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robin-sides · 2 months ago

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SO COOL!! Ill make sure to check it out!! Do the same!! >w< 🫶

When It’s Cold I’d Like To Die

★ 5k words

★ time travel fix-it au

★ slowburn finney/robin

★ aged up characters

★ ongoing

Chapter One: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64462024/chapters/165739153#main

Ages: 18: Vance, 17: Bruce, 16: Robin, Finney, Billy, 15: Griffin, Gwen, Susie, 14: Amy

Finney’s eyes opened with a heavy flutter, lids trembling like they were lifting weights on each muscle. His chest rose with effort, each breath shallow and tight, as though a stack of bricks had been placed there in the night. His mouth was painfully dry, his tongue like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth, and every swallow scraped his throat like gravel.

But it was the pain in his body that truly woke him. An ache deep in his muscles and bones—dull but unrelenting—throbbed like an ancient warning bell. Every joint felt rusted, locked in place, and searing with heat whenever he tried to move. His limbs were foreign to him, heavy and useless like they belonged to someone else entirely. His fingers curled limply, too sore to clench into fists, too tired to try.

A sudden sound pierced the stillness.

A phone rang.

It echoed off the walls like a scream. Loud. Sharp. Invasive. It didn’t sound real at first—more like a memory of a sound than the sound itself—but with every passing second, it grew louder, more insistent, more impossible to ignore. Finney clenched his jaw, willing it to stop, praying it would just go away.

The shrill ringing seemed to dig into his skull, rattling around in the empty places where sleep and peace should have been. He wished it would all just stop.

Robin said he had to be strong.

Those words came back to him now, uninvited, floating to the surface of his aching mind. “Be strong, Finn. You can do this. You have to.” He had repeated it like a mantra, like a lifeline tossed across an impossible distance.

But Finney didn’t want to be strong anymore. He was tired—tired in a way that sleep couldn’t fix. Tired in his bones. Tired of fighting. Tired of waking up to pain and fear. He wanted it all to end, not just the phone, not just the pain—everything.

Still, some stubborn part of him forced his eyes open again. His lashes stuck together, and his vision swam, the light flooding in with such intensity that it felt like needles stabbing into his retinas. He groaned, instantly regretting the decision. He had expected to be greeted by the familiar, suffocating gloom of the basement—the concrete walls, the dusty corners, the flickering bulb that cast shadows like ghosts.

But the world he opened his eyes to was bright. Unnaturally bright.

The room flared with white light, sterile and unforgiving. It was a slap in the face after the darkness he had become used to. He squeezed his eyes shut with a gasp, the light slicing across his vision like a blade. It burned—god, it burned. Not just his eyes, but his brain, his memories, his hope.

Was he dead? Was this what the end looked like?

Or worse—was this something new?

Something worse than the basement?

Something worse than the Grabber?

The phone kept ringing.

And Finney couldn’t tell if it was a call for help—or a warning he was too late to answer.

Once his eyes adjusted to the shine, Finney blinked hard, again and again, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The familiar shapes slowly came into focus, like a polaroid developing too slowly for comfort. The posters on the walls—Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon with its known prism, and David Bowie staring out from beneath a bolt of lightning—were exactly where he remembered them. His desk, still cluttered with notebooks and cassette tapes, sat untouched. A jacket was slung haphazardly over the back of his chair. It was all the same.

It was mesmerizing. He hadn’t seen any of it in what felt like a lifetime. After days of cold, colorless concrete and unchanging shadows, the colors and details of his bedroom hit him like a wave. The room looked surreal, like a replica built from memory rather than the real thing. He could barely breathe. There was something so painfully beautiful about it—almost cruel.

How could something so normal exist after everything that had happened?

He couldn’t remember exactly how long he’d been down in that basement. Time didn’t flow right in places like that. It stretched and warped and wrapped around itself until you couldn’t tell one day from the next. All he remembered was waking up to a place that wasn’t his. A place that smelled of mold and dust and death. And the burning. God, the burning in his eyes. The spray the Grabber had used—chemical and sharp—had seared his eyes like acid. They hadn’t stopped burning for hours. Maybe longer.

But even that pain—unforgettable as it was—felt like nothing compared to the piercing shriek of the phone. The ringing had only gotten louder. It felt like it was clawing at the inside of his skull, each pulse louder, more demanding, more impossible to ignore.

It hadn’t stopped when he opened his eyes.

It hadn’t stopped even when he realized he was home.

He hadn’t had time to process anything—how he got here, if he was really here, or what this meant. There wasn’t time to think.

