful it must feel every time she hears a siren.
He remembers the feeling of wanting to be good at something that isn’t a way to hurt her.
So he swallows his bitterness at the way the Model UN Conference ended and swerves away from hurting her, makes some charming jokes about how good she is at diplomacy instead.
She smiles at him from across the table, and later even laughs when he tells her about his awkward pizza encounter (he won’t say it makes him feel better than he has in the last 24 hours, but something loosens in his chest at the sound of it).
It doesn’t take away the loneliness of the day completely or soothe all his disappointment, but even though the day still stings, at least he knows that he can be alright – maybe even good – at something more than just hurting Devi.
He knows he’s had more grandma juice than is advisable when he finds himself staring at his reflection and telling himself that he didn’t throw this party just so Devi would come to his house.
It’s his birthday, he reasons, and people throw parties on their birthday. It’s what his parents wanted when they left him, and he’s nothing if not a dutiful son. Plus, he has the house for it, and the money for it, and the friends –.
Well, he’s still not drunk enough to say – even to himself – that he has the friends for it.
But having parties is what cool kids do on their birthdays, and even if he can admit that he isn’t one of them, he’s at least adjacent enough to cool kids to be able to emulate their behavior.
So, yeah. That’s why he threw this party – to be cool. Not because Devi asked him about throwing one. Not because seeing Devi look at Paxton like he was a goddamn chiseled marble statue come to life in the style of Pygmalion set off a hot spark of something that felt like jealousy in the center of his chest. His throwing this party had nothing to do with Devi, at all, in any way, shape or form.
He tells himself that a half dozen times as he looks at his blurry reflection in the mirror, as he splashes his face with water in the hopes that it’ll miraculously clear his vision, as he walks down the stairs holding his fourth cup of grandma juice.
Then he sees her come through the door and it’s like his vision clears up completely (if momentarily, because apparently emotions do not supersede biology) and he feels a warmth in his veins that has nothing to do with the alcohol currently coursing through it because Devi is in his house and she actually looks genuinely happy to see him.
He takes her on a tour of the house, pointing out the memorabilia from all his dad clients, showing her the game room and the gym and the two indoor pools (one chlorinated, one a saltwater pool), and she’s complimenting it all without even the slightest bit of sarcasm and laughing at his jokes and mocking him without the usual hard edge to her and he honestly can’t remember the last time he was this happy and –
Oh, fuck.
He totally threw this entire party just to invite Devi over to his house.
He spends the next two days after the party replaying his back to back attempts at kissing Devi, then the way he had just stood frozen in place as Paxton helped her out of the pool.
By that time, Shira had emerged from…wherever it was she had been and had draped her arm around him, and the combined weight of that and the guilt he felt from making a move on Devi when he was still in a relationship with her had rooted him in place.
So he’d just watched as Devi had had what probably should’ve been a private confrontation with her closest friends in front of the entire school, then as Paxton had rushed in to save the day and whisked her away to take her home.
He’d hate Paxton if he wasn’t so thoroughly disgusted with himself, and he’s at least not so selfish that he isn’t glad that Devi at least has someone there for her at the exact moment she needs it, since he’s apparently too much of a coward to be it.
His one saving grace for the night was that he’d managed not to be a total shithead. He’d waited until most everyone was gone or too drunk to really know what’s going on, then pulled Shira aside.
“Hey, so.” He’d taken a deep breath in and then breathed out again slowly. “I think we should break up.”
He had steeled himself then, ready to give a long and genuine apology about how it wasn’t her – she’s beautiful and popular and he knows he’s lucky she even spent this long with him – it was him. He’d been ready to talk about how sorry he was to do this to her, how he knew she’d find someone again soon and he wished her the best.
But she’d just given him a bored look and said ok, then left the room with a listless wave.
After nearly a year together, it turns out that his relationship with Shira is approximately the equivalent of a half-hearted shrug, which might make him sad if he wasn’t spending all of his waking hours thinking about what to say to Devi when he eventually has to talk to her about what happened at his party.
He’d run after her at the moment and blamed it on the alcohol – and that had held at the time – but he isn’t so sure it’ll hold up in the bright light of day.
What scares him isn’t some delusion – and he knows it’s a delusion – about Devi holding some kind of more-than-friends affection for him, but the very real threat that he’s lost the opportunity to actually be her friend at all.
The awful, boundless loneliness of going back to just being her enemy instead of her maybe, sometimes, somewhat friend seems unbearable. Not now that he knows how much lighter he feels when they stand on solid ground next to each other rather than just trying to claw each other down to get ahead.
He really wants to insist that he was drunk and stupid and that he didn’t mean it, even if saying that second part out loud makes him feel a little bit sick – as if the lie is too much for his stomach to hold.
