Author's Notes: There's probably too much regurgitation of the events of Episode 4 in this chapter and I really haven't reached what I was aiming for but I hope there's some value in this.

Chapter 3

Maeve stepped around the last of the line of trees concealing their wall and the knot in her stomach loosened and her breath began moving again.

Otis was there, everything she physically liked about him present in his appealing awkwardness as he paced beside their wall, seemingly in muttered conversation with an invisible unknown. She watched him as he rehearsed and the rawness in her throat returned and she hoped that meant there was something to salvage.

She sighed and steeled herself then began walking across the gravel leading up to their wall. She saw the noise alert him and watched him stop pacing and look in her direction and she could see his first instinct was to flee.

"Don't you fucking move, Milburn. I will hunt you down and gut you like a rabbit."

He jumped and shivered with trepidation and she could see he was scared of her and she knew she had spent years trying to cultivate that reaction but she wasn't sure how she felt now seeing it reflected from Otis.

He waited and studied her and as she approached she could see wariness and indecision and dread in his eyes and she wanted to throw away the armour she had been fitting into place during the walk from the caravan but she didn't feel strong enough to risk it. She needed to hear so she could understand.

"Maeve, g—" he began then retreated under the force of her protective glare as she stopped with just enough distance between them. He nodded to himself then looked down and seemed almost startled at something he saw then she noticed a piece of paper in his hand that he began alternatively holding out to her and trying to hide behind his bum.

Her curiosity rose but she simply looked at him until he nodded again and surrendered and slid the note into his back pocket and breathed deeply and swallowed and set his shoulders and raised forlorn blue eyes to her face and she had a microsecond to force her own eyes to seem dead.

"I'm sorry, Maeve," he murmured and the emptiness of his voice almost shattered the armour to microfragments.

"Yeah. You said." To a dismayed Otis, her voice seemed flat with indifference.

He took a deep breath and looked away and gathered his words and tried again but his eyes never quite reached her own. "I mean, I'm really sorry."

She noticed his hands reaching out and withdrawing as he spoke but she didn't say anything and she didn't move.

"I hurt you. I betrayed your trust. I basically—" He straightened suddenly as a realization struck. "No, not basically," he said, annoyed with himself before looking Maeve directly in the eyes and continuing with a fierce earnestness. "I did lie to you, Maeve. Repeatedly. I lied. Lies of omission. Lies of commission. Just lie after lie after lie. And I shouldn't have. You're m—" He stumbled as dissonance hit and he hesitated and he dropped his head and he seemed to shrink and when he continued his voice was strangled in his throat. "You were my friend and I let you down and I'm sorry."

She hoped her face was still showing stone.

"You deserved better than that," he finished, quietly.

She watched him take a deep breath then set his posture and finally return his eyes to hers to await sentence and that glorious blue was clear for the first time since the explosion.

She held his gaze for longer than she could see he was comfortable with then snapped, "You fucking bet I did. I deserved—I deserve- a helluva lot better, Otis."

She gave him an ever fiercer glare then looked down and reached into her bag and pulled out a cigarette and lighter and he took another opportunity to ogle the ground and a little more of the knot in her stomach drifted away.

She lit the cigarette and took a few drags while watching him until she finally asked, "So why did you do it?" and her voice was not satin but it was not steel.

"I…" he started and faltered.

She watched him struggle to find a word to restart then she moved past him to lean her back against the wall. "Come on. Tell me everything. And be honest, Otis." She allowed the armour to fade for a moment. "I need you to be honest."

After long moments of staring at him, watching him start to speak and then swallow his words, she raised her face to the sky, sighed and said with only a tinge of impatience, "So what did Jackson first say to you?"

She could see he was grateful for the focus as he straightened and turned to her and his words tumbled out in a rush. "Eric and I were sitting in the study, just minding our own business and we were talking and I think we were studying English and Eric saw Jackson coming over and Eric was smitten because—"

She rolled her eyes and snapped, "Stop waffling. Get to the point. I want to finish this conversation before the Universe explodes."

She could see his mind leap to a place where he felt more secure and her heart dropped. "Well, actually, if you go by the Big Freeze theory—"

She threw her cigarette and her patience away. "Right, we're done. Have a shitty life and stay the fuck away from me, Otis."

She stepped away from the wall and started to walk back towards the trees, face set against the tears fighting to break free. She should have known this would be a waste of her time. It always was.

"No, Maeve, please," she heard him call from behind her and the desperation in his voice dragged her to a standstill. "Please. I'm sorry. I'll… I'll get to the point. I won't waffle." His voice was barely a whisper that hit harder than a spittle-flecked scream. "Please."