Just react.

He threw the covers off and jumped from the bed with instinctive urgency. His legs were shaky, and pain rippled through his stiff joints like electric shocks. He barely registered the softness of the mattress beneath him until his body was off of it, but the contrast was stark—luxurious compared to the cold slab of concrete he’d grown used to. It felt almost wrong to have that comfort back.

The phone was still ringing.

Finney reached for the receiver with a trembling hand and yanked it from the hook, his breath hitching in his chest.

His heart dropped like a stone inside him. It plummeted through his ribcage, down into the pit of his stomach, heavy and cold.

This couldn’t be real. None of this felt real. Especially not with a phone in his room.

Maybe the Grabber had killed him.

Maybe he’d died down in that basement, and this was it—some twisted afterlife built from memory and longing. The ghosts, all of them, they were waiting for him. Maybe this was the final call, the last connection before everything faded away. Maybe the phone wasn’t warning him anymore—it was welcoming him.

His voice came out small, broken at the edges. “Hello?”

There was a pause—just long enough for his breath to catch—before a voice responded on the other end.

“Hello, Finney Blake.”

It was quiet, genderless, almost gentle. Like a whisper meant only for him. The kind of voice that didn’t demand anything from him—just offered its presence. Understanding. Patience. As if the speaker knew he was barely holding it together and was giving him space to breathe.

Finney swallowed. His throat was dry, his pulse loud in his ears.

“Who… who is this?” he asked, stronger this time, but still dazed, shocked. It echoed slightly, like he hadn’t really meant to say it out loud.

Because it wasn’t Robin’s voice.

It wasn’t Billy’s or Griffin’s or Vance’s.

It wasn’t any of them.

And if it wasn’t the boys who’d helped him survive down there—then what the fuck was going on?

“Who I am doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re getting a second chance.”

The voice was chipper, almost too chipper—like a cartoon character trying to sell you cereal while hiding a knife behind its back. Its tone began to fluctuate unnaturally, warping from a deep, unsettling bass to a squeaky, high-pitched whine, like it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Human? Machine? Something else entirely?

Finney’s brows pulled together, unease tugging at his features. “A second chance at what?” he asked cautiously, his voice steadier than he felt.

His fingers curled tighter around the phone receiver, knuckles whitening, the plastic creaking beneath his grip. His hand trembled slightly, whether from the adrenaline or the cold dread crawling through his body, he couldn’t tell.

He didn’t trust the voice. Hell, he didn’t trust anything right now. But one thing the Grabber had taught him—burned into his mind through pain and fear—was not to ask too many questions. Not to push too hard. Because curiosity wasn’t just dangerous, it was deadly.

So he tried to distract himself.

Finney’s eyes drifted to his desk, where schoolwork sat in a relatively neat stack. Papers, folders, a pen he’d chewed half to death. It looked untouched, like time had never moved. He blinked slowly. His fingertips brushed against the phone’s cord as it lightly tapped his arm. He reached out and slid the top sheet from the stack, already knowing that’s where he always left the most recent stuff—Gwen had taught him to do that. Efficient, she called it.

The date on the paper made his stomach twist. His breath caught.

The voice on the line suddenly laughed, a jarring, sarcastic cackle that broke through the silence like shattered glass.

“‘A second chance at what?’” they repeated in a cruel mimicry of his voice. “A second chance at life, kid! Come on, keep up! Would I play you for a fool?”

Their tone shifted again—taunting, condescending. It got under Finney’s skin in a way that felt oddly familiar. It reminded him of Gwen—not in cruelty, but in how she’d say something that made you feel dumb, even when she didn’t mean to. Gwen always had that exasperated edge, especially when she knew something he didn’t. Which, okay, yeah—fair enough. There was a lot Finney didn’t know.

But he knew one thing.

Gwen was smarter than anyone gave her credit for. Smarter than their teachers, smarter than most adults. People didn’t see it because she was small and loud and strange, but Finney saw it clear as day. Maybe he wasn’t the brightest kid around, but at least he had the sense to know brilliance when it was standing in front of him, swinging a backpack and calling the school bullies bitches.

And now, standing there with this creepy, shifting voice on the phone, Finney realized how much he missed her. How much he wanted to hear her voice instead.

He stared at the date on the homework again. It wasn’t possible. That day had come and gone before the Grabber ever took him. Long before. He remembered it now—the math quiz he never studied for, the note he passed to Donna during lunch, the detention Gwen earned for punching a boy who wouldn’t stop making pig noises at her. It was before.

