How Unexpected | Brance | The Black Phone

Chapter 5

Finney

I noticed Vance get up and watched him go to the bathroom. I got worried.

"Hey." I tried to get everyone's attention.

Argue.

"Hey!"

Argue.

"HEY!"

They flinch. I don't yell very often, if at all. They knew it was important.

"I'm so sorry to ruin ur fucking scream-fest here, but ur arguing made Vance leave. I saw him go to the bathroom." I hit Robin upside the head, "How would u feel if ppl started fighting bc of u and ur awkwardness? What if he's sitting in there eating lunch? That'd be rude! So, Robin, UR gonna apologize."

"What?! Por que?! It's not MY fault he's weird!" I glare at him.

"We're all gonna go check on him, ask if he's ok, apologize for arguing, and Robin will apologize for being rude. AND that. is. Final." I say getting up and walking away.

I can hear them all come after me. They know when I'm playing around and I am not playing around rn.

We all walk toward the bathroom and hear the sink running. We don't wanna scare him so I just lightly crack the door open for all of us to clearly see him.

He's just....standing there, staring at himself.

"See? Staring is just his thing." Bruce whispers, just loud enough for us to hear. Robin just rolls his eyes.

Vance moves. We watch. Kinda creepy but for some reason, we felt like we shouldn't just walk in.

He brought his hands to his face and used his fingers to do that thing where u lift ur lips into a smile, but like, a bad smile. He did that a few times before stopping and just staring again.

"Omg! What if he doesn't know how to smile bc he's never been happy?!" Griffin whisper-yells at us. We all look down at him.

"What? It could be true! Maybe that's y he stares when we smile. Bc, it's foreign to him!"

We just look back at Vance. He's messing with some blue stuff in his hair and keeps grazing his fingers along the underside of his eyes.

"Alright, let's stop being creeps. I'll go in first." I say. I take a deep breath and fully opened the door.

He seemed startled and looks over at me. "Finney?" I give a small smile. He stares.

"Yea, listen, Vance, we're sorry about arguing at lunch. We didn't mean to make u feel bad or anything. I promise." The others filed in as I spoke.

"Yea, Vance, I really am sorry, I did drag u to the table after all."

"Don't worry, Vance, we don't judge ppl for anything. Most of us r fucking fairies!" Griffin says, laughing at the end. He never meant 'fairies' or 'fags' as an insult. None of us did really. It was mostly Moose and some other ppl out in the world.

Vance just stood there. He seemed to be trying to find something interesting to stare at bc he couldn't look us in the face. We all turned to Robin. He looked at us and rolled his eyes.

"Uh, listen, man, um, I- I didn't mean to be so...aggressive. I'm just....protective of Finney bc well, he's my bf. Meirda, this is hard. Just, I'm sorry, alright? I don't hate u or anything.....like...that. So, yeah, sit with us if u want or whatever." Robin had difficulty apologizing to anyone outside the friend group.

I was proud. I smiled at him and gave him a peck on the cheek. He just wrapped his arms around my waist and hid his face in my shoulder.

Vance was still just standing there. Looking at us.