Chapter Text
Growing up in a little town had a few ups and a lot of downs- it was nice, having so many places you could walk to, and it was easy to know everyone, but that also meant very few places felt sacred, and everyone was always in everyone else’s business; for a community who prided itself on being close-knit, she’d never felt more alienated then when she was growing up. One of the only kids without a mom, a nerdy little girl who didn’t understand when to smile and laugh, and when to keep her mouth shut- connecting with others had always been hard for her- were they joking or serious? Was she supposed to laugh or correct them? Were they being friendly or angry? She could never tell, and she could never pretend well enough to sate them. Susie Mack teased her for years about her exaggerated expressions, and then when Eve didn’t have those, she was teased for being too deadpan. There was no winning, really.
So when she wasn’t participating in a fight with Butch Deloria or his stupid Tunnel Snakes- minus Paul Hannon, he’d always been nice to Eve; a little alike, even, -she was studying psychology and medicine, asking her father to read out of science books for bedtime stories. It surely surprised no-one when she moved to go to college, accepting into several prestigious schools (both because of her hard work and her father’s name, but she liked to believe it was mostly the hard work).
She didn’t keep in touch with anyone, not that there was anyone to keep in touch with. She and Amata had gotten in a fight of epic proportions when she was 16, her dad had gone missing when she was 17, and nobody had a clue where he’d gone; if he was taken or left of his own accord- the local police force had failed, and the current P.I. hadn’t returned anything useful.
Aside from those two… everyone else either ignored Eve, or actively hated her. Who would want to keep in contact, anyway? That’s how she justified it. A life of solitude was better than a life socially tortured; besides, she found people in college who understood her, those who were just as bad at conversing with others or who were just as eager to throw themselves into research.
She graduated summa cum laude from the Vault-Tech College of Higher Learning, though barely, named the outstanding graduate in Neuroscience, her undergraduate in psychology. After that… Well, she floated. She worked minimum wage jobs here and there- a waitress at a shitty roadside diner, a librarian’s assistant, a florist’s delivery-boy. For a while, she was a tiny general store’s clerk, working for an eccentric ex-scientist-turned-merchant boss who kind of reminded Eve of her father, in the weirdest ways; the kind smile and the way she cared, really- the habit of blowing things up or trying to give Eve radiation poisoning… not so much.
But none of these jobs lasted- she got impatient, flighty, or got too emotional over little things that nobody else seemed to grasp. It was how she found herself back in her stupid little town that she swore she’d never come back to, buying the little house she’d grown up in (or, more like ‘in the process of paying it off)- vacant since her father and her had disappeared in their own ways, she was sure.
Staring up at it, it seemed even smaller than Eve remembered. The little swing she’d grown out of by the time she was 8 was still there, and Eve couldn’t remember ever being that tiny- she was giant now, not even just comparatively, but it pulled her heart in a way she was sick of feeling. She’d have to get rid of that play set, soon.
Getting the house situated was easy, as she didn’t bring much with her; some clothes and some things she’d originally brought from the house, anyway. Not a lot looked touched. All the furniture was the same, and while more obvious signs of her past life had been removed, they were only shoved in the little cellar that had operated as storage for longer than Eve could even remember. Several photos of her mother and father, and one of Eve and her father when she was very young were amongst the first things she pulled out.
They hurt to look at, but she didn’t put them away again. Eve hung some of the ones of her mother on the wall by the door, the one of her and her father was put on the tiny lamp table in the foyer.
And that’s how her first day back went; quiet, lonely. She put new sheets on the bed that had been her father’s, and she spent the night staring up at the ceiling, wondering how many times he’d done the same.
Eve must’ve fallen asleep at some point, as she woke up with a start, but she didn’t remember it.
Someone was knocking on her door, rather loudly, and it was going to annoy her if they didn’t knock it off.
