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Jane feels like she’s gonna throw up, despite the fact that she probably threw up everything she had in her.
Everything is in the random bathroom she took refuge in was too bright, her throat is scratchy, and her stomach is turning so much that she wouldn’t be surprised if she was on a rollercoaster somehow and just had no idea.
“The room stopped spinning for me.” She hears the voice a stall away from her say. “Did it stop spinning for you too?”
Jane honestly forgot Mike was here with her, and his voice jump-scared her a little.
Reluctantly trusting Mike that the room stopped spinning and it’s not just him messing with her, she opens her eyes to look up at the ceiling, and to her surprise-
“Oh shit,” She replies, “Yeah. Yeah it’s not moving.”
Mike moves to lay down on the floor, his lanky legs hitting Jane’s unintentionally, and she tries to nudge him with her foot a little in a small effort to retain her bubble.
“Do you think we threw up so much that the drugs aren’t in us anymore?” Mike asks her.
Jane takes a second to process what Mike is saying to her, but then responds with “Maybe.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then Jane adds to her response and says “Ask me something.”
“Just…. Anything?”
“Yeah.” She says. “I don’t know, maybe it could help us see if we’re still loopy.”
Mike laughs lightly and says “Yeah, sure.”
It takes Mike a bit to think of something to ask her, but eventually he laughs at nothing in particular, and very maturely asks her
“When was the last time you peed your pants?”
Jane looks in the direction of Mike’s voice and fights the urge to laugh at the ridiculous question.
“That’s what you’re gonna ask?” She says dumbfounded, but entertained nonetheless. “Are you twelve years old?”
“Hey, you said to ask you anything!”
“I thought you would ask me, like,” she pauses, flailing her hands “A celebrity I have a crush on, or something.”
“Well fine Ms. Mature” Mike responded sarcastically. He thinks for a second, before asking
“Have you ever been in love?”
A beat of silence passes.
“I mean, I know there was that one guy you were with like a year ago.” Mike recalls “Did you love him?”
Kevin. That was his name. They were the king and queen of their last school dance. Before their relationship was set on fire.
“I… I don’t know” Jane answers honestly.
“Wait, really?” Mike responds, confused. “You guys seemed to really like each other.”
“Yeah, you’d think so.” She says “But to be honest, I think we were only together because our friends wanted us to be.”
“Oh.” Mike says, “That must‘ve really sucked.”
“Yeah.” Jane laughs dryly “It really did.”
Another note of silence passes before Jane continues talking.
And maybe it’s the drugs that she was forced to take against her will, but she’s feeling more confident than she usually does, and maybe that’s why she says
“There’s another guy though.”
Jane can hear Mike’s curiosity through the stall’s wall that divides them.
So she continues talking.
“And it’s weird too, because he’s not the type of guy I would usually fall for, but there’s just something about him. Maybe it’s the fact that he just seems so much like himself, at least more than other people I’ve meet.”
Jane shifts so she’s sitting with her legs crossed, and continues to talk.
“Honestly, I didn’t really know he existed until this summer either, but ever since I met him, I’ve had the most fun I’ve had in a while. Probably the most fun I’ve had since before I started high school, actually.”
Jane looks at the floor to see Mike’s own legs hesitatingly pull back into his own stall, and for the first time since she’s met him, he’s completely silent.
“So, yeah.” She says, suddenly wishing she didn’t say anything at all. “There’s your answer I guess.”
Mike is still deathly silent, and it’s unnerving because it’s not like him at all.
“Mike? Did you die over there?” Jane makes a joke, trying to defuse the tension.
“No.” Mike says with a dry throat “No, I’m still here.”
Jane starts to get restless sitting in her own
stall, so she carefully gets up, and walks a few steps into Mike’s stall and sees him with his back against the wall with his knees to his chest, and his head against his knees.
She sits down across from him, trying to give him some space.
“What do you think?” She asks hesitatingly.
Mike stays silent for a bit, to the point where Jane thinks that he’s not gonna respond at all, but eventually he speaks.
