Chapter Text
It is not, Sean tells himself every time the subject is brought up, that he minds PJ trying to set him up. It's not even that he minds that he’s only trying to set him up with one girl. Sean likes Sydney well enough; she’s got a smile that takes up her whole face and a full-bodied laugh that fills whatever room she’s in. She’s pretty and kind and fierce, bright eyes and a bubbly personality. Sean knows, he swears he knows, that he could fall in love--head over heels in love, the kind of love in corny YA novels--if he’d only let himself. So it's not that he minds that PJ is trying to set him up, and he’s got absolutely nothing against Syd.
He just wishes PJ would stop trying to set him up with Ethan’s ex-girlfriend.
Sean isn’t the world’s biggest advocate for the “bro code,” or anything. He doesn't necessarily have any general objections to dating a friend’s ex, depending on how long ago they dated and for how long, as well as why they broke up in the first place. Someone a friend dated for three months back when they were sixteen isn’t going to be someone Sean views as off-limits (unless she like… murdered someone, or something). He wouldn’t even feel the need to ask if that friend would be okay with it; three months over a decade ago is nothing at all. But Syd and Ethan dated for something close to two years, and they only broke up just over two months ago. From what Sean understands, it was messy, preceded by shouting and fights that didn’t make sense, ending with two heartbroken individuals that were entirely unsure of where exactly it went wrong. He’s heard both sides of the story, and neither of them were quite willing to place the blame solely (or even primarily) on the other, but refusing to take it themselves. The last few weeks they were together could only be described as a trainwreck, and they're only just starting to talk to each other again, even if it's only in stilted and awkward texts.
Sean wouldn't mind PJ trying to set him and Syd up if the breakup hadn't been so recent, or at the very least if it had been cleaner.
“I'm not trying to set you up,” PJ tells Sean now, clearly seeing where Sean’s mind is. PJ says that each time, but there's no way he’s not, when he’s trying to convince Sean to let Syd stay at his place for a couple weeks while they film something for her channel, some music video that PJ agreed to direct, despite the fact that they lived in different countries. “But she needs someplace to stay, unless you want her to spend more money than what's fair on a hotel for two weeks.”
“And what's wrong with your place?” Sean asks, though he already knows. Syd wouldn’t complain, she never does, but she certainly wouldn't be comfortable sharing a space with a happy couple for an extended period of time, not if she’s still hurting. Even Sean, way back when he and Signe broke up, found it hard to be around Mark and Amy, Arin and Suzy. (Ethan and Syd.) His own breakup hadn't even been that rough, certainly not as rough as Syd’s and Ethan’s.
PJ fixes Sean with a look that tells the Irishman what he already knows: he’s grasping at straws, desperate for… what, exactly? An excuse not to have to deal with Syd? She’s his friend, too. Sean’s grateful she and Ethan aren't making him choose a side. Maybe that's what this is about, a perceived choice he doesn't even want to make.
Maybe he’s afraid that he won't be able to help himself. Maybe he’s afraid he’ll fall in love anyway, in spite of his best efforts.
“It'll give her a chance to teach you the choreography, anyway,” PJ says finally, even if they both know that's not the real issue.
“Waste of her time, to be honest,” Sean says, latching onto the chance to change the subject. “I'm shite at dancing.”
PJ shrugs. “Give it a chance,” he says. “She told me the dance isn’t that hard, and she’s a professional dance instructor. I'm sure you'll be fine.”
And just like that, Sean has to prepare for Syd to stay at his house for two weeks, with less than forty-eight hours to do so. He feels cheated, somehow, almost like PJ guilt-tripped him into agreeing. Possibly, he might have, but Sean doubts he meant anything bad by it. Those doubts might even help Sean forgive him, someday. Maybe.
Plane's landed. En route soon.
Sean still isn't sure how the hell he managed to let PJ convince him to do this.
Actually, scratch that. Take it back further, Sean isn't sure how the hell he let Syd convince him to do this; he doesn't know the song, doesn't care about the band, can't dance to save his life, and he doesn't feel like filming on the beach at daybreak in March is anything close to a good idea. Everything about what she's asking of him is adding up to what could have been, should have been, a simple, “No, thanks. Sorry.” He could have turned her offer down and resolutely stayed inside while his friends froze their asses off in the wee hours of the morning. Probably, he wouldn’t have even felt like the worst person in the world for all that long.
Somewhere in the midst of his frantic musings, he found himself in front of his computer, YouTube already pulled up, as it always is these days. He decides that now is as good a time as any to look up the song.