Or else that he’d just been so lonely and grateful that someone gave him a present and he’d been drunk enough to let that gratitude manifest in affection, and that it wasn’t her, specifically – he’d have kissed anyone in that moment who’d given him a present. He’d have kissed his dentist for sending him that postcard.
He so desperately wants those things to be true – like, more than he wants the Clippers to win the title or his mom and dad to spend more than a week at home with him. More than he wants to be valedictorian at the end of high school.
Because he knows the last thing he needs to do is admit that it wasn’t the alcohol or the present or the fact that it was his birthday and he was feeling alone despite the crowded house. Because admitting that would mean admitting that he had tried to kiss Devi simply because he wanted to kiss her. Because she had looked pretty in the dimness of the theater room, and he’d looked at her lips and suddenly realized (or maybe let himself admit) it wasn’t the first he’d wondered how they might feel. That somewhere along the way the warm sensation in the center of his chest whenever he looked at her stopped being spite, but became something softer, something more tender and dangerous and hopeless.
“Goddammit,” he says out loud in the darkness of his empty room, which is weird for two reasons: he almost never cusses and he’s talking out loud to absolutely no one.
Still, it helps, kind of, so he keeps going.
“God. Fucking. Dammit.”
And then because he can’t bear to say that one particular truth out loud, he switches it for one that he can; stares straight up into the emptiness of his dark room and says through gritted teeth: “You are an entire fucking idiot, Ben Gross.”
It takes another day for him to work up the courage to talk about what happened that night, which is ridiculous because the tactic he lands on has all the grace of a daytime soap: feigned amnesia.
So he stutters through some half-assed explanation about what he may or may not have done, about not wanting things to be weird, and how they shouldn’t be weird because, hey after all he couldn’t remember anything, so they should be ok.
She looks somewhere between thoughtful and skeptical, which makes sense because Devi’s not stupid. She is, in fact, the exact opposite of stupid, which is something that has frustrated and motivated and enticed him at various turns in their rivalry.
He figures he’s about half a minute away from her calling him on his lie, and he steels himself for whatever sharp-edged insult he’s about to get deservedly thrown his way.
Which is why he’s stunned into silence when she doesn’t insult him at all, but instead asks if she can move in with him.
“I’m sorry, what now?” He asks – you know, once he’s able to get his brain to function properly and his mouth moving like it’s supposed to.
She sighs heavily, and he notices for the first time how tired she looks – almost defeated. Which throws him off even more than Devi Vishwakumar asking if she can move in with him, because he’s never even seen her look humbled – and God knows he’s tried.
“Before you say no –.”
“I’m not gonna say no, Devi.” He interrupts, and the relieved smile on her face is enough to make him want to give her almost anything she might ask for. “I’m just – is everything ok?”
He expects her to say something sarcastic, something along the lines that the simple fact that she’s even asking him means that her world has gone terribly wrong.
But she doesn’t say that. In fact, for a long moment she doesn’t say anything at all, just closes her locker and leans against it with her head kinda bowed.
“Uh, Devi?”
He moves closer to her and it’s almost as if he can feel the misery coming off her in waves. Some remote part of him clocks the fact that like two years ago this would’ve felt sweet; now he just feels alarmed and a little panicked, his anxiety settling along his skin like an itchy rash.
She looks up at him and he’s close enough to see the brightness of unshed tears in her eyes. His eyes widen in shock as he moves closer to her – not to touch her, because he doesn’t think she’d actually appreciate that from him right now, but to block the gaze of any random passerby in the halls. Half their class have seen Devi lose her temper, but next to no one has seen her cry, and he thinks she’d probably prefer to keep it that way.
“Hey,” he says softly, ducking his head down to meet her lowered gaze. “I just need to ask my parents, but I already know they’re gonna say yes.” He chews on his lower lip. “Is there anything else I can help with?”
“Not unless you can convince my mom not to move us to India.”
He blinks rapidly at that.
“Wh – what?”
She nods, lines of misery settling along the shape of her mouth.
“That’s why I need to move in with you. I can’t just, like, go back home and be there with mom, knowing that she’s just gonna whisk us off to India.” She shakes her head. “I can’t be around her, Ben.”
“Ye – yeah, ok, definitely, sure.” He says, trying to process what she’s saying. He takes a deep breath and gives her a small smile. “It’s no problem, David. You can stay with me however long you need to.”
“So, this is the guest room,” he says, opening the door. “Well, one of them.” He gestures towards the closed door on the far side of the room. “This one has the best bathroom though.”
She raises an eyebrow at that, then walks past him and sets her bag on the bed. She turns around and scoots onto the bed.
