Muggle Cambridge AU | Kellona
prompt: "what are you afraid of?"
Nausea rolled through Keller as he quickly placed his bag over his shoulder and picked up his books. With one last look at the smug face that sat in front of him, Keller walked out of the library, willing himself not to break into a run to get away from there faster. The campus was large, and the lamp posts were just beginning to glow with light as Keller took a shortcut through the arts buildings and headed straight for the dorms, needing to get away from people for the foreseeable future. Everything was wrong – it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. All Keller could think about was the fact that if he was expelled, his family would quite literally murder him to try and get the money they’d paid for his education out of his blood and bones and organs. He pressed his back to the door once it was closed and listened to the hum of silence that filled his room – obviously Nolan and Zane were both still out, which meant that Keller had the place to himself. Switching on lamps as he went, Keller headed for his room and closed that door too, making sure to lock it, as though someone where after him. His phone in his pocket buzzed as Keller slung his bag off his shoulder, and taking it out, he saw that he had a message from Fiona—
Hey, where r u? want to get dinner together? xx
Keller felt a pang of guilt as he closed his phone without replying to her, tossing it down onto the bed and trying to put all thoughts of her sad face out of his mind. Fiona had been increasingly more worried about Keller over the last few weeks, and with good reason – he’d stopped eating, stopped sleeping, and was more than a little anxious whenever anyone spoke to him. His temper was short, and any time Fiona had tried to broach the subject, he’d snapped at her and stormed out – only to apologise later, explaining it was the oncoming finals. But that wasn’t it – at least, not exactly. Keller sunk onto his bed, pulling his laptop toward himself and booted it up, watching the screen flicker to life and show the folders of information that were stored on his computer. Keller quickly pulled on his glasses so that he could see better before clicking on one, revealing the files within: tests and their subsequent answers for the entire English literature department. Keller moved his finger across the mouse pad and opened the next folder – within were the tests and answers for the science department, listed by subject and year. It was easy to pretend that it was under control when Keller was alone with the files – it was easy to pretend that he wasn’t going to be expelled if he was found with these files. The truth was less murky, however – because the truth was that Keller’s manager had set him a deadline, and he had the entire history department to hack into before midnight tomorrow, otherwise there would be consequences. It didn’t take a genius to know that if Keller didn’t deliver the answers and tests that they were looking for, his name would ‘accidentally’ be part of a rumour linked to leakage of test scores. Sometimes, at night, when he was drinking his third cup of coffee, Keller wondered how he’d gotten here; how he’d managed to get wrapped up in something so completely wrong that the right path didn’t even show its face anymore.
Shuffling up the bed until his back was against the headboard, Keller grabbed his headphones and wired them into the computer. Clicking a playlist of indie music that he liked and which kept him focused, he started an encryption program which would break down Cambridge’s firewall and allow him to access the site where the teachers stored their future exams and the answers to the tests. It would take all night – Cambridge had upped their online security after a break in a few months back, which had been Keller’s test run for the gang that had ended up hiring him. Now, he navigated their security with ease, slipping in and out of their system without them ever knowing. Keller had been so lost in coding and encryption that he hadn’t noticed someone hammering at his door until the song ended and another began. The pounding on the door was intense, coupled with a voice, and when Keller took his headphones off, he heard that it was Nolan. Keller quickly closed the tab he’d been working on and shuffled off the bed, calling to Nolan to hold his horses, before he slid the bolt back and opened his door, revealing Nolan standing there shirtless and with several hickeys placed down his neck.
“What?” Keller snapped, scrubbing his eyes and running a hand through his hair. He hadn’t realised – until he stood there and caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall – that he’d been coding for four hours.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” asked Nolan, who folded his arms.
“No? My headphones are noise cancelling,” Keller replied dismissively, mind still on the computer that sat on his bed. “What do you want?” he asked again.
“You have a visitor,” and Nolan jerked his thumb to the door of the dorm. “I didn’t let her in because I didn’t know if you were asleep or what.”
Keller remembered the text message he’d gotten from Fiona – the one that he’d forgot to reply to – and his heart dropped as he started toward the door. “Yeah, well, if I had been sleeping, you would’ve woken me up anyway.”
“Whatever,” Nolan murmured, walking back to his room and closing the door, perhaps a little more forcefully than necessary. Things had been tense between them since Nolan had found out about Keller’s side business, and had urged him to stop – but Keller was in too deep to back out now, and had told Nolan to mind his own business. Nolan had just about hit him, but instead slammed the door to his room and not talked to Keller for three days.