Syd does this thing on her channel, where she makes a music video for a song that doesn't already have one, recording a cover of the song in the process. She covers a lot of bases with them, stretching across genres and making the videos she feels her favorite songs deserve, and it all started with a Fall Out Boy cover she made to tell a story and to make a point to herself (Sean's heard the story about the video and everything it means, a late night after a charity stream on her end, something that left her drained and tired and needing a fresh pair of ears, someone who hadn't heard the story before). PJ had reached out months ago about a collaboration, and Syd had an idea ready and waiting for exactly that moment. A music video cover, for a song from an album with no videos at all. Weird and a little bit creepy, right up PJ's alley.
It's not Sean's kind of music. It feels more like a dramatic reading, like slam poetry recited over a piano than a proper song. It's soft and easy, but the words come through perfectly clear, and he can tell, plain as day, it's perfect for PJ.
He ends up, inexplicably (or maybe just inevitably) on a binge of Syd's cover videos, and he's halfway through one for a song called “Lifted” when his phone vibrates.
Outside. Come help with her bags like a proper gentleman.
Not trying to set them up, Sean's arse.
He exits out of the window, not that Syd's going to be going into his recording room anyway to spot the incriminating evidence, and heads outside. Unsurprisingly, Syd doesn't even need help with her two bags: a bright orange suitcase and a backpack with a collage of Pokémon printed on it. She looks up at him and grins her face-splitting grin, and Sean can't help but smile back. Worried about nothing, that's what he's been doing. Being around Syd is easy, and he can hardly make a fool of himself in his own damn home. If he really can't get the hang of it before they go down to the beach in a week's time, then Sean's sure she has a backup plan in place.
And, at any rate, isn't making a fool of himself something Sean doesn't care about? Isn't it kind of what he's known for?
"Hi, Jack!" she says, setting the suitcase down on the ground and wrapping her arms around him, pressing close like always. Syd hugs everybody with a full-bodied embrace, as if every person she meets is a personal friend she's known her whole life. She pulls away after a moment, and up close, Sean can see bags under her eyes and the exhausted set of her shoulders. But she's still as bright-eyed as she always is, almost as if nothing can actually slow her down for long. "How've you been?"
Sean shrugs, picking the suitcase up for her--he came out here to help her with her luggage, apparently, so that's what he's going to do. "Pretty good," he tells her, waving to PJ as other man gets back into the car. Syd waves too, much more energetically. "How about you?"
Syd responds with a shrug of her own. "Okay," she says softly, and Sean winces internally. Bright eyes and broad grin, maybe, but that doesn't mean she's going to be the same as she was before. "Been better," she continues, and Sean opens his mouth to apologize, but she adds, "Been worse," before he can.
Sean doesn't know what to say to that, but Syd doesn't seem to mind. He opens the door to let her into the house, and she walks in, toeing her shoes off almost as soon as she's through the door. He's never been entirely clear if it's an "Americans don't wear shoes indoors" thing or a "Syd hates shoes and will take them off at the soonest available opportunity" thing.
"I'll show you to the guest room," Sean says, moving around her and into the hall. He doesn't check to make sure she's following; the house isn't exactly big enough to get lost in, and there's nothing interesting enough to distract Syd for the amount of time it would take for Sean to disappear completely.
The guest room isn’t anything special, just a bed, dresser, and a nightstand, but it’s enough that Syd won’t be wanting for anything in the couple weeks she’s here. Sean doesn’t see a point in decorating a guest bedroom, since there’s never any way to know who will be staying in there, and all sorts of people like all sorts of things. It’s better to keep it dull and empty than to make some guests uncomfortable just for the sake of getting his ma off his back (“The room’s so bare, nobody’ll want t’ stay that long!”).
Syd doesn’t seem to mind, at any rate, setting her bookbag on the bed and shrugging out of her coat. She grins at Sean as he sets the suitcase by the door, floundering for something to say next. He should probably do something about dinner, not that his kitchen’s well stocked.
“Thanks for letting me stay on such short notice,” Syd says, collapsing backwards. Sean thinks her head is now hanging off the side of the bed he can’t see. “I was supposed to stay with PJ and Sophie, but Peej said something came up.”
Of course he did.
“It’s no problem,” Sean assures her, still standing awkwardly in the doorway. “’It’s not like I keep the place filthy or anything like that.”
