TWELVE MONTHS PRIOR TO THE DEATH OF OLIVER SALLOW

If anyone would have asked seventeen-year-old Oliver if he'd ever liked someone, he would have denied it profusely. His crushes were mayflies: there one day and gone the next, perishing either through natural causes or through his violently crushing them under his palm. Usually, the latter.

Usually.

This thing with Finn—whatever this was—was not a mayfly. It was a three-months-and-a-few weeks-fly and crushing it, he understood with a resigned sort of horror, was not as easy as it had once seemed.

He knew that it was just temporary. Everything always was. He wasn't in Blissby to make friends, and certainly not to get caught up in anything beyond that. His teenage years were a corridor leading to only one thing: the day he turned eighteen and was finally free from the whims of the foster care system. In the narrow space between him and the uncertain future, there was simply no time to move in the furniture beyond the barest comforts.

What he hadn't considered was that, somehow, the furniture might move itself in.

"Have you ever seen The Hunger?" Finn asked. He was sprawled across one of the desks as he was wont to do, his head pillowed in Oliver's lap. "It's got your band on the soundtrack."

"Bauhaus," Oliver distractedly acknowledged. His fingers were itching with the urge to run them through Finn's hair, but he kept them planted firmly on the desk. Someone could walk in any second. Granted, they were at the back of the library and this arrangement would've raised questions even without the petting of hair. Still, to a teenager with little experience in casual physical contact, the gesture felt unbearably intimate.

Finn snapped his fingers. "That's the one. It was on the telly last night. My dad wanted to watch it because David Bowie's in it."

"Was it any good?" Oliver asked. His eyes were stuck on Finn's lashes. They were almost blonde, so they didn't look that long from a distance but this close, with the soft light of the setting sun catching in them, Oliver could see how they fanned against Finn's cheeks.

"No idea." Finn laughed; Oliver felt his own lips quirking into a smile as the sound vibrated through his body. "I fell asleep halfway through. It was weird, though. You'd probably love it."

"Why, because I'm weird?" Oliver snorted.

"No. 'Cause it's got Bauhaus. And vampires. Bisexual ones, even!"

"Incredible," commented Oliver. His voice sounded insufferably fond even to his own ears. He didn't think it could not be—not when he had Finn O'Connell in his lap, lazing in the spill of afternoon light like a cat stretching in the sun and talking about things that reminded him of Oliver.

Really, it was no wonder his heart stung with unsung sonnets every time they were in the same room; no wonder that, within weeks, he'd gone from watching Finn from a distance to making shared Spotify playlists with him and saving his football match dates in his calendar.

It was all temporary. But the mayfly didn't know this, did it? Surely, with an entire lifetime crammed into twenty-four hours, the minutes were all the more intense—the seconds all the sweeter for their spareness.

Even if the mayfly knew its fate, that was no reason it shouldn't live the few hours it was granted to the fullest.

Gingerly, Oliver reached out and brushed a curl from Finn's forehead.

***

Oliver had gotten worse at adhering to the Walker family ritual. It wasn't on purpose, cross his heart. It was just that time moved differently in the library and now that the sun set at five, there was no way of tracking the hours until dinner just by looking out the window. (Also: Finn O'Connell was of the clingy variety and seemed to grow more arms every time Oliver tried to send him home. It would have been irritating if not for the fact that everything he did was distressingly endearing.)

When Oliver slipped through the door that evening, it was well past eight—Oliver could tell because Milo was already sitting in front of the TV with his plate of apple slices. From the kitchen sounded the low murmurs of Gabby and Daniel.

Quietly, Oliver stripped off his boots and placed them neatly onto the shoe rack, next to Milo's tiny Converse. Sometimes, in moments like this one, he felt like an intruder; an extra accidentally walking onto a set where a family was being filmed. It didn't matter that he had let himself in with his own key, or that he knew where to hang his coat. Lingering below the routine, there was still the knowledge that the Walkers had existed as a closed system long before they'd opened their doors to him... and the knowledge that, at some point, they would inevitably return to that state.

He jumped when Gabby's voice rose over the chattering of Milo's kids show. "Oliver? Is that you?"

Straightening his shoulders, Oliver entered the warm kitchen, his socked feet soundless against the tiles. "Hey. Sorry for missing dinner."

Gabby gave a dismissive wave of her hand. "Don't worry about it. It should still be warm."