So what the hell was it doing on top of his pile?

His voice was barely above a whisper, hesitant and uncertain. “Is this a dream?”

It was the only thing that made any sense. The only explanation that didn’t make his brain split in half trying to reconcile timelines and logic and pain and—

The line went dead.

A flat, empty click.

Silence.

Finney slowly pulled the telephone from his ear, his heartbeat roaring in the sudden stillness. The dial tone didn’t return. Nothing did. The receiver hung limp in his hand, as lifeless as his thoughts.

If this was a dream, it was the cruelest kind.

And if it wasn’t—then something far stranger was happening.

And Finney wasn’t sure if he was ready for what came next.

Suddenly, he was no longer standing.

There was no transition, no warning. One moment, the telephone was dead in his hand, his mind spiraling, the next—he was back in bed. Not the basement, not the impossible replica of his room with the haunting phone call—just his bed.

His eyes fluttered open again, sluggisher this time, like his brain was lagging behind his body. The faded press of a pillow cradled his head. His hair was damp and smelled faintly of the cheap shampoo Gwen always picked out—the one that stung if it got in his eyes but left everything else feeling warm and clean. The collar of his pajama shirt itched lightly at his neck, but the fabric was smooth—a stark contrast to the dirty, everyday clothes he was grabbed in.

Gone were the tattered jeans and too-tight shoes that had been soaked in fear and filth. In their place were fluffy socks—oversized and mismatched, slipping slightly at the heel. Finney stared at them. He remembered them. They were Gwen’s, originally, gifted to her by Susie’s parents when they’d bought Susie a new pair. Gwen didn’t even get to keep them long—Finney had stolen them within a week. They were comfortable, warm, and purple with little white stars.

He hadn’t thought about those socks in months. Not since before.

His breath came out ragged and uneven, his chest rising and falling too fast. He sat up, muscles still unsure, still bracing for pain that didn’t come. His arms wrapped tightly around himself as if he could shield his body from whatever might come next. Finney’s gaze swept across his bedroom—his real bedroom—searching for clues, for proof, for a crack in the illusion.

Everything looked normal.

Too normal.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it?

His eyes landed on the wall where the telephone had been. Only it wasn’t there anymore. In its place was his old calendar—taped slightly crooked, corners curling with age. The pages hadn’t been turned in a while, but the date was clear, printed in bold blue ink at the top:

January 3rd. Wednesday. 1978.

Finney’s throat tightened.

Griffin Stagg had been taken on February 2nd.

Which meant none of it had happened yet. Not the black balloons. Not the basement. Not the voices on the phone. Not Robin. Not the blood. Not the belt. Not the silent screams in the dark.

Not yet.

His stomach clenched like a vice, twisting and turning until he felt sick. The memories hadn’t faded—they were still there, sharp and vivid and wrong. He could still see the eggs, shattered on the kitchen floor. The belt. The Grabber. The soda can was in his hand when everything went quiet. They weren’t dreams. They weren’t images born from a fever or an overactive imagination.

They were real.

And they hurt.

Bile surged up his throat. He swallowed it down, pressing his forehead into his knees, trying to breathe through the rising panic. His skin felt too tight, his thoughts too loud. His heart wouldn’t slow down.

Then—

Click.

The soft sound of a door creaking open.

“C’mon, Finney!” Gwen’s voice whisper-shouted from the doorway, urgent and hurrying.

Her head peeked through, her braid swinging forward across her shoulder as she leaned in. Once she turned fourteen she lost the double braids, opting for a singular one because it was more “mature”.

Her face was flushed with impatience, her eyes wide with mischief, like she had a secret and no time to explain. She didn’t look worried or haunted. She didn’t look like a girl who had just lost her brother. She looked like Gwen—normal, restless, very much alive.

Finney looked up at her, his mouth half-open, heart hammering in his chest.

And for a terrifying moment, he didn’t know if he should hug her or warn her.

Because if this was real—if this was truly real—then everything could still be changed.

But if it wasn’t—

Then he was still trapped.

In something far more dangerous than a basement.

But god, he had missed her. Not just her voice or her face—but everything about her. Her energy, her stubbornness, her strange mix of rage and tenderness. Just standing there, in the hallway light, Gwen looked so vividly alive that it almost made Finney want to cry. He swallowed the lump in his throat and forced his voice to work.

“I’ll be there in a second,” he muttered, voice thin and uneven.