The truth is, he’d had to spend the last couple days tidying up. It’s not like he lives in squalor or anything like that; he puts his dirty dishes in the sink and he keeps most of his clothes in a hamper, but he also tends to leave scraps of paper and loose pens lying around. He doesn’t even know where they all come from, it’s not like he does a lot of physical writing or anything. It’s just that he knows Syd well enough to know that she’d feel bad if she thought he had to go to any length of trouble for her benefit.
She sends him a thumbs up in response to his assurances, before letting her arm flop back down to her side.
“Anyway, I was thinking of just ordering a pizza for dinner,” Sean says, mainly because he doesn’t have enough food in his kitchen to make an actual meal. He needs to do some grocery shopping, but he didn’t think to do that before Syd arrived. "Any preferences?"
"No fucking pineapple," she says, and Sean refrains from making some ridiculous comment to kickstart an arbitrary argument about pizza toppings.
"So two different pizzas, got it."
"So," Syd straightens up, after clearing a large space in the center of Sean's living room, "do you have any dance experience at all?"
"I filmed those pole dancing videos with Mark while I was in LA," Sean answers, clicking his fingers and pointing at her.
Syd lets out a breath of air, looking down and putting her hands on her hips. "That's…That's okay," she says, straightening up. She claps her hands together once. "I can work with this." She smiles up at him, blindingly bright. "Let's stretch out, first."
She leads him in a few stretches, explaining where Sean's meant to feel each one. It leaves him feeling kind of weird, loose in a way that he's not used to. It takes about twenty minutes before she declares him ready.
"Alright, so," she says, bending over backwards far enough that Sean thinks she might fall over, "have you listened to the song yet?"
Sean flashes back to the day before. He nods.
"And what did you think?" She stands back up.
Sean can't tell if she wants his opinion on the song itself, or if she wants to know what he thinks he's going to be doing, what role he thinks he's taking in all of this. "I think it's interesting," he settles on finally. "Definitely PJ's cup of tea."
"Right?" Syd looks happy with his assessment. "Anyway, so there's that part of the song where the narrator says he sees that spaceship, right? And there's a voice that says, 'follow me instead.' I was thinking, you could be that voice, the temptation to leave the line the narrator's been in day in, day out. Understand?"
Sean understands the concept well enough, even if he doesn't understand why she chose him, or how that translates to him trying to dance. He nods, though, instead of questioning any of that. He figures that he's already committed, knowing why isn't going to help him. He probably should have asked her why him when she first asked.
"Alright," she says, stepping close to him. "Any objections to me getting slightly handsy to adjust your position?"
"Be my guest," Sean offers. It's really starting to get difficult to believe that PJ has no intention of setting them up, although he doubts that he knew about this bit.
Syd grins, and Sean's pretty sure that it's not meant to be as sharklike as it looks. She grabs him by the arms and shifts him over about three steps to the left, so he's standing dead center of the living room. "So there won't be marks on the ground," she explains, "because it's a beach and that might be difficult, but we're starting 'center stage'," she makes finger quotes around the last two words, "which is to say the center of the camera's frame. I'm not gonna hound you on marks for the whole thing, just because hitting exact marks in this style of dance is difficult enough when you do have experience, which you do not." That sounded fair. "So, you're gonna start with your feet slightly more than shoulder width apart," she says, nudging Sean's feet apart with her own foot. "And then your body turned towards stage left."
"So...my left?" Sean asks, as she twists his torso so that his feet are kept facing his couch, but his shoulders are facing the wall.
"Well, yeah," she agrees. "But if your back's to the camera, this is still stage left, even if it's your right."
"Oh, Jesus," Sean mutters.
Syd grins at him again. "You'll do fine!" She adjust his arms, then walks over to the left, just out of his reach. "Ready?"
He's pretty sure the answer's no. He nods anyway.
It's hard. Syd's patient, going slow and adjusting his body over and over, giving him kind smiles and telling him how great he's doing. They go for almost two hours, and Sean's sweating all over, even though he's not doing nearly as much as Syd. He doesn't feel like he's made any progress, and he's almost entirely certain that when they come back to this tomorrow, he won't remember any of it.
"Let's call it for the day," Syd declares, barely winded. "You did well!"
"Don't lie to me," Sean huffs, doubling over. "That was terrible."
"Oh, no, believe me," she says, sitting down on the couch, which Sean can't wait to move back to its original spot, if only because that means that this hell will be done with. "I've seen terrible. Inexperienced and struggling with choreography is not the same thing as talentless and unmotivated."
"Oh God, please tell me that you tell your students that they're talentless," Sean says, straightening up and joining her on the couch. " Please ."
"Of course I don't," Syd says, as if the idea is ridiculous. "Calling someone talentless isn't constructive. I say it to the other instructors."
