Sidelines. (A Yellowjackets AU Fanfiction COMPLETED)

What if the Yellowjackets never boarded the plane?

No wilderness. No rescue. No supernatural horror. Just Wiskayok High - and the ordinary wreckage people leave behind when they choose silence, cruelty, or distance at exactly the wrong moment.

Peter Duncan has spent most of his freshman year trying to take up less space. With his round glasses, battered backpack, and a head full of songs, comics, and thoughts he rarely says out loud, he is easy to overlook. Until Natalie Scatorcio decides he is fun to target.

Natalie is sharp-tongued, hard-edged, and impossible to read - the kind of girl people call fearless because they cannot see what she is protecting. Peter should know better than to look for anything gentle beneath the insults. He should definitely know better than to notice when she looks back.

Then there is Charlotte Matthews: soccer star, golden girl, and Peter's former best friend. Once, he was the voice in the bleachers cheering her name. Now eighteen months of silence stand between them, and neither of them knows how to cross the distance without admitting who let it grow.

As old friendships begin to stir and an unexpected connection takes shape in the hallways, locker rooms, parking lots, and shadowed corners of Wiskayok High, Peter finds himself caught between two girls who see different versions of him - and may be learning to see him at all.

The Yellowjackets are still here: ambitious, loyal, watchful, messy, funny, and dangerous in all the ways teenagers can be. There is no crash in this story. But there is still a collision coming.

Sidelines is a slow-burn Yellowjackets AU about being seen, being used, and discovering that love is not something you fall into by accident. Sometimes, you have to choose where you stand.