synopsis: in which two deeply stubborn, profoundly lonely geniuses are the only students left at barton academy over the christmas break. they spend their days arguing about philosophy and their nights trying not to stare. they are, to put it mildly, disgustingly in love with each other. they are also idiots about it.
pairing: angus tully x reader
a/n: hello!! it's the season of giving and as an early present, i give to you an angus tully fic! i haven't written anything for so long because i just started college but now that the first semester is done, i can finally devote my leisure time to writing! i apologize if my writing's a bit, well--wonky, i'm a bit rusty because of my inactvity for like months. i hope you enjoy reading this little fic i wrote!! happy holidays!! (THIS IS NOT PROOFREAD)
The heater rattled like it was coughing up a lung, which, mood, honestly. You were camped out on the library’s sad armchair, a fortress of textbooks around you that you weren’t really reading. The words had blurred into a grey smear about an hour ago.
Across the room, Angus Tully was doing his impression of a human pretzel, limbs all angles and tension, glaring at a Latin text like it personally insulted his mother. His tie was loose, his hair was a mess, and he had that look; the one that said the world was a profoundly stupid place and he was the only one who’d read the memo.
You’ve been orbiting each other for weeks. Stuck in this empty, frozen school over the holidays because both your parents could care any less about your asses. Your overbearing Mother in Prague, and Angus’ mom with her new beau on a honeymoon. As a result, both of you have no choice but to celebrate the holidays in Barton Academy.
Hell, you didn’t expect to be stuck in an all-boys boarding school. You expected you were gonna be spending your time in Saint Mary’s, Barton’s sister school just a walk away from here. But the nuns said ‘No, no, we will be on a mission in Rome for the holidays.’ You think it’s because the nuns don’t want a troubled teen and just wanted an excuse for getting rid of the poor kid.
A snort escaped you at a particularly dense passage. His head snapped up. “What.” Not a question, but a challenge.
“Nothing. Just… Catullus is being extra.” You flipped through the pages, smirking.
“He’s always extra,” Angus muttered, but the defensive hunch of his shoulders relaxed a fraction. “It’s the translations that suck the life out of him.”
“Tell me about it.” Silence again, but it was a different kind. Thicker.
You both went back to pretending to study, but you could feel his eyes flick to you, quick and bird-like, before darting away. You did the same. It was a dance, and you both knew the steps by now: look, retreat, pretend you never looked.
—
Dinner was the same canned soup that tasted vaguely of regret and salt. It sat in your bowl, a beige landscape, while Mary’s gentle, worried looks floated across the table like moths trying to find a kind light. Every time her gaze landed on you, it felt like a soft, sad pat on the head. Mr. Hunham chewed with a grim, rhythmic determination, each bite an act of defiance, as if the food weren’t just bland but a personal, moral failing he had to conquer.
The silence was a heavy blanket, broken only by the click of spoons and the ancient radiator’s hissing sigh. Mary, saint that she was, finally broke it.
“The decorations in the main hall are… festive,” she offered. It was less an observation and more a peace treaty carefully folded into a single sentence.
“They’re a fire hazard,” Hunham grumbled into his napkin, not looking up. “Tinder-dry pine needles and nineteenth-century wiring. A delightful combination.”
“There’s mistletoe,” Mary added then, her voice bright with a forced innocence that was utterly transparent. Her eyes didn’t just move—they slid, a rapid, calculated ping-pong from your face to Angus’s and back again, a maneuver so swift it could have secured her a gold medal in Olympic Subtext.
From the other side of the table, there was a sudden, strangled gurgle. Angus had choked on his water. He coughed, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and fixed the air somewhere above Mary’s head with a look of pure betrayal. “Great,” he rasped, his voice still scratchy. “A parasitic plant. Very romantic. Really sets the mood for gastrointestinal distress and existential dread.”
“It’s tradition,” you heard yourself say, aiming for a tone of casual, anthropological interest. You landed somewhere closer to strained, like a wire about to snap.
His eyes, sharp and everywhere, finally cut to you. “Tradition is peer pressure from dead people,” he shot back, automatic, a line from his well-worn lexicon of disdain. But he wasn’t looking at his soup, or at Hunham, or at the sad painting of a ship on the wall. He was looking at you. The full force of his attention was a physical thing, a slight pressure in the quiet room.
A reckless spark jumped the gap. “Spoken like someone terrified of a little foliage,” you said, and oh god, was that.. flirting? It came out flat, challenging, an accusation leveled across the cream of celery soup.
A flush, vivid and warm, crept up from his collar, staining his cheeks pink. He straightened in his chair, a soldier against an absurd enemy. “I’m not terrified,” he insisted, the word brittle. “I am logically opposed to its hemiparasitic nature and its documented use as a tool for social coercion. It’s botanically and sociologically problematic.”