Walking toward the dorm door now, Keller saw that it was left open a crack, and opening it properly, he saw Fiona waiting there on the step, her long hair falling in curls and her eyebrows knitted in worry. “Kell,” she breathed when she caught sight of him, and she immediately moved forward to wrap her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. Keller’s guilt didn’t stop him from hugging her back, his own longer arms folding around her small frame and squeezing gently. Fiona was the only one that made him forget, at least temporarily, that what he was doing was criminal; she didn’t know a thing, but she suspected something was wrong – she saw through his lies so easily these days. “I was worried when you didn’t text me back,” she was saying, voice muffled against his shoulder until they parted, and she gave him a once over. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sorry-… I uhm-… I was beat, so I got back and crashed after class,” he said, avoiding her eyes and stepping back, allowing her into the dorm. Keller knew that she couldn’t stay – he had a deadline, after all – but he didn’t want to make her worry more than she clearly already had been. “Did you get dinner? I’m so sorry that I missed it – I completely slept through your text.”
Fiona nodded and held up a paper bag. “I brought you something, mostly because I know how often you forget about dinner,” she said, and placed the bag on the table, giving him a small smile. “You might need to reheat it though.”
The guilt inside of Keller throbbed harshly. “Thanks,” he said, looking back at her and failing to return the smile. “For-… for everything, for worrying, for bringing me food-…”
“You don’t have to thank me,” Fiona said, smiling up at him with the same bright blue eyes as she always did, and Keller could feel his resolve crumbling under the weight of the pressure, the stress, not to mention the lies that were stacking up quickly. “So long as you’re okay and not studying yourself to death.”
It was meant to be a joke, but Keller couldn’t laugh – not even a forced one. He felt his face fall, and he turned away from her, unable to even bear it. He’d never been good with keeping secrets from her: she was a master at internalising everything too, and she knew all the tricks. Keller always thought he was doing the right thing by hiding the truth, but the reality was that it always ended up worse when he did. They’d been down this road several times before over the course of their relationship – usually over minor things that could have escalated quickly, but it had been enough for Fiona to now know the signs.
“Kell,” she said, softer now, stepping close to him and looking up at him with that intense gaze that tried to catch his own eyes, but Keller purposely didn’t allow it. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
He hadn’t realised how exhausted he felt, and Keller could only step back out of her hold, shaking his head. “It’s nothing,” he said, eyes darting around the room and landing on the clock: he had less than twenty four hours to get the test answers that he needed to. Though the prospect of continuing to lie to her hurt him, Keller knew that if he could just keep it up for another day, then he would tell her – he’d tell her everything. He felt trapped and suffocated as he was torn between the truth and another lie, and he went with the default, knee-jerk response: a lie. “Look, thanks for uhm-… thanks for dinner, really, but I-… I should get back to studying.”
Fiona frowned. “I thought you said you were sleeping?” she asked quietly, catching him in his lie and watching his nervous movements. The thing about Fiona was that she would always try to give him the benefit of the doubt – she didn’t want to think of him as lying or hiding something, but she simultaneously wasn’t a fool.
“I-.. yeah, I mean, I was, and then I uhm-… I woke up, and then-.. I was studying. Look, Fiona, really, I need to get back--”
“Keller, please,” she said, cutting him off and looking frustrated and worried, all at once, wrapped up in a glance as she looked at him. “What’s going on?”
His heart was thudding painfully, and he starting retreating backward toward his dorm room. “What—what do you mean? Nothing’s-.. nothing’s going on.” Keller shook his head, trying to smile and appear normal, but he couldn’t even muster that. His palms began to nervously sweat at the thought of Fiona finding out – of the way she’d look at him when she heard what he’d been doing, the way she’d tell him that he wasn’t who she thought he was, the way she’d walk out of his dorm and never see him again. Keller couldn’t lose her – he would do whatever it took to keep that from happening.
“You’ve been acting really weird for a while now, and I didn’t-… I didn’t want to say anything, because I thought you were just stressed, but then you started disappearing for hours at a time, bailing on dates and dinners. I mean-… you were supposed to meet my parents, and you never showed.”
