It's been three days.

Finch has been ignoring him for three days and he's going crazy waiting for her to offer him...something so he can get another fucking kiss.

Fucking stupid, this is. All this waiting, all this anticipation.

She likes this, Yvo realizes. Having power and control over him.

He knows she likes it. Fucking Finch wouldn't tap her pen on her lip during first period if she didn't, mouth parted, head tilted to the side so she can show him her fucking neck.

Yvo has had dreams of those lips and what they've done—and could do—to his.

He's itching. Finch only gave him a simple and quick kiss the last time. He scowls remembering it—it was, what, two fucking seconds? Yvo barely even felt it, that little shit.

No. No, that's incorrect. He felt every millisecond of those two seconds. Felt his stomach churn and his toes curl before his eyes snapped shut.

And he knows he looked stupid standing there, outside her door, waiting.

Yvo looks stupid now watching her in class, hating her mouth wrapped around the straw of her drink. Hating what she's doing to him.

It was infuriating when Finch didn't expect him to show up for lunch that day. It was a punch in the fucking gut, knowing her expectations of him were so damn low, but who could blame her when all he's done since they were freshmn was—in Graham's words—terrify her?

He stared at her while she packed her things, engaged in conversation with another of their classmates. Yvo leaned back against his seat, waiting for her to give him a look, to stop in his row, to do something, when she just walks past him with their classmate and leaves.

Yvo grits his teeth. Suffice to say he's not in the best of moods through the rest of his classes.

How long is Finch planning on fucking torturing him like this? Jesus fucking Christ—

"Whoa," Jayden says, chewing his food during lunch. "What crawled up your pants, Yvo?"

Graham breaks a piece of the bread he's eating and snorts. "Not Finch, that's for sure."

The two of them break into cackles. Idiots.

"Heard a wall took her to lunch," Jayden says, and then they both cackle again.

Fucking idiots.

Yvo glances up the second he hears her laughter. Fucking Finch walks in with that dog of hers, arms linked, and they find a table in the hall with their other friends, across from where's seated.

Dane Kallhoff, Finch's slave of an ex—now best friend or some shit like that. Yvo narrows his eyes at how close they're seated, but he's not important, he's useless.

Yvo stares at Finch and spends an embarrassing amount of fucking time watching her mouth smile and talk and chew and swallow—

Graham snaps his fingers in his face. "Yo. We're getting beer down the block with Isla. You in?"

Finch stands up, shouldering her bag and hugging her laptop. She's the only one standing up. She squeezes Kallhoff's shoulder and waves, smiling brightly at her other friends, before walking down the aisle towards the exit.

She has to pass his table.

And fucking finally, Finch looks at him, subtly tilts it towards the direction of the exit, and disappears.

"No," Yvo bites out, clattering his utensils on the plate and grabbing his stuff to follow after her.

This is embarrassing, this is humiliating, fuck her, fuck her—

He almost jolts out of his skin when tiny fingers encircle his wrist and pulls him into an empty room.

Finch lets go immediately once he's in there with her and steps back. "Hi."

Yvo glares at her.

Do you know how long I've waited? he wants to hiss. Why were you ignoring me? Never mind that, tell me what I need to do—

Her voice is small and unsure when she says, "I've thought about what I want next."

"Thank fuck," Yvo grits out through his teeth under his breath.

But Finch hears it, because the corner of her mouth twitches and she looks like she's about to smile.

He narrows his eyes. She thinks this is funny.

"I need an extra set of hands with party invitations."

Yvo stares at her. "Party invitations."

Finch grins, rocking on her heels. "If you don't have plans, that is. You can come by my dorm room after dinner."

Then she turns and walks away, her hair bouncing behind her back, leaving behind a trail of cinnamon.

His eyes go down her figure. Couldn't she afford a dress that didn't fit her ass so tightly? Peasant.

Also, it turns out that Yvo Sandejas doesn't, in fact, have any plans.

In the room he shares with Jayden, he waits anxiously for thirty minutes after his shower so he doesn't look too eager, pretending to do his homework when in fact he's already finished it during the days Finch was fucking ignoring him. Yvo brushes his teeth twice just because he likes the mint of his toothpaste, runs his hands through his hair and looks at it in the mirror to inspect what color hex code his white-blonde hair is exactly because he's never been able to figure it out, and opens his closet thrice to check if the doors are working fine. (They are.)

