Page 49 of Spring Awakening

There’s a moment when they just look at each other, and he feels like he’s standing on the precipice. He would kiss her, if she leaned in. He would tell her anything she wanted to know. Sometimes, a thought comes to him, and he wants to tell her for no reason other than he wants her to know a thought in his head.

“Sorry about last night,” he says.

“That’s alright,” she replies. “Devon?”

“Mmm.”

“Sorry,” she responds, her lip caught in her teeth. “Can you… I know it’s a stressful situation, and you don’t need something else to think about, but please just text me, or voice note, or anything. I don’t know. I can’t sleep when you’re not home and I don’t know where you are.”

“You can’t?”

She shakes her head. “What if someone is beating you up?”

Zach laughs. “Mal, I throw men around all day.”

“What if they attack you from behind?” she asks, her eyes wide.

“You’re ridiculous,” he says, with a smile.

“And Buffy stomps all over me because he’s a traitor who wants you to come home so he can abandon me.” She says it with a light blush to her cheeks, as if she didn’t mean to tell him that at all. He’s entirely too fond of her. Zach knows his mum cares about him, and he knows on some level, Devon does too. Perhaps some people at the club would care if he died, buthearing it out loud settles something in his chest. Even if she never wanted to kiss him, he’d be content with being with her like this.

“I’ll text you,” he says.

“Thanks. You going to work now?” she asks.

“Yeah. Wanna walk together?” Zach wonders if she’ll want to walk along the riverside, and if he can slyly take a photo of her as she does.

“Yes,” she replies, taking another sip of her smoothie, then placing it on the side. “I just gotta feed Buff.”

“I already fed him,” Zach says with a laugh, and he swears Buffy glares at him.

“Oh! Thanks. Okay, gimme like three minutes to put my gross hair on, and I’ll meet you in the hallway.”

“You’re the worst person I know,” he calls after her, but he smiles as she laughs going up the stairs.

Way too fond.

Zach’s shoulders ache with the force of Kai trying to barrel past him. Scrums are one of the most important parts of rugby, and while he loves the team-building aspect of it, he hates the practice. Every part of his body aches with the motion of trying to move massive men out of the way. He needs to work on his squats, but all he’ll be focused on tonight is icing his ears and hoping he doesn’t have to drain them.

Frankie blows her whistle for the millionth time in the past few minutes. It’s fair. The scrum was about to collapse, and Zach knows they haven’t been practicing for long enough today, but his thighs don’t want to cooperate.

“Ez, what the fuck?” Frankie shouts, and Ezra grunts, but when does he not. He sits on the ground, blinking aggressively—more so than usual. Zach wonders if something is wrong, but he doesn’t have time to ask before Frankie has rounded on him.

“Zach? Do I need to get Mali out here so you’ll play decently?” And,oh. So he’s not as subtle as he was hoping to be. Interesting and mortifying.

“No,” he replies, though he follows Ezra to the floor. His chest heaves with the exertion of simply trying to breathe. He takes the time Frankie is telling everyone what they did wrong to kick Ezra in the thigh.

“Bro, what’s going on?”

Ezra looks at him like he has no idea why he’s talking to him. Mali told him to try chatting with his teammates. She was so sure they didn’t hate him, but this is his first trial, and he thinks Mali is a pretty little liar. Zach looks up at the sky, attempting to force his mouthguard out with his tongue. He blinks the sweat from his eyes, once again wondering who created sweatbands and why they’re so popular yet utterly useless.

“It’s stupid,” Ezra replies, and Zach almost chokes, but he gets his shield out.

“So?”

“Man, my parents dishwasher malfunctioned and flooded the kitchen, and it fucked up their new underfloor heating because they didn’t seal the flooring around the edges like I told them to. Now they’re looking at me to fix it all because they don’t care that I’m a plumber, like shit is interchangeable or something.”

Zach laughs, and Ezra frowns at him. So, yes, he’s in a bad mood for a silly reason, but Zach knows one or two things about parents who need a lot of help.

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