Keller could see the hurt and worry written all over Fiona’s face. “I know,” he admitted, nodding his head and hanging it low. “I’m sorry, I’ve just-… I’ve got a lot riding this semester – if I don’t keep my grades up, I might lose my scholarship, and I can’t-… you know my family can’t afford the tuition, and-…”
“Kell, your grades have always been perfect,” said Fiona reassuringly, and even though it pained her to keep pressing the topic, she couldn’t let it slide until she was sure he was okay. “Is something else going on? Are you in trouble of some kind?” The panicked look that Keller shot her encouraged Fiona to keep going. “Is it money? Do you need money? I know your textbooks must be so expensive-… I can help you, Keller, it isn’t anything to be embarrassed about…”
“It’s not money,” he said, voice quiet and full of his own pain. “Not-.. not entirely.” Keller ran a nervous hand through his hair. “I can’t do this, Fiona, I can’t—if they know-… if you knew, you’d-…”
“Who’s ‘they’?” she asked, taking a concerned step forward. “Keller, please don’t shut me out, I can help.” Fiona reached out and placed her hand on his arm. “What are you afraid of?”
Keller looked down at her – her earnest, sincere eyes that only wanted to help, and he knew that he couldn’t keep hiding secrets and expect her to stay with him or to trust him. He wanted them to work; Fiona was the only person he could ever love – she was his complement in a way that he’d never felt or known before. It was something along the lines of soulmates, but Keller was a student of science, and he couldn’t rationalise soulmates with what he knew. Technically, their chemical makeup reacted to the others’ in such a way that made them compatible, but the pull in his chest at the sight of her wasn’t chemical – it was physical. Keller loved her with all of his atoms and cells and muscles – it was visceral, and that’s how he knew that she was the one he was supposed to love, because it was his knee-jerk reaction when around her. But what no one told you about love is that it’s messy and complicated – it comes with needs and wants and demands, and one of them was to protect the ones you love from the truth that is the dark side of your soul. Keller felt like he had more hidden dark patches than he cared to admit, and showing them to Fiona felt like peeling back a layer of his skin and letting her see the dark, scarred flesh beneath. Taking in a shuddering breath, Keller gave in and took her hand, leading her into his room. Closing the door behind them so that they were alone in the small confines of his bedroom, the laptop sat glowing on the bed like the demon that it had become, almost taunting Keller with the decision that he had made in that moment.
“I started something a few months ago that I need to finish,” he started, letting go of her hand and walking to the bed, sitting down heavily. Fiona followed his lead and sat on the end of the bed, looking across at him with patience in spades. “It started out as a harmless way to earn some extra money for my family-… they promised me a few hundred a week for only a couples of hours’ work, and I agreed. How-… how dangerous could it be, hacking into websites?” Keller looked down at the computer and bit his lip. “The money-… the money was solid, and I was able to send a lot back to my family, but the work-… it started to get really-… really uncomfortable, and it was dishonest, and-… a lot of bad people started to benefit from it.”
Fiona crawled down the bed until she was sitting next to Keller, their shoulders brushing. “What did they ask you to do?” she asked in a quiet voice.
His heart was beating so fast in his chest that Keller almost feared he was having a heart attack, but the words were right on the tip of his tongue, and he could no longer hold them back. “I hacked into the Cambridge website and stole the tests and exams that were coming up-… as well as the answers,” he murmured, unable to look at Fiona. “I gave the files to-… to some people, who gave me the money in return. But soon they started to make demands – they wanted certain classes quicker than others, they wanted me to access other year levels-…” Keller shook his head. “A few times I’ve had to hack Oxford’s site, apparently they got a commission…”
“Keller,” whispered Fiona, her voice unreadable while her hand wrapped around his arm, fingers tight.
“It’s-… it’s not something I can stop,” he said seriously, daring to raise his eyes to look at her own, and finding them filled with tears. “They’ve threatened my position at the school – I could lose everything that I’ve been working my whole life to get. I need to graduate, I need the scholarship, I need to get a job – and if I stop what I’m doing, they’re going to take it all away from me.”
“Can they really do that?” Fiona asked, her eyebrows knitted in worry. “If we told the Dean--”
Keller shook his head. “It’s no good – they’ll take me down with them. They’re-… they’re bad people, Fiona – I’ve seen what they do to people who don’t give them what they want… No, I need-.. I need to finish this and get out clean and clear. I don’t want to owe them anything – I don’t want them to have anything on me. I just-.. I need to get these last few tests to them by tomorrow and I’m done – I’m out, officially. I promise.”