You held his flustered gaze, the corner of your mouth threatening to twitch. “Sure, Tully,” you said, slow, dragging the words out. “That’s it. It’s the… sociological implications you’re worried about.”
A sudden, sharp nudge connected with your shin under the table. You jolted. Mary was sipping her water, her expression one of serene innocence. Or maybe she’d kicked Angus. The secrecy of it, the shared, awkward conspiracy, was impossible to parse. But the moment broke, the strange charge in the air dissipating back into the general gloom, leaving only the memory of his blush and the phantom ache on your leg.
—
Two days later, the tension wasn't just a live wire—it was the whole damn substation, humming and dangerous. You'd bickered ferociously about Hobbes' Leviathan (him arguing for its bleak, logical truth, you calling it a fancy excuse for being a buzzkill), then turned around and agreed with terrifying, instantaneous passion that Ringo was, objectively, the weakest Beatle. It was in the library, your fingers grazing over the same worn spine of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold at the exact same moment. You'd both snatched your hands back like the book was electrified, muttering "sorry" and "no, you—" into the dusty quiet, your faces hot. Nearly. But not quite. The not-quite was gonna kill you.
You were stomping down the main staircase, lost in a vivid, pointless thought about the exact way his stupid mouth moved when he was dismantling some philosophical point, all sharp edges and eloquence, when you turned the corner into the dim hall.
And there he was.
Frozen. Stopped dead under the stone archway to the common room, his posture rigid with the kind of alarm usually reserved for fire drills or pop quizzes.
Right under the stupid, beribboned clump of mistletoe.
He was staring up at it, not with annoyance, but with pure, unadulterated horror, as if it had personally marched into the Sudetenland.
You both froze. The only sound was the ancient grandfather clock in the foyer, ticking like a slow, mechanical heartbeat in the palpable silence.
"Of course," he announced to the plant, his voice low and despairing. "Of course you'd be lying in wait here. Tactical positioning."
"Talking to the decor now, Tully?" Your voice came out weird, tight and too high, betraying the frantic skitter of your own heart.
He whirled to face you, looking genuinely caught, his eyes wide behind his glasses. "It's a trap," he stated, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss. "A biological ambush. It's phoradendron leucarpum, for God's sake."
"It's a bunch of berries and some leaves, Angus. It's not sentient."
"It's expectations," he insisted, shoving his hands so deep into his trouser pockets the seams threatened to protest. "It's… it's performative. A social contract written in chlorophyll. People don't actually do this. It's for terrible Christmas movies and people who use 'yule' as a verb."
"Okay, so walk away," you said, and you could feel your pulse in your throat, a frantic, living thing. "No one's making you stand there. Just… move. Exit stage left."
He didn't move. Not an inch. He just stared at you, all that coiled, intellectual energy suddenly focused into a single, burning point of stillness. His voice, when it came, was quieter, stripped of its defensive edge. "Maybe I don't want to."
The world didn't just shrink, it evaporated. The cavernous hall, the portraits of dead headmasters, the eternal New England grey outside the windows. All of it dissolved until there was nothing but the three feet of worn floorboards between you, the December chill seeping through the stones, and the defiant, stupid green of the mistletoe leaves.
"You don't want to walk away?" you asked, the words barely a whisper, stolen by the thick air.
"I don't know what I want," he admitted, and it sounded like the truest, most painfully honest thing anyone had ever said in this whole pretentious place. "Except that I really, really hate this mistletoe."
"Yeah," you breathed, the word a puff of vapour in the cold. Your foot moved almost without permission, a single step closing the gap. "Me too."
Another step. Now you were both in the archway, standing under the botanical verdict. The waxy white berries dangled above, ridiculous, cliché, utterly inescapable.
"This is so dumb," he whispered, his eyes not leaving yours, searching, cataloguing your reaction.
"The absolute dumbest," you agreed, your lips feeling numb and tingly all at once.
You were close enough now to see it all: the faint, frustrated crease between his brows, the single fleck of gold in the sea of his left iris, the nervous, soft part of his lips. His hand came up, hesitant, his movements uncharacteristically clumsy, and brushed a stray strand of hair from your cheek. His fingers were cold, but the touch itself was electric, a jolt that froze you and burned you all at once.
"Look," he started, his voice rough, scraping out of his throat. "If we… just to get it over with. A clinical experiment. Just to… shut the mistletoe up. Prove it doesn't matter."
"Right," you murmured, leaning in just a fraction. "A tactical manoeuvre. Just to defeat the plant, an experiment."
"Exactly."
You both leaned in. It wasn't a movie kiss. It was awkward, a calamity of angles—noses bumping, a shaky, shared exhale mingling in the cold air before your lips finally, clumsily, found their way to each other.
