"so much time you can bathe in it. so much time you can waste it. but for some of us, there's only today." but then it's finney watching his peers grow up and explore the world and find themselves when all he can do is think about being in 13 and trapped a basement
"I don't know why you're giving me so much crap about being here when you were the one who wanted me to come in the first place."
"Because I've been asking you to come with Ernie and me for weeks, and you've shot me down every time!" Gwen shoves his arm, performative irritation that can't quite fight against the relieved smile tugging at her lips. "I'm glad, Finney, I'm really glad you're here. I'm just a little confused about what changed your mind.”
It wasn't exactly his scene, after all. It wasn’t really her scene if she was being entirely honest. For obvious reasons, excessive alcohol consumption and willfully choosing to spend more time with classmates was usually more than enough deterrent.
Today was different though, different because —
“Finn? Is that you?”
The familiar voice, sweet and soft, not without a note of surprise, was only just loud enough to carry in the room full of underage, intoxicated teens.
Donna, older and just as pretty as she was in all the years they have ever known her, was holding a red solo cup, one that she instinctively pushed into her friend’s hand the moment she saw them.
It warms something in Gwen’s chest that even tipsy she remembered, and from the way Finney’s eyes softened, she was sure it did for him too.
“Hey, Donna,” He says, “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind?” She smiles, slow at first, giving him a once-over that made it grow brighter. “Why would I mind? You look — Finn, you look great!”
Donna doesn’t even stumble as she abandons her friends without a second glance, throwing her arms around Finney and squeezing him hard enough that Gwen might have to recount her perception of how much she had to drink.
The two of them had dated a little over a year before they broke up, around the time that Finney had really started to isolate himself. Gwen knew they had a couple of disagreements. Worry about the amount that Finney was smoking, weight loss and sleep deprivation, always tense in public, and a cloud over his head that never really seemed to dissipate.
Donna was always sweet, and before she was his girlfriend, she was one of the only good things the world had to offer Finney after — well, after everything. While he couldn’t tell her about the basement or any of the heavier things that weighed on him, she genuinely cared, and for a while that felt like it could be enough.
There was never really an ultimatum, not a screaming match or even really an argument. Donna was too young to understand what Finney was feeling, and Finney couldn’t stop believing that he was dragging her down with him.
They broke up amicably, a minute-too-long hug and a promise that they wouldn’t disappear from each other’s lives, not entirely. A promise that, Gwen could admit, her brother had all but given up on keeping.
Finney took her enthusiasm in stride, a soft huff and a hug he returns, gracefully ignoring the alcohol on her breath to add, “It’s good to see you too, Donna.”
“‘And you look good too,’” Donna adds, teasingly, laughing at the eye roll it earns her, “No, seriously, you look… you look really good. Gwen told me you weren’t up to coming, so this is a really great surprise!”
“He told me he wasn’t.” Gwen sent him a stink eye. “Jerk.”
“I didn’t think I was. This is all… just a little much,” Finney admits. “I just — Robin thought it might be fun.”
Gwen’s smile fades, though she tries valiantly to keep her mood pleasant as Donna nods, looking a bit taken aback.
“Robin?” She says, voice light, “He’s here?”
Finney nods, and, as if on cue, as if he were waiting for the perfect invitation, Robin breezes effortlessly through the crowd. Two soda cans perspiring between his fingers, one that he presses to the side of Finney’s neck.
“Robin!” Donna exclaims, an uneasiness that often colored the kids at school, “I, um, I’m glad you’re here. We haven’t really… gotten to talk yet.”
Robin, to his credit, looks back at her, perfectly pleasant. He offers a nod, analytical eyes that seem to track every movement and only a slightly tense smile as he says, “Thanks for having us.”
Gwen doesn’t miss the way his fingers curl around Finney’s wrist, and even slightly inebriated, Donna doesn’t either.
“I guess I have you to thank for getting Finney on a regular sleeping schedule,” She teases. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen his eye circles this light.”
The joke works, even as Finney scowls, it makes Robin’s lips twitch, untensing his shoulders.
“Would you —“ Donna hesitates, “I mean, do you want to sit down? I’d like it if we could talk. I really have missed you, Finn.”
Finney looks back to Robin, a hesitancy that the other nudges him for, before nodding.
“I’ll find you in a few minutes,” Robin assures, “I think I saw Griffin sitting on the stairs.”