Sean laughs, and tries not to think about how lonely he's going to be once Syd goes home.
About a week and a half later finds Sean chugging coffee and freezing his ass off on the beach at four in the morning. Syd's beside him, talking animatedly to PJ about positions and camera angles. Most of it goes right over Sean's head, less because he doesn't understand filmmaking (he does) and more because he's been awake for too long. What doesn't go over his head is when he hears PJ say, "Water's not quite as cold as I thought it'd be."
"Oh, that's good," Syd says, taking a sip of her own coffee. "Although we do still have a plan B."
PJ waves his hand dismissively. "I think this'll be fine. More authentic."
"Okay, but if anyone gets sick, I am not taking the blame," Syd warns. "I had a plan B, which does not involve jumping into the ocean in March."
"We're doing what now?" Sean asks. He was not told that he was taking a swim in this weather.
"Oh, no, not you," Syd says, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You're doing exactly what we've practiced and nothing else, don't worry. Everyone else is walking into the ocean, it's fine!" She smiles up at him, bright, infectious. Calming.
Still, though, Sean isn't going to let go of the issue so quickly. "Can I ask why everyone's walking off into the ocean in the middle of March?"
Syd shrugs. "It's PJ's vision. I was cool with a green screen and some cute animations."
PJ looks affronted. "This was your idea!"
"Not in the middle of March, it wasn't!" Syd argues. "I said, depending on when we end up shooting. If we were here in June or July, then yeah. Sure, we can line up our friends and send them into the ocean. Once we settled on this time of year, I offered up an alternative where nobody gets a cold and spends the next couple weeks angry at both of us."
Sean spares a glance over to the other clusters of people. He recognizes most of them, even if only vaguely. A lot of them are more PJ's friends than his own, people PJ always calls on for his films. it makes Sean wonder, again, why he's the one that got chosen to dance with Syd. Why was he singled out, why's he the only one doing something special?
"Anyway," PJ says, pulling Sean away from his train of thought. "Which did you want to film first, this bit," he gestures to the two of them, "or the part where all our friends walk into the freezing ocean and hate us for the foreseeable future?"
"We'll do the dance first," Syd decides. "If the light changes during the line, it's fine. I want the illusion that we've been marching for a while."
PJ nods. "I'll get the equipment set up over there, then."
"Can I ask why I'm the one who's got to dance?"
Syd looks up at him and smiles. "PJ suggested it." Of fucking course he did. "But I was thinking about asking you to do it, anyway. I had this idea forever ago, way before I even became a YouTuber, back when you had green hair. And in my head, you were the alien in the spaceship."
"This was before you'd even met PJ?" Sean can't believe that Syd's been sitting on a KickthePJ collaboration for that long, longer than that collaboration's even been in the cards.
"I've admired him for an incredibly long time," she says, matter-of-fact. "And I really felt like this song suited his aesthetic. Anyway, even after you went back to your natural hair color, the visual kinda stuck." She shrugs. "Why'd you agree, if you were so sure you'd be terrible at it?"
Because I can't say no to you, apparently. "Beats the alternative, which is apparently running into the ocean."
Syd rolls her eyes. She grabs him by the hand and drags him toward where PJ's finishing setting up.
"Hey, do you want us to get into our starting positions so you can make sure we're both in frame?"
"Yes, actually," PJ agrees. "We can set up how wide the shot's meant to be, as well."
Syd nods before dragging Sean over to a stretch of beach that seems to have been set aside for the two of them, positioning him right in front of the tripod that PJ must have set up earlier. "You remember any of the dance?" she asks, tapping him on the shoulder.
"Parts," Sean says. "Not all." Really, it's much less complicated than he'd thought it would be, with a wide margin of error on his part. So long as he remembers where to put his feet, Syd will be able to do the rest. He just can't quite remember all the places he's supposed to put his feet.
"Could be worse." She grins up at him before stepping away, standing a few feet away and waving to let PJ know that she's ready for him to adjust the camera.
Looking around, Sean realizes that even though he doesn't have much of a clue as to what he's doing, he's glad that he agreed. He watches Syd for a moment, waving excitedly at different people and bouncing as she talks to whoever comes over. Nobody seems too upset about the fact that they're expected to walk into the ocean on a brisk spring morning, surprisingly.
"Alright, Jack?"
Sean starts, turning to his right to see Jack Howard standing there, looking much more awake than he has any right to.
"Oh, yeah," he answers, even though he has to fight through a yawn to say it.
"Bit tired?" Jack guesses with a grin.
