"What're you even doing here anyway, Helga? You don't even come to stuff like this."
"Right, like I'm spending the weekend with my family in some lodge in Appalachia."
"So, that's it? That's why you're here ruining our vacation? Christ,Helga! Maybe if you weren't such a pain in the ass, your family would've wanted you there!"
… … …
Arnold had always considered himself a good person.
Though far from perfect, no matter what mistakes he'd made, he'd bought enough good in his life to keep that belief steadfast. And, even though his track record wasn't exactly the best lately, he was still, ultimately, good.
Because at the end of the day, he never intended to do the wrong thing on purpose, and the only times he'd lost control were when he'd been pushed to the brink.
And whether they were relevant or not, these distinctions flagged in his mind as she muscled him into a hold that forced his line of sight toward her closet, and adrenaline stole the words he would've said if she hadn't. Either way.
Even if he wasn't choked by her question Arnold wouldn't have gotten far trying to answer Helga with her suffocating him into the mattress.
He didn't fight back, but flinched hard enough from the sharp drag of her knee across his spine to gasp in the gap of air the reflex granted him.
"Helga! I'm sorry, I—"
His teeth grit as her body weight pressed through her hand as it smothered his profile with a punishing force; a chill frosting his gut at the realization that despite his overwhelm, that the shakes going through him weren't even his own.
Her voice was shaken and cracked as her frame radiated the vibrations of her fury into his.
"What…did you…see?"
His eyes scattered across her room like darts but returned, inescapably, to the closet door; beckoning him between the gaps of her fingers.
Arnold hesitated, blanking on the cusp of actually saying it, and of being more than just…hopefully vague, like he'd planned, somehow…?
Only as clear as he had to be…?
She tore a gasp from him as she twisted his arm behind his back.
"I—"
"WHAT?"
"...I saw you naked!"
It was an accident.
He cringed, clenching his eyes into the mattress at the escaped confession—and in self-admonishment...
…Like that matters?
"And, I…panicked," he scratched out, breathing rough, "so I hid in your closet."
And really, awful as it was…what else could he have done…?
Arnold swallowed uncomfortably at the sensation following that thought, some inner stirring; like damning tendrils slithering to the front of his mind.
Her turbulent shivering intensified in the cryptic moments that passed, but it wasn't the menacing weight of her silence that began to crush him.
So, that's it?
You had to see her naked?
His gut turned at the concept.
…Had? No, I mean…
Sweat beaded his hairline.
I guess I could have…warned her maybe, that I was here, before she got out of the bathroom… In case she came out before me, and wasn't decent…
He swallowed again, harder.
…But, I hadn't thought of that…
"And what did you see then, Arnold?" Helga seethed. "Huh?!"
"Nothing!" he blurted, a sharp spasm throbbing through his shoulder. "It was dark!"
Arnold broke out in a shallow pant as he endured her cruel hold in the torturous quiet that followed.
I mean, his train of thought returned, she would've killed me. Hell, she might kill me now.
And how could I think that fast, anyway? She wasn't supposed to even be here in the first place.
His stomach tightened, an inner retort already coiling around his conscience...
No.
You weren't supposed to be here in the first place.
For a moment he had no rebuttal, that truth panging dull in his chest.
…Yeah, he finally returned, but I didn't want to be. Gerald and Phoebe needed my help.
"...And?"
Though Helga's question clearly pressed a different matter, it tugged another question in turn.
Did they?
Arnold's stomach sank.
Well…no. In the end, they didn't… Phoebe jerry-rigged what she needed out of Gerald's phone…
"...And what?" he asked Helga back, and he only had half a mind when he did.
Because, even though he didn't predict it…he realized, rather acutely, that he hadn't been surprised at all, that Phoebe had managed to pull it off.
Not in the slightest.
"Don't get smart!" Helga snapped, earning a fevered gasp as she strained his arm.
It was getting harder to breathe. Why are you even thinking this stuff?
"Was that…" Helga pressed on, her tone wavering hesitantly, "all you saw…?"
Arnold shuddered. It wasn't, and the sights he had seen mixed with a tossed jumble of his thoughts.
She sounds so scared—how can I even tell her? I never meant to—it's so hard to breathe—I'm so sorry—that mess of hers on the bed—this bed—I hadn't even realized my feelings for her yet—how could I have even known I'd—
The foreboding shake of her breath snapped him to the present. He had to answer her.
And, within Arnold, where his internal compass laid, flashed a warning at the prospect of not just omitting truth, but outright lying when she'd asked a direct question…
But it weakened against his absolute refusal to mention her soiled toy after she'd left; that violation of privacy looming over the horizon of his thoughts like a truly existential threat.
And a detail that would, by all rights…unsettle anyone.
"...Yeah," the lie pushed out his throat, thickly. "I left after you did."
He winced, his conscience stabbing in his gut.
"So," came her low, dangerous whisper, after a pause. "You didn't see anything else?"
