The Dead Boy's Guide To Second Chances

bonus chapter: part 2

Four Times Oliver Sallow Got Caught Staring at Finn O'Connell
(+1 Time He Didn't Look Away)

2. Library Hours

16 years old. Surprisingly, the same school. Unsurprisingly, the library.

It's been a year now since he's moved to Oakriver, and Oliver has spent approximately eighty percent of it inside the library. He got the position as student librarian—not like this was difficult, seeing as he was the only one who applied—and subsequently spends almost every afternoon here, shelving books and keeping things in order. Because most of his classmates are involved in other extracurriculars like drama club or—Heaven forbid—sports, he is usually the only one here.

The solitude suits him just fine. In the silence, he feels like he gets to know the building. He learns the way the structure will creak as it settles in the evenings. The way rain sounds when it hits the windows, and the way the sunlight streaks the floorboards depending on the time of day. The way the dust-filled air will smell slightly different on hot days, deep and rich with the scent of yellowing paper.

Sometimes, he feels like time is suspended inside the library's walls. He lets the quiet drape over him like a blanket and draws out his shifts—stays longer than he's being paid for, sometimes getting kicked out by one of the cleaners.

It's not that he doesn't like spending time at the Walkers' house. He does like it. He likes his foster brother and the laughter that fills the rooms and the easy way Gabby and Daniel speak to him, like he's an adult and not a charity case.

Still, something inside him feels skittish whenever he's there. He doesn't want to like their stupid routines and the inside jokes he's growing to understand. Wanting anything means accepting the hurt he knows is sure to come.

He thinks that maybe if they only see him an hour or two a day, they won't notice how long he's been staying with them. Maybe if he spends all day at the library, they won't see in him what the other families saw; the ugly, flawed parts that made them send him away that he can never seem to hide well enough.

In the library, he doesn't have to pretend. He can be as surly and unapproachable as he wants to be. What does he care if other teenagers think he's stuck-up and pretentious? At least he isn't faking anything like the rest of the school.

The biggest fake, he's pretty sure by now, is Finn O'Connell. There is no way he's actually as happy or as kind as he makes out to be. Every time Oliver sees him around, he's either laughing with one of his fifty-thousand friends, rejecting a girl he acts like he doesn't know has a crush on him, or getting invited to parties. It just has to be a persona. No one who's popular is that nice.

Operating on this assumption, Oliver can't help but bristle the first time he sees Finn enter the library. He looks rumpled in a way Oliver is sure he thinks is charming: he's wearing the school uniform's mandatory white dress shirt and dark blue sweater with the tie haphazardly knotted, his ginger hair still looking damp from the showers. Oliver almost expects a pulk of football players to manifest behind him, but, mystifyingly, he's alone.

From his perch behind the librarian's desk, Oliver watches as Finn halts in the doorway, his head tilted back as he takes in the tall ceiling. Figures that he hasn't been here before. Maybe, Oliver thinks cynically, he got lost on his way from the showers.

When a few seconds have passed and Finn hasn't done anything but shift uncomfortably from one foot onto the other, Oliver clears his throat.

Finn jumps. "Sorry, I—I didn't see—I, er...  came here because someone told me this was a good place to study when you... you kind of want to be left alone?" His fingers fidget with the strap of his duffel bag. "Is it okay if I stay here for a bit?"

Oliver only sends him a blank stare. Then, already looking down at his play again, he gestures vaguely at the empty desks around as if to say take your pick. There are a few seconds of silence before he hears Finn shuffle across the room and take a seat near the entrance.

Oliver frowns down at his play. Is this a bloody prank? Did they pay him to come to the library as some weird dare? He waits for something to happen, but half an hour passes, and Finn is still just sitting there, ostensibly studying.

Oliver keeps an eye on him as he goes about shelving some of the books in the return cart nevertheless. It's honestly unsettling, seeing Finn without his entourage or the grin he's usually sporting. Bent over his workbook, he looks... tired. There are bags under his eyes, and his skin looks pale even by English winter standards. His lips are chapped and there are ink stains on his fingers from the pen he's chewing on.

Oliver tells himself he wasn't staring, but his cheeks still catch on fire when Finn's eyes dart over to him. He quickly ducks behind another shelf.

Finn comes in a couple of times over the next months. He's always alone, and always seems like an entirely different boy than the one Oliver encounters in the school hallways. Slowly, Oliver begins to understand that he was mistaken about the nature of the secret Finn keeps locked away under his bright smiles. He isn't a bad person at all. The more Oliver studies him, the more apparent it becomes that Finn O'Connell is just desperately sad.

It shouldn't make a difference, really. They never interact, and likely never will. Finn O'Connell is the exact opposite of everything that Oliver Sallow is. The exact opposite of what he, after thorough evaluation, thinks he wants.

And yet, after that first day in the library, something in his mind shifts. He doesn't trust the shiny version of Finn that everyone else knows. He still thinks about the simple kindness contained in the smile Finn offered him on his first day here. He feels something inside his chest ache at the sight of the quiet Finn who drifts in and out of the library. Somewhere, he's sure, the three versions must intersect. Either that, or there's another, truer version hidden beneath all of them.

Whatever it is, Oliver wants to find it.

He doesn't know that he will catch a glimpse of it months from now, tucked under a sink in the library bathroom. Just like he doesn't know that he will spend the next three years collecting facets of Finn like trinkets to keep in the archive of his own mind. It's a good thing, that: if he knew what they would become to each other, he would probably quit his job and move himself to the other end of the U.K. of his own volition.

For now, he settles on watching from a distance.

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anyone who thought it was love at first sight forgot that oliver is a Judgmental Bitch 😭

i hope you enjoyed this short little snippet! the next chapter is one of the fluffiest things i've ever written with the boys :,)

p.s. today's song is mirrorball by taylor swift!! oliver and finn are so midnight rain x mirrorball-coded <3