Work Text:
WILL Will Will Will Will!!!
Olive!!
I’M GETTING OUT!!
Remember how Mitch said we could always reach out and she'd help us? I was writing a letter to my mom when I realized I really should have been writing it to her
so I wrote Mitch a letter and she said I could move in with her! I've already packed and everything and I'm leaving TONIGHT
Holy shit, Ostrovsky!
That's crazy. I'm so happy for you! Hopefully you'll never see that dickhead again.
HELL YEAH!!!!
also Mitch lives like 20 minutes away from you I think
so we could hang out in person!! Other than the Bee!!
That would be so cool.
Good luck Olive!
It had been two and a half years since the spelling bee that changed Olive's life. It had been 5 months and 13 days since she got a boyfriend (which she's still amazed even happened. A boyfriend!). It had been 4 days since she left her fathers house for the last time (which she's even more amazed about and keeps forgetting). She would turn 15 in two weeks (which she was kind of frightened by. Only three years until she no longer qualified for the Bee). She knew all these numbers by heart.
Living with Mitch was completely amazing. She had apologized for her apartment's mess, but Olive loved it more than anything. There was a mess. And no one cared! No one shouted or blamed or hit. It just sat there, messily, and it was totally fine.
Olive really did love it here, and she texted her boyfriend (her boyfriend!) about it frequently. She had technically switched school districts with this move, it was 40 minutes away from her old house, but she hadn't really decided where to go yet. Will had told her many stories of how his school was terrible, but now that Olive had a taste for change, she craved it. Plus, the idea of seeing him almost every day made her kick her feet with glee.
“Hey, kiddo, who’re you texting?” Mitch plunked down beside her on the couch. Olive flinched her phone away, before remembering this was Mitch, and Mitch was chill. Plus, she hadn't gotten to brag about her incredibly cool boyfriend (BOYFRIEND!!) at all since she acquired one. Well, unless you count leveraging it to make fun of Chip, which she did frequently, but that barely counted. She took a deep breath and tried to go from defence mode to normal teenager mode, a mode she has never before successfully achieved.
“My boyfriend. He's the best.”
“Boyfriend? Oh, yeah, I think you mentioned him in your letter. You're fourteen, what do you even do with a boyfriend?” Mitch crossed her legs. Her questions were not disapproving or prodding, just simple curiosity. It felt weird.
Olive tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, “I wouldn't really know. We only see each other at the Bees. There's no way in hell my dad would let me go hang out with him. Or let me leave the house at all if he knew I had a boyfriend.” She chuckled quietly to herself as her fingers inadvertently brushed the healed bruises. Even if the colours left, she could swear the muscles were rigid beneath the skin. Everything she did, she did quietly nowadays.
Mitch raised an eyebrow. “Your boyfriend is a speller? Wait, did Barfée actually work up the nerves to ask you?”
“I asked him, thank you very much.” Olive sat up straighter. Mitch raised a hand in surrender.
“My apologies, go feminism.” Olive laughed, and Mitch turned to face her. “Your dad wouldn't let you see him?”
Olive shook her head, and Mitch pushed her phone further into her hands. “Find out when he's free, I'll drive you to his place. You haven't seen each other in the, what, six months since the last Bee?”
“Five months and thirteen days,” Olive supplied immediately, and Mitch smiled kindly at her. “And… thank you, Mitch. For everything.”
Olive knocked on the door rapidly and excitedly. It opened almost immediately.
“Olive!” Olive looked up at him. That was new. Five months and fourteen days ago, she was an inch taller than Will. He was smiling at her like the sun, and she was sure her expression matched.
“Hi!” she responded brightly. There was a moment where they just stood there smiling at each other before Will seemed to remember vague social skills.
“Please, come in. My room is downstairs.” He moved aside to let her in, and she looked around the little hallway she was in. It was decorated sparsely, with a few photographs of Wills family and a small table covered in keys and coins and a paper clip for some reason. She enjoyed Will’s school photo, he looked nice in it. The group photo from the 25th Bee was there, too.
