Team Foster-Keefe one shots!

#48: Face

Sophie is a simple being. She goes to school, comes home with way too much homework, and then has way too much trouble falling asleep. She has great friends, and at least half of her school has some sort of crush on her, which she is not totally aware of. She's good at talking, demanding things, getting her way.

And yet, when the situation calls for it, she cannot, for the life of her, flirt.

She spends almost every waking moment with her friends, who are all great at flirting, but for some reason, that is the one thing she hasn't been able to pick up from them. Keefe is constantly flirting with her, and maybe she has a photographic memory, but being able to know how to flirt, and actually executing the task are two very different things. One of which Sophie cannot do.

So when she finds herself in the position of wanting to flirt, she's left with the very disappointing fact that she has to wing it. Otherwise, she's probably never going to be able to advance on her newly found crush on Keefe, because she's also one of those people who can't seem to just outright say how they're feeling, and she curses herself everyday for that.

While she might not be the best person at managing her feelings, she thinks that she's got a good handle on it, having gone through so much worse already. Really, why should having a crush be more scary than looking death in the face? And Keefe's an empath, he probably knows already that she's become aware of the feelings she has for him. She now knows that whatever Keefe was feeling every time she enhanced him was a subconscious crush on him, and the fact that he kept it a secret from her was seeming kind of necessary now. She has to admit that if he had told her at the time, she would have tried so hard to deny it, to push it away, to ignore it. Because she was dealing with so much. Trying to figure out what to do with her crush on Fitz, or the fact that she had just broken her best friend's heart, and then was about to go to Ravagog to wager with an ogre who had previously tried to put her into one of his work camps. So yeah, she wasn't as ready then as she is now.

But right now, she can see Keefe across the hall, talking to Dex, and she has an impulse. The impulse to go over there and to kiss him spontaneously, without a care in the world.

Or... maybe she'll just start with a few lines.

So, she marches over there, all smiles while putting her things in her locker, trying to look as attractive as possible and inwardly cringing when she thinks about it, and waits for someone to acknowledge her presence before doing this stupid thing she's planning on doing.

"Hey, Foster, you heading home?" Keefe asks, sliding up next to her open locker, looking at her from over the locker door. She answers him without even looking up.

"Yeah, gonna help out with the animals today. You're free to come over and help with me," she says, trying to sound absent minded. She is so not good at being nonchalant.

"You mean hours in stinky animal pens with my favourite girl? How could I pass that up?" Keefe says, sounding sarcastic, but it makes her cheeks flare up with heat, and a small smile paints her face.

"Okay, just let me get my stuff all ready and then we can go," she tells him, putting her homework into her satchel and closing the locker, taking as long as possible.

When she's finally ready to leave, they say goodbye to Dex, who gives her a look that says 'you better do what I think you're about to do,' and head down the hallway in silence, while Sophie tries to figure out what to say. So when they finally get to the Leapmasters, she turns to him and gathers up the courage to finally just blurt it out, because she is so nervous.

But never did she think she'd do as bad as she does in this moment.

"You have a face," she states, and immediately furrows her eyebrows, wondering how she can mess up so extravagantly. Obviously, her own confusion shows on her face, because Keefe starts to chuckle at her.