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“Dude, you need to relax,” Chris said, watching you pace the length of his small trailer for the millionth time.
It was getting close to when you two would need to leave. It was your 15-year high school reunion and now the nerves were finally starting to hit you.
You were only going as a joke. People didn’t like you in high school. Well, for the most part. They left you alone, so you didn’t hate your school experience, but you were a weirdo even among the weirdos, and glided through your school years largely friendless. The few you had were still your friends to this day and they all thought you were crazy for going. They certainly weren’t. So, since you and the boys from Evergreen went to rival high schools, you thought it would be absolutely hilarious if you showed up with Christopher “Peacemaker” Smith. He absolutely loved this idea when you asked him.
They were all going to talk anyway, might as well give them something juicy to really gossip about.
While you had first met Chris shortly after you got out of high school and hung out a few times due to mutual friends, you didn’t really count him as a friend until after you reconnected after he got out of prison. You two always had a very brother/sister like connection, but it had gotten stronger in the last year. Chris would freely admit you were his younger Big Sister due to you being slightly younger than him and your tendency to call him on his bullshit like an older sibling would. But you both were confident you could pull off a dating each other vibe.
Neither of you had any interest in dating, he was just grateful to still have the friendship of someone who knew him from before. Chris had told you that many times and you could tell he was a changed man actively trying to be a better person. You promised him you’d help him as best you could and be patient with him. He had really worked that patience sometimes with his offhand comments, but he was getting better you had to admit.
You turned to look at him. He was almost ready and was just tucking his short-sleeved button down into his jeans. He was giving you a look that said, “stop overthinking it.” Before you could say anything, a unique sounding knock came from the front door.
“Come in, Adrian,” both you and Chris called.
The man himself slowly opened the door and walked in, balancing a case of beer on one hip. Adrian blinked in confusion when he saw Chris was dressed up, then his eyes got slightly wider as he looked at you.
“What’s going on here?” he said, eyeing you from head to foot and back again.
You quirked a brow at him. He was looking at you as if he had never seen you before, which irritated you at the moment. You weren’t dressed much different from normal. One of your nicer tops, your casual funeral/wedding pants, and a pair of your nicer shoes. The reunion was in a park on an early summer evening, not the Ritz Carlton. You and Chris both looked nice, but comfortable.
You bit your tongue, not wanting to use your nerves as an excuse to snap at him. You hadn’t snapped at him yet and tried not to since you didn’t have anything against him. Besides, despite your nerves, you were in a good mood and that would just start an argument.
“Oh shit!” Chris said and smacked himself on the forehead. “I’m sorry, I totally forgot to call you, dude. I can’t do movie night tonight, I’m taking Y/N out.”
Adrian had been walking over to set the case of beer down by the table and suddenly stopped in his tracks. He looked back at you suddenly with wide eyes, then back to Chris.
“The fuck?” Adrian said, surprised. “Why?”
“She needed a date to her reunion,” Chris said, checking himself over in the mirror and doing some last-minute preening.
To your surprise, Adrian whipped his head around to look at you, his cheeks red.
“Why the fuck did you ask him?” he almost demanded, a sharp tone in his voice.
Your eyebrows shot up to your hairline.
Adrian was not someone you could read or figure out at all. You met him not too long after you started hanging out with Chris again. The fact that you hung out with Chris a lot meant you also hung out with Adrian a lot. You didn’t mind. He was just that perfect balance of adorable and sexy that made him absolutely hot as hell. While you were always very good at maintaining your composure around people you found sexually attractive, he was one of a very select few you had a tough time keeping it cool around. You did it, it was just very hard.
This should be a good thing, though, right? Hot available friend of a friend?
Wrong.
Adrian didn’t like you. You had no idea why. As far as you knew, the only thing you said to him before he immediately went cold to you was “nice to finally meet you, I’ve heard a lot about you” when Chris introduced you two. He wasn’t mean about it; he just had no real warmth towards you at all. He was polite, speaking to you only when you spoke to him first and was directly to the point when he did, he didn’t ramble to you like with other people. He wouldn’t joke with you or laugh with you, and his eyes always went blank when he looked at you, which he usually didn’t. You could count on one finger the number of times you’d gotten him to crack a smile at your humor.