Despite his words, he makes no move to go anywhere but to stare after the two as they sit on the couch and begin to talk.
“Don’t be weird,” Gwen frowns at him, “They’re just friends.”
“I know that,” Robin says, voice neutral, an irritating deadpan that she could never really dissect even before he died.
Donna’s face is colored warm by the lights, a pink flush and a stick of gum she was chewing on to cover the alcohol on her breath. Finney smiles at her, real and something so close to happy that her chest feels tight, eyes flickering away even there, even then, to look back at Robin.
“Then why are you staring at them like that?”
Robin huffs, reflectionless eyes and a twitch at his lip as he doesn’t so much as blink. “I like looking at him.”
Gwen pauses, baffled, “What?”
He shrugs, taking the look as an invitation to squeeze onto the couch, to the left of Finney, who nearly falls off if not for the hand that curls around his belt loops and tucks him up and back.
Donna takes it in stride, including Robin in the conversation, with bright eyes and a friendly smile. It was enough for Robin to relax, enough for Finney’s face to soften impossibly, every hard edge and sad line to melt as if they were never there. Somehow younger here than he had ever gotten to be, before the basement, before their father started drinking.
From here, they almost looked like everything that could have been and everything that was supposed to be. Friends that came together naturally, a lunch table and studying after school, planning for college instead of sitting in a funeral pew.
It isn’t for very long, though; it never is —tension arising with the first jeer that builds in a collective call.
“If you sit in the circle, you’ve got to play the game,” An obnoxious voice crows, cheered on by more than one holler, “Pick a slip, or we’ll pick for you, Donna!”
“Oh my god, you guys are so annoying,” Donna grouses, glaring at the half circle as she digs through the upside-down cap and opens the slip. “Chug two — oh, you guys are assholes.”
“Do or drink, Donna!”
“I’m obviously going to drink.” She rolls her eyes, sending an apologetic look to Finney, who waves her off.
“You too. Finn, right?” The observer, a guy whose name escapes, something like Dan? Dave? prompts.
“I’m good,” Finney mutters, to no avail.
“If you don’t pick, we’ll pick for you,” David? warns, the kind of presumptive frat-guy attitude that made Gwen grit her teeth.
“Guys, just skip us, seriously,” Donna tries.
“Oh, come on, stop being a buzzkill,” Dean? complains, snatching back the hat from Donna and rifling through it.
“He doesn’t want to play.”
Robin cuts in, voice even, not pitching a syllable, not a grit or a warning caught between the tones, and still it made the room pause. A sort of buzz that they didn’t even seem to fully register, or understand, maybe too drunk to realize who said it.
“It’s a good one,” Daniel? snickers, “Oh man, this is a good one. I did you a favor, Finn.” He holds the paper up proudly as he says, “Kiss the person next to you or chug the rest of your drink.”
“Paul, just do it yourself,” Donna glares at him.
“It’s the rules,” The boy stresses.
Donna huffs, turns, and kisses Finney’s cheek, pretending not to see the way Robin stiffens, “Next.”
“That doesn’t count!” More than one voice protests.
“And he doesn’t even have a real drink, so it’s got to be the do,” Paul, really? Paul? He doesn’t look like a Paul, he looks like a jackass, “Or he can get away with an indirect if you pass your drink, Donna.”
“Fuck off,” Donna snaps, looking actually upset now, “We’ll move out of the circle, okay?”
Finney, who looked about one more word from standing up and beating Paul’s face into the fireplace, looked relieved at that idea, though it quickly soured at the continuous heckling.
“You’re committed, c’mon, you’re being a bad host. Didn’t you use to date this guy? What? Still have a crush on —“
Without a word, a tan hand reaches up, turning Finney’s head from his glare to share a long, meaningful look before Robin was kissing him.
Not a short kiss, not one of the fast kind of pecks where someone might turn away and comically screw up their face to let the room know it wasn’t serious. This was a long, intentional, brushing his thumb over his jaw, and only pulling away when breathing is necessary kind of kiss. A, what the fuck you’re making out with my brother in front of me, his ex-girlfriend, a room full of drunk teenagers, and god, kind of kiss.
Robin pulls away, one more press of his thumb to Finney’s jaw, before he turns back to the room, and says, “Who’s next?”
It would have been comical how quickly the room shut the fuck up if Gwen’s own brain wasn’t reeling alongside them. Not a drop of alcohol necessary to make her feel like she was in the goddamn twilight zone.