There was silence in the room, broken only by the hum of Keller’s laptop that sat between their legs on the bed. Keller had no idea what Fiona was thinking or feeling – was she disgusted with him? Ashamed? Losing Fiona was listed among Keller’s fears, but for so long, he’d only been able to think about what would happen if he lost his position in the school – if he was expelled, and lost his place in the medical program. Keller hated priorisiting Fiona against his career – so he’d separated them entirely until Fiona existed in another realm to what he was doing, in a place where she was untouchable. But now, he’d forced the two worlds together, and he sat quietly, waiting for her response. Keller couldn’t take the suspense and looked across at her, seeing her eyes still whelming with tears but she was now blinking them back. She seemed to be staring across the room but unseeing anything – they flickered back and forth in thought, and Keller studied her closely, wondering if it would be his last chance to ever do so.
“Fiona?” he asked once several minutes had passed.
Instead of responding, Fiona released his arm, and Keller’s heart stopped, thinking that this was it – that this was her leaving. But she merely reached between them and pulled his laptop closer, before lifting it onto his lap. “Do it,” she said quietly, her voice wavering slightly. “Do-… do whatever you need to, so you can finish it.”
Keller could hardly believe what she was saying. “You want me to-…?”
“I want you to be out from under these people, Kell,” she said, looking at him with a concerned frown. “I want you to stay on at school, but I also don’t want you working for bad people – for people who could get you hurt or expelled.” She looked at the computer. “So-… do what you need to do, and then end it. Okay?”
There were no words to accurately describe what was going through Keller’s mind in that moment – the way he felt a rush of appreciation and affection and unconditional love for Fiona; he felt ashamed of himself for doubting her – and them – to come through hard times whole; he wanted to smile but he wanted to cry, because the mixture of having Fiona’s support after keeping it a secret for months was a huge relief, and the prospect of being done with it forever made that rush even greater. All Keller could do was lean across the gap between them and kiss her cheek, not wanting to push her further in case she was genuinely still mad at him. Leaning back, Keller touched the mouse pad on the laptop and woke it back up, the glow brightening and revealing the program files that Keller had been in the process of acquiring. He shot a nervous look at Fiona. “Are you-.. are you going to stay?” he asked, biting his lip – he’d never hacked in front of someone before.
“Do you want me to?” she asked, and now, she was no longer the supportive girlfriend, unafraid of a few dodgy students that were blackmailing Keller – she was just as unsure as he was.
“Yes,” Keller said, nodding.
His response made Fiona smile, and she nodded too, before sliding off the bed. “Then I’ll stay. How about I reheat your dinner – you haven’t eaten yet, right?”
“Fiona, no – you don’t have to do that, really,” he argued, watching as she walked around his bed and to the door, opening it up and revealing the dark common area.
“You just work,” Fiona said, still looking worried and nervous, but Keller could also see her fighting through it – for him. And it was then that Keller done what she asked: he worked. The hours passed, and Keller had eaten the dinner that Fiona had reheated, taken a break with her to drink a cup of tea, watched as she went from upright and reading, to lying down and reading, and eventually, the book slipped from her hands as she fell asleep beside him. Keller paused in his typing of code to pull a blanket up over her body, watching as she curled into the material and kept on sleeping. He watched her for a moment longer, wondering if her eyes would flutter open and if she’d ask about his progress, but she didn’t – she slept, and Keller knew he had to get this finished before she woke up. The early hours of morning were quiet, broken occasionally by birds outside in the trees, and Keller’s eyes strained against the glow of the laptop in the dark room, but he didn’t stop. He typed and saved and kept going, breaking down the firewalls that Cambridge’s security set up until he was able to retrieve one exam and the accompanying answers, before needing to do it all again, working through layers of encryption, servers, and multiple anonymous back-lane sources until he could get another. Keller’s fingers typed quickly across the keys, and his mind worked more on autopilot than anything else – he didn’t come up for air until the sun broke against the backs of his curtains and the campus outside his window started to come to life. Fiona woke up when a door slammed somewhere down the hall, eyes opening slowly as she looked around, confused for a moment before they landed on Keller.
“Morning,” he said, giving her a small smile before looking back to his screen.
“Did you…” Fiona scrubbed her eyes and yawned. “Did you work all night?”
“Mmhmm,” he replied, scanning the screen as he watched the download progress.
“Have you moved at all?”
“Not really.”
“Did you get something to eat? Drink?”