They briefly encountered Joan, who remembered Olive from the Bee, which was flattering. She also winked exaggeratedly at Will, which made Olive laugh.
“Your mom seems really nice!” Olive said once they had successfully made it to Will’s room.
He closed the door behind them. “Yeah, she's great. She would help me study before we started doing that over the phone.”
Olive nodded, sitting down on the bed. “I think you've mentioned her.” She looked around. “I like your room.”
“Really?” Will smiled at her, seemingly surprised. The walls were a pale green, and there was a big bookshelf with an entire set of encyclopedias. His dictionary sat on his desk, and a large fish tank was on a sturdy looking table next to it.
“Yeah!” she leapt up, approaching the tank, “are these your sea anemones? They are! Oh, they're so much cooler in person! Hi Pontus and Benthesikyme! Wait, that's Eidothia, right?”
“You remember their names…?” Will came up behind her to peer into the tank, “uh, yeah, that’s her.”
Will stood up fully again, but didn't move away. Olive stared in wonder for a little while longer, and when she stood again they awkwardly bumped into eachother.
“Sorry,” they both said at the same time. Olive giggled.
“I'm so excited to see you, but I have no idea what to talk about,” she admitted, playing with one of her bracelets absentmindedly. Leaf had given it to her at the 26th Bee, and it had her nickname on it. She loved it.
“Me neither.” Olive noticed Will’s bracelet was wrapped around the cup that held his pencils. She smiled at the fact Leaf had clearly sharpie-d on the acute accent for the “é.”
Will had sat down on his bed, so Olive followed and sat next to him, criss-cross applesauce.
“I like your blanket,” she offered to break the silence. It was blue and green, with a swirly abstract pattern.
“Thanks,” he turned to face her, and they sat there staring at eachother for a while.
Olive liked Will a lot, mostly because of his ability to make her laugh and his earnest passion for his nerdy interests, but she had to admit she also likes his face. She had spent a lot of the 26th Bee staring at him creepily from the bleachers. He just had such a sweet smile, and he always smiled at her, and she kind of wanted to squeal or hide or handcuff herself to him forever or something every time. But something Olive had never really seen in all her “staring at Barfée a normal amount” experience (until now) was how green his eyes were. It was kind of amazing and also suddenly extremely important.
They sat like that for maybe too long, before Will broke the silence.
“I can't believe- well- just… you,” he stuttered out awkwardly, turning his face away in an attempt to hide his burning cheeks. Olive was sure hers matched as she tilted her head quizzically. He laughed to himself.
“Ok, that probably didn't make sense. I just, you're so cool and funny and pretty, and I crushed so hard on you at the 25th Bee- I don't know if I told you about that, but it was truly pathetic, like Chip levels of pathetic, but anyway - I daydreamed about you so much and you actually like me? In real life? The whole time? Well, maybe not the whole time, but-”
“I had a decently pathetic thing for you from the start, I just thought it was platonic at the time, but, y’know, continue,” Olive cut in for the sake of fact. Will narrowed his eyes at her.
“I was obsessed with you from the moment you introduced yourself with the “I love” spiel,” he said as if he was going to win this competition, which obviously he wasn't. That was like halfway through the Bee.
“I wanted to be your friend from the second I saw you. The very millisecond I walked into the Bee,” she confessed, acting more confident than she was. Will's eyebrows shot up.
“When I was warming up The Foot? Seriously? This is what I mean, you're, like, the coolest girl on the planet and you saw the foot guy and thought “oh wow I need me some of that”? How is this my life?” Will flopped dramatically backward onto the bed and Olive was overtaken by a burst of affection.
“Barfeé, you've got this completely backwards. You won the Bee. You're crazy smart and funny and you've got a sea anemone circus and this smile that just… you're totally cool, and you like the weird kid with a book for a friend who never goes outside and wears the same cardigan every day. I don't know how this one happened either.” She scootched so she could lie next to Will on the bed.