He's out the door at eight fifty-five. Four minutes, he estimated, is the time it takes for him to travel from the boys' dormitory building to the girls'.

Some of the girls in the common room playing darts and video games send him looks and smiles. Yvo ignores them all as he usually does and heads straight to Finch's floor, giving the door two sharp knocks.

Finch opens it. Her hair is up now in a ponytail, showing her face, and she's changed into a big gray shirt and tiny gym shorts. She's barefoot. "Hi."

Without waiting for his response, as if assuming she wouldn't get any, Finch opens the door wider and kicks something out of the way. There are papers and envelopes and stickers strewn all over the floor...and her bed is occupied. "Come in."

"Sandejas," Kallhoff greets from Finch's bed, lying down across the mattress like he fucking owns it, leg stretched, head on her pillow. He's throwing a ball up and down in the air.

"This is Dane," Finch says brightly, grinning from ear to ear as she watches Yvo step inside with his jaw tight. "He was just leaving."

He better fucking be, Yvo thinks.

"So what the fuck do I do about Charlie?" Kallhoff continues, catching the ball so he can sit up and focus on Finch, eyebrows furrowed.

Finch sits down on the floor and taps the space next to her for him. Yvo doesn't move. She asks, clearing her throat, "Uh, you said you watched gay porn?"

Oh, fucking hell. That dirty word from her pretty little mouth.

"Yes," Kallhoff says.

"And..." A crease between Finch's eyebrows appear. "Did you like it?"

"It's porn, of course I liked it," Kallhoff hisses. "You're useless."

Finch huffs. "Ask him out, then. That's what I've been telling you for days."

"It's not that easy." Kallhoff stands and grabs his jacket from Finch's chair. Then he leans down and kisses her cheek. "You should know, took you how many weeks to finally ask me out."

"Because you were an asshole!"

He grins and winks at her, then he moves past Yvo, his smile fading. "This one's an asshole, too. Pick you up tomorrow, night babe."

Kallhoff closes the door behind him after Finch shouts, "Night!"

She taps the space on the floor next to her again, blinking up at him with uselessly big eyes. "Are you just going to stand there?"

Yvo suppresses his huff and finally moves forward, folding his long legs to sit beside her. He tries not to look at the rumpled sheets on her bed that Kallhoff left behind.

"Sorry about Dane," she says, separating one stack of cardboard papers into two in front of them. "He's shameless. Anyway, here are the invitations." She points to another stack, and Yvo tries very very hard not to look at her legs. "Envelopes. Stickers. We just need to pack 'em."

Yvo scowls. "I'm not your fucking slave."

Finch looks at him, blinking. "You're free to leave."

Yvo grits his teeth, shaking his head, but then his eyes drop to her parted lips and he remembers the way she kissed him, her hand on his skin—

He snatches an invitation and an envelope.

Yvo doesn't have to look at her to know that fucking Finch is smiling.

He looks down at the cardboard paper. There are words like birthday party, Disney princess, gifts, and Finch. Saylor Finch.

"Saylor is my sister," Finch says when he finishes reading the rest of the details. "It's her eleventh birthday party and...well, she's obsessed with Disney."

Yvo didn't even know Finch has a younger sister. He merely nods once, takes the invitation and puts it inside an envelope with the Disney logo printed on top of the flap. The circle sticker is a seal in blue.

They work silently with only the quiet hum of Finch's speaker on her desk the only sound.

That is, until Yvo opens his damn mouth after sealing five invitations."Is it your thing to have boys in your dorm room all the time?"

His voice sounds unusually loud in the small dorm room.

Yvo keeps his eyes on his hands even as he feels Finch look at him. "No. Just you and Dane."

"Short list."

"Mm."

"And is it your thing to kiss the boys on that list?"

Finch's dainty fucking hands stop. This close, she smells so good. There's a hint of shampoo that he can't place. "Sandejas, what—"

"I don't share." He tosses one packaged invitation on the pile with more force than necessary.

For a moment, Yvo thinks he's screwed this up before he could even collect. He considers hitting his head on the desk because God fucking damn it, he's been starved of this—of her for three days and now she's going to kick him out—

"I don't, either."

Yvo looks up. Finch isn't looking at him, busy with her hands, and her lip is in between her teeth.

He looks away before he grabs her face with desperate fingers and nods once. Understood.

