Chapter Text
They’re singing again. Finn leans against the wall, hands jammed in his pockets, thumb worrying the edge of his phone like a loose tooth. Gaten’s voice is a foghorn. Sadie’s harmonizing like she’s auditioning for a Broadway show. The PA with the neck tattoo is holding up her phone, and his mom’s last text detonates in his brain: don’t be a viral idiot.
He knows this song. He hates this song. Not because he hates birthdays, but because twenty people are shrieking his name, and he’d rather eat an entire cake alone in a closet than survive one more second of this.
He clocks the faces: Noah, lobbing a balloon at Millie’s head; Caleb, double-fisting slices of pizza. Even the director is here, peering at Finn over a stack of paper plates like attendance is legally mandatory.
The cake sits on the table under a trembling crown of candles. Someone, probably Gaten, has rammed sixteen of them into the frosting at weird angles, so the whole thing looks like it’s been stabbed with birthday dynamite.
Finn presses harder into the wall. He manages a smile. It comes out more like a wince.
When the song finally dies, Millie gives him a smile, small and real, the kind that doesn’t perform for anyone. Gaten pounds him on the back so hard Finn’s vision goes static for a second.
Noah steps forward, arms already open, and Finn braces himself just in time. Noah’s hugs are always a little off—he’s shorter, so his face ends up mashed into Finn’s collarbone, and he squeezes too hard. Finn’s hands hover before landing on Noah’s waist, awkward, like he’s never hugged anyone on purpose before.
Noah’s hoodie is soft, pilled at the seams, and he smells like something expensive Finn can never name—just the sweet, blue smell, sharp and clean. The hug lasts a second too long, long enough for Finn to feel the static charge crawling up his arms, the weird fizz of being held and seen at the same time.
He tries to ignore it.
Noah squeezes once more before letting go.
“Speech!” someone yells, and it might be Sadie or Caleb, or maybe just the echo in Finn’s own head, but everyone’s looking at him now. He clears his throat.
“Um,” he says. “Thanks.” He tries a smile. “I hope this cake gives all of you food poisoning. That’s my wish.”
Everyone laughs, and for a second the pressure in his chest goes loose and light. He closes his eyes, draws in a deep breath, and when he blows out the candles, the real wish stays stuck somewhere between his ribs and his tongue, stupid and glowing and impossible to say.
The world comes rushing back in. A Bluetooth speaker shudders to life, thumping out a retro pop beat that makes the cups jitter. “Cut the damn cake, Finn!” Gaten howls, and someone thrusts a plastic knife into his fist. He looks from the knife to the cake to all those expectant eyes.
The frosting resists, gummy and stubborn, and the knife snaps through with a wet sound. He hands the first chunk to Noah, who grins, his teeth already blue from a rogue finger-swipe of icing. For a second, their hands brush. Finn pulls back too fast, and the plate wobbles in Noah’s grip.
Everyone mobs the table, shoving out plates and napkins, buzzing and sticky with sugar. Finn keeps at it, hands smearing with cake gore, until Caleb steps up beside him, close enough that Finn can hear him over the music.
“Hey, man. You stoked for break? Two whole weeks of not waking up before sunrise.”
“Yeah, for sure,” Finn says, not quite looking at Caleb. He digs the knife into the cake again, makes it through the chin this time. “Gonna be so nice to just—” He waggles his free hand, an unfinished gesture that could mean anything: sleep, nothing, peace and quiet. “Finally some relaxing, right?”
He hands a piece to Sadie, who’s already licking blue gunk off her thumb, and she gives him a tiny salute with the plastic fork. Caleb lingers, shifting from foot to foot.
“I mean, we’re going to my grandma’s,” Caleb says. “She always says she’s made of eighty percent Nutella and twenty percent guilt trips, so.” He grins, but keeps looking at Finn like there’s another question behind it. “My cousins, too. All younger. Rage monsters. It’s gonna be chaos.”
He says it like he’s prepping for a war he has no chance of winning.