Oh well. Can’t please everybody, I guess. It was disappointing though after Chris swore the two of you would be crazy about each other. Chris had really hyped Adrian up to you, and you saw what he was talking about. Adrian had a brilliance to him, only it seemed like he had walled you off from it. You had asked Chris about it finally and it seemed like he knew more than he was willing to say, but he assured you that Adrian was fine with being around you. There was that, at least. He didn’t completely hate you, just didn’t care for you. You could handle that. He wasn’t your first “I guess I’ll just admire you from afar then” crush.
This attitude change was completely new. Now it felt like genuine hostility or dislike towards you.
“He was the first person that popped into my head,” you said, answering Adrian’s question with a shrug. But now nerves were starting to get the best if you, so you turned to Chris. Though, maybe Adrian’s right and this is a sign. It was all a dumb idea, if you think about it.”
Out of the corner of your eye, you thought you saw Adrian nod suddenly before stopping. But you did see Chris’ gaze flicker briefly over to Adrian, his brow raised, then come back to you as if nothing had happened.
“Nope! We’ve had this all planned out for weeks now!” Chris exclaimed, then grabbed his keys off the table before. “And it is a dumb idea, that’s what is so fucking great about it. It’s gonna be a fantastic night! You’re going to have a blast, trust me!”
Chris was an excellent hype man when he wanted to be, and his energy soon had your nerves draining away. A grin came to your face.
“Good point!” you said and grabbed Chris’ hand. “Let’s do this!”
Chris grinned back and started pulling you out the door.
“Adrian, I know you have a key, can you lock up?” Chris said and surprised you by running to open his passenger door for you. “We better go and get to Stone Creek Park before Y/N actually changes her mind.”
“But-“
You didn’t hear the rest of Adrian’s reply since Chris shut your door after you got in. He came around the car and opened the driver’s side.
“-that big of a deal, then hang out here and we’ll get wasted after I take Y/N home,” Chris was saying as he got in the car, then promptly shut the door before Adrian could reply.
“He okay?” you asked.
“Yeah, he’s just being a little bitch about us leaving together,” Chris said, then started the car. “He’ll either get the fuck over it or finally do something about it.”
You thought that was an odd comment, but just nodded in agreement.
As it turned out, all of your nerves were for nothing. You both ended up having a lovely time. The people you most dreaded seeing weren’t even there and you reconnected with a few people you’d lost touch with. Oddly, not that many people recoiled from Chris. While a few kept their distance, most thought his story was fascinating.
The relationship ruse worked perfectly. While it wasn’t going to fuel the gossipers as much as you’d hoped, the secondary reason of going with someone you could talk to was a success. Many times, you two ended up keeping to yourselves as the old cliques grouped together to catch up. Chris stayed in character the whole time, including the kind of PDA you two had discussed beforehand. He even started doing it a lot more than you thought he would, which was great since it made things more believable. It wasn’t anything major, just slight touches that indicate a comfortable intimacy with someone; he would lean in close to talk to you, lightly place his hand on your lower back while walking, softly touching your hand every now and then during conversations, lightly bumping you with his shoulder. When he had something particularly mean to say about one of your old classmates, he’d lightly place his hand on your shoulder and steer you closer so he could lean in close to your ear. He’d whisper whatever he had to say, usually about someone you didn’t like, so it would get a good laugh out of you.
You teased him about how sweet he was being at one point.
“Why is everyone always so fucking surprised when they find out I actually do know how to treat a lady?” Chris feigned hurt, knowing full well you knew some of his past history. “Random fucking notwithstanding, when I’m actually into someone, I don’t act like a total jackass. So, I’m treating you as if I were into you and imaging how I would be several years in.” Then he chuckled. “I gotta take care of my longest running relationship, after all.”
The story was you two stuck to was simple and close to the truth. You had known each other for years but reconnected when he came home. Lies became hard to keep straight when they become too complicated. But, since Chris’ longest relationship was about seven months, and you two were claiming you were just under a year together, you were now his longest running girlfriend.
This had already become an inside joke between you two.
Periodically throughout the night, Chris took an interest in the trees scattered throughout the little park. Since Stone Creek Park was nestled in a little valley just on the outskirts of dense woodlands, there were plenty of trees in all sizes. It was odd, but you thought they looked neat to him or something. It was a nice park, and you were already planning to come back sometime during the day to meander about.
It was close to 11 when Chris pulled up outside your house. Still keeping up the ruse, he tutted at you when you went to get out. Instead, he hopped out and came around to open your door for you again.