She turned and looked at him and the full force of her glare made him flinch and she knew he couldn't see how flimsy her armour really was.

Otis took two deep breaths and looked into her eyes. "Jackson said he knew I was your friend—" He faltered slightly as she snorted. "—and said he wanted to hang out with you for more than just the sex and he wanted me to help get you to be his girlfriend and then he just shoved money in my hand and walked off."

She waited a moment to savour the indignant and disbelieving shrug he gave then asked, "So why didn't you just tell me? Wouldn't have been a big deal. I could have just told him to fuck off and the money was a tax for wasting our time."

"I couldn't, Maeve." His face twisted in anguish and she had to force the armour to hold.

"Why not?" Maeve asked, hope and desperation making her harsher than she wanted to be. "You had a tongue, didn't you? Or did he take that when he gave you the money? Is that what the money was really for and you just fucked me over for the hell of it?"

"I was in love with you, Maeve," he said as he bent over and put his hands on his knees, looking as if he'd been gutpunched.

She still couldn't understand because it made no sense but she couldn't bring herself to say anything and he finally turned his head to look at her.

His voice was so hollow she struggled to hear his words. "Eric knew. I was in denial, but Eric knew."

Her voice was still firm if not quite as sharp as she spoke again. "So what did you concoct in that pretty little head of yours to tell Jackson so he could 'get' me?"

He straightened and stepped towards her, willing his eyes into hers. "I wanted to give the money back."

Familiarity swept through her as she stared into the blue that had been etching itself into her soul and she dropped her eyes to her hands to escape, both fearing and hoping he had noticed. She shrugged to conceal a shiver. "So why didn't you?"

"I tried, Maeve. I really tried. But Jackson… He's like…" She looked back up at him and let annoyance claim her face as she sensed he was going to start waffling again and he clamped down on the sentences that were about to escape and took a deep breath and restarted. "He was talking about you like you were an inanimate object."

She smiled, cynically amused. "What? Like a pocket pussy? Blow-up doll?"

"No, like a… like a Rubik's Cube that he couldn't solve. Or a sexy merry-go-round that went round and round and he couldn't get off."

She snorted and smiled and looked at her fingernails and deliberately missed the point. "He always got off with me."

Otis pressed his lips together momentarily and she hid her smile as he deliberately ignored her words.

"That really annoyed me," he continued, with an indignance that shot right through her. "I told him you weren't an object. That you were a person. And I asked him if he ever thought of just asking you what you wanted or what you liked. And then…"

"Then…?" She bit gently into her thumbnail.

"He was like a Jedi. He just opened his mouth and no matter—"

She shook her head sharply. "You're waffling again. It's not cute today, Otis. It's boring."

He completely missed the significance of her words and she wasn't sure if she was disappointed or relieved but her pout may have been pointing the way.

"He asked me what you liked and I told him," he said, flatly.

"What did you tell him?" she asked as she walked past him to return to the wall.

"That you had a really dark sense of humour."

She leaned against the wall and didn't know what to do with her hands. "What else?"

"That you liked female writers like Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath and Roxane Gay and that you had really great taste in music like Joy Division and Nirvana and Bikini Kill but you weren't a snob because you listened to pop as well."

She smiled and felt seen and let her posture relax and she noticed her armour in pieces on the ground. "And you can just remember everything you said to him? Just like that? No reaching? You don't have to try to think back?"

"Of course I remember, Maeve. I was in love with you."

She hoped she hadn't flinched when she finally realised he had been using the past tense.

"So what next?" she asked quickly. "What did you do next? What did he do next?"

Otis sighed and put his forehead against his fingertips. "He started using what I told him to… intrigue you?" He frowned uncertainly at her, his eyes querying whether that was the right term.

She stared at the fingernails of her left hand for a moment, then nodded. "'Intrigue' is probably right. It was weird. I was just… I was looking at him in a new light. I hadn't thought of him liking stuff like that—" She almost smiled again and her posture softened and then she remembered.

Her voice was flat as she continued. "But he didn't, did he? He didn't actually like stuff like that."

Otis sighed and she glanced up at him as he spoke tentatively. "He said he liked some of it. And that you were mad brainy and the two of you were texting all the time."

She pouted a little and picked at one finger. "Yeah, he did say he really liked The Bell Jar."

"He said it was good seeing things outside our bubble sometimes."

"So, what next?" she asked, trying for indifference.

"He came up to me and said he was going to ask you out. Properly, this time. And he asked me how he should do it so he didn't screw it up. Because he really really liked you. He went to bed dreaming of you. He woke up thinking of you. He… he thought you could be… The One."

She gave a little smile and snorted then allowed soft puzzlement to caress her face. "So why did you tell him to go for the Grand Gesture? You knew I didn't like them."

