Work Text:
To say you were scared shitless when the window of your room flung open was an understatement. You screamed as something flailed in the curtains, picking up the object nearest to you to throw it (which happened to be your Bottle of Youth for in the morning) when the intruder flew out. Your brain screeched to a halt as their face registered, and you took a few stumbling steps back, still clutching the bottle.
“What. . . the hell?” you asked. You slammed the bottle down, storming up to the cloaked figure. Keefe looked more disheveled and sweaty than he did during gym, which was saying a lot, as you’d seen him purposely wrestle with Fitz in the mud millions of times over the years.You peered out the window, wondering if he’d climbed or levitated. Either one had probably looked weird.
Your voice dropped as you frantically looked to the door, hoping your parents hadn’t heard. If either one of your dads found out Keefe was here, you’d be screwed. “What are you doing?” you hissed. You shoved him by the chest impulsively.
Keefe stumbled back a step and flipped off his hood. “What are you doing up?”
You scoffed. “Don’t ask me why I’m up when you’re the one climbing in through my fucking window! If my dads catch you-”
“I’m going to be charged, I know.”
It was a thing your dad had always like to playfully threaten. He was a Charger, after all. Basically if anyone ever hurt you, they’d, as he said so often with a grin, “regret it”
(Your other dad, Talentless, didn’t like to miss out on that fun, either, and often offered to use a frying pan if needed).
“No, I’m going to be grounded. So get out.”
Keefe chuckled, tilting his chin like a cat. “Get out? What happened to hello? How are you?”
“I don’t want to know how you are, asshat. Get out - before I push you out the window myself. What are you even doing here anyway?”
Keefe’s smiled dulled. He looked you up and down and slowly shrugged.
Your eyebrows crushed. “What do you mean?” you asked, mimicking his shrug. “You can’t just. . .” You shook your head. “Get out. Seriously, get out. I don’t want to hear it.”
“But-”
“No! I’m not scheming with you. You’re the enemy. You chose the enemy over your friends and now you randomly show up in my room at midnight? Get out of my house.”
Keefe used your name as you started ushering him towards the window and you paused. He looked you in the eye for the first time that night, looking a little breathless as his mouth remained open. He breathed, trying to find words, finally settling on a shrug.
You sneered. “Seriously, what the fuck does that mean?”
“It means I wanted to see you!” he said as you reached back for the bottle again.
Your heart froze in your chest. Surprise laced under your skin. “What?”
He tore a hand through his hair. “Look, I know it’s stupid - I know - but I haven’t. . . The last time I talked to you was, like, a month ago. I needed to see you.”
You looked at him like he was mad. “At midnight?”
“I didn’t know you’d be awake,” he argued. “I just wanted to drop in and. . .” He dug in his pocket with a small growl, pulling out a carefully sealed envelope. How he had access to that, but not a decent bathroom (as Sophie had reported, according to his and her “check-ins”), you didn’t know.
“So, what?” you scoffed, gesturing to the letter. “You were going to finally leave me an apology after betraying me and everyone else for the group of murderers we’ve actively been trying to disband? Wow! Well, in that case, I forgive you.”
He winced. “Please don’t-”
“Don’t you dare try to tell me I’m overreacting after everything you did.”
“I wasn’t going to say you were overreacting. I get why you’re angry-”
“Then if you get it, you’ll let me be angry.” You stared at the letter, trying to focus on anything but his face. “Now. . . Leave.”
He used your name again before pleading, “I need to talk to you.”
You took a step back when he took one forward, trying to get closer to you. You didn’t miss the way his cloak met your floor, black and thick and long and ugly, with that stupid white eye patch on his shoulder.
You hugged your arms over your chest. “Why. Why now?”
“Because I. . . I miss you. And I need to tell you why I’m doing what I’m doing. I can’t have you angry at me-”
“It’s too late.”
You watched the way his jaw clenched and the crease between his brows formed. “I’m not. . . I’m not who you all want me to be. I can’t be that person. My mom-”
“Your mom is a liar.” Keefe swallowed - hard - but you continued, “And she’s manipulative and always been awful to you, Keefe. Why the hell would you want to follow her plans?”
“Because maybe we can learn something from it!” Keefe pressed. It was the first time he’d raised his voice at you in a long time, and it had you wanting to back up another step. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, seeing the way you recoiled. “What I mean is. . . It’s obviously really important to my mom. And just like Foster wants to figure out stuff about her past and who she is, I need to figure out me. And I can help while doing that. I’m clearly apart of this mess somehow, so maybe if I start to untie it-”
“You know what, Keefe, if you want to find someone to help you out then, just. . . Just go somewhere else.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go. And even if I did, I want to talk to you.”
“You do have other places to go, though,” you said, voice hard.
“What does that-”
“Why don’t you just go talk to Sophie?” you snapped, feeling your patience thinning.
His face fell. You’d seen him look hurt by your words quite a few times, but half of that time, it’d been him sucking it up for sympathy. This looked genuine.
“Don’t do that.”