“...I am going to compliment you so much, but first, I hate your dad with a fiery rage, and I needed to get that out of the way,” the look on his face was incredibly sweet, and Olive knew they were going to go back and forth for a while, so she started cataloging a few compliments in advance. “Olive Ostrovsky, you are so cool. You are the only one other than Chip who can match me in scrabble, and you are the only one ever who I would actually enjoy playing scrabble with. You are absolutely going to win the next Bee, because you're crazy smart as well. And if you haven't noticed, you are totally pretty. I could go on, but I sense you have a ridiculous retort, so I will let you respond.”
And so it went, back and forth. Both teens grew increasingly flustered and the compliments got a lot shorter, until Olive snapped.
“Oh my god can you just kiss me already?!” She slapped a hand over her mouth and felt a sinking feeling in her stomach at the outburst, sudden fear. Of what, she didn't know, but her shoulders tensed. Then she looked at him.
Will's face was completely pink, and his jaw was dropped. Then he smiled, not his usual perfect one that Olive so adored, but a new, equally adorable one. It reminded her of the big smiles from the Peanuts comics. He mumbled incomprehensibly for a few seconds and when she gave him a look of confusion he responded with the most enthusiastic nods Olive had ever witnessed. She couldn't help but giggle, relaxing into the moment.
The kiss itself was a first for both of them, and thus very chaste and awkward. They lost their minds about it immediately afterwards and then for several weeks, but merely 2 minutes later Olive got a text from Mitch that it was pickup time.
As the two walked back upstairs, they giggled incessantly about holding hands until Olive needed hers to put her shoes on.
“I can't wait to study for the next Bee in person!” She noted as they lingered for goodbyes.
“Me neither! And by the time the next Bee rolls around, we’re gonna be so good at being a couple. We can shove it in Chips' face so hard.”
“This is the real reason you said yes to my note, so you could further advance your rivalry-slash-bromance with Chip Tolentino, I get it,” she joked.
“Olive, I know you're joking, but I am so serious: I'm crazy about you. I'm in deep.”
Olive flustered again, before remembering the important gossip she had to share. “Oh! By the way, update on Chip and the Coneybear kids. I think Mari is trying to turn Leaf into some kind of spy to find out if Chip likes her, even though obviously he does, which is completely hilarious from an outsider perspective. Like she's trying to find out about Chip through Leaf, so she's telling Leaf to ask Chip about this and that, but because of the nature of these questions, it completely just sounds like flirting. And since the last Bee Chip is having his little bisexual crisis, remember? So it’s just struggle time for him, and I think Leaf is getting seriously annoyed with Marigold so he's actually flirting on purpose but I can't prove that.”
Mitches car horn beeped insistently from outside, and Will ignored it completely to remark “Logainne really has turned you into a gossip hound, I'm impressed.”
“I just want everyone to end up happy at the end, it's like a tv show, I'm too invested now.” She turned heel to leave, and then thought about it for a moment. The last time they separated, she had kissed him on the cheek impulsively and then overthought it for the entire bus ride home. Before she could overthink doing it again, Will pecked her on the cheek, turning her bright pink.
“See you soon, Olive! Text me later!” He was obviously trying to be cool, but he was clearly giddy and nervous, and Olive liked him so dang much.
“Yep okay bye!!” As soon as she was outside, she tried to shake out her energy. It was something Mitch had been teaching her to do when she felt too tense or hyper, and while it felt humiliating it was extremely helpful. She realized Mitch had seen her do it, and scurried into the car.
“Did you have a good time?” Mitch asked half-jokingly. Olive nodded, smiling widely.
“Dang, you're bright pink,” Mitch noted as she pulled out onto the road, “maybe fourteen-year-olds do more with boyfriends than I thought.”
Olive's responsive sputter and Mitch's laughter drove off into the sunset.