THIRTEEN MONTHS AND THREE WEEKS PRIOR TO THE DEATH OF OLIVER SALLOW

Finn didn't always use to panic in Oliver Sallow's presence. For a while there, being with him actually made him feel the calmest he could imagine.

Five days after the Bathroom Breakdown Incident, he went back to the library. Even then, he still felt it in his bones. It had been the first time he had a panic attack at school. Naturally, it also had to be the first time that someone walked in on him.

Like all his panic attacks before—seven, if he had counted them right—it had come out of nowhere. One moment he'd been revising a section on glycolysis for his Bio A-Levels, the next he felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. He'd barely made it to the restroom in time before the shaking started.

Re-entering the library that Thursday, Finn felt his heartbeat stutter, but he quickly tamped down on the feeling. He knew by now that the panic attacks didn't have anything to do with the location he was in. They were all him.

And besides—it wasn't like he could avoid the library forever. He loved that place. It didn't have anything to do with reading, and more with the fact that he liked libraries as a general concept. He liked being alone without feeling lonely. Even more than that, he liked not being home.

The third reason was currently sat behind the large mahogany desk at the front of the library, his lace-up boots propped on the worn surface as he flipped through a tiny book.

Finn was sitting closer to the librarian's desk than he usually did, the edge of it visible if he scooted just a tiny inch to the left and craned his neck to peek around a shelf. He wasn't sure why he had chosen this desk. The easy explanation was that he'd already embarrassed himself in front of Oliver, so there wasn't really a reason to play hide and seek with him now. The truth that was more difficult to swallow was that, for some unknown reason, Finn had come away from the scarring experience strangely intrigued.

Oliver Sallow was the kind of person that everyone in Blissby talked about, but no one really knew. The stories that were whispered about him ranged from mildly concerning to downright bizarre: he was a satanist, he was in the witness protection program, he was dealing drugs, he had won a poetry competition, he could be found wandering around the cemetery in the afternoons, he had once saved somebody's cat from a tree. To Finn, Oliver had always been more of a myth than an actual person; a cautionary tale with a bad black dye job.

Until he'd found himself squeezed under the sink next to him.

Then, Oliver hadn't been very scary at all. Trying to make Finn laugh, offering him a ride home, he'd been... oddly sweet.

It almost made Finn feel indebted to him. Which was why he was presently clutching a bag of Maltesers while trying to work up the nerve to get up from his seat.

He scooted. Craned his neck again. Oliver was still sitting in the same position, only moving every once in a while to take a sip of coffee—Villain, I have done thy mother, his mug proudly proclaimed—without taking his eyes off the page.

Finn swallowed. He could easily just forget about this, go home, keep the Maltesers. But... that would've meant giving up. Which meant avoidance. Which meant doing what his mother would do. He got out of his chair and rounded the corner.

As he tentatively neared Oliver, he realized that his lips were moving, whispering to himself: "Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, speak to—Oh, good lord!"

This last part, Finn guessed, was not from Shakespeare's quill. Aside from the sudden exclamation, Oliver quickly regained his composure. Lips ticking up ever so slightly—Finn always wondered how people did that without looking stupid; had he practiced this in the mirror?—, he swung his legs off the desk and drew himself up straight. "Finn O'Connell. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

The sound of his full name made Finn's pulse flutter. Used to his heart doing all sorts of strange things for no apparent reason recently, Finn came to a halt in front of the desk. "Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your reading there."

Save for the way his ears turned pink, Oliver looked entirely unimpressed. "I'll have you know that Shakespeare is supposed to be read aloud," he informed Finn. "His plays were written for the stage."

"Huh." Feeling his grin spreading, Finn made a show of glancing over one shoulder, then the other. "That's weird, I don't see one."

He wasn't at all sure where the quip came from, but he was glad he'd said it when Oliver's eyes flashed with amusement and he leaned forward, obviously engaged now. "All the world's a stage."

Finn cocked his head to the side. A beat passed.

"As You Like It," Oliver added.

"As I like what?"

Oliver blinked before a sudden laugh shook his shoulders. It seemed to surprise him almost as much as Finn—it was a rusty sound, quickly stifled by long fingers pressed to his lips. "Mh," he hummed. Finn had a feeling he was trying hard to return to his stoic expression—or Sallow's resting bitch face, as Kavi had poetically described it once—but there was still the flicker of a laugh in his dark brown eyes as they drifted down to the Maltesers clutched in Finn's hand. "Were you going to give me those?"

"Oh." With a start, Finn dropped the bag onto the desk as if it were a ticking time bomb. "Yeah. As thanks for the other day." He scratched at his neck, an uncomfortable prickle running down his spine at the memory. "They... might be melted."

"You really don't have to thank me," said Oliver. He took the Maltesers anyway.

"I don't have these often," Finn felt compelled to tell him. "Just... sometimes. It's not, like, a thing. It won't happen again."

Oliver said nothing. Finn didn't think a seventeen-year-old's silence was supposed to feel so heavy. The thing was that there was a gravity to Oliver Sallow. When his gaze was on you, you could feel its weight like a physical touch, his attention a disarming weapon he always kept sharp. Bloody intimidating was what he was.

"Right." Finn stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I'll leave you to it then."

Oliver picked up his play again. "Good luck with Bio."

Finn had no idea what to make of the fact that Oliver had paid enough attention to know what he was studying. Before he could make even more of a fool of himself, he abruptly turned on his heel and retreated back into his dimly lit corner, a safe distance from the student librarian.