Keller glanced at her, watching as she sat up, the same tired frown on her face. “No,” he said, tapping at the keys again as the file finished and he could access it properly. “I wanted to get this finished.”
There was a sigh from Fiona, and Keller watched her in his peripheral vision as she rolled out of bed and walked across the room. “I’ll boil the kettle,” she murmured, leaving the room. Keller knew that she was mad – but she wouldn’t have been if she’d known what he was doing. Somewhere around 3am, he had managed to finish downloading all the tests and answers that his employers required – he’d sent the information off, along with his resignation email. It had felt good to get it off his chest and shoulders, and Keller had contemplated waking Fiona up and telling her the good news, but she’d been murmuring in her sleep, which meant that she was dreaming, and Keller couldn’t bear to disturb her. Burning away time, Keller had come up with a rather ingenius plan that would right many wrongs that he’d helped create: he would change the questions on the exams that he’d stolen so that any student taking them now would get the answers to the old version, rather than the new version. They’d be thrown, hopefully fail, and Keller would be able to sleep at night with a clear conscience. Of course, changing the questions to the exams was easier said than done – it required learning several courses’ worth of information in a night in order to change the questions to something that was substantially difficult to answer. Keller had read up on novels and plays; he’d read about engineering and chemistry and geology; he’d learned about history, about religion, about nutrition, and by the time Fiona had woken up with her sleep-filled eyes, Keller had managed to put the finishing touches to the exams that he’d changed and logged out, once and for all.
In the other room, he heard the sound of a spoon in a cup and a moment later, Fiona returned, carrying two mugs of tea. Handing one to him, Keller watched Fiona climb back onto the bed, sipping her own tea (with added mint). She noticed the absence of his laptop right away, eyes scanning the bed and room for it, finding it on the floor and looking back to him cautiously. “So-… you finished?” she asked slowly, thought Keller could see the under currents of hope.
“Yep,” he said, giving her a smile and sipping his tea. “All done.”
“Kell, that’s so great – I’m so proud of you,” she breathed, and threw one arm around his neck, making sure to keep her other one still, lest she spill any tea on him. “Did you tell them that you weren’t doing it anymore?”
“I did,” he said, nodding. “They emailed me back, saying that they would send my last paycheck at the end of the week and I’d be out of the game for good – hard to replace, but that’s their problem now.” Keller omitted the part about changing the exam questions – it had been dangerous and foolish, but it would be his cross to bear. It had been something that he’d had to do, for himself, in order to live with what he’d done. Keller couldn’t have faced the school every day, knowing that he’d allowed hundreds of students to pass their classes when they didn’t deserve to – knowing that he’d allowed bad students to walk into jobs based on grades they hadn’t earned. It was dangerous for the future of their country, and Keller had had to correct it. The consequences from the group that had hired him were likely to be severe if they found out, but Keller knew that he’d just have to cross that bridge when he got to it.
“I’m glad,” Fiona said, and she leaned up and kissed his cheek, pulling back slightly. “And if you need money again--”
“Don’t work for shady businessmen, I know,” Keller replied, good-humouredly. “Maybe I’ll just get a job at McDonald’s instead.”
Fiona shook her head, smiling and biting back a laugh. “I mean that if you need money, you know you can always come to me, right?”
Keller felt the familiar pang of shame that he’d felt his entire life wherever money was concerned. He hated being anyone’s charity case, let alone Fiona’s, but he knew that her heart was in the right place, so he nodded. “Right,” he said, giving her a smile. “And thank you.”
Fiona leaned forward and kissed him properly now for the first time since she’d found out about the hacking scam, mouth opening up and allowing Keller’s to do the same. It was a small kiss – but full of the hope for him that Fiona had; and Keller tried not to let the bitterness and worry that he held echo back. Fiona rested her forehead against his when they parted, eyes opening to look into his own, and Keller had to almost turn away from how intense and bright her gaze was – the blue hue of her eyes always seemed to shine through whatever Keller was hiding. They were honest, clear eyes – and his were full of shadows and lies. Eventually Keller had to close his eyes and lean forward to kiss her again, anything to take her piercing gaze from his guilty conscience, but when Fiona kissed him back with as much passion as he gave, there was nothing in it to suggest that she suspected anything.
“I love you,” he said, hand against her jaw as they parted, “so much.”
She smiled and leaned into the touch of his hand. “I love you too,” she replied, and in that exchange, there would never be a lie – not on either side.