She didn’t bother changing out of her pj set- fuzzy blue shorts and matching shirt sleeve tshirt that had axolotls on them, -after rolling out of bed, and it took her no time to cross the tiny house and open the door mid-knock. On the other side of her door stood one Jonas Palmer, someone her father had worked with when she was a child. He looked older than she remembered, prominent crow’s feet and streaks of grey in his coily hair that weren’t there the last she’d seen him had taken her for surprise.
He seemed equally surprised, though if she had to guess, it was probably because of the pjs, and not the fact that she was a decade older than before, and adjusted his glasses.
“Jonas! What’re you… uh, what are you doing here?”
And suddenly it was like no time at all had passed between them- Jonas smiled at her, the same smile he’d always had, and Eve found herself returning it.
“I hear that my favorite assistant is back in town and you thought I wasn’t going to stop by and welcome her back?” He reached out and ruffled her hair, a task made harder by the fact that she was now a good 3 inches or so taller than him.
“I wanted to see for myself, before work, but I guess I forgot not everyone gets up as early as I do.”
Eve waved him off, still smiling, and tried to smooth her hair down after he retracted his hand.
“I should’ve been up, anyway; I’d invite you in, but if you have to work, I won’t keep you too long. It’s… good to see you again, after everything,” ‘everything’ being her father’s disappearance and the mess it left for people.
Jonas nodded, his expression turning melancholy for a split second, before he shook his head and opened his arms, motioning for Eve to give him a hug, which she gladly did, all but tackling the man. He was lucky he managed to stay upright with the force she met him with, her own arms wrapping around him and squeezing until he was pretty sure one of his eyes might pop, like one of those stress-relief toys.
“I should get going, I only wanted to welcome you back, but listen, kiddo; I know it’s been a long time, and you’re an adult now, but if you ever need anything- even just a friend, you’re welcome to come to me, alright?”
Eve closed her eyes and breathed deeply, relaxing her shoulders from the last decade of stress and the night of sleeplessness, before nodding and letting go.
“Alright. Thanks, Jonas- it’s really good to see you again. Really.”
She watched him leave before she shut her door, resting against it briefly- Eve didn’t have a set list of things to do yet, but the nausea that was gripping at her stomach and head made ‘breakfast’ the number one priority for her. She set about getting ready for the day- changing out of the comfortable pjs, brushing her teeth, running her fingers through her coils after a couple of sprays of a water and conditioner mixture, making sure she looked at least… presentable. Her shoes were a ratty old pair of combat boots, they were on their last legs after five years, but her sentimental heart couldn’t bare to get rid of them just yet, despite the peeling pleather paint and the shoelaces that were missing their aglets.
Eve shrugged her jacket on, an old leather thing that barely fit around her shoulders anymore- if she stretched it to far, she was sure the seams would snap and she’d suddenly own a vest instead of a full-sleeved jacket. She didn’t own a purse, though she kept meaning to buy one, and instead just tucked her wallet into the back pocket of her jeans alongside her phone. Her keys went into her jacket pocket, as it had a zipper, and then she was ready to go.
There was a locally-owned grocery store not far from her- it had been established when she was a kid, but she was happy to see it was still up and running.
She grabbed a basket from the stack at the entrance, plastic green and blue stripped with the store’s logo painted on the front, as if to deter theft. Surely someone HAD to have stolen one before, but it was an odd concept in Eve’s mind; what would someone even do with these, other than shop?
Eve found herself wandering, not sure what she wanted other than to eat- the isles were all clearly labeled, and she found that everything sounded good. The produce called to her eventually, how fresh everything smelled, and the overwhelming scent of the laundry and cleaner isle was hidden by the gentle floral notes among the fruit.
It was relatively empty- she saw a couple she didn’t know, and there was a man inspecting the apples that she paid no attention to as she beelined for the ‘exotic fruits’ section.