With a nod, Oliver made his way over to the stove, aware all the while that Gabby and Daniel were watching him. The scene he'd walked in on was overwhelmingly domestic. While Gabby was already wearing her bonnet and had removed her make-up, Daniel had exchanged his contacts for the thick-rimmed glasses he only wore at home. A candle flickered gently in the centre of the rustic wooden table, its light catching in the glass of wine the two were sharing; in the background, the radio played a soft tune.

"How was school?" Daniel asked.

Oliver didn't look up from his task. Tonight's dinner seemed like a team effort; the stew looked like one of Daniel's while the ugali, a Kenyan dish, was one of Gabby's specialities. "It was all right. How was work?"

"Oh, you know," Daniel said. It was code for Please don't make me talk any more about code.

Gabby quickly jumped in. "Mine was really good! The board approved the grant for my new research project. You know, the really pricey EEG one that I told you about?"

Carefully balancing his plate, Oliver offered her a smile. "Hey, that's great."

"I know. Here, come sit." She patted the seat next to her on the kitchen bench. "We were just talking about you."

Oliver could feel his smile slipping off his face in real time. With a lump forming in his throat, he complied, eyes darting between her and Daniel. In his experience, the words We were just talking about you were usually followed by him packing his suitcase.

His thoughts raced. Was this because he'd missed dinner? Did they think he was ungrateful? He would turn eighteen in a few months. He'd thought they'd maybe let him stay until after he had graduated, but it made sense for them to want him out of the house as soon as he was of age and technically not a foster child anymore. Or was it because Gabby was working on a new study and didn't think she had time to take care of some brooding teenager while she analysed people's brain waves? Was this because—

"Daniel and I noticed that you've been hanging out with Finn O'Connell a lot recently."

Oliver blinked. The words were so wildly different from the ones he'd been bracing for that his brain needed a few seconds to process them. When it finally did, his cheeks turned a flaming red. "Er," he managed. "I guess."

Gabby shot Daniel a triumphant look that screamed Told you so!

"Do you—Would you feel comfortable sharing with us since when you two are... friends?"

"You don't have to answer that," Daniel threw in.

"Of course," Gabby immediately agreed before adding in her goofy professor voice, "Your participation in this research study is voluntary. You may choose not to participate. Withdrawal from participation will not be penalized. The data collected will remain strictly confidential."

Oliver squinted at her. Fond of surrounding himself with as much mystery as possible, his sexual orientation was information he usually gave out on a need-to-know basis—which, so far, had only ever included him and Finn. In every other foster family, the possibility of coming out hadn't even occurred to him. Strangely, glancing from Gabby's hopeful grin to Daniel's poorly concealed curiosity, the idea didn't feel that horrid.

"We... are kind of having a thing," he offered.

"Oh, Oliver, that's—" Gabby began, but he rushed to cut her off.

"We're not like, in love, or anything!" His voice cracked on the crucial word, much to Daniel's amusement and his own mortification. "We just hang out after school sometimes. He's—he's not out."

"We're not going to tell anyone," Gabby immediately said. Trying very hard not to let her excitement show, she added, "Thank you for trusting us enough to share this."

"You asked," Oliver, still miserable from his voice crack, accused his ugali.

Ignoring his sulking, Gabby asked, "Honey, do we know the O'Connells?"

Daniel thought about it for a few seconds. "Hm. I think I've seen Arthur O'Connell at the pub a few times when games are on. But I'm not sure I've ever met Finn's mum."

Oliver winced as the memory of what Finn had told him in London after the play resurfaced. Now, she can barely leave the house alone. "She works from home."

"Oh, lucky thing," Gabby wistfully said. "You should invite him over sometime! We could cook something nice, get to know him a little—Does he eat meat?"

"I don't think he'd want that." The words left Oliver's mouth in a rush. "He's... shy. Really quiet. It wouldn't be a good time."

Gabby frowned. Even though what he'd said wasn't necessarily a lie, Oliver felt like she could see right through the excuse. "Oh, well. There's no rush. As long as you two are being safe. Speaking of, do you need anything? We can—"

"No!" Grabbing his plate, Oliver abruptly leaped to his feet. "All good. I'm going to finish this in the living room, I think. Haven't said hi to Milo yet."

He fled the room quickly enough that Daniel's snorted Nice going and Gabby's retort were muffled by the kitchen door. A moment later, he dropped onto the couch next to Milo, who acknowledged him with a silent nod and the offering of a slightly browned apple slice.

Oliver's face didn't stop burning until a few hours later.

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we love some friday fluff :,)

i hope you enjoyed this chapter!! the interactions with ollie's foster family always make me so soft. did you have a favourite part? :)

today's song is sweet tooth by cavetown because that is, in fact, what oliver has for finn <3