"Yeah," Sean agrees, "but at least I get to stay on dry land the entire time."
Jack scoffs. "Alright, rub it in." He doesn't look like he actually minds too much, though. "It'll look good, though. At least, that's what PJ says."
"Oh, obviously you can trust PJ," Sean says.
"Oh, totally," Syd says, coming up behind Sean. "But I told him that if everyone gets sick it's not my fault."
"It's your video, though, innit?" Jack points out. "So, it sort of is."
"No," Syd objects. "Absolutely not. I had an alternative plan in case we ended up doing this while it was cold, and it's cold, and PJ said we're gonna march y'all into the ocean anyway. Not my fault."
Jack opens his mouth to reply, but PJ calls out, "Jack Howard! Get out of my shot!"
It takes about an hour and a half to film, but Sean doesn't know that they get that much usable footage out of it. He forgets about a third of the routine, and he probably looks graceless as fuck. Syd grins at him as they finish, though, tells him he's done a good job. He doesn't call her on the lie.
Sean doesn't pay too much attention to the line, mainly because he doesn't see a reason to. He sits on the ground next to PJ, just far enough from the camera that they could talk without being picked up by the camera's mic. It's mostly courtesy, since Syd's explained that the audio is being recorded separately because it's a music video.
They don't talk much, though. PJ's too busy calling for restarts and changes in positions, talking to Sophie behind the camera about whether it looks good or if they need to reshoot. Sean already feels for everyone who's gone into the water. There've been a lot of exclamations of, "It's fucking freezing!" already, and Sean's glad that he's not involved in this part.
"We'll do close ups tomorrow," PJ explains to him, when Sean asks why people keep moving into the back of the line, even though they're already soaked through. "This shot's wide enough that it shouldn't be obvious that we're just cycling through. We wanted the line to look longer than it is."
"Oh, so it's two days people are walking into the ocean."
PJ laughs. "Why are you so caught up on this?" he asks. "You don't have to do it!"
"It just blows my mind that they agreed to it," Sean says truthfully. "I swear, it's like Syd's got some magical ability to convince anybody to do anything she wants." He glances over when PJ doesn't respond immediately. PJ's watching him, and Sean knows exactly what he's thinking. "Don't start."
PJ just shakes his head at him. "The only person who told Syd they'd do something that they don't necessarily want to do was you," he says. "I talked to everyone else."
"It's not that I didn't want to," Sean argues. "It's just that I don't understand why she chose me." He looks over to PJ. "But apparently it was your suggestion."
PJ shrugs. "I wanted you to be in the video, but I didn't think you'd be willing to waltz into the ocean."
Sean sighs. "You really think I don't notice what you're doing?" he asks.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," PJ says, before he calls out something about resetting, effectively ending the conversation.
They keep going until the sun is high enough in the sky that it no longer constitutes as 'dawn' and is now, officially, 'morning.' Sean wants nothing more than to go back to sleep. But Syd's chattering excitedly about how much they got done, they can totally finish up tomorrow, Jack you did so good!
"Stop lying to me, I was passable at best," Sean mutters, looking around and debating stopping in at a coffee shop for some more caffeine.
"Well, considering you didn't even think that you were going to get that far, I'd say it was fantastic," Syd points out. "Besides, I'd go so far as to say you might have even been…" she leans in close and lowers her voice, " okay ."
"Blasphemy," Sean says, but he can't help the grin breaking out over his face. "No way was I anywhere near okay."
"Don't argue with me," Syd says. "I'm a dance instructor, I know what I'm about." She pauses, looking around. "Are you hungry? Because I'm starving and this place looks good!" She points at a diner a couple doors down from where they are, advertising fresh brewed coffee and a special on eggs and bacon. Sean gets convinced by the coffee and the grin on Syd's face.
The next morning moves smoothly and quickly. As it turns out, Syd signs off on everything she and Sean did yesterday, or at least enough that they don't have to reshoot any of it. They spread out the shots so that everyone's walking into the ocean with the sky at different shades, so there's a lot of downtime where everybody just mills around and talks to each other.
About half of the group assembled are wrapped up in towels and blankets, warming up after their foray into the ocean. Sean's in the middle of a conversation with Brad Smith and Emma Blackery when Brad says, in a total offhanded tone of voice, "Hey, so when did you and Syd start dating?" and Sean sort of...blanks.
As far as he's aware, nothing about the way he and Syd have been interacting the past couple days would indicate that they're together , especially considering that Sean doesn't want to be dating Syd. Sure, she's kind of been clinging to him, but that's just who Syd is. She's a tactile person who will hug literally anybody who doesn't shove her off. And they only arrive together because she's staying at his place, which is only happening because PJ guilted Sean into it.