“No,” you said, “I’m doing that. Go talk to her - and leave me alone. You obviously care more about-”
“Don’t do that,” he begged, sounding like it came out in a gasp. His face distorted with pain, and you felt it flash through his body and flame in his chest, but no, you couldn’t let his emotions get the best of you. Not this time.
He called your name. “Please. I don’t care more about any of you. It’s not a competition. You all mean everything to me and I can’t lose any of you.” He grasped your hand like holding on to it tight enough would begin to sew the two of you together so that you wouldn’t leave. “I can’t lose you. You know that.”
“No. I don’t.” You bit the inside of your cheek so hard it drew blood. The iron swirled in your mouth as you stared at him, trying your hardest not to let your chin quiver like you wanted. “If you didn’t want to lose me, you wouldn’t have left.”
He said your name again, this time like a plea. He could feel how you were drifting farther away. Keefe maintained eye contact as he said, “You were the first one I told about my dad. I didn’t even tell Fitz! But I told you because I trusted you so much and I’ve-” He made a distressed sound. “I’ve liked you since we were five.”
His eyes gleamed as he said it, whether from admiration or terror or tears, you didn’t know. But his chest felt tighter than it ever had, and his nerves were crackling in some electric way that it felt like caressing fire to touch his hand and have all of him flow through you.
Your body shuddered. Against your will, your palm sweat, slicking the point of contact between you and Keefe.
That was all you’d ever wanted to hear, but somehow, somehow it felt. . . Wrong. It was beautiful, but it was wrong, like a puzzle piece that looked just right, but wouldn’t fit.
“Then if you liked me so much, why did you never tell me? Why did you suddenly latch onto her and forget about. . . This, like eight years of friendship was nothing?”
Keefe’s jaw tightened. “I thought you. . .” He paused. “After I told you about my dad, you started fussing over me. And I honestly thought the fussing was you being. . . I don’t know, trying to act like the parent I didn’t have or something. I thought that was you saying that you weren’t interested in me that way. So I kept it friendly and I never told you and I tried to push it down and. . . And after years of pushing it down, when Foster came around. . .”
You looked away.
Keefe’s stomach dropped. “I know it sounds shitty and complicated and I was stupid, but I’m telling you right now that I like you. I always have. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped, even if it felt like it for a moment.” Two fingers grasped your chin and pulled your eyes to lock with his eyes as he said, “If you want me, I want you.”
In that second, you could barely breathe. His emotions spiked when he said it, swirling around you like a fog thickening against a meadow, and for a moment you were blinded.
He wanted you. He liked you. Just like you’d always wanted and loved him.
But then the sun peaked through the fog and you were reminded of how he’d left. He’d left you behind without a second thought. He hadn’t told you - you’d had to hear it from Sophie, at that embarrassing and devastating group meeting where everyone had cried and screamed and you’d been filled with everyone else’s pain and hurt and tears because anytime you were held by another one of your friends, you’d been connected to their emotions like a radio you couldn’t tune out.
He’d left and now that he decided it wasn’t for him, he wanted you to be his way back in. But you didn’t want to redeem him just because he felt you were the last person that would. You refused to be used. You refused to be put in last place.
You shook your head. “No.” You shook it again, with more conviction. “No. I’m not going to be the person you settle for just because you can’t have what you really want.”
“That’s not it!” he promised when you ripped your hand from his and turned to walk away. “What does that even mean?”
“Just because she’s not going to help you come back doesn’t mean I’m going to be your one-way ticket home. You’ve got to talk to me, Keefe, not push me out and then decide once you’ve hit rock bottom that it’s time to confess everything!”
“Why are you acting like Sophie and you aren’t friends? Has she done something that I don’t know about?”
“No!” you sputtered. “She’s been great. She’s wonderful and that’s the issue here. I’m-” You choked. “I’m jealous, okay? I’m jealous and I’m scared and I’ve been scared ever since she came along and you got swept into this Black Swan mess!” You covered your mouth with your hand, hiding your tiny sob as you turned away. You squeezed your eyes shut as you tried not to let any of the threatening tears gathering in your eyes slip. You couldn’t cry. Not in front of him after admitting you were jealous. That was humiliating.
“I’ve always been afraid of you leaving,” you whispered. “And when she came along I. . . I know it’s mean, but I felt like you didn’t want to be around me as much so I panicked and I got angry and. . .” Your throat tensed as you tried not to cry. “And then you left.”
Keefe stared at you as you tried not to let your lip quiver. All the old memories and feelings rushed back, pouring into your body until you were overflowing with that grief.
“When Sophie told everybody, they all felt guilty. I didn’t initially and I couldn’t understand why any of them would ever think that they could drive you away, but then that got to me, and I started to wonder if I was the reason, or at least one of the reasons, because-”
“I did not leave because of you.” He reached up and squeezed your arms. “You didn’t drive me away. Okay?”
You couldn’t contain the sniffle. God, you hated him. He knew how to play your strings just right. Every time. You were putty in his hands. “Okay," you croaked.
“Okay,” he confirmed, hushed as he peered at you. Slowly, his lip twitched at the side. “You did hear me right, yeah?” Maybe it was just the lighting, but you could’ve sworn he seemed a shade darker as he reminded, “I. . . said I like you.”