She was inspecting the durian and açaí when the feeling of eyes on her back crept over her, making her skin prickle. Eve frequently thought others were looking at her, an anxious thought that often kept her watching her surroundings, but this felt genuine; when she glanced up and around, she found her feeling to be correct- the man who’d been looking at the apples was squinting at her, and she blanched when she realized it was none other than Butch Deloria.
“Ho-ly shit,” He drawled out, looking like she’d just performed the world’s most impressive disappearing trick. “Is that little Evie Hargrave? What on Earth are you doing here?”
“Butch. Hi.” Eve placed the durian fruit she’d been looking at down, briefly making eye contact with him before returning her gaze to her hands and the fruit and forcing her legs to walk away from the exotics section to the pears and mangos.
“I’m… shopping?”
“No shit, Nosebleed,” he chuckled, following her and now much closer- they were close in height, he maybe had an inch and a half on her, and it was weird to think she’d once been taller than him.
“I meant back in town- it’s been like a decade since anyone’s heard about your or your pops. How’s he doin’?” Butch picked up several oranges, tossing them in his own basket without inspecting them, making Eve wrinkle her nose.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh- right, he’s uh… yeah, sorry. I forgot. Soooo… got plans after this?” Butch asked, watching Eve pick up a pear and inspect it, gently prodding at the soft flesh to test it’s ripeness, like he hadn’t just poked at a still-open wound in her mind.
“After… groceries?” She asked, placing the fruit in her basket after deciding it was good. “Just, yknow, making breakfast. With the groceries I’m buying.”
“Cause now I was thinking, you should let me take you to Porter’s.”
Eve raised a brow, trying to place the name.
“The old cafe?”
“It’s more of a diner now, but yeah! You musta’ just gotten back, right? You can’t have been here long, it’ll be my treat.”
If Butch Deloria talking to her like an actual person wasn’t weird enough, offering to pay for her breakfast was definitely setting off alarm bells. Sighing, Eve turned from the produce to face him, making an uncomfortable amount of eye contact as she studied him.
“What’s your game, Deloria? Why would you want to buy me anything?”
“Ah, look, I know we never really saw eye-to-eye on things…”
“We beat each other up.” Eve deadpanned. “More than once.”
“Right- I know, but… it’s been a long time. I’m making some changes in my life, and you're suddenly back in town- I’m gonna call it fate, c’mon,”
Eve studied his face, looking for some sign of insecurity or some kind of crack in his armor, and upon finding none, slowly nodded.
“Alright… I guess. As long as we don’t end it screaming at each other, it can’t get any worse than before, right?”
Butch smiled at her- something he’d never done genuinely before, and she found herself thinking it was nice-looking, nothing like the cruel ones he’d used to wear in high school. He had dimples, which she’d never noticed.
“Awesome! I, uh- I’ll let you finish shopping then,” He suddenly looked a little bashful, like he was remembering he completely interrupted what they were both doing.
“I assume you drove, but if you’d want, I could give you a ride…”
“Actually,” Eve weighed her options; she could either try and remember where Porter’s was and walk by herself, or deal with being alone with Butch in a car. “I walked. And I… wouldn’t hate a ride.”
In the diner, which was still visually pretty similar to the cafe it used to be, Butch and Eve sat at a booth in the corner, an awkward silence between them as one tried to find a good conversation topic and the other tried to avoid any and all eye contact.
The waitress had taken their orders and given them their drinks- Butch, a coke, and Eve, an iced tea, -but had since been busy taking care of new customers.
There was a basket of thin fries on the table with them, several cups of ketchup, and Eve was thinking about giving in and eating some to quell the growling in her stomach despite desperately wanting sweet food.
“That girl looks like she’d rather be anywhere else,” Eve sighed as she eyed a group of teens who entered, one girl lagging behind the rest. Eve placed her elbow on the table- something her father had always chastised her for, -and her chin in her palm.
“Huh? What’re you talking about? She’s just walking,” Butch raised a brow, having to lean forward to see who she was talking about.