Otis sighed and stepped back, frowning and hesitating before speaking. "I thought… I thought if he went for the Big Grand Gesture you would just be so horrified or disgusted that you'd turn and walk away giving him the double-barrel fingers as you went and I… I wouldn't have to be jealous of him."

She looked searchingly at him and she knew he was untruthful but she didn't know why.

He took a breath and looked directly at her. "And I owe you another really big apology about that. I'm sorry. I never thought about what it would be like for you, being put in a position like that because if you rejected him then you'd be the Biggest Villain Ever and it would be another thing for people to attack you with and you didn't need that. You didn't deserve that. And it would be my fault your life would be worse."

He looked at her and she was just staring at him. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

There was a very long silence between them as she pondered and ruminated and reflected until finally she realized and she stopped biting her nail and softened her posture and firmly shook her head. "Bullshit."

He flinched and frowned. "What?"

"You didn't tell him to try the Big Romantic Gesture because you wanted me to get right the fuck away from him because you loved me and thought you may have had a slight infinitesimal chance with me if he was out of the picture. You wouldn't have been that selfish, Otis. You would have thought about what it would be like for me and you would never have deliberately set things up to hurt me or embarrass me even if you were jealous he was already with me sometimes. Unless…"

"Unless…?" he asked with a failed attempt at puzzled innocence and she could see she had struck a nerve.

"Unless he did something to annoy you so much you weren't even thinking about me."

She smiled as he flinched and dropped his gaze and she moved to stand directly in front of him.

She hoped he could hear her smile. "He did something to annoy you and you wanted to see him fall flat on his arse."

His shoulders deflated and she wanted to hug him and celebrate her victory but she was enjoying her feelings of relief too much. "So what did he do?"

"It doesn't matter, Maeve. I lied to you. I hurt you. I put you in what could have been a shitty situation—"

She was disappointed he wasn't looking at her smile. "What did he say to you, Otis?"

Otis looked anywhere but her face. "It doesn't—"

"Otis," she snapped.

Otis jumped and squeaked and looked at her and she almost burst out laughing. "He called me a little mum man."

"What?" This time she did laugh.

"'Mum!'" he said and began walking away from and back toward her, gaze flying anywhere but toward her. "He said 'mum'. I heard 'Mum'. My mum. My crazy mental overstepping no-boundaries therapist mum and I remembered I was being a therapist which meant Mum and I were similar and I was like my mum and we were fighting and I didn't want to be similar and I didn't want to be like my mum and it really stung that I could be like my mum and Jackson was the one who implied I was like my mum and I was jealous of the way Jackson never had any problem asking girls out because he could just ask them and they would say 'yes' and the way he was so handsome and so popular and had everyone gazing at him as if he was a god striding past and even you were checking him out even before all the book stuff and I was jealous and I wanted him to fail and I wanted him to fall on his medal-winning golden champion head prefect boy perfect arse and I wouldn't have to think of him being with you and making you laugh and making you smile and making you happy."

He wound down to a halt and regained his composure and when he finally had the courage to look at her she could see he was surprised by the presence of something they both thought they had lost forever.

They held their gaze for a long time before she murmured, "And the next time you saw him I was snogging his face off after he sang that I was cheating and lying to get any guy that I fancied."

Otis straightened and faced her directly and reflected on her words and relaxed into a small smile. "When I think about it that line was a classic example of projection."

Maeve chuckled and shook her head and savoured the lightness in her heart.

"Inadvertently," he finished, lamely.

She punched him gently in the arm. "Only you, muppet, could push me closer to the guy you were trying to break me away from. When you fuck it up, you really fuck it up."

He shrugged and nodded and grimaced. "I could go to the Olympics for Fucking Up."

She snorted a chuckle and gave him a smile she noticed she seemed to have been reserving only for him lately. "Otis Milburn, World Champion Fucking-Upperer. Gold, Silver, Bronze, Diamond, Platinum, Quartz and Lego medals."

He snorted his own chuckle and stared into her eyes and she watched his smile spread throughout his body.

An eternity of familiarity passed for both of them before she spoke again.

"Did it hurt when you saw me kiss Jackson?" she asked softly.

"A lot," he breathed.

She never broke his gaze but her tone was gentle. "Good."

Author's Note: Hope you found some entertainment.

May be a few days before the next chapter.

This writing thing is hard.

I'm primarily a dialogue writer (see my Castle story 'I Didn't Say It Was A Date') but sometimes I need to put flesh on the bones.

I don't think this chapter has enough flesh, especially in the latter half.

Maybe one day I can find a way to improve it but for now this is the best I can do.