Paul’s face twists with disgust. “What the fuck? You’re a fucking queer?” He looks around the room, incredulous. “Who the fuck let these queers in here?”
His voice, dripping with disgust, was almost sobering. Gwen looks to Donna, who looks less shocked than she would have guessed, and Finney, whose face is the reddest she’s ever seen.
The words hang there, heavy enough to sober the room. Nobody says a thing until Griffin, who has somehow made his way through the chaos, leans against the couch.
“You shouldn’t say that,” He says, voice perfectly pleasant, perfectly mild.
It takes him a minute, a long and embarrassing minute, to realize the words are directed at him, but when he does, Paul glowers, “Who the fuck asked you? What are you, another fucking queer?”
Griffin hums, and without another word, empties an open container over his head.
The people sitting next to him shriek, standing up to try and dodge as much as they could, leaving Paul in a puddle, soaked head to toe.
He stands, looking furious, grasping the front of the boy’s shirt, but Griffin wasn’t as small as he was when he was kidnapped. Growing up somewhere where no one else was around to watch, in ways she couldn’t even imagine. Even-eyed, blank-eyed to him as he smiles.
The smell of something sour hits her nose first. The pungent smell of something acrid as the sound of a match being struck rasps and the dull sound of a container falling as it bounces twice.
LIGHTER FLUID, it reads.
“Ernie!” Gwen screams, startling the boy who was watching, as transfixed as anyone else, only just in time for him to dive and fumble the still-burning match. Millimeters away from the carpet, from streaks of gasoline.
The music stops. One by one, every face turns toward the eerily still boy, horror and disbelief written across them. Griffin frowns, his dark eyes settling on Finn as he says, “I told him not to say it.”
Robin huffs a laugh, picking up the discarded cap and calls, “Who’s next?”
—
part four of my one wish willow au, the other parts are under the tag under the same name.
this part is based off of the party scene in obsession, but again, no spoilers. ideally, you should discuss in length with your partner on whether or not they’re ready to kiss publicly in a homophobic town. not seen, robin and finney have kissed before this part, and have discussed being in a relationship.
consent <3
anyway, this is probably a bad time to be posting since it’s so late, but hope you enjoyed!
Gwen would yell at him for smoking so much. Angry at her brother for so blatantly disregarding his health, but she didn't get it. He was glad she didn't get it, glad that he was the one who went through everything instead of his innocent little sister. But it still stood; she didn't get it.
Robin probably didn't like it either, but at least he didn't try to yell at Finn for it.
“You won’t even admit that you’re scared. You just want to smoke your fucking weed and numb yourself out like Dad.”
“You’re both the same! Alcohol, weed, it’s all the fucking same. Anything to not feel. Anything that helps you check out! You both avoid everything that scares you—everything you feel!”
“You just pretend you don’t see him sneaking out at night. You pretend you don’t smell the weed on him, in his room!”
“Shut up!” Finn explodes. “You think I don’t know that!?”
“You think I don’t know it was real!?” He tugged at the fabric of his beanie. “It’s all I ever think about! You don’t know what it was like down there!”
“And don’t you accuse me of being like him!” His anger turned halfway towards Terrence, not entirely unprompted or unsubstantiated. “I never beat you! I never put my hands or belt on you! I have never made you clean me out of my own vomit because I was too out of it to even know I was alive!”
“Hey!” Terrence whined.
“I may be a shitty excuse of a person but I never failed as a brother! I gave you my everything and he never did!” There were tears and cracks in his voice. He wasn’t sure if it was even Grabber related anymore.
So many years of built up resentment for a shoddy implication of a father, and fear, and misery, and hatred for what had been done to him, and the anger of his own faults being thrown back in his face like some cheap shot!
Neither of them seemed to care that Terrence was literally right there. Let him hear, maybe it’ll knock some kind of sense into his fucking head. Sure he was sober, but Finn was sick of the weird half-relationship they were supposed to be having as if everything was fine.
“I was so.. fucking scared! I don’t want to be angry anymore! I don’t want to be afraid anymore!”
On a whim post between schoolwork. @acid-miwi @d1sapp01ntm3nt @2tonedwolf @cheap-lemons-and-theatrics @watered-down-lemonade @sluttyheroinneedle @zombiegrains @arteei @everest-docx
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