We've Gone Full Teenager, Winston

Sarrain

Sarrain

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Rory felt..complicated when she got home. Not bad. Not great. But certainly torn. And the one concrete thought was: fuck this place. Really fuck it hard.

It wasn't maliciousness, per say, but it was close enough.

She didn't go back to sleep once she'd arrived but instead worked at getting extra makeup off her face. Took a warm shower got dressed, combed through her hair. She got to take her time, which was nice. Gave her an opportunity to think. Jude would be curious, mostly because Rory didn't make it a habit of not being home at night. Neither did Jude, really. They'd settled into normalcy coming here. Rory was learning nothing was worse than normalcy.

 
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Romi

Romi

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Jude had slept like a rock that night. It was his first day of work the next morning, and as much as he'd have loved to have stayed up to heckle Rory? Not happening.

Nope.

Instead, Jude woke close to six, got in the shower, and was dressed all nice and ready to go by seven, when he headed to the kitchen.

Maybe he'd woken up a bit too early. He still had three hours. Two and a half if he was going to get there really early.

"Look who was home late last night," Jude said, heading to the freezer to pull out some waffles for the toaster.
 
Sarrain

Sarrain

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"Not late last night," Rory corrected, "early this morning. Look at you all dressed to impress."

She was eating a bowl of oatmeal, already made up and ready to go. School wouldn't be for a while, and Rory had gotten sick of pacing or finding any distraction she could so boredom didn't set in and make her bed look extra inviting.

"Crazy, I know. Sometimes I actually decide to have a life. First day on the job, right?"
 
Romi

Romi

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It wasn't quite a suit and tie, but... okay, well, it was a blazer and a tie, which was the tiniest shade less formal, not that most people would have really agreed or had much of an opinion. Jude did though. Jude actually kind of liked formal wear. A well fit outfit was going to have to do the rest of the work for him in making him look like a mature adult, and not like a high school student who'd just wandered into the office by accident.

"First day on the job," Jude confirmed as he popped his chosen breakfast into the toaster. "Should I ask who you were out with?"

Truthfully, Jude was a bit... off at the whole thing. It wasn't that Rory didn't have a life, but Jude couldn't help but feel a bit thrown off by the fact that she apparently had friends she'd stay out all night with that he didn't even know about. Maybe it was that. Maybe part of it was that Rory was, well, a good girl. The kind of girl who stayed up late studying, but didn't run out going to parties or anything like that.

Except she did, apparently.
 
Sarrain

Sarrain

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Jude sounded off about the whole thing. It wasn't like Rory was that good, was it? Oh shit.... she fucking was. That's why it'd been such a noticeable change, back home, when she'd started superheroing and being out all the time. That's why Eddie had known. Her mom hadn't been around for much of it, but Eddie had and he knew she wasn't out at parties or with friends. She'd never stayed with friends.

"Actually, you know," and Rory stopped before she even completed her sentence.

That excuse wouldn't work. She'd texted Angelo preemptively to tell him she'd be out. Jude probably knew that, or if he didn't, he'd find out one day. And really? There was no reason at all to lie. It wasn't like she'd done something terrible — minus that part before the sleeping over, that was.

And so she ate some oatmeal and started again. "I was just at Broen's place. Got tired, and didn't feel like coming all the way back."
 
Romi

Romi

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Broen. She'd been out all night with Broen? Jude squinted. Rory was sort of lucky, because any sort of awkwardness she might have given off with her abrupt stop was completely lost in the one eighty Jude's brain did, his voice dropping.

"Hold on," he said, his voice quiet. "Did you sleep with him?"

She crashed at Broen's place???
 
Sarrain

Sarrain

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"No." Rory rubbed her face. "I slept on the couch. We watched Kill Bill, ate some stir fry and then went to bed. It was entirely uneventful." And Rory breathed out. "You know I pay for this right?"

And God, Jude's voice was all low. This was why Rory hadn't wanted to mention it, but keeping it secret just made it look more sketchy. "Look. I'm never going to do anything with Broen, alright? You don't have to worry. I know you like him."
 
Romi

Romi

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God. What was he even thinking? This wasn't that. He was very, very mentally insistent on that. It wasn't that he liked Broen. It wasn't that.

"No," Jude said, his voice still more quiet than usual. "I was just surprised, because you were all No I'll never go for him but then you spent the night and... had stir fry?"

Had he cooked for her? The whole thing was weird. She was acting weird, right? That wasn't just him? "Did he make another pass at you? Wait, no. Did he not make another pass at you?"
 
Sarrain

Sarrain

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"It's Broen," Rory emphasized. Which answered the question 'did he make a pass at you' in full, but she'd say it loud for Jude, who was a classic overthinker, anyway. "He made about three of them.

"And I'm still not going for him. But yes, he heated up some stir-fry. Like I said, I got tired. So I slept on the couch and left... eh, about three in the morning."

Rory grimaced. "Jude, are you sure you're okay?"

Why did Rory feel bad anyway? She hadn't done anything, but then she was starting to feel like maybe she had. First, she'd ruined Broen's night and now she was ruining Jude's morning. Christ. She really needed to stop talking to people, this was putting her track record at three.

"I swear, nothing happened. Okay? Nothing even mildly happened."
 
Romi

Romi

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It was weird. Jude was sure of it. The whole thing was weird, and that weird was throwing him off enough that Jude actually jumped when the toaster popped.

But it was the distraction he needed, and he reached over, grabbing his waffles and getting his breakfast ready. It let him process. She wasn't lying. She wouldn't lie about that, not with him directly asking.

Even a year on, he still struggled to trust them sometimes, and he felt a pang of guilt at the realization.

"Nothing happened," Jude confirmed, abruptly dragging the conversation to something that made him feel less guilty.

"Did I tell you what Gil's been doing lately?"
 
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