I Could've Been Your Girl. - Fem!Singer!Homeowner x Chance
★ : summary : the aftermath of realising Chance
★ : content aware! : irresponsible drinking but only a little bit, one mention of blood in a non-violent setting
★ : authors note :: thank you for all the love on Critical Hit! Ive been seeing lots of people say Chance has mega angst potential, and i was listening to some She & Him this morning and I just had to write this. Apologies in advance.
★ : genre :: angst, hurt/comfort, songfic
It doesn't matter, if I were willing
It doesn't matter that the lights are turned down low
Oh oh
I know you have to go
You watched Chance walk out of the door of the house with his soft smile and his suitcase, albeit not a very full one, and find yourself slouched against the door as his Uber drives off. You’d waited till last to realize him. It was selfish, and you knew it, but you wanted to remain in your sweet boy’s arms as long as you could. But it couldn’t last forever. Chance deserved the opportunity to be free too. To go to college, to open the G&G therapy office he’d fantasised about having, and who were you to stop him? Just a girl with a BFA in Customer Services and an insatiable crush on her D20. Not that it mattered anymore. Chance had taken off without you, just as every other object had done, leaving your home quiet and empty.
You stumble to the kitchen, where Bev used to be, and grab the nearest and fullest bottle, and bypass a cup of any sort. Hours that night are spent on the couch, the cool glass of the bottle now warm after being in your clammy hands for so long, tears streaming down your face as you rewatch the Fantasy High Dimension 20 campaign, in a faint hope of feeling somewhat connected to Chance. You stare at your phone until you fall asleep, hoping that somehow, for some reason, he’ll text and say he misses you.
That text never comes.
It doesn't matter, I fought my heart
It's broke and shattered to a million and one
I'm done
I guess I haven't won
Trying to get over Chance is not an easy feat. You fall into a rut. Get up. Eat some sort of instant noodle. Work. Stalk the local college instagram for photos of Chance, after you saw him amongst a group of G&G players in a freshers week photo. Nothing really seems to work. You try therapy. You hit the club. You download Tinder and then uninstall it after 3 swipes, feeling like you’re cheating on Chance every time you look at another man. You’re in a new hell every time his little giggle crosses your mind, each time you recall the way his thumb would slide across your cheek, a fresh, hot tear rolls down instead. You daydream a lot. About what it would have been like to just keep him here. Your mind rolls off regularly to the thought of making the taller man breakfast every morning, his coffee just how he likes it and his eggs over-easy. How you’d kiss him good morning and kiss him goodnight, yet all you got was these lousy sunglasses. One evening, after a few too many shots, you threw them. Hard, and with so much anger that their metal frames crumpled under the weight of the loss of your love, lenses a shower of sharp confetti on the floor. The mess was still there, in the corner of the living room. You couldn't bear to clean it up.
Because it was all you had left of you and him now.
Cause I could've been your girl
And you could've been my four leaf clover
If I could do it over
I'd send you the pillow that I cry on
The only thing that brings you some solace in all of this is music. An old guitar you’d found in the attic after everyone had left, one of the few hobbies or activities that had never activated the dateviators. It became your lifeline for a little while, strumming softly to yourself as you sat between old character sheets Chance had left in your desk drawers. Eventually, you graduate to writing your own songs and recording them on your shitty iPhone camera. They start off shaky, but pick up traction within a few tunes, and the next thing you know, you’re on your own adventure. Making soft, sweet music about your long-gone lover, a signature D20 dice necklace becoming a staple of your musician self, with fans begging you to release your own one as merch. You can’t bring yourself to do that, but you do eventually go on a small tour, playing little arenas and university student’s unions, and you finally start to pick yourself back up onto your feet.
You agree to play a small set at Valdivian Tech, for their Psychology department ball, and you show up, eager as ever with your white guitar and the red and gold D20 slung around your neck like a good luck charm, pressed right over your heart. Students file in, all chatting excitedly, dressed up for the evening, and there's a small round table at the front for the students with the highest averages.