“I think,” He croaks out, “That you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His response surprises Jane, and admittedly offends her a bit.
“What do you mean ‘I don’t know what I’m talking about?’ I-“
Mike interrupts her by raising his head from in between his knees, and Jane notices the tears in his eyes that he was undoubtedly trying to hide.
“I think,” he starts to restate “I think that if you actually knew this guy, and you knew the things he thinks, and the type of person he actually is,”
Mike pauses, taking a deep breath.
“I think you’d be scared to even be around him.”
Jane wears a look of confusion on her face, so Mike takes it as a sign to continue speaking.
“Do you remember Mrs. Mason’s biology class?”
Jane nods, smiling a little. Mrs. Mason’s biology class was one of the strictest and hardest classes in her sophomore year, but she still enjoyed the class, purely because she likes an academic challenge, as frustrating as they can be.
“That was the only class we had together in 10th grade.” He explains “And it was also the only class I had with him.”
“Who is ‘him.’” Jane asks genuinely.
Mike takes a breath before answering “Thomas Moore.”
Oh. Jane remembers him. He was a guy that wasn’t that smart, but tried to talk to Jane whenever he could back in her sophomore year. Jane thinks he might’ve liked her back then, considering how he acted around her.
“What I said, back in the room at the Russian base wasn’t a lie,” Mike continues talking. “I was really just, aware of you, but that wasn’t because I liked you.”
He takes a deep breath.
“In all honesty, it was because I hated you.”
Jane takes a breath, admittedly hurt by the revelation.
“…But why?” She asks. It’s not like she was an asshole back when she was popular. At least not intentionally.
Mike breathes out shakily, multiple times, before he says, very quietly.
“Because he wouldn’t stop talking about you.” Mike admits, like he’s admitting to a murder. “He wouldn’t stop looking at you, and I-“
A deep, shaky breath, and then-
“I wanted him to look at me.”
Jane is just looking at him now, meeting his emotional eyes through Mike’s shaggy bangs. And she says, with genuine confusion,
“But Thomas is a boy.”
And Mike is close to breaking.
And even though he feels like there’s a rock in his throat, he manages to croak out a “Yeah.”
And then it all clicks for Jane.
“Oh.” she manages to say.
They sit in silence for a bit, with Jane staring at the floor, and with Mike looking at her, bracing himself for the worst.
“Jane? Did you die over there?” Mike says, trying to make a joke to diffuse the tension.
She pauses for a moment before she responds. “No. No I’m still here.”
A moment of loud silence passes again, before she says
“It’s just,” Jane starts to say, and Mike can feel his heart drop to the floor.
“It’s just y’know,” she says “I mean, he is cute but he’s just…”
“He’s just really dumb.”
Mike sits across from her, and it’s his turn to be dumbfounded, because out of a million possible answers, and a million different reactions, he wasn’t expecting this one.
“…What?”
“Yeah I mean, he told me he wants to be on the WWE, or something.”
“What?” Mike responds.
“I don’t even know how that would work!” Jane exclaims “He looks like he weighs sixty pounds!”
“He-“ Mike starts “He could be a lightweight!-“
“He wouldn’t even be good at boxing or wrestling or whatever!” Jane says “I bet his opponent could just, like, throw him and he’d float away!”
Mike can’t help but laugh at the mental image of his old biology partner just floating away into the sun, and is distracted enough that he doesn’t notice the door to the pubic bathroom he and Jane are hiding in open.
Erica, Jane’s friends sister, who found the Russian code in the first place, and Mike’s own sister Holly who helped them break into the secret Russian base, open the door frantically and take a solid four seconds to look at the scene before Erica says “Okay, What the hell are you doing?!”
Mike and Jane just look at each other before they burst out into a fit of giggles, and Jane can’t help be grateful for the fact that Mike is her friend.
And she still loves him all the same.
And even though it’s not in the way she was initially hoping, she knows Mike loves her too.