“Look at her posture- she walks with her shoulders pulled inwards and head down. I bet she’d be walking faster if she wasn’t in a group, too,” Eve shrugged, pouring salt into the little cup of ketchup, and then dipping a fry into the mixture.
“How do you even notice that kinda thing?” Butch asked, squinting at the girl across the diner and comparing her stance to her friends.
“I’m a people-person, and even I don’t read them like that.”
“I just… look for what called me out to others when I was younger, I guess. The hunched-down, ‘I wish I was smaller so they wouldn’t notice me’ look is easy when you’ve worn it.”
She didn’t miss the look Butch gave her, thoughtful- if bashful -gaze trained on her face as she looked just about anywhere else.
“See?” Eve nodded her head ever-so-slightly towards a woman with berry-purple hair; she was short, but held her head high.
“Her shoulders are relaxed, but straight and held up. She’s either trying to seem or is genuinely confident.”
Butch nodded, but his eyes fell to Eve’s shoulders instead of the woman she pointed out.
“You have nice shoulders,” he noted bluntly.
“Thanks…? They do their job, I guess.”
“Y’ever play basketball?”
“Is this a ‘black’ joke, or a height joke?” Eve finally turned her eyes to his, deadpan expression
“What? Neither! I was gonna comment on how you’re kinda fuckin’ built, Jesus Christ!”
“… Oh.”
It was Eve’s turn to look somewhat embarrassed with herself,
“A little, but it was mostly baseball, actually. I played on a travel league as a kid, remember?”
“… I vaguely remember hitting you in the face with a baseball when we were kids, but that’s kind of it.”
Eve snorted, the ungraceful sound had been how she laughed softly since before she could remember, and she’d stopped trying to hide it after high school; she’d almost forgotten how she’d been teased for it.
“I remember that pretty well, but then again, I was the one hit in the face,” She smiled the tiniest of smiles, looking somewhat far-off in her memories, before glancing at Butch and nodding.
“I kept playing after that- after high school, too. Found a couple of organizations that ran teams, left when it got too competitive, though. I, uh, don’t really like when my own teammates are always fighting for the #1 spot.”
Butch nodded, though she got the feeling he’d do pretty well in sports like that; he’d been good at showboating when they were kids, and while he was clearly trying to be… better than he had been then, she couldn’t help but still think of him as that arrogant, irritated teen.
“You’ve grown up, a lot, too,” Eve finally noted after a minute, before rolling her eyes when he gave her a grin and flexed, immediately realizing she’d made a mistake in commenting.
“Oh yeah? Checking me out now, huh?”
“In your dreams, Deloria. I just meant last time we talked, you were 5’9 and kind of scrawny.” Eve smirked slightly at his offended face, knowing she was exaggerating slightly.
“Why you little… Nobody would have considered me ‘scrawny’, Nosebleed. I still had 40lbs on you even when you had 6 inches on me.”
Eve relented only because she could see the waitress coming with their food- her stomach growled, loudly, making Butch snicker, but it didn’t matter once her plate of french toast and banana slices was placed in front of her.
She could eat several dishes, her dad had always called her a walking black hole, but she never liked ordering anything when someone else was paying- not that she’d ever tell Butch that, either.
His own meal was huge- he’d gotten a stack of pancakes that she was sure would kill a regular man to eat all of, and several sides of sausage, eggs, and bacon. It made sense, she supposed; he clearly worked out, just like she did- their similar appetite size wasn’t a big shock to her.
They were quiet for a moment, enjoying the food, though she couldn’t help flinching each time someone near her loudly crunched on something or a child tried getting more out of an empty drink. She was normally fine in restaurants, but her anxiety at being at a restaurant with BUTCH must have been higher than she thought. It was the fifth time when Butch finally said something, putting his fork down and raising a brow at Eve.
“You good over there? You’re doing a whole lot of, uh…”
Someone made a slurping noise, likely drinking something, and Eve twitched, one shoulder jerking up as she cringed.
“That.”