You chuckled and got out of the car. “You don’t have to keep doing that, you know.”
“Nope!” Chris said, shutting the door, then offered his arm to you. “I’m invested now! Gotta see it through to the end!”
You snort laughed at that and took his offered arm. Chris set a slow pace as he walked you to your front door, asking you some questions about one of your classmates you had reconnected with. This turned into you telling a story from seventh grade about the person. This resulted in you two standing outside your front door for about ten minutes, talking.
“All right, this has been a lot of fun, but I better get back to Adrian,” Chris finally said.
“Do you really think he stayed there this whole time waiting for you?” you said, surprised.
Chris glanced over at one of the bushes by the sidewalk near where he was parked. You got curious and looked over to the bush yourself. It was very brief, but you thought you saw a flash of what looked like teal and white by it. You blinked a few times and figured the streetlights were playing hell with your eyes again. Chris chuckled, so you turned back to him.
“Probably, knowing him. All right, see you later,” he said and started to turn back to the car.
“Hey, at least let me kiss you on the cheek before you leave so the night ends with a kiss,” you said. “It was a good date, and it feels like inviting bad luck for both of us on our future dating endeavors if we don’t.”
Now it was Chris’ turn to laugh, and he turned back to you, shaking his head. You had some weird quirks and odd superstitions like that at times. It was never anything too bad or weird, so he usually indulged you. “Yeah, my love life is cursed enough sometimes, I definitely don’t need to make it worst.”
Chris leaned down a bit towards you as you were leaning up. Just as he turned his head to present his cheek for your lips, the bush by the sidewalk decided to start yelling.
“What the fuck, dude?!?”
You both stopped and turned to see someone in a black, teal, and white costume try to jump out of the bush, but trip and end up rolling out of it instead with several muttered curses.
Chris raised one hand in greeting.
“Hey, Vig! Fancy running into you here!”
The figure from the bushes then sprang to his feet, ran at full speed toward you both, and then skidded to a sudden stop just a couple of feet away.
It was a little dark on your street at night, so you didn’t recognize the figure until he was within the illumination of your porch light. You blinked several times as you realized this was that crime fighter named Vigilante who ended up helping Chris with Project Butterfly.
Why was he here? Surly he didn’t think you were some kind of threat to Chris? That would be ridiculous.
“Seriously, Peacemaker, what the fuck?” Vigilante snarled at Chris, completely ignoring you.
“What’s got you so steamed, Vig?”
“You know what the fuck has me steamed!”
“Nope, can’t say I do,” Chris shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “You say one thing, but do the exact opposite of what you say, so I really don’t know what’s got you so upset anymore. It’s not like you’re doing anything yet.”
It was like watching a tennis match, your gaze went back and forth between the two men as they argued. Each time your eyes came back to Vigilante, they lingered for longer and longer. There was something familiar there…
“I fucking told you I am working up to it. I will do it, I just…don’t know when.”
Your eyes got wide as it started clicking in your brain. The voice, the mannerism…
“That isn’t good enough, Vig. You’ve been saying that for months now. You’re here now, so, as my dad’s old neighbor would say, it’s time to shit or get off the pot.”
Vigilante raised a finger and his change in stance indicated he was about to retort when the shock finally abated enough to where you could finally speak again.
Your head whipped around from Vigilante to Chris, your eyes wide.
“Holy shit, Adrian is Vigilante??? The fucking Vigilante???” you said.
You looked back over to Vigilante; you could see his eyes were wide behind his visor.
“I-I have no idea who you’re talking about…”
Vigilante started to say, sounding like a panicked Adrian, but then he trailed off when you rolled your eyes and turned your attention back to Chris.
“Now that that’s cleared up,” Chris said. “I’m going to head home since you two obviously have a lot to talk about. Y/N, be sure to ask him about why he has been following us tonight ever since we left my trailer.”
Vigilante huffed, sounding uncertain. “I was not-“
“I was wondering why you kept looking over at the trees,” you said, cutting him off. “You never had an interest in being an arborist before.”
Chris nodded. “Yup. Anytime this fool saw me touch you or lean in, he’d fully expose himself and leave himself wide open to dart to a closer tree to get a better look.”