And oh.
It was warm. So much warmer than the hall. And softer than you'd ever imagined his smart, stubborn mouth could be. He tasted like the astringent school tea and the spearmint gum he was always chewing, a familiar, comforting scent that was now entirely, dizzyingly new. One of his hands found your waist, his fingers pressing into the wool of your sweater, anchoring you there. The other stayed cupped against your jaw, his thumb resting just below your ear. The kiss began as a chaste, closed-mouth press, a hypothesis being tested. Then it changed, deepened, turned hungrier in about two seconds flat; a silent, mutual concession. All those arguments, all that brittle tension, every nearly-touch in the library, melted and fused into this one, perfect, inevitable point.
You pulled back, gasping a little, the cold air rushing in. His forehead came to rest against yours, his eyes were wide, stunned.
"Well," he managed, his breath fanning warm over your lips. "That… the data just contradicted the hypothesis. That wasn't just to defeat the plant."
"No," you agreed, a stupid, helpless, uncontrollable smile spreading across your face, so wide it almost hurt. "It really, really wasn't."
From down the shadowy hall, there was the distinct, unmistakable, and deliberately theatrical sound of Mr. Hunham clearing his throat—a sound like gravel being shifted in a metal pan. You jumped apart as if the floorboards had given way, putting a foot of scandalized distance between you.
He was already walking away, his posture the usual monument to disappointment, but you caught it. Mary, a step behind him, failing completely to hide a triumphant, radiant grin as she flashed you two a quick, jubilant thumbs-up behind his retreating back.
Angus looked from their disappearing figures, back to you, then up at the mistletoe with a new, dawning expression. He let out a shaky, disbelieving laugh that was mostly relief, the sound bubbling up like something he couldn't contain.
"They totally set us up," he said, the realization painting his tone with something like awe.
"Yeah," you said, and before you could think better of it, you reached for his hand, lacing your fingers through his cold ones. The simple, solid rightness of it made your head spin. "But we're smarter than them."
"Debatable," he said, but he was smiling—a real, unguarded, gorgeous smile that broke across his face like dawn, lighting up his whole stupid, brilliant, beautiful face. He squeezed your hand. "So… wanna go logically oppose some eggnog? I hear it's a sociologically fraught beverage of the highest order."
"Only if you're buying," you said, letting him pull you down the hall, away from the mistletoe, the dust, and the silence, into something infinitely warmer.
{'x Reader' works currently include: Isaac Night (Wednesday), Angus Tully (The Holdovers), Bosco Leroy (NYSM:NYD), Emperor Geta (Gladiator II), Johnny Storm (Fantastic Four: First Steps), Eddie Munson (Stranger Things), Steve Harrington (Stranger Things), Gator Tillman (Fargo), & Walter "Keys" McKey (Free Guy) - open to other suggestions as well!}
If you have anything you’d like to see from me (one-shots, character-wise, etc - don’t hesitate to send me an ask !! i love hearing from you all!
Completed Multi-Chapters:
Unraveled (Isaac Night x Reader) Series Masterlist - Completed
Hurt You To Heal You (Isaac Night x Reader) Series Masterlist - Completed
Holding All Your Baggage (Angus Tully x Reader) Series Masterlist - Completed
Small World, Ain't It? (Gator Tillman x Reader) Series Masterlist - Completed
So Much I Wanna Do (Eddie Munson x Reader) Series Masterlist - Completed
City Girl (Gator Tillman x Reader) - Series Masterlist - Completed
Tethered (Walter "Keys" McKey x Reader) - Series Masterlist - Completed
In Progress Multi-Chapters:
Magic In Your Sighs (Bosco Leroy x Reader) Series Masterlist - In Progress
Would That Be a Bad Thing? (Emperor Geta x Reader) Series Masterlist - In Progress
We Were Friends (Gator Tillman x Reader) Series Masterlist - In Progress
Character-Specific Masterlists:
Joseph Quinn Character Masterlist - includes Eddie Munson, Emperor Geta, & Johnny Storm
Joe Keery Character Masterlist - includes Steve Harrington, Walter "Keys" McKey, & Gator Tillman
These are some of my favourite fics that I have read this year. Much love to these amazing authors!!
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Chapter 1: "Bah, Humbug!"
Chapter 2: "You're a Mean One, Miss Hunham"
Chapter 3: "Emotional Motion Sickness"
Chapter 4: "Too Late to Turn Back Now"
Chapter 5: "One More Reason to Control Myself"
Chapter 6: "December Never Felt So Wrong"
Chapter 7: "Christmas Time is Here"
Chapter 8: "The Most 'Wonderful' Time of the Year"
Chapter 9: "Dimensions"
Chapter 10: "Such an Old Fashioned Word"
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