Finn laughs, short and soft. “That sounds…” He wants to say nice, but it doesn’t sound nice at all, so he just shrugs.
Caleb’s grin sharpens. “You flying back to Vancouver?”
Finn nods and wipes a smear of blue icing on his jeans. “December twenty-first. My mom’s already texting me the minute-to-minute schedule.”
Caleb says something else, but Finn’s attention slides to a point just over Caleb’s shoulder.
Noah has managed to get cake everywhere—cheeks, forehead, even his earlobe, like he’s been in a pie fight with an invisible opponent. He’s making a show of licking icing off his fingers one at a time, pinky up, like he’s judging a five-star dessert instead of floor cake. Millie’s next to him, mouth open in a perfect O. She’s saying something to Noah—Finn can’t hear over the music, but her lips make the word clear: Noah!
There’s a whole pantomime of exasperation, then she’s grabbing his wrist, trying to wipe off the mess with a napkin, and Noah’s not making it easy. He’s laughing, twisting away, a whole slapstick routine.
Caleb is still talking. Finn catches a word—chaos? maybe?—and makes a noise of agreement. He says “yeah, for sure,” but his timing must be off, because Caleb gives him a weird look. Just a flicker, like a skipped beat, before he grins and claps Finn on the shoulder.
“Enjoy the party, man,” Caleb says.
Finn gets the sense the conversation’s over, or at least that Caleb has decided to let him off the hook.
He gets trapped in two more drive-by chats: one with Sadie, who appears at his elbow just long enough to remind him she’ll text about the Secret Santa thing; another with the PA, who says, “I’m not cleaning this up,” and winks like it’s a real threat. Finn nods at both, chest tightening with the need to escape.
He makes it to the back exit, pushes through the heavy door, and breathes in the cold, sharp dark.
The parking lot is empty except for a few cars and a single cone of light from a busted floodlamp. The building’s cinderblock wall is damp, smelling like moss and old cigarettes. Finn tries to count his breaths, but they won’t come out even.
He stands there until the tips of his fingers go numb, wishing he’d brought a jacket, or at least a hat. The music inside is muffled, a pulse he can feel more than hear. He closes his eyes and lets the chill settle on his skin.
When he finally works up the nerve to go back in, he nearly face-plants over something soft at the bottom of the steps. The sidewalk is fractured here, wet with runoff and shreds of party napkin. At first Finn thinks it’s a crumpled towel or a lost parka, which makes zero sense, but then the lump shifts under his foot.
He jerks back, windmilling his arms. “Oh, shit—”
The lump twitches.
A rabbit. A little snowbank of a rabbit, white fur damp from the pavement, crouched low against the concrete, breathing. Its eyes are open. One of them blinks up at him with a dark, patient sort of awareness.
Finn crouches, glancing left and right, like someone’s about to leap out and say ha, gotcha, here’s your viral moment. But the lot’s empty, and the windows above reflect only a flicker of party light and a jaundiced moon.
“You scared me,” Finn says, trying to keep his voice low and unthreatening.
He edges closer, careful not to spook it. The rabbit’s chest heaves, too fast. Is it dying? Great. That’s all he needs—to be the guy who kills a rabbit at his own birthday party.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he says, but the question dies in the air, stupid and soft.
The rabbit looks back, and the full impact of its eyes—hazel, soft brown and gold, almost human—hits Finn hard. He has to blink. For a second, it feels like the rabbit is appraising him, weighing his intentions, and he’s the one waiting for a verdict.
The rabbit has this tuft of fur on its head, a swirl like one of those ’50s cartoon characters, a perfect little bang flopped over one eye. Finn can’t help it—he laughs, really quietly so he doesn’t freak the thing out. It looks like a plush toy, except for the breathing, which is too real and too fast.
He slides down onto the concrete, folding his legs so he’s at rabbit level. His jeans are instantly soaked; it doesn’t even matter.
“Hey,” he whispers. “You good?”
