Chapter 27 Oddly, I Adore You
twenty-seven
oddly, i adore you
He spent the night in my too-small bed again, and I wake up this morning with him wrapped around me like he’ll fall off the face of the Earth if he lets go. To be fair, he might fall off the edge of the bed if he does.
I shift over to give him more room, but he follows and latches on immediately.
I don’t know if he’s awake or not, but he makes this happy little humming sound against my back.
Although hum is much too cute a word for it—it comes from somewhere deep in his throat, almost primal, and vibrates through me.
I still don’t know if he’s awake, but I definitely am now.
He shifts closer to me in a way that doesn’t necessarily seem intentional at first, but then it’s clear that he must be awake because he’s—
Yep.
Then again, every Hadley/Sammy There Was Only One Bed fic makes it seem like this is just a thing that sometimes happens in the morning, that it doesn’t mean anything—or so the characters loudly claim.
(And then they usually end up having sex anyway, which kind of invalidates their argument, but still.)
When he kisses the base of my neck, right above my t-shirt tag that I can feel is sticking out, I know for sure that he’s awake. It’s such a small gesture—such a sweet, tiny thing—but it feels like too much. Too much goodness for one person to take, for one person to give.
“Damien?” I turn my head, though I barely get a glimpse of his face in the corner of my eye. Enough to know that his eyes are still shut, at least.
He hums his response against me again. “Mm-hmm?”
“Um. I think—I mean, I’m probably—What I’m trying to say—” I stammer, and his arm curls tighter around me, holding me close to him. “I think I love you?” I don’t know why it comes out as a question, but he hums again.
“Mm-hmm.” Like it’s a statement of fact.
“And I think—I think you already know that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And I think maybe you love me, too.” I sound much surer about that one, somehow.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Are you asleep?” I ask, rolling around to face him under the weight of his arm.
His eyes are still closed, but he smiles. “No, I heard you.”
“And that’s all you have to say?”
His eyes finally open and they are staring right at me. “I think you know what I’m going to say.”
“What do you—” I cut myself when he lifts himself up on one elbow and leans over me like he’s going to kiss me.
“You know, after everything we’ve been through… Oddly…” he says, brushing hair out of my face. Why is he calling me by my Play’N handle? He smiles again. “I adore you.”
Well, that’s a weird way of—
“Oh my god!” I say with a laugh when his words register. “You just Hadley’ed me!”
He grins and gives me a small peck on the cheek.
“How long have you been holding onto that one, then?” I ask, practically cackling as he rolls me onto my back.
“A long time,” he says, leaning in, like he’s waiting for me to kiss him. And so, I do. “A really long time.”
There isn’t a lot of time before I have to get to work at Ink they look terrifying.” He manages to get a laugh out of me with that.
“People always thought we were dating anyway, I guess,” I continue. “We spent all our time together for years. And then he spent less time with me at school, so people would stop thinking that. And then he stopped spending time with me altogether.”
“What a dick.”
“The worst part of it was that he—” I stop myself before I tell him the thing I’ve never told anyone, not even Victory. But I want him to know. “He did kiss me when I first told him I wanted to.”
Damien’s eyebrows pinch up in concern.
“It was just one time, but it was for…a while. I thought it meant… I thought he liked me, too, but then later he said he’d just felt bad for me and that’s why he did it. It was a pity kiss. And then after that was when he stopped hanging out with me at all. So, I guess he is a dick, yeah.”
“Actually, now that I think of it, calling him a dick is an insult to dicks,” Damien says, completely deadpan. “At least I feel better about tanking that group project, though.”
I laugh again, softly, and shrug. “Well. It’s not like we’re actually going to see him again, so it doesn’t really matter. Plus, I basically did the same thing to Shawn, but for like a year, so I’m no better.”
“You told him that you were pity-fucking him and didn’t want to be seen together because he was beneath you?”
“God, no! Why would you even—”
“That’s my point. It’s not the same. You were figuring shit out,” he says more seriously.
“And yeah, maybe this guy”—he juts his thumb at where Cameron had been standing, even though he’s no longer there—“was also figuring shit out, but he made it your problem. And I know none of us have it figured out, and we all screw up sometimes, so I’m not going to make him the literal devil here, but he was supposed to be your best friend and he discarded you, so I don’t have to be too sympathetic about it. ”
“Oh.” I don’t know what to say to that. I mean, I always knew it was a sucky thing for Cameron to do to me, but I figured it was my own fault. My fault for falling for him, my fault for telling him, my fault for not being good enough.
And maybe I did screw up sometimes, with Cameron and with Shawn, but it didn’t mean I deserved to lose my only friend over it.
“Well,” I add after another minute, contemplating all of this. “I probably dodged a bullet, in any case.”
“Yeah?”
I nod. “He was a really bad kisser.”
It’s a Friday morning when I find out.
When our little sub-niche of the internet starts buzzing like it’s Christmas and the Apocalypse all at once—though I’m agnostic, so maybe I’m wrong about that.
In any case, it does feel like the world has just been flipped upside down.
Helmi is the first one to point it out to me. A private message on Play’N with a link to a recent forum post that just went up last night, and as soon as I click it, I know the spit is about to hit the fan.
Some user by the name of SconesIsFascist—a brand new account, by the looks of it—posted a photo of Damien along with his full name and city. But the photo isn’t just of Damien; he’s with his whole family—I recognize his sister—though his head has been circled. Along with the man to his left.
SconesIsFascist:
Damien Iverson, or @SconesOfAyor as he’s most well-known on some corners of the internet, is the son of Conservative MPP Mark Iverson, who supported legislation that would require Ontario teachers to out their trans students to their parents, along with other anti-LGBTQ+ policies.
Damien—who recently made a flippant homophobic joke on stream—is pictured here with ol’ Dad, and below I’ve attached a screenshot of Scones wearing the exact same hoodie a few weeks ago on his stream.
Just keep this in mind when you go to hit that tip jar button.
You’re giving money to the son of a fascist, and apples don’t fall far from trees.
What.
The.
Fuck.