Gwen narrowed her eyes at him, her expression tightening in concern. She looked like she wanted to ask something more—like she knew something was off—but she didn’t push. Instead, she gave him a slow nod and pulled the door shut behind her.

Alone again, Finney stood frozen for a beat. He stared at the spot where she’d been, then glanced around his room like it might disappear if he blinked too long. Everything was still where it had always been. But it felt different now—like he was looking at it all from the other side of a glass wall. This room was safety. Memory. Innocence. And none of it matched the burden—if that could even encapsulate the intensity—he carried now.

He threw on his clothes quickly, not caring if they matched. The act of dressing—of doing something so normal—felt strange and mechanical, like he was playing a part in someone else’s life. He grabbed his backpack from where it always hung on the back of his chair and tiptoed into the hall, careful not to let the floorboards creak too loud.

Their shared bathroom was empty, and Finney took the opportunity to brush his teeth in quick, clumsy strokes. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, toothbrush in his mouth, water running. The boy who looked back at him didn’t seem different—but he was. His eyes looked older, like he’d seen too much, and he didn’t recognize the heaviness behind them.

The house was silent when he emerged, except for the irregular wheezing of Terrence snoring in the living room. Finney peeked in on instinct, already knowing what he’d see.

There he was—slumped in his recliner, one arm dangling off the side, beer bottle balanced on his stomach like a grotesque crown. The ashtray on the side table was full. Several empty bottles lay scattered at his feet, clinking softly when Finney’s backpack brushed one by mistake.

He didn’t even stir.

Finney’s jaw clenched. Wednesdays were always bad. No work meant Tuesday night was a free-for-all. A pregame to nothing. A celebration of excuses.

He didn’t pause. He didn’t dare. He just slipped his shoes on, grabbed his coat from the hook, and moved toward the door like a ghost—as though if he was quiet enough, he could disappear from this house entirely.

But he already dreaded coming back. Because it wasn’t just the mess. It was the atmosphere—the thick, sour fog of alcohol and apathy that settled into the walls and clung to everything like smoke. Sometimes the house felt as if it was dying from the inside out—and was taking Finney with it.

In a matter of minutes, Finney was outside, walking beside Gwen. The air was cold and sharp against his face, stinging his cheeks and nose until he buried himself deeper into the scarf wrapped around his neck. He liked the cold—when there was something to fight it with. A thick coat, a scarf, the comforting brush of Gwen’s shoulder next to his. It made the cold feel real, but not cruel.

The bloody bed offered only so much. Its thin, stained mattress sagged in the middle, as if it had already given up. Finney had refused to nestle into it, no matter how exhausted he got. The coppery scent clung to the fabric, stale and metallic, and he couldn’t stop thinking about whose blood it was. Bruce’s. Griffin’s. Maybe even Robin’s. The idea twisted in his gut.

Lying down felt like giving in, like making peace with something he was never supposed to survive. So he stayed on the floor most nights, curled up by the black phone even when the concrete burned through his skin. At least there, he could pretend he was still fighting.

In the Grabber’s basement, the cold had been something else. A hollow, bone-deep chill that no amount of curling into himself could shake. No blanket, no warmth, not even a scrap of fabric to hold onto. Just concrete walls that radiated the same emptiness back at him. That kind of cold had felt endless. Like it wanted him to disappear.

She raised an eyebrow, her gaze dropping pointedly to his feet. Finney followed her eyes and blinked—only then noticing his shoes. One green, one black.

Great. Just great.

“Look at your hair!” Gwen fussed next, exasperated, reaching up to run her fingers through it.

She was already on her tiptoes, running her fingers through his hair like she’d been resisting the urge since the second she saw him. Her touch was rough, a little impatient, but familiar—comforting in a way that settled deep in his chest.

And really, Finney knew it wasn’t strange at all.

He missed this—missed her. Missed his family, even if it was just the two of them most days.

He winced, flinching back a little as her fingers tugged too hard.

“Ow!” he grumbled, more from habit than pain.

Gwen smirked but pulled her hand back. She looked ahead, focusing on the sidewalk, though Finney could feel her eyes flicking back to him every few steps.

Then came the question.

“Are you okay?”

She asked it simply, but there was something in her voice—like she already knew the answer. Like she just wanted him to say it out loud.

Finney hesitated before answering, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side. She didn’t resist. If anything, she leaned in a little.

He missed her. Her nagging about bullies and messy backpacks. The way she’d roll her eyes when Terrence acted like a clown but would send Finney a quick smirk anyway—one that said we’re in this together. Her sharp words, her unwavering truths that always managed to ground him when everything else fell apart.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m fine. Are you fine?”