The rabbit makes a noise, low and throaty, and Finn’s chest goes tight again. Instinctively he reaches out, palm up, fingers spread like he’s surrendering. The rabbit doesn’t bolt. It just blinks those uncanny eyes and lets him get close enough to see every strand of white fur.
He drags his hand lightly over the top of its head. The fur is dense and warm, and that little curl of a bang bounces under his touch.
“You’re alright, aren’t you.” He lets his hand rest there a second longer, then pulls it back and nods at the dark beyond the parking lot. “Go on, then.”
The rabbit doesn’t move. Its nose keeps going a mile a minute, but otherwise it’s a lump of living snow.
Finn stands, knees crackling. “Shoo,” he says. Then, when nothing happens: “Back to wherever.”
Still nothing.
He shakes his head, laughs out the last of his nerves, and for a second he’s tempted to leave it there. He could go back inside. Pretend this never happened. But the party is behind the wall, and the rabbit is at his feet, and he can’t shake the feeling that this is a test. Like if he walks away, the universe will tally a mark next to Finn Wolfhard: Failed at Animal Rescue.
He sighs, squats back down, and tries out the voice he uses for his cousin’s Pomeranian. “Would you like to come with me?”
The bunny, for its part, does not dignify Finn’s question with any sort of answer. It just keeps blinking up at him with heavy-lidded, old-man patience, like it’s been expecting company all along.
“Okay,” Finn says. “I’m gonna take you with me, but if you bite me, I’ll—” He pauses, realizing he has no leverage. “I’ll be very disappointed.”
He slips his hands under the rabbit, expecting claws or a panicked squirm, but it only settles against him, warm and soft and heavier than it looks. There’s a faint, hay-sweet smell, not unpleasant.
He holds it against his chest, feels its heartbeat thundering, feels his own all the way in his fingers. In the blue dark, the rabbit’s fur almost seems to glow. He’s not sure if it actually does, or if he’s just lightheaded from the shock of everything.
Finn glances back at the building. The party is still a muffled pulse behind the wall, all hands and shrieks and phone cameras. His skin crawls.
So he heads for his trailer, feet sloshing through the puddled asphalt, rabbit tucked carefully against his chest.
His trailer smells like the plasticky soap they stock in the bathrooms. Finn swings the door shut with his hip, the rabbit pressed to his hoodie like a secret.
The overhead light flickers, then steadies.
He sets the rabbit on his narrow bed. The comforter is a blue cartoon map of Canada, left over from when he was twelve. The rabbit sits there, a weird, disapproving marshmallow, smack in the center of his home province.
“Stay,” Finn says.
Like it’s a dog.
The rabbit doesn’t move.
“Cool.”
He fills a mug with water and sets it on the floor. The rabbit immediately noses it and begins to drink, then flops on its belly like a deflated plush. Shoving aside a pile of scripts, Finn drags his desk chair to the foot of the bed and sits, his knees nearly knocking the comforter.
He studies the rabbit. It keeps drinking, loud and intent, each gulp punctuated by tiny jaws working up and down, a cadence that starts to sync with Finn’s pulse. Its ears are so pink the veins show through in the light, like he could see everything happening inside its head if he just looked hard enough.
He pets it again, hesitantly. The hair is softer than he expects, dense as memory foam. The rabbit’s body trembles, and Finn’s hand does too, but it doesn’t pull away.
“Happy birthday, Finn,” he says, in a high, squeaky voice.
He laughs, softer than his own voice, and glances at the rabbit for backup.
The rabbit gives him nothing.
Finn grins, the joke too dumb to be funny unless you’re alone with a rabbit at midnight. “Aw, thank you, bunny. It’s not my real birthday, though.”
He waits, just to see if the universe will answer back.
The rabbit wipes its face with its paws, then goes back to the water.
Finn drums his fingers on the chair’s arm, watching the shivery light bounce off the mug. “My real birthday’s next week,” he says quietly. “But nearly everyone will be back home by then.” He shrugs, a gesture meant for the rabbit, or maybe just the room. “It’s fine.” He wonders if the words sound as hollow to the rabbit as they do to him.