Shit, there it was again. You swallowed. “I heard,” you squeaked.
He hummed. “And how do you feel about that?”
A chill ran down your spine when his face seemed to lean closer. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
Keefe chuckled at that, lifting a hand up to lay it on your cheek. You swore he was staring into your head by the way his eyes were so intently locked into yours.
“I have had feelings for you since we were five,” he said again. “I wasn’t joking about that. It’s been ever since we were in Level One and you purposely popped one of those gift bubbles over my dad’s head at Midterms. I still don’t know how you managed to fling that piece of candy and hit the bubble-”
You were both instantly lost to snorts and giggles as the memory flooded to the front of your minds. “You started to like me because I hit your dad with a sack of toys?” you asked.
“I started to realize I liked you when we both started laughing at the same time and I realized how much I loved hearing you laugh and. . .” He stopped, shaking his head. “I know we were, like, eight and it took me three years to finally accept that I liked you, but. . .”
Your mouth twitched against your will as he stopped to look at you. “Yeah,” you replied, not needing anymore words. You knew what he meant, even if his sentences were a little unclear and the thoughts weren’t all laid out. You knew that feeling. You knew what he was aiming at.
You’d always known. You’d know from the moment you met him that you liked that boy. And from the moment you’d set eyes on him and your heart had decided it was him that you wanted, you’d learned to repress that feeling.
Keefe’s hand slipped under your chin, holding it between two fingers as he barely titled up. Your heart found a new path in your throat to take, and for a moment you felt like all the breath had been vacuumed from your lungs. “Hey,” he called. “Can. . . Can I kiss you?”
You felt him getting closer as he said it. You felt yourself leaning in on instinct, too. It was confirmed when your foreheads met and Keefe’s eyes were fluttering closed, meanwhile yours were drooping, barely staying open.
“Keefe,” you whispered, practically against his mouth. You put a hand on his chest, looking at him when his eyes opened. “We can’t do this-”
“Why not?”
Your heart twisted. “Because. . . Sophie-”
Keefe shook his head. “I said I like you. Foster is amazing and. . . I’m not going to lie and say I haven’t felt things for her. You of all people know what I’ve felt.” He paused to slip his hand over your heart, and you swore your soul left your body as he pressed to feel the beat. “But that also means you know how much I’ve felt because of you.”
Your knees felt more wobbly. “Then- then even if there’s not a choice for you to make, you might not come back. You’re not home yet, Keefe. You still have to go back to them. There’s not guarantee that you’re coming back. And you’ll be practically alone for how many more weeks? That’s a lot of reflection time. You could change your mind.”
He smiled and mumbled your name, brushing a finger along your jaw. “Always so full of worries,” he mused, lips twitching with a smile. When his touch left your cheek, he gathered both your hands in front of him. “If I changed my mind, I’d tell you. And I’m pretty sure if I haven’t changed my mind after eight years of looking at other guys and girls, I’m not going to change my mind now.” He made sure you were looking in his eyes when he said, “I’m not changing my mind when I’m so close.”
You shivered. “What if I said that I didn’t like you? What then?”
“I’d say you’re full of shit.” You couldn’t manage anything but a whimper from the way he cracked a smile after it and puffed out a small laugh. He took his hand and cupped your cheek again, keeping your foreheads together. You both closed your eyes, focusing on the other’s breathing as you tried to keep your heart from racing out of your throat.
Your spine tingled and you shivered. “I like you,” you whispered.
If your eyes had been opened, you could have seen him smile. “I know.”
“I’ve always liked you.”
You could feel his eyes on you, so you opened them to find your vision filled with blue. He smiled. “Took you long enough to admit it.”
“Shut up.”
He laughed, and if it had been any other time in the world, you would have laughed with him. For that time, you only allowed your mouth to crack in the most minuscule way before you both returned to straight faces and slow breathing.
Keefe reached his other hand up, cradling your face in his palms, and you swore you’d melted into a puddle of goo right there. He’d always been the type to be touchy. It was how he showed his love and how he liked to have affection shown to him. So you weren’t immune to his head scratches and hand holding and occasional hugs, but this was something that left your mind and body reeling. He was so close. And he held onto you like he was afraid he might break you if he let go.
“I’ll come back,” he promised suddenly. “I don’t know when, but I will.”
You bit your lip and dipped your chin. “Alright.”
His mouth itched with a smirk. “In the meantime, try to put in a good word for me with your dads.”
You managed a laugh. “That might be difficult. They’ve already caught me crying a few times.”
Keefe’s eyebrows strung together. You held in your grimace, realizing that probably wasn’t the lightest thing you could’ve chosen to say, “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” you said, with a shrug. “You’d. . . You’d better be.”
His smile came in full-force that time. “Get some sleep.”
“Don’t die.”
Keefe's mouth slanted. “Will do.”
Faster than you could process, your farewells had been said, he slipped the letter into your palms, and Keefe was gone again, lost to the night. You wondered when you'd hear from him again.