She fought the urge to shrink in on herself, never liking when somebody asked about the noises she hated.
“I have a neurophysiological disorder” she finally admitted. “My audio cortex has more connectivity, it’s a stupid thing called ‘misophonia’. It makes certain noises… painful. I guess.”
Eve waited for Butch to laugh- for him to make some sort of gross noise, or just in general be an ass, but all she got was a ‘hm’ from him, an expression she couldn’t quite place when she finally looked at him.
“Not going to lie, I only understood like… part of that. Is that why you always used to cry in class when someone ate, or ditched lunch?”
“Oh, no- you noticed that?” She groaned. “I wasn’t allowed to leave, I couldn’t get diagnosed back then- I thought I hid it well.”
“Eve,” He used her name instead of his nickname, surprising her. “I don’t know how you missed this, but I kind of paid a lot of attention to you.”
She blinked, pursing her lips into an unintentional pout as her brows furrowed.
“I… guess I never paid attention. I kind of tried to block everyone that wasn’t my dad, Amata, or Mr. Broch, out.”
“Ugh, Almodovar was so protective of you, you’d think she would’ve like, said something to you.”
Eve mindlessly nodded, stuck in her thoughts as she munched on a slice of banana. She didn’t even mind when Butch stole on from her plate, despite not being finished with his own food.
“I know it’s probably a bad time to dump this on ya, but I always had a crush on you, y’know?” Butch started, casually, like that wasn’t the most shocking news of Eve’s life.
“And I was a dumbass little shit who didn’t know how to handle the fact that you were pretty, and too smart for me to really get, so I guess it made sense in my dumb little brain to pull your hair and put worms in your lunchbox because I was mad at myself.”
Eve couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even nod- she’d spent so many nights crying in her dad’s lap as a young child, wondering why Butch hated her so much. Once, when Ellen Deloria was called into a meeting with Eve’s dad, she’d made the suggestion that boys were mean to girls they liked, and Eve thought her dad might explode- it was the angriest she’d ever seen him, and when they got home, he couldn’t get it into her head fast enough that it was complete horseshit. Her dad never swore around her, so she took it seriously.
“Eve,” He’d sat her down, holding her shoulders in his big hands and making her look at him. “Promise me you’ll never, ever let a boy hurt you and call it love. We don’t hurt the ones we love because we don’t know how to tell them what we feel.”
At the time, she hadn’t understood what he’d really meant, but she had grown to appreciate the lesson.
“And I just made it worse the more I focused on it- and then you started hanging around Paul, and-“
“Wait, what?” Eve suddenly came back into reality, cutting Butch off from his confession.
“What does Paul have to do with anything?”
“I dunno- you guys started getting close around 10th grade and I just kinda assumed…”
“Oh, gross!” Eve laughed, bringing her hands to her face, like she was holding it up.
“Paulie and I were like siblings! We were both a little weird, bonded over Transformers and shit-“
Butch snorted at the confession- of course she liked Transformers, that sounded exactly up her alley.
“He and I lost touch after high school, but no, we never had anything together. I was pretty sure nobody would ever like me like that, Butch. Your little gang, Susie, Christine… Everyone had me convinced for a long time that I was… some sort of broken, I guess. I still think like that, sometimes.”
Eve was never the best at guessing how much she should say or shouldn’t, what was too personal to share with someone she hadn’t seen in a decade and what wasn’t, but at this point, after all the hurt and the sudden niceness, she wasn’t going to bother holding back and thinking before she said something; either Butch was really trying to be a better person and he would process what she said, or he was the exact same as before and this would just end in a fight, like always.
“God… we were so fucking mean,” Butch murmured after a moment, almost like he was just realizing it.
“I’m an asshole- I’ll never deny that, but jeez, Nosebleed, I never meant to actually make you feel like that…”
“How else would I feel, Butch? I mean, Freddie used to make fun of me for making expressions, and Wally used to make fun of me for not making expressions. There was nothing I could do that was ever ‘right’. Susie was always on me for being too tall, for not smiling or for smiling too much, she was usually the one bullying me if you weren’t.”