"We aren't," he says belatedly, remembering that he's in a conversation.
Brad and Emma don't look like they believe him. "I thought she was staying at your place?"
"Well, yeah, but..." Sean's not sure why he's getting so flustered. "I mean, she's been here close to two weeks, and most of it's been spent teaching me the dance from yesterday. I wasn't gonna let her pay for two weeks in a hotel when she was gonna be at my place most of it anyway. And it was PJ's idea, anyway."
"Oh, God, PJ was right," Brad says, like he can't believe how dumb Sean is.
"Right about...what?"
"Don't worry about it," Emma cuts in, smacking Brad in the chest. "Although, if I may, can I ask why you aren't dating her yet?"
Yet?
"Yet?" Sean repeats. "What do you mean, yet? "
Emma and Brad are gaping at him. "Is this about Ethan?" Brad asks, after a moment. "Because I don't think he should have anything to do with you and Syd, you know?"
"I—" Sean's floundering, he can tell. But he can't figure out how to string together the words to explain himself. Not that he needs to, but every second he spends in open-mouthed silence is a second that fucking solidifies Brad and Emma's point. "Can't I just not be interested and end it at that?"
"Sure," Brad allows. "But you seem pretty fucking interested."
PJ comes up then, saving Sean from having to answer, and Sean thinks maybe he should have just stayed home. Syd had given him that out, since he didn't have to do anything today and he spent so much of yesterday complaining about the cold and the early hour. Why hadn't he stayed home ?
"Jack?" PJ's looking at him weird, of course he is.
"This is all your fault," Sean says, before he walks away and sits near Sophie and the camera. He knows it's a bad choice, since PJ's going to be sitting there too, but the alternatives are either sitting off to the side like an antisocial weirdo, or storming off and going home. Both of those would a) make Brad and Emma think that they were right, and b) lead to Syd asking questions. Sean isn't going to deal with that exchange— "PJ's been trying to set us up and I only just realized that it might be because I've got an actual crush on you and not because he's being totally weird," sounds bad on a lot of different levels, and also he might have to explain that he's been avoiding even the slightest notion of asking her out, and why.
They film until the sky turns pink, at which point PJ calls a wrap and everybody cheers.
"I feel bad," Syd announces, "because all of you took a swim in the ocean in the early morning in March for one of my videos, and I didn't do that. So." She takes off her coat and hands it to PJ, then toes off her shoes. The entire group assembled stares in shock as she runs waist deep into the water and shouts, "Holy fuck, it's cold!" before running back to the shore. "Oh, fuck, that was cold! I regret that so much!"
"Why would you do that?" Sean asks when she meets back up with him and PJ, taking her coat back and wrapping it around herself.
"Were you not listening?" she asks, pressing close to him. "I felt bad. Now, share your body heat. I'm very cold."
"I feel like that's entirely your fault," PJ points out, but he hands Syd a spare blanket anyway. "So I won't take any blame if you get sick."
Sean helps adjust the blanket around her shoulders, then wraps his arms around her. He actively avoids looking at Brad, or Emma, or PJ, or even Sophie, who has to be in on PJ's whole thing.
It's much later, eating Chinese takeout and watching some stupid movie on Netflix, that Sean realizes that he might be in deeper than he anticipated, and was certainly in deeper than he wanted. Syd's got her feet propped up on his lap,wearing a Reptar onesie and a pair of Nightmare Before Christmas slipper socks and making dry comments about the characters' choices.
She leaves in two days.
She leaves in two days, and Sean, for the first time, thinks it's entirely too soon. He's enjoyed the past couple weeks, sure. Of course he has. It's nice to not be alone, it's nice to have someone to laugh at his jokes and give insight on his videos that aren't gameplay. He had fun with the collaborations that they filmed and, yes, he had fun on the beach. But he had hardly been prepared for her visit, and he's spent the entire time walking on eggshells and actively avoiding thinking about her as anything other than friend (or Ethan's ex; he's spent a lot of time thinking of her as Ethan's ex). Now that the floodgates on those thoughts have opened, he realizes how much he likes having her here.
"This movie sucks," Syd says, setting her empty carton on the coffee table. "I love it."
"It's certainly something," Sean agrees.
Once the movie ends, they clean up the empty cartons and put the leftovers in the fridge. Sean has a question, something that's been niggling at him for a while. He's just not sure if it's a good idea to ask. Syd looks up at him. "Something on your mind?"
