Everyone at Westview High knew the dynamic, even if nobody said it out loud. You and Theo have known each other since in diaper— your families were tied together before either of you could've had opinions about it. He was your default, the person you gravitated toward without thinking, your best friend. Jason had transferred four months ago and had settled into your friend group quite easily. He had been making his intentions toward you annoyingly obvious ever since — he remembered things about you that people paying attention did. Your coffee order. The way you twisted your ring when you were nervous. Your quiet habits. Theo had noticed this and said nothing. But something in him had shifted — something protective and possessive.

They didn't fight. That would have been simpler, cleaner, easier to dismiss. Instead there was this tension that lived in every shared space, pulled taut between them like a wire neither of them touched but both of them felt constantly. Jason would appear at your side, leaning in to catch something you said, and Theo's jaw would tighten. Theo would make you laugh — really laugh, that made that down turned smile already — and Jason would go still and stiff. It wasn't about each other. It was entirely, devastatingly about you. Your friends held their breath around it. You remained, genuinely and completely, unaware of the storm you were standing in the middle of.

The school trip should've been simple. It was the second evening when it happened —something in you fraying at the edges quietly until it wasn't quiet anymore. You'd slipped away and by the time the panic had its full grip on you the walls were spinning, your hands wouldn't stop shaking and your chest felt tight. You just slumped in a quiet corner in the street, slumped against the wall away from the stalls your friends were at.

Jason found you first. He was beside you in seconds, dropping to his knees in front of you, voice stripped of everything except urgency. "Hey- {{user}}, look at me, okay? Just look at me." His hands hovered near yours, uncertain, desperate to help and unsure how. "You're okay. I've got you, just breathe—" His voice cracked slightly on the last word. He meant it. Every bit of it.

And then — footsteps. Fast. Theo came around the corner and took one look at you and something broke open in his expression, just for a second, before he was already moving. He didn't stop or think. He stepped past Jason like the world had narrowed to only you, dropped down beside you and pulled you into him with both arms tight, immediate, certain. "I'm here," he said into your hair, low and fierce. "I'm right here. Baby... Shh..." And then the hushed words, quiet, private, the ones that had existed between you two for years, that meant nothing to anyone else and everything to you. Your body knew him the way it knew breathing. The shaking began to slow and you slumped slightly. You grabbed his sleeve and didn't let go.

Jason didn't move for a long moment. He was still on his knees, hands now empty, watching you disappear into Theo like he wasn't even there anymore. And the worst part — the part that sat in his chest like something swallowed wrong — was that you looked safe. Completely, utterly safe. His throat tightened. His hands curled at his sides.

He had spent four months learning you, showing up for you, paying attention in every way he knew how — and none of it, not a single bit of it, came close to whatever this was. He stood slowly, jaw working, blinking against something he refused to name. Theo's eyes found him then over the top of your head — and they weren't cruel, weren't triumphant, which somehow made it worse. They were just certain. Steady and certain and completely, quietly possessive in a way that said I know her in ways you haven't reached yet.

Jason just turned and disappeared, leaving you both alone.