“It… might be my fault, a little, for how Susie treated you in high school. She figured out I thought you were pretty and wouldn’t get it into her head that tearing into you wouldn’t make me like her.”
“What, she was jealous of me? She was always so little and cute, though- guys loved her.”
“Yeah, well… you were always tall, and athletic. I thought that was attractive, she got mad.”
Eve’s face burned, the strange knowledge of knowing someone thought she was attractive made her throat feel like someone’s hand was against it, ever so slightly catching her breath.
“I… never would have guessed,” She admitted.
“My father always made sure that I didn’t believe that old playground saying- that boys are mean to the girls they like.”
Butch bit into a strip of bacon, shrugging.
“Probably a good thing. I’d hit younger me if I could- taking out all my angst on everyone else never did me any good, just drove people away. And then you and your dad left, the Mack’s dipped a few years later, everyone just kind of… drifted apart, y’know? Suddenly I had to be someone without anyone watching, and I guess I realized I’d been a prick my entire life for show and didn’t know how to do anything else.”
Eve nodded, having felt a little bit of that ‘lost at sea’ feeling after her dad left, and in her first few months at college; where everything was so different from what she knew, and nobody was around to tell her how to act or what to do.
“I, uh, I’m not real good at apologizing, and I know damn well it doesn’t change almost 20 years of harassment, but I’m sorry, Eve, for how I used to treat you.”
Eve studied Butch for a moment- his still-pomade-filled hair was essentially the same as when they were kids, he wore a similar leather jacket and his bright blue eyes were still as piercing as they had been, but there was a sincerity that she hadn’t known him to wear before; he looked older, and happier, if she were to just go off of a glance, and despite the anxiety that wormed it’s way around in her gut at the idea of trusting someone who’d made her childhood so miserable, she didn’t feel like he was playing with her.
“Thanks, Butch.” She smiled slightly. “I… really appreciate that, actually. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about the fights I instigated.“
From there, breakfast went quickly- they exchanged the usual ‘get to know me’ questions about work or college or life in general, though Eve was largely embarrassed to admit how much she’d been just trying to keep her head above water. Butch didn’t seem perturbed for his part, letting her skip questions when she seemed uncomfortable and even teasing her in a way that almost felt like they were old friends instead of old enemies.
Butch paid, true to his word, though she managed to pay for the tip, and then it was time for him to drive her home.
The truck Butch drove was old, but she didn’t know much past that- cars were a weak spot in her interests, admittedly. He’d told her about how he fixed it up originally, but past that it was just a car to her. It was surprisingly clean inside, ignoring the occasional can or wrapped tossed in the back. She held her groceries in her lap, hands playing with the handle on the plastic bags- she tied them together and then untied them, wrapping them around her fingers and then unwrapping.
Butch drove lazily, one hand on the wheel and one hanging out the window and against his door, listening as Eve told him when their turn was coming up like he hadn’t memorized her house’s location by the time he was 16.
She stole glances at him when she thought he was focused on the road, almost admiring his profile in the sunlight. Almost.
They lingered outside her house when he got there, neither exactly sure how to end things- Eve thanked him again as she got out, almost knocking her head against the roof in the process, smiling slightly when Butch laughed at her.
In a spur of the moment decision, she asked for his phone, typing her number in before she could think about what she was doing and handing it back, speed walking to her door.
Butch immediately changed her contact name upon being given his phone back from ‘Eve 🍎 ‘ to ‘Nosebleed’, glancing up just in time to catch the awkward little wave she gave him before darting inside.
He idled in her driveway just a little longer, processing that his childhood crush had started to forgive him for just how much he tortured her in the past, while Eve slumped across the counter, resting her face on the cool faux marble as she tried to reason with herself on why the actual hell she would do any of the things she did that morning.