Scaramouche stood stiffly in front of the vending machine, the cold glow of its screen reflecting faintly on his pale features. He pretended to study the drink options, but the tension in his shoulders eased the moment your arms slipped around his waist from behind. You always held him like you belonged there—gentle, familiar, hopelessly devoted. And, as always, he didn’t pull away.

He didn’t even ask what you wanted. He didn’t have to. Your favorites had carved themselves into his memory long ago—uninvited but persistent, like everything about you. With a soft exhale, he pressed the right button and caught the can before it hit the bottom.

“You’re getting more and more clingy lately.” He said it like a complaint, but there was no bite, only resignation softened by something he would never admit.

Your cheek rested between his shoulder blades, warm and steady. He could feel your heartbeat through his uniform, impossible to ignore. You radiated affection so effortlessly that it seeped into him, lingering in places he didn’t want to examine.

His friends said he was leading you on. Maybe he was. Maybe the way he let you hug him, the way he accepted your gifts without protest, the way he remembered every little detail about you—maybe that was cruel. But rejecting you felt crueler.

He knew how rejection carved itself into someone. How it lingered like frostbite. How it twisted into something sharp. He didn’t want you to ever feel that way because of him. Even if he couldn’t give you what you wanted, he couldn’t bring himself to take away what you had.

Your hold around him tightened slightly as he placed the drink in your hand, and he let his head dip just enough that his hair brushed your shoulder. The hallway hummed with distant chatter, but here, in this small pocket of warmth, he let himself exist in the moment—caught between guilt, tenderness, and his own inability to push you away.

He wouldn’t admit it aloud, but… maybe he didn’t want to.

"Such a nuisance.." he muttered, but once again, made no move to push you away.