Sean takes a deep breath, but he decides to bite the bullet. "Can I ask why you and Ethan broke up?"
Syd sighs, sits down at the table. "It's..."
"You don't have to answer," Sean backtracks. "Not if you don't want to."
"No, it's fine," she says. "I just, I don't actually know? Like, we were doing really well, and then...we weren't." It sounds familiar enough to what happened with Sean and Signe, but it feels like there's something that she's leaving out. Not that Sean's going to press—it's her prerogative not to tell him everything. "I just felt like...almost like he wasn't putting in the effort anymore, and I know that it's on both parties to keep the relationship working but it was like everything I tried to do just seemed to blow up in my face. I don't know what I was doing wrong."
Sean wants to comfort her, to tell her it wasn't necessarily anything she did, but it's incredibly out of character for Ethan to pick fights for absolutely no reason. Not to mention how out of step it would be for Sean to imply that Ethan was in any way emotionally abusing Syd. He wouldn't have done that; every second Sean spent with them while he was in LA, they were the absolute epitome of a healthy relationship. It really does sound like something went wrong somewhere, but it's impossible to tell what or where.
"At least you're talking again," Sean offers. "It sucks to lose a friend like that."
Syd nods. "Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And I'm glad none of our mutual friends chose one or the other, too. Because, unsurprisingly, after almost two years, we had a lot of those, and it would have sucked to lose all of them, too."
"You wouldn't have lost all your friends," Sean points out. He doesn't know if he means that he himself would have stuck with her, but there are a lot of people that were closer to her than to Ethan. "But it's weird, because I've never had two friends break up and not feel compelled to choose one over the other, you know?"
Syd nods. "I knew that once things with me and Ethan calmed down, I'd want to try to at least be able to...I don't know, coexist? Like, next time Mark does one of his weird sketch things, me and Ethan could both help without being at each other's throats. And it'd be entirely pointless if me and Mark stopped talking, wouldn't it?"
The problem with this conversation is that it doesn't give Sean any kind of clarity. He's thinking about it, even after Syd says good night and goes to her room. Syd and Ethan were doing everything right; they communicated, they took the time to let the anger burn out before they talked about what had pissed them off, they did everything to try not to piss each other off that point in the first place, and they loved each other to boot. There had to be a catalyst somewhere , even if neither of them knew what it was.
And, really, that's why Sean's been so opposed to PJ's attempts to set them up. That's why Sean doesn't want to pursue anything with Syd, that's why Sean's been trying to bury this fucking crush. Because something went wrong. And maybe it's something that went wrong on Ethan's end, whatever apparently changed his attitude so drastically, but Sean doesn't know. He won't know, not until they figure it out and decide to share with him.
He almost wishes he hadn't asked.
Sean's too keyed up to sleep, now. He knows this. So, he does what he always does when he can't sleep. He records.
He records until his vision starts to swim, because he's been up for so long. He wants to try to keep going, but he knows a fruitless endeavor when he sees one, and he's walked his character off a cliff at least five times, and he can't even remember what game he's playing. He shuts everything down and collapses into his bed, but his mind's still racing even when he can't keep his eyes open. He doesn't know what time he ends up falling asleep, but it's probably much later than he'd have liked.
The first thing he does when he wakes up is take a shower. He regrets it as soon as the spray wakes him up more fully, and his mind immediately picks up where it left off last night. He's gonna kill PJ next time he sees him, and then he'll kill Brad, too. Not Emma, because she's not the one who's been trying to set them up, and she's not the one who asked 'So how long have you been dating? ' She did ask why they weren't dating yet , but Sean can forgive that. Probably. If he's feeling generous.
Syd's in the kitchen, slicing up an apple and putting the pieces in a bowl. She grins at him when he walks in, and his heart skips a beat. He's already in so fucking deep now that he's not in denial and it fucking sucks . "Good morning!"
Sean resists the urge to say something stupid, like what's so good about it , since then he'd have to explain what's got him in such a shitty mood. He knows she'd let him get away with simply saying that he didn't get much sleep last night, but it would feel weirdly like lying, and Sean can't do that to her.
"Any idea what you wanna do with your last day here?" he asks instead, grabbing a bowl so he can pour himself some cereal.
Syd shrugs. "I dunno. Brighton's not exactly one of those cities with a bunch of internationally known landmarks, you know?"
"We've got some fantastic shops," Sean suggests. "If you wanna just walk around and look in at some of them."
"Works for me."