It's not like he wants to kiss anyone else.

While finishing up the last of the few envelopes, Yvo looks around the small room. It's the last one down the hall, packed into the corner of the building, so the space is more limited than the usual two-bed. Her single oak bed is pushed against one side of the wall where the window is with the fucking rumpled sheets in gray and maroon from where Kallhoff had been lying on it, and beside it is a small desk and chair with books, binders, laptop, a pen holder, and some picture frames. Above the desk is a shelf full of books, and on the other side of the wall is her two-door closet.

Finch finishes her stack first and leans her back against the side of the bed, torso facing him. Then, in a soft voice, she says, "You have long fingers."

Can I put them around your neck? Inside your shirt? What about your underwear?

She doesn't say anything else as Yvo finishes sealing the last invitation. When he turns to her, she's still staring at him, big brown eyes unblinking.

"What?"

Yvo nearly winces at his voice. He didn't mean to snap it out, to sound so defensive, but he doesn't know why she's staring at him like—like that.

Finch's tongue licks her lip before she stutters, unsure, "Um, thanks for your help, I really appreciate it. Do you still want to—"

Yvo nearly topples the piles of invitations as he sets one hand on the carpet and the other to her cheek to shut her up.

Her small hands go to bunch his shirt when the surprise wears off, and she kisses him back and good Lord—he hates this, he hates how good this feels, hates how she's ruined him with her taste and breaths and sounds and touch—

Yvo's hands travel down her neck, thumbs brushing her throat, and then they find themselves under her shirt, itching but waiting. He pulls back just enough to catch his breath and pant out, "May I?"

Finch's face is flushed. "You want permission to grope me?"

Idiot. He kisses her again. "You'd rather I just went for it?"

"Well, ye—"

Shuts her up again before she could get the last letter of that word out.

Yvo slips his hands under her shirt and Finch makes a sound into his mouth that he swallows, and her own fingers go up to his hair when he tilts his head and kisses the line of her jaw, the curve of her shoulder and neck, hands tracing her chest and the offensive line of her fucking back.

Finally.

"This," he rasps as he strokes the line of her spine with the tip of his finger, and she drops her head to his shoulder, clutching his shirt, breathing uneven, "is fucking insulting. Been wanting to touch it for months."

"Shut up," Finch tells him in a whisper, obviously embarrassed, tilting her head to the side to kiss his throat.

Fucking, fuck, fuck—"You shut up." Yvo grabs her chin and kisses her again. Presses harder, more obnoxiously.

His hands travel back again to her chest before he slips them out to pull her ponytail and tilt her head back, lips moving to her throat and pulse point.

"I thought you can't stand me," Finch murmurs.

"Can't stand not kissing you more." He slows down, kisses her on the mouth one last time and pulls back, then stands up. If they continue, he won't stop. "I know your schedule's fucking impossible, but fit me in somewhere."

Finch looks up at him from the floor, still catching her breath. "You don't like being ignored, Sandejas?"

"Try it again and see what fucking happens." Before Yvo turns around, small fingers grasp his long ones in a tight but unsure hold.

"You can stay," Finch blurts out. Her throat moves. "If—if you want to. The bed is...big enough. To—to sleep in."

Yvo looks at the mattress. Can his legs fit in there?

The appeal of erasing Kallhoff's shape on the sheets is fucking tempting.

Finch lets go of his hand and Yvo has to restrain himself from catching it before it falls back again beside her on the floor. She clears her throat and picks up the invitations, bringing them to her desk. "If not, I'll see you tomorrow."

She watches him sit down on the bed. "How many are on the list here?"

Finch pulls the ponytail out of her hair and turns off the lamp on the desk and the music. She turns to him and answers, "Just one. He's kind of a prick."

Yvo's mouth twitches. His heart leaps. Fucking skips. Jumprope.

He lies down on the bed when Finch goes to the bathroom. He will deny rolling over multiple times so there's no more trace of Kallhoff anywhere and so that his smell sticks.

Finch turns off the light and pulls the covers aside to slide in, and she hasn't even lied down yet before Yvo's arms pull her back to his chest. Her head flops down on the pillow with a surprised squeak.

Yvo quite likes this. He closes his eyes.

"Night," she whispers.

He presses his mouth to the back of her head and pulls her closer.

*

yvo u fucking simp