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iris had just got out of her last class of the day when she was approached by tommy, waiting in the hallway for her. "hey, multi was cancelled, so i figured i'd come wait. wanna get food?"
"i'm starving," iris agreed. they had nearly an hour until tommy's next class, and the two of them walked until they found somewhere that served chips, standing in the back of the small shop and talking quietly.
there was only a few people in there, but tommy had iris pulled close to him, both of their masks up over their noses as he talked softly in her ear. they got their food, iris calming down once they were further away from other people. out of habit, iris had her pinky hooked with tommy's.
tommy couldn't handle being so close to her. she smelled nice, familiar. safe. like peaches and cinammon, and his thumb ghosted over one of the shitty plastic rings on her left hand. iris's right hand was fiddling with her belt buckle.
they were always both physically affectionate, that much was obvious. but to tommy, it held a deeper meaning now. as much as it scared him, he liked iris. that had never even been on the table for him. they'd been friends since they were seven years old, that was ten whole years of iris being one of the most important people in his life. he'd always assumed that if he was going to develop a crush, it would have already happened.
tommy didn't even know how he was supposed to handle this. he'd liked girls before, sure. but not girls that he already spoke to on a daily basis. usually, his crushes consisted of seeing them in the halls at school and then just... walking past. none of this getting lunch together, holding hands, recognising her conditioner stuff.
should he be letting her so close to him? did he have an ulteriour motive, now that he'd had this realisation? it wasn't strictly platonic for him. maybe that meant he needed to tell her, even if she didn't feel the same.
they got their food, and the two of them went outside to sit on a park bench. iris sat cross legged, talking about one of her classes while tommy listened intently. he opened his mouth to reply when there was a soft voice from beside him. "tommy?"
panic flashed in both their eyes, tommy's head whipping to the side and immediately untensing when he saw it was just one of his classmates. "oh, hey, josie. iris, this is josie, she's in my multimedia class. this is iris, my best friend,"
iris relaxed, smiling up at her. she let tommy talk to the other girl for a second, looking down at her food. iris played with her shoelaces, trying to hold off the frown from her face. it wasn't tommy, nor this josie girl. she seemed lovely, and iris had no ill feelings towards her, but she'd been struggling. she'd revelled in this time alone with tommy, and even though it wasn't josie's fault, all iris wasnted was for her to leave.
she'd been consumed in her own thoughts lately. lachy had been working, her mum had been sleeping, and she still felt nervous about texting ranboo or tubbo. ranboo would usually message her first, and the two of them had mantained consistent contact since she'd returned from tubbo's house. and yet there was still the fear that she was being annoying.
she'd taken to spending her evenings in the park more and more often, returning home once she felt uneasy being alone outside. she'd muted her notifications for all social media apps. she hadn't gotten anything other than love and support from tommy's community, but the sheer number of them made her anxious.
she'd thrown out a number of her clothes in the past few weeks as well. being out in public so often hadn't done her much good so it seemed. tommy hadn't noticed, but she didn't expect him to.
iris had covered the mirror in her bathroom the night earlier, and spent the night on her bathroom floor writing.
that was one upside to how she'd been feeling, she supposed. the music came easy. the thoughts that had been trapped in her head since her and her boyfriend had broken up were now out there, put into words. she didn't know how she'd survived so long without them.
she loved tommy, truly she did. more than she probably should have. but he was one of the least observant people she knew. more than that, she was sort of hoping he wouldn't notice. she didn't want him to worry.
he had a lot on her plate, he didn't need her stuff too.
her phone vibrated, and she fished it out of the back pocket of her jeans, casting a look upward. tommy glanced at her, smiling apologetically as he and josie talked about their homework. she opened her phone. it was tubbo, some random meme she'd look at later.
instead, she opened up her conversation with ranboo and, before she could regret it she was sending them a message. he replied almost instantly, and by the time tommy turned back to his best friend, she was engrossed in a conversation with him, a miniscule portion of the weight off her shoulders, just for a moment.
— AUTHOR'S NOTE! please don't be a silent reader i appreciate votes so much but i absolutely love getting comments