Gwen nodded, but it was slow—hesitant. “I’m fine. It’s just…” she trailed off, then took a breath. “You looked—” she paused again, searching for the right word. “Spooked this morning. Did Dad wake up and say something to you?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, protective, ready to throw hands on his behalf if she had to. That was the thing about Gwen—no matter how small she was, she’d fight god if he looked at Finney wrong.

But Terrence was a different beast.

In the basement, Finney had thought a lot about him. The man who once held him on his shoulders at the county fair. The man who stopped caring after their mom died. The man who replaced grief with bitterness, and love with liquor.

And Finney had come to a definitive conclusion, one he hadn’t said out loud—maybe never would.

He wouldn’t call him “Dad” anymore. Not out loud. Not even in his thoughts. Because dads didn’t raise their kids on fear. Dads didn’t hit their children and pretend it was discipline. Dads didn’t drink themselves numb while the world fell apart around them.

So no—he didn’t wake Finney up this morning.

But he haunted him just the same.

Remembering that Gwen was still waiting for an answer, Finney shook his head quickly.

“No,” he muttered, the word coming out almost too fast, too automatic.

His mind, however, was elsewhere—racing back to the calendar on his wall. January 3rd. February 2nd. Griffin Stagg. Finney’s heart skipped a beat as the memory of Griffin’s name hit him again, ringing alarm bells in his brain. He had to save Griffin Stagg. He couldn’t let the same thing happen again. He couldn’t let anyone else fall into the hands of the Grabber.

His gaze drifted downward, his fingers unconsciously curling into his palms. He couldn’t think about it for too long, not with Gwen still watching him so carefully, so intently.

Gwen’s voice broke through his thoughts, her usual excitement bubbling to the surface. “Good. Anyways, I’m going to Susie’s tonight. We’ve got a math sheet to work on.”

The way she said it—so easily, so cheerfully—made Finney’s chest tighten. She sounded like she was escaping, like she always did when she talked about leaving the house, about getting away from Terrence and the chaos he stirred up. Finney could have helped her. He felt a twinge of guilt, something abrupt and uncomfortable. Gwen deserved a break from that place. She deserved the freedom to be a teenager, to laugh and joke with her friends without their family’s dysfunction hanging over her.

Finney was happy for her. He was. But part of him couldn’t help but envy the way Gwen could find a way out, while he was still stuck—trapped in the messy, suffocating world that Terrence had built around them.

He had barely been able to protect her when they were younger. The memory of those days haunted him. Back when he was still brave before Terrence’s cruelty had crushed the last bit of his confidence. Back when Finney didn’t hesitate to step between Gwen and him, to take the blows meant for her, to shield her from the things he knew no kid should ever have to endure.

But that was before the incident—the time when he’d stepped in one too many times and ended up in the hospital with a shattered left hand. The pain was still with him—lingering like an old, familiar ache. And now, whenever he thought about standing up to Terrence, fear would tighten his chest, and his hand would scream with a vehemence that left him gasping for breath.

He hated it. Hated that he couldn’t protect his sister like he used to.

But deep down, Finney knew that no matter what he did to Gwen, no matter how many times Terrence tried to break her spirit, she never lost the fierceness inside her. She never lost that fire. And that, more than anything, gave Finney a sense of relief. At least she still had that. At least someone was strong enough to survive.

Gwen’s eyes were still on him, though. Finney could feel it—her gaze, calculating and searching. She was staring at him like a predator studying the slightest movement of its prey, waiting to pounce when it was at its weakest.

He could feel sweat clinging to the back of his neck—which was odd in January—the sticky sensation almost suffocating him. He tried to look away, but it was impossible to escape the intensity of her attention. Was she onto him? Did she see through the mask he was trying to wear? The mask that said everything was fine when nothing was fine at all?

For a split second, Finney almost felt like he was going to crack under her gaze. Like he would say something he wasn’t ready to admit. He wasn’t ready to talk about the nightmares. About the telephone calls. About the things he still couldn’t shake from his mind—such as the Grabber.

But he swallowed hard, forcing himself to meet her eyes, even though it felt like she could see straight through him.

“I’m fine,” he said, the words coming out barely louder than a whisper, but it was all he could manage.

Gwen didn’t say anything at first. She just kept staring at him, her brow furrowed in that familiar, defensive way. Finney knew she wasn’t convinced. She never would be. But for now, it was enough to get by.

And maybe, just maybe, that was all he could hope for.