Out of his sight, Finn almost managed to concentrate on his schoolwork again. It was only after twenty minutes that a light rustling sound made him look up.

He scooted. He craned.

Oliver had opened the Maltesers, eyelashes fluttering shut as he popped one of them into his mouth. Finn watched him for a few seconds, quietly pleased, before he ducked his head again.

After that, it became a bit of a thing. Every afternoon, they found themselves almost alone in the library—Oliver with his nose in a play, Finn with his hair still damp from his post-practice shower and a flood of homework to wade through.

True to his word, he didn't have another panic attack in the library.

Just barely, though. The next one, he had on a Friday afternoon in the locker room when everyone else had already left. It was the bad kind. Not that any of them were pleasant, it was just that this one—the kind where he felt untethered from his body, his limbs numb and tingling—was worse than the ones he'd gotten used to. By the time it was over and he felt like he could breathe again, he was more worn out than after five hours of training.

Probably he should've just gone home.

Instead, he found himself dragging his body through the doors of the library at half past five. The tension in his shoulders loosened a little when he saw that, aside from two other girls, no one was in sight.

No one but Oliver, perched behind his desk as per usual. He was wearing a long black coat instead of the mandatory school blazer, the rings on his fingers and the piercings in his ears glinting in the light of the small lamp in front of him. His long black hair was held back by the kind of black clip that Finn's mum always displaced around the house, only a few strands of hair escaping to frame his face.

Finn was too tired to analyse just why the sight of Oliver Sallow with a different hairstyle made his heart feel so goddamn weird.

"Hey," he softly said before un-softly dropping himself and his bags onto the chair closest to Oliver.

Oliver looked up, an eyebrow quirking. Today, his eyes were rimmed red, a smudge of coal making them look sunken-in. "Hey," he echoed. "You okay?"

"Fine."

Oliver had a distrustful face as it was, but at the one-word answer it pinched with even more suspicion. "Did you have another panic attack?"

Finn jumped, taken aback by how frankly Oliver said it. He could barely think the words, much less utter them out loud. Calling it what it was made it real.

Unfortunately, so did hearing it in Oliver Sallow's raspy baritone.

"No," he responded, a knee-jerk reaction. "Just tough practice."

Oliver stared at him for a few long seconds. One of the rumours about him was that he was a mind-reader. Finn really hoped that wasn't true.

Eventually, Oliver gave an elegant shrug and went back to his reading. He was whispering to himself again, apparently unabashed about it now that he'd already been caught once. In his voice, the old English sounded alive, much more fluid than it did in Finn's head.

Finn's hands sluggishly reached for his Geography notes. He had a presentation due on Tuesday. He had a Physics exam on Wednesday. He was...

He was dozing off. He was aware of it as it was happening, but his mind was too tired to fight against the pull of sleep as it dragged him under. And so, he didn't try to swim against its current—he let it submerge him, carried along by the soft lull of Oliver's voice.

***

"Finn."

The feeling of a hand on his shoulder jerked him awake. Disoriented, he raised his head from where it had been pillowed on his arms for... bloody hell, how long had he been out like this?

Oliver's hand disappeared, but his voice remained nearby. "Library's closing."

"Thanks for waking me up," Finn murmured, his words still sleep-soft. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes and watched through heavy eyelids as Oliver wound his way between the shelves, collecting stray books and turning off lamps. In the dim evening light pouring in through the tall windows, there was something strangely intimate about this routine dance of his.

Finn shook his head as if that might help his brain come online. He stretched a little, startled when he felt a weight shifting on his shoulders.

Reaching up, he realised it was the very coat that Oliver had been wearing moments ago, now draped over Finn's shoulders like the world's most nicotine-infused superhero cape. Normally, Finn wasn't a big fan of the smell of cigarettes, but mixed with the unobtrusive cologne Oliver apparently wore, it was... almost nice.

"Sorry." Oliver's voice made his head snap up, fingers abruptly pulling back from where they had been brushing against one of the shiny buttons. "Those girls that were here took it upon themselves to vape in the middle of the library." He gestured at where they'd been sitting with an offended sniff. "I had to open the windows."

Finn wasn't sure if his brain was still too sleepy to keep up or if Oliver's words really explained astoundingly little. "And you gave me your coat because...?"

"Because I didn't want to be responsible for you catching a cold," Oliver said, like it was obvious, and came to a halt in front of Finn again. "Even though you still might've. What with your hair wet and everything."

Finn felt like he was getting whiplash. Slowly, he stood and draped the coat over Oliver's shoulders instead, ignoring the way he instantly felt colder. "Thanks," he told the other boy's collarbones. "Suits you better, I think."

"Agree to disagree." Even though he wasn't looking at his face, Finn thought he could hear the amusement in Oliver's voice. "See you Monday, Finn O'Connell."

"Good night, Oliver Sallow," said Finn.

On his ride home, he turned it over in his head. Oliver Sallow. People tended to only use his full name, first and last name strung together by awe and distrust alike. Now that Finn considered his first name alone, he found that it sounded a lot softer.

Oliver. Oliver. Oliver Sallow.

**************************

this is one of my favourite chapters of the entire book. it's so soft!! they're so soft!!!

i hope you enjoyed this one as well! the sharing clothes trope means the world to me, actually :,)

this was a bit of a break from the angst before we're going back to the future next week. i would be super curious to hear what you prefer: the fluff in the past time line or the angsty present? 👀

p.s. today's song is banana bread by cavetown for those mellow, bitter-sweet vibes <3