Chance finds himself in a blazer and shirt, a D20 pin on his lapel. He wasn't overly happy to be having to go to a party of any kind, let alone a ball, but he had an award to accept, and besides, the whole G&G group were going too, so he may as well just suck it up for an evening and go. The red pin glimmers in the evening light as he and his friends walk from their dorm to the student’s union, where the ball is being hosted. There's chatter, and drinks, and ridiculously small bites of food being carried about on fancy silver trays as he enters the hall. He takes a glass of champagne and the all too small snacks as he and the others in his adventuring party take their seats at the awards table. The evening runs well and Chance is given some sort of plaque, accepted with a warm smile and a small talk on his current research, He sits back in his seat, glass to his lips when his professor ways words he never thought he’d hear:
“And to finish the evening, we are graced by the wonderfully talented Y/N L/N.”
He swears he almost drops his glass. Almost.
It doesn't matter, I'll just be gone
And if you see me
Just move on
Cause you
Are free
And never meant to be
It takes everything in you to stay professional when you two lock eyes. You feel your vision cloud with tears and quickly blink them back as you take your seat, guitar hitched on your knee. His eyes are transfixed, glued to the D20 around your neck. You were there. Sat in front of him, positively glowing, and it all rushes back to him. Every campaign replays in his head. Every time you laughed at his nerdy jokes, or played a game of Sandylands with him and Parker. Chance’s head spins and he can’t tell if he’s drunk on alcohol or the sweet smell of the perfume you’d always worn. Some things never change,eh?
You clear your throat and the wave of nausea hits him again as you speak, confirming that it’s not the alcohol that's the problem. You look ahead into the crowd, and smile. “It’s such a pleasure to be here, at Valdivian Tech, to help you celebrate your wonderful achievements. For this first song…” Your eyes lower to meet Chance’s gaze, for the first time in a long time, and you exhale softly “This is I Could Have Been Your Girl…”
He swears his heart leaps out of his chest and shatters on the floor in front of him, his sweet traveller’s voice filling the room.
“Cause I could've been your girl
And you could've been my four leaf clover
If I could do it over
I'd send you the pillow that I cry on”
He’s never sat so still in his life. The metallic taste of blood filling his mouth as he bites the insides of his cheeks just to stop himself crying then and there. He had left, because that's what everyone else had done. He had a mission, and it was to make others happy, through the magic of Grottos and Gargoyles, but he had forgotten, in the buzz of college and of his new human body, that he had a human that had made HIM happy, and all he had managed to do was break her heart. He spent the whole rest of the evening with his eyes on your hands, the way they glide across the neck of the guitar with an effortless, practiced grace, the same way your hands had moved minis across a map.
“Dude, you’re like, so totally eyeing her up” His friend laughs, getting a round of laughs from everyone at the table as he’s elbowed in the side, faking a laugh along with them. The ball draws close after a few hours, and Chance makes a piss-poor excuse to go and wait at the back of the student’s union for you to exit the stage door. He’d run a few larger scale G&G events there, so knew where a guest would exit from. He sees you start to climb into a car, and he prays for a nat 20 roll on his agility, as he runs towards the car at godspeed.
“Y/N! Please! Please- Wait…” He pants, hands on his knees to catch his breath, as your driver looks at you with a confused and concerned look. You look at Chance, and slide your guitar into the backseat. “Go on without me, Henry. I can make it back to the hotel myself, this is important.” The driver nods, and speeds off, as you stand face to face with him. He’s red. Very red. He matches the D20 pin on his lapel and the one around your neck, that he carefully moves to hold between his fingers. “Y/N… I…” He lets out a shaky exhale as you shake your head softly “You’re doing so well, Chance. Look at you, winning awards. I'm so proud of you. Please, don’t apologise for having moved on-”
“Moved on? Y/N, don’t you dare say I’ve moved on- I- I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I left. The number I had for you, it never seemed to connect, and I- fuck, Y/N. I haven’t gone a night without wondering where you are, what you’re doing, and what lucky man gets to have you in his arms-” He chokes out a sob at the thought of there being someone else and gravity forces your hand into his and your spare hand to his chin, and you don’t think. No, you don’t think when you press your lips against his to shut him up and he doesn’t think when he kisses you back.
Air unfortunately becomes scarce, and you pull apart. His face is covered in tears and you rush to wipe them away. “That song… It was about me, wasn’t it?” He asks through broken gasps, his arms wrapping around you like you’ll disappear. You nod, and he cries harder. Oh, does he cry. You pull back, and dry his face once again, and smile softly at your precious D20.
“If i give you my number, maybe we can write something happier, together? Maybe you could come back to my hotel with me, i-if you arent busy-!”
“I’d like that, Y/N. I’d like to be your lucky shot, your four leaf clover.”
