The Art of Falling in Love (With a Stranger): Part 7
You put your head in your hands and groan before straightening up, posting a scowl onto your face, and opening your door.
“How’d you figure out where I’m staying.” you say flatly.
Finn’s mouth twitches—almost in a smile—nervously. “A good magician never reveals his secrets.”
“What do you want?” You still haven’t opened the door wider and the both of you know he’s not welcome in.
“Y/n, I fucked up,” Finn says without preamble. “I know you would never cheat on me and I feel sick just thinking about how I didn’t trust you or how I called you those names.”
“You showed up 15 years late with Starbucks to the glaringly obvious truth,” you say tiredly, leaning on the door frame.
“I get that you won’t forgive me. Ever. I get you’ll never want to date me again—”
“You got that right,” you break in and Finn’s face crumples a bit.
“—but I miss my best friend. Before my girlfriend, you were like a breath of fresh air, a break from Hollywood and everything. I just—maybe not one-on-one, like, ever again, but couldn’t we hang out? Once in a while? I don’t think you understand how much I miss you.” Finn finishes his speech and peers up at you through a curtain of black hair like a kicked puppy.
“Let me get this straight.” You stop slouching. “You call me names, have no trust in me, and then just when I’m doing fine on my own you’ve come crawling back for forgiveness?” You snort. “Not gonna work, Wolfhard.”
You start to close the door but Finn’s hand shoots out and stops the momentum. “Wait!” He looks desperate. “If not friends, can we at least tolerate each other’s presences?”
“I wasn’t the one that started this,” you say softly. “Why are you asking my permission?”
But something compells you to open the door wider and you turn and walk further into the hotel room.
Finn, recognizing the invitation, follows dutifully.
“Want some tea?” you offer awkwardly after you’ve stared at the microwave for a full minute and Finn has stuffed his hands into his pockets and slouched.
“Sure,” he says gratefully, happy for anything you’re willing to give him. Even if it’s just tea.
You brew the tea in silence, almost brooding, before handing one cup to Finn and surprising him with these words: “Ollie asked about you yesterday.”
Finn doesn’t even try to hide the smile slowly spreading across his face. He knows you’d do anything for your little cousin. You also wouldn’t have brought up Ollie asking about him if you weren’t secretly telling Finn you wouldn’t be as averse to him winning you back as you say you are.
You let out a harumph at his smirk-smile. “I swear, the kid’s getting more devious every day.” You let out a long-suffering sigh. “But, as an answer to if we can be in the same room, I guess yeah.”
Finn’s beam makes it worth it.
“I’ll tolerate you,” you emphasize and said smile wavers. It’s going to take a lot more than an apology to make you forgive him.
“What if I won you back?”
Your small grin contradicts with your challenge: “You could try, loser.”
Finn chooses to listen to the smile.
Of course you’re not going to forgive Finn right away. You’re not going to date him. You’re not going to make an effort with him.
You’d repeated those words all morning before arriving at the studio, where Finn greets you with a huge smile that makes your heart flutter and a tall hot cocoa from Starbucks—you hate the taste of coffee. “Morning, Y/n!” he says, the sun practically shining out of his smile.
Suddenly you can’t remember exactly what you’d been telling yourself all morning.
Then you see Caleb’s shocked face and you’re rudely reminded.
“Thanks,” you say unenthusiastically and then hand the cocoa to Gaten right in front of Finn.
Gaten takes it, nervously glancing inbetween you and Finn. It’s only a testament to how you’re more intimidating with daggers shooting out of your eyes than Finn is. He looks nervous enough to faint, right in the middle of a fight between two extremely dangerous people. When did this developement happen? Gaten wonders deliriously. He’s not sure which Y/n/Finn relationship he likes better: Y/n and Finn making him want to vomit with his cuteness, Y/n and Finn fighting, or Y/n and Finn locked in a dance he doesn’t know the moves to.
You feel slightly smug at Gaten’s panic.
Finn just clenches his jaw and nods slightly. He can do this.
To anyone who’d been watching the dynamic between you and Finn, they would have been confused. To them, Finn would shower you with attention and praise and you would brush him off as if he were a pesky gnat.
They would wonder why Finn isn’t with someone who’ll treat him right.
Finn wonders why he’s spending all this effort to get you to even look at him again.
I think, Finn muses as you go over your script one last time, mouthing the words, the second she commented on my post I was a goner. It’s always been y/n for me.
This is hard. You can’t help but remember what it’d felt like when Finn had smiled at you, fire erupting in your cheeks and spreading down your cheeks
and how amazing it’d felt when he’d told you he loved you
and what it was like to have his cool fingers intertwine with yours.
It’s harder to pretend disdain or disgust when you look at the soft curls you were addicted to running your hands through
and how entertaining memorizing lines became with him.
You can’t help but remember laughing at him as he wiped out on the Flow Rider at Great Wolf Lodge
hardly controlling or abusive but could have steered down that path if I hadn’t ended it
and how adorable he’d looked while being frustrated that the dragon in MagiQuest wasn’t dying.
“I swear I’m going to change my hotel room if it’s Finn again!” you shout, rubbing your eyes and running a hand through your hair before flinging your door open.
Big surprise. Finn beams at you, ‘Miss Missing You’ by Fall Out Boy playing on his phone. He hands you a bouquet of marigolds. “Can I show you something?” he asks without preamble.
“Why?” you grump, looking down at your pajamas and just now realizing with some embarrassment that you’re not wearing a bra.
Okay, Finn gets some brownie points because you can feel his eyes fixed firmly on the crown of you head as you crane it—he’s not using this chance to ogle.
“I have a surprise!” he says simply and is delighted when you don’t trash the marigolds immediately—you set them carefully on the nearest footrest in your humongous hotel room.
“This better be good,” you frown, crossing your arms over your chest. “It’s—what time is it?”
“1:24,” Finn says. “Don’t worry about that; tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“We still have a rehearsal,” you point out.
Finn waves his hand flippantly. “Eh.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“There’s a roof?” The second that comes out of your mouth you feel extremely dumb. Finn snickers. “You know what I mean.”
A squeal leaves your throat when you see what he’d prepared for you—candles are arranged in a big heart with just enough room for a tall thermos of hot cocoa.
“Aww,” you coo, your hands on your cheeks. “How sweet!”
“That’s not all,” Mike murmurs. You can see the reflections of the stars in his wide eyes.
He points up and you gasp. You’ve never seen a meteor shower in real life before!
“Wanna dance?” Finn asks shyly, holding out a hand.
Finn twirls you under the stars, you in your pajama-clad glory, with your retainer in and uncombed hair and then he tells you he loves you and he’ll keep telling you until you say it back again.
“What if I can’t?” you ask and neither of you have noticed that you’ve stopped swaying to the music.
“Then I’ll still say it every day.”
You can feel his breath licking over your face like fire and you inhale sharply.
“Can I?” Finn asks, tilting his head.
You close your eyes and his lips brush against yours for one millisecond and one eternity and then you pull away, resting your forehead on his. He can see the conflicted look in your eyes.
You turn and glide back to your hotel room. When you wake in the morning, the thermos of hot cocoa is on your bedside table.
“I will sing to you every day
If it will take away the pain
Oh and I’ve heard you got it, got it so bad
‘Cause I am the best you’ll never have…
Baby, you were my picket fence
I miss missing you now and then
Chlorine kissed summer skin
I miss missing you now and then
Sometimes before it gets better
The darkness gets bigger
The person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger
Oh, we’re fading fast
I miss missing you now and then…”
-Miss Missing You by Fall Out Boy
dailybridgerton
vaporwave
2087
theartofmadeline
gamechangershow
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