He leans forward until his chin almost rests on the foot of the bed. The rabbit’s eyes are enormous, all pupil and question mark. He studies them, looking for the moment they dart away.
They don’t.
The more he looks, the stranger they seem. Not animal-strange. Familiar-strange. Like someone he almost recognizes from a dream, or the background of a photo he didn’t realize he was in.
Finn blinks hard and rubs at one eye with the heel of his hand.
“Okay,” he mutters. “That’s normal.”
The rabbit only stares back at him, patient and gold-eyed, waiting.
“I can’t just call you ‘bunny’ forever,” he says finally, and it feels momentous, like this is the most consequential thing he’s said all night. His mouth is dry. “You need a name, right?”
He cycles through the obvious names—Marshmallow, Snowball, Mister Whiskers—but they all sound like they belong to a preschool class hamster. This rabbit seems too serious for that. Finn feels a weird obligation to get it right.
The rabbit, meanwhile, has moved on to licking its own paw with a pointed, almost theatrical indifference.
Finn narrows his eyes at it. “You’re a bit of a jerk, aren’t you?”
The rabbit glances up, unimpressed.
“Fine,” he says. “You look like a… I don’t know. A Reginald. Sir Reginald.” He says it in a fake British accent, which gets him exactly zero points with either himself or the rabbit. “You’re too dignified for regular names. You look like someone who would judge me for eating string cheese the wrong way.”
The rabbit blinks, slow.
“Reggie, then,” Finn says, and the syllables feel right. Like a handshake. “Congratulations. You’re Reggie now.”
He sits back, satisfied, and the rabbit—okay, Reggie—finally hops forward, nudging Finn’s wrist with a damp nose.
Finn’s phone is at five percent and the battery icon nags at him, but he doesn’t want to plug it in yet. He wants the room quiet. He wants to watch the rabbit—Reggie—do absolutely nothing, like he’s in the world’s dumbest wildlife documentary. For thirty seconds, Reggie just sits there, staring at the Canada map, as if planning a cross-country escape route.
Then he hops. Once. Twice. Finn tracks the movement, torn between pride and the dread that he’s about to lose a bunny in the sprawl of his messy trialer.
He stands and starts to assemble a makeshift enclosure on the floor beside his bed out of what’s at hand: two backpack-barricades, a roll of masking tape and three hardcover books—all unread gifts from his mom. He wedges them between the bed and the wall, forming a lopsided pentagon, the kind of pen a six-year-old would draw.
Reggie tests the perimeter immediately. Sniffs at each edge. Paws, then sits back on his haunches like he’s very pointedly not impressed. Finn sits cross-legged on the floor, watching Reggie and the blue cartoon coastline hanging over the side of the bed. The rabbit shivers once, then curls up, nose buried in fluff.
Finn’s eyelids feel heavy. He glances at the time. Almost one. He toes off his sneakers without untying them and peels his socks off, dropping them somewhere near the door. He grabs his toothbrush from the cluttered corner of the bathroom. It’s an old, travel-sized one, the bristles warped because he bites them when he thinks too hard.
He brushes by the glow of the overhead, watching his reflection in the mirror. There’s a frosting smear on his chin he didn’t notice until now.
He rinses, spits. Pulls off his jeans and throws them onto a pile that—if he’s honest—he’ll never put in the laundry bag. He tiptoes back to the bed, chest loose in a way he doesn’t know what to do with.
Reggie’s still awake. Watching him, ears laid back like he’s listening for anything that will make the night less strange. Finn crouches beside the pen, lets his hand hover over Reggie’s head, then thinks better of it. He pulls an old hoodie from the floor and tucks it around the rabbit like a blanket, whispering, “Goodnight, Reggie.”
He lies on his back, arms folded. Tries to count the weird cracks in the ceiling, but sleep seeps through anyway. The last thing he remembers is a small rustling from the floor, and the color of Reggie’s eyes in the dark—not quite brown, not quite gold, burning.