Gwen adjusted the grip on her bag, her fingers curling around the straps as she watched Finney carefully. There was something in her stance that was more than just casual observation—she was sizing him up, looking for the crack in his armor. And then, as if the words had been building up inside her all morning, she finally spoke, her tone heavy with accusation.

“Maybe you should spend the night at Robin’s tonight,” she said, her voice sharp like a blade.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

Gwen rolled her eyes so dramatically that it almost looked painful. “There’s something off with you today, shit-face. Maybe it’s better to stay away from home, especially when I’m not there.”

Finney flinched at her words, but there was truth in them—too much truth. Something in him snapped, the fragile threads of his patience breaking under the pressure of everything he’d been holding in. He wasn’t ready to let her in. Not like this. Not yet.

“I don’t need your protection, Gwen,” he snapped, his voice sharper than he meant it to be.

The words felt wrong, like a lie he was forcing himself to believe. What he really wanted to say was: “Yeah, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. But I can’t look Robin in the face without the possibility of falling apart. I can’t even breathe without feeling like I’m drowning. I’m sorry, but I need a rain check.”

But the words didn’t come. Instead, there was only the silence that hung between them like a thick fog.

Gwen, never one to back down, shot him a glare, her eyes narrowing. She didn’t miss a beat. “We need each other, and you know that’s true, dumbass.”

The name stung, but it was well deserved. Finney had been acting distant, hiding pieces of himself even from her—his little sister, who always seemed to see him more clearly than anyone else.

But it was too soon for Finney to admit anything. Too soon to talk about the Grabber, the basement, about being from the future —to top it all off.

By now they had made it to the front of their school, other students poring into the gate to get away from the cold.

She gave him a slight push, knocking him off balance just enough to send a jolt of annoyance through him. “Don’t deny it,” she said firmly. “Just spend the night at Robin’s tonight. Dad won’t even notice.”

Finney couldn’t bring himself to admit the real reason he couldn’t go to Robin’s. The last time he had seen the other boy, the memory still burned in his mind like a jagged wound that wouldn’t heal. Robin had been a bloody mess—his face and body barely recognizable, his clothes shredded, his skin torn and bruised. Finney hadn’t been able to save him, hadn’t been able to stop what was happening, and that image haunted him. The idea of facing Robin—of seeing his friend healthy and alive—well it was solidified that he was in the past too much. It wasn’t something Finney could explain, not to Gwen. Not yet.

“Sure,” he said, his voice softer now, trying to placate her. “We’ll see.”

He wasn’t sure if he’d actually ask Robin, but saying it made her quiet down, if only for a moment. Time would tell, he thought to himself, but he didn’t have the heart to say it out loud.

There was a pause as the two of them walked side by side, the tension in the air still thick and palpable.

Finally, Finney broke the silence. “Have you had any dreams?”

Gwen stopped dead in her tracks, her body freezing as she turned to face him, her eyes wide with a mix of surprise and suspicion.

“No,” she said quickly, her voice rising a bit in volume. “Is this why you’re acting weird? Is something going on?” Her gaze seemed to pierce him, searching for an answer, a clue, anything.

Finney felt a sudden rush of panic, his chest tightening as he scrambled to come up with an excuse. He laughed it off, though it came out more nervous than he intended.

“No! I’m fine. I’m going to eat breakfast in the cafeteria,” he said, trying to sound casual. “You go to your homeroom.”

Gwen crossed her arms, an indignant look crossing her face. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she said, her voice laced with that familiar mix of defiance and stubbornness.

Finney shot her one look—a silent plea that was both apologetic and resigned. He wasn’t in the mood to argue, not now, not with everything swirling in his mind. But the look seemed to get through to her, and with a huff, she turned on her heel and walked off in the opposite direction, her steps purposeful and firm.

As she walked away, Finney let out a long breath, his heart still racing. Gwen always had a way of cutting straight to the core of things, and it left him feeling exposed. He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to shake off the feeling of vulnerability that lingered in the air between them.

But in the back of his mind, the worry gnawed at him. If Gwen had dreams—if she had any inkling of the things he’d been seeing, the things that were chasing him from the inside—he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to protect her. Or even protect himself.

thank you so much for reading! unfortunately, the italicized font wouldn’t switch over from ao3 to tumblr, so there are some annunciated words missed. this fic is updated regularly every five days, and will be until completion.

what are your theories for the second black phone movie?

#the black phone #tbp #tbp fandom #the black phone fanfic #finney blake #robin arellano

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