“I – uh – really appreciate this Ben,” she says, and it’s the first time he can ever remember her actually seeming shy. “I know it must suck to have your rival in the house with you.”
His face twists involuntarily when she calls herself his rival, and he can see the flicker of confusion on her face.
“Do you prefer nemesis?”
He gives her a small smile.
“I was thinking – .” He almost says friend, but then thinks that might be a bridge too far. “Associates? Living with someone who considers themself my nemesis makes me feel like you’re going to murder me in my sleep. ”
She rolls her eyes.
“I mean,” she says after a moment. “You are letting me stay in your house for, like, free.” She smiles. “If that doesn’t qualify as friendship, I don’t know what does.”
He shrugs and looks away, but only to hide the wide smile on his face.
He hears a knock on the door, and then his mother walks into the room.
“You all settled in sweetie?” She asks Devi with a smile.
Devi nods.
“Yes, thank you Mrs. Gross. I really appreciate this. I know having a house guest can be an imposition.”
She waves the compliment away.
“Not at all. There’s 4000 square feet in this house – we could go days and not even see one another.” She turns to Ben. “In fact, that is literally what is going to happen this week because your father is going to Malibu for a boy’s getaway and I’m having a girls trip to Napa for the week, so we’ll be out of your hair until next Thursday.”
He gives his mom a tight smile and leans forward for her to kiss him on the cheek like he knows she will.
“And I’m so sorry we’re going to miss your band concert, sweetie,” she says and he sees Devi frown out of the corner of his eye. He glances over to her and mouths a capella, then turns back to his mom. “I promise we’ll make one of them one of these days. It’s just – well, you know, sometimes you just need a break from parenting!”
She gives him a small hug then sashays out of the room, and he’s left with the weight of Devi’s stare.
“So, have you ever been in band?” She asks after a moment.
He shakes his head.
“I have not.” He shrugs and gives her a smile that he knows is strained at the edges. “But I am in a lot of extracurriculars, so it can be hard to keep up.”
She gives him a hard stare when he says that, but he has the feeling it isn’t really directed at him. He makes a weird gesture with his arms that’s halfway between it’s fine and what can you do, and thinks about how Devi’s parents have always gone to every fair, competition and exhibition they’ve ever had. They even went to the monthly award ceremonies in elementary school, where Devi would rotate between being student of month to science star of the month to best orchestra student of the month to shining art star and then back around again.
His, it should go without saying, have never gone to any of his events – a fact that it seems like Devi is now realizing by the expression on her face.
“When’s your A Capella concert?” She asks after moment.
“Tomorrow night.”
“First one of the year?”
He nods.
“Yeah, so it probably won’t be our best one.” He grins at her. “I mean, I’m going to be awesome, obviously, but the rest of the group – they don’t quite have my talent.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Alright, Will Schuester, leave me alone so I can unpack.”
“Ok, first of all, that’s glee club and it’s completely different,” he says, as he turns to go. “And also, I’m clearly Finn Hudson.”
“You’re a freaking dork is what you are,” she yells behind him, but even with his back turned he can tell she says it with a smile.
Their A Capella concerts never have a very big audience, which makes it easy to spot Devi in the third row of the auditorium the next night at his concert. She gives him a small wave and a thumbs up from where she’s sitting, and he smiles so widely at her that his cheeks hurt a little bit.
The concert goes pretty well, all things considered. He is obviously the best part of it – that part wasn’t a brag to Devi. Well, it wasn’t solely a brag.
He emerges from the chorus room and out into the lobby as soon as its over, not even stopping to help tidy up the room as he usually does to score brownie points.
He scans the lobby and sees Devi standing in the far corner, her hands in her pockets as she scans the room for him.
“David,” he calls out and walks over to where she’s standing. He tells himself he’s a little bit breathless because of all the singing he’s just done. “You didn’t have to come.”
She shrugs.
“I know.” She gestures to the program in her hands. “It’s actually a lot cooler than I thought it’d be, though it’s nothing like Pitch Perfect.”
He scoffs.
“I mean, this is just a concert – you should see what it’s like at regionals.”
“Ooh, do you guys have a sing-off in the parking lot?”
“One sing-off, David? More like you can’t go anywhere at regionals without getting challenged to a sing-off.”
She laughs, and he gives her a sidelong glance.
“So you, uh, you don’t think it’s weird and nerdy?”
She shakes her head.
“No, it is definitely still weird and nerdy, but, like, in a cool way.”
He grins at her.
“Thanks for coming – it’s the first time anyone’s ever been there for me.” He catches the look on her face – a flash of something that could be anger, could be incredulity, could be sadness – and furrows his brows. “What?”
She shakes her head.
“Nothing.” She smiles at him. “I’m glad I came.”
He smiles back at her.
“Me too.”