“I-I-I did no-“
“Good thing the few people at the reunion who saw him thought it was funny and weren’t freaked out,” Chris looked at Vigilante and shook his head. “Not smart, Vig. You know what Harcourt would say about this.”
While you hadn’t met any of the team he worked with (aside from Vigilante, apparently), Chris had told you enough about Harcourt to know she was serious. Vigilante’s head drooped.
Everyone was quiet for a couple of minutes, looking at Vig. Finally, Chris broke the silence.
“You gonna take the mask off? Or do I have to wrestle you to the ground and do it for you?” Chris asked him.
Vigilante sighed again, this time sounding resigned, but he slowly took his mask off. Once that was done, he rifled through a pocket for his glasses, putting them on before finally looking up at you.
You smiled at him.
“Hey Adrian,” you said with a gentle tone, knowing he had to be feeling raw and vulnerable right now.
“Hey…” he finally said.
Adrian suddenly seemed very nervous, your porch light giving away the fact he was turning red. This was also new.
Chris looked back and forth between you two then shook his head before stalking off to his car and driving off to leave the two of you alone.
That didn’t help the conversation flow any easier. In fact, it completely killed what little conversation there was. Adrian shuffled his feet and wouldn’t look at you. You were trying to be patient, but you were also tired after having to be so social today. Your spoons were low.
“Well, it’s getting late,” you finally said, figuring he would’ve said something by now had he wanted to. “You have a good ni-“
“Did you mean what you said when we first met?” Adrian cut you off suddenly with a question.
You blinked,
“That it was nice to meet you?” you asked. “Yeah, Chris had been hyping you up to me for weeks.”
Adrian blinked and finally met your gaze.
“He did?”
You nodded. “Yeah. Said we’d hit it off and I actually had looked forward to meeting you.”
This shocked the man. He stood there and stared at you for a while, then shook his head.
“No, it was before that,” he said. “You actually said it to Chris before I walked up, so I just overheard you.”
You had to think about it for a minute, and then shrugged.
“Honestly, I don’t remember saying anything to Chris before that,” you said, shrugging.
Adrian nodded. “You did. I had just gotten to his trailer and was getting the beer out of the trunk when you said something to Chris.”
You blinked. “How in the hell did you even hear that then? You were like thirty feet away.”
“I have excellent hearing since my eyesight is bad,” he said.
You were pretty sure it didn’t work that way, but whatever.
“Okaaaaay,” you said. “So, what did I say to Chris then.”
“You said, ‘Why the fuck didn’t you warn me that he’s so hot? You just said he’s really cute!’”
Now you remembered. You had said that and could remember the smirk Chris got on his face at that.
“Well, yeah,” you said. “I don’t say shit I don’t-“
Quite suddenly, you were cut off by Adrian’s lips on yours as he kissed you softly, both of his hands coming to rest on the sides of your face. The thick fabric felt warm against your skin, the textured pads on the fingertips slightly rough but not unpleasantly so. Your eyes closed and you tilted your head towards him, leaning into the kids. Adrian started to deepen it, but then broke away, taking a step back.
“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that since you went out with Peacemaker tonight, but I couldn’t help myself,” Adrian said in a rush, rambling at you for the first time ever, and you found it to be the cutest thing ever. “It’s just, I like you so much, and he knows that, and knows I’ve been wanting to ask you out, but he went behind my back and now-“
It was your turn to cut him off with a kiss. This was what you had been wanting since you first laid eyes on him. There was a very short pause before his hands rested softly on your waist and you draped your arms over his shoulders.
After several intense moments, you slowly broke your lips and looked up at him with a smile.
“Man, I wish I would’ve known asking Chris on a fake date would get me a real date with you,” you told him with a grin. “I would’ve asked him on one months ago.”
Adrian looked confused then blinked.
“Wait…fake date???”
“Yeah, I just wanted to freak the people I used to go to school with out by making them think I was dating Peacemaker,” you chuckled. “He loved the idea since our schools have always been rivals. So, we really went as friends, but told anyone that asked we were dating.
The look of shock and then relief on Adrian’s face was indescribable. He threw his arms around your waist, picked you up and spun you around, while he made whooping noises. You couldn’t help but laugh.
“Alright, Vigilante,” you said, pulling away from him and taking his hand in yours. “Let’s get you inside before someone sees you so we can talk about all this.”
If you thought Adrian was adorable before, that was nothing compared to the smile and look of adoration he had on his face as you led him inside.