Neither of them buy much of anything, although Syd does have a few new t-shirts and a new hoodie that she really doesn't need, living in LA. She was really excited to see it, though, and Sean's trying not to think too hard about what that excitement did to his heart. They ate while they were out, so when they get back to Sean's place, Syd just pouts and says, "I should probably pack, shouldn't I?"
"Probably a good idea," Sean agrees. Her flight home's an early one, and PJ's coming by to pick her up at about five the next morning. "I can keep you company?"
"Oh, God, please. My cat was the only one keeping me company while I was packing to come out here, and all she did was sit in the suitcase."
"She wanted to come with you," he says with a laugh.
"I'm pretty sure smuggling a cat across country lines in a suitcase is illegal," she points out. "At the very least it's animal cruelty, and Truffles would be, you know, dead, and that's not ideal."
They continue on like that, in some fashion for a while. It's easy, Sean thinks, to avoid thinking about her like that , if they keep the conversation light and mundane. Sure, she laughs easy and smiles often, and he feels like it should mean less when it happens but it doesn't, still make his heart stutter every time, but he can ignore it. He can ignore the pangs in his chest when he thinks about the fact that she's leaving tomorrow, probably before he even wakes up. Ignores that he wishes she'd stay, because he doesn't want to go back to the house being so empty.
He can almost ignore how hard he's fallen in just a couple days, can almost ignore that it means he has to have fallen well before that point but has been in denial the entire time.
Or maybe he can't ignore any of it, but denial had gotten him far.
So instead of acknowledging any of that, he makes his jokes and laughs at hers. Listens to her telling him about a different collab she filmed with PJ three days into her visit, where they played some nonsense card game that she didn't understand at all but enjoyed playing.
"I'm gonna miss you," she says, a bit suddenly, as she sets aside the same sweatpants she was wearing when she arrived. "Because I know that I said that nobody chose me or Ethan, but it's still weird spending time with any of our friends out there. They all knew him first, I know they'd have chosen him if we'd made them. It's awkward hanging out with them knowing that, and I think they know that too." Sean doesn't know what to say. He'd known Ethan before he'd known Syd, too, but he honestly couldn't say who he'd have chosen. In the past, he'd always panicked and ultimately lost contact with both parties, but he's not sure he could have handled that. "It just gets really lonely. And he's the one that moved out, so I'm alone in an apartment made for two people. It's been rough."
Sean takes a deep breath. "At risk of sounding self centered and making this all about me, I do know what you mean."
"Fuck, yeah," Syd says softly. "You and Signe dated for longer than me and Ethan did by about a year, right?"
Sean nods. "Something like that. House still feels too big, if I'm being honest." He moves a little closer to her, hoping it comes off more comforting than...just a desire to be closer. Maybe he can construe it as seeking comfort, if she asks. She won't; she never does. "It does get a little easier, if that helps."
"Yeah," Syd huffs. "Everything gets easier, eventually." She stuffs her socks into the gaps between the clothes in her suitcase, then closes it and zips it up.
"I should let you sleep," Sean says, and already he's mourning the loss of another person in his home.
"Probably," Syd agrees. "Or I could embarrass you on camera by kicking your ass at Mario Party."
"Oh, it's on!"
Sean and Syd stay awake until PJ comes to pick her up, because they play like three rounds of Mario Party and a few rounds of Mario Kart and end up awake until three in the morning, and two hours isn't really worth it for Syd to go to bed. Sean's keeping her company because he's a nice person, and not at all because he's wringing every second of time with her that he can. They end up watching another shitty movie on Netflix, with a bowl of popcorn between them.
PJ shows up five minutes early, and somehow, despite knowing and acknowledging it this whole time, it hits Sean like a freight train just how alone he's about to be left again. He doesn't want her to leave, but has no way to get her to stay. He hugs her tight, wishing he didn't have to let go.
"Keep in touch," she says. "And thanks for letting me stay. I appreciate it."
"I will," Sean promises. "And it was no problem. I had fun!"
He ignores PJ's wink as he and Syd leave.
It's a little over a month later when Sean goes to bed feeling a bit...off. He'd been recording some indie co-op game with Syd and Robyn for a couple hours, and then stayed on and talked with Syd for almost an hour after Robyn logged off.
He almost, but not quite, feels sick. Something like dizzy, like something’s not quite right. Everything's off-kilter, but Sean can't work out quite why. It's almost like he's drunk, or drugged, but he hasn't been drinking and he doesn't do drugs, so it can't be either of those things. He goes to bed, hoping he can just sleep it off.
Everything's even weirder when he wakes up.