Yet, wretched as he felt, that compass warped and bent.
"No."
Arnold bit his lip.
…Unsettle her, huh?
And it just happens to be convenient for you, too.
Arnold scowled, his self-disgust eclipsing every bit of pain she dealt.
"...Alright, then," came her reply at last, oddly measured.
And, for the briefest moment he wondered if she'd lower her guard...
He cried out as she wrenched his twisted arm instead.
"What did you hear?"
"W–what? I—Ah!"
"You said you saw and heard things you shouldn't have. So…" she emphasized, voice dark and quavering. "What did you hear…?"
Fuck, he thought, his earlier words spinning him up in their recollection. She was right. He did say that. And, God…
The things he had heard…
He shouldn't have been surprised, even with the sharpness throbbing through his back and her practically maiming his arm out of the socket at that point.
Despite the harrowing reality of being faced with her painful interrogation, how awful she must feel, and the shame within him that gnawed, he felt his cock harden at those illicit memories.
…Like goddamn…fucking clockwork.
And, dammit, hadn't that been the lynchpin in all this? That so many ridiculous circumstances had set him up in an impossible position? That so much had conspired all at once to thwart his best efforts to do the right thing?
To not jerk off in her closet? To not jerk off to her at all, then and after?
To not need to? How the hell could he have resisted?
It felt like everything he'd done wrong since that day had always been against his own will and dammit, he was better than that!
And sure it was wrong, but come on! It was like he had no fucking choice!
Something seized in Arnold's chest, the view of the closet peeking between her fingers splitting into a pair of blurred doors as his eyes went distant, unfocused.
The door in his doubled vision remained closed, but another opened within him, that he hadn't even realized had been there all along, let alone wedged shut; and held an unbidden doubt behind it.
One that questioned whether or not he'd really been forced by unfair circumstance down a path that was inescapable; or if he'd actually stood at the fork of two that day.
Come on, a voice in him implored, undistorted from the heart of his inner compass, however blemished. The very one that had disarmed and guided so many others to do the right thing, and face the truth.
Since when did you start believing you never had a choice?
Arnold's eyes clenched shut, shivering through the cold, weightless drop he felt go through him.
…I always had one.
And—and it's not like I haven't beaten myself up over that fact, but… But, dammit, he thought, as his lungs seized from the pressure building in his chest, throat clogging wet and thick.
Sure makes it easier to keep going, when you use that guilt like an excuse... Like you hadn't done what you'd actually wanted…
…But, it was.
Helga's patience snapped mercilessly, tearing a bark of pain from him as she fiercened her hold on his contorted body. The heat of his crushed face flared under the punishing weight of her outstretched hand as she belted out her demands, voice choked and hard above him.
"What did you hear, Arnold?! What have you've known about all this fucking time, that you're only just telling me now? Like I'm a fucking joke!"
I heard what I wanted to hear, he thought, before his mind spun a pivot on her words.
"...Joke? H-Helga, you're not a—AH!"
"WHAT, already?!"
Fuck—!
Helga…I'm so sorry.
"You started…!"
His words choked on that crushing weight, because the lie he'd believed had never been true. He hadn't been tempted away from some actual, true desire to do the right thing.
He hadn't given in to temptation despite himself…
He did it all, everything…
…Because, deep down…he wanted to.
And she…deserved to know more than just what had happened, but about this demoralizing, despicable…fact, about the kind of person it turned out he really was. Who'd had no place for all the high roading he'd ever done…
'Maybe if you weren't such a pain in the ass, your family would've wanted you there!'
…And, was apparently even worse than what the girl he loved had ever thought of him.
The confession he'd once swore to his grave was nothing more than a murmur when it finally slipped away.
"...Touching yourself."
He nearly bit blood from his lip.
Helga had frozen completely still, but he was mentally removed from the panicked dread in his heart. Fear and impending loss didn't matter.
His, anyway...
"And—like I said, I couldn't see anything," he persisted, his voice croaking and far away. "But…"
"But what, Arnold?!" Helga scorched back, shaking as she death gripped his wrenched arm. "For fucks sake, what?!"
In that moment, for the life of him, he couldn't believe that he'd ever been deluded enough to even hope that he could keep a physical relationship with her without disclosing the truth. Or, that it'd maybe somehow work out, if she did know.
How the hell had he been able to keep holding on, when he'd known, beneath it all, that there hadn't been a chance? Fuck. He'd always been like that.
His eyes wrenched shut, breath shuddering and hitched.
Own up. Face up. There's no more holding on anymore.
And make no mistake.
After this, it's over.
All of it.
The herald of that horrible truth swelled and amplified every damn feeling inside of him until the building pressure burst, hurling the words out his throat.
"...I jerked off!" came his cracked, warped confession. "Okay? In your closet. Listening to you like a—like a fucking creep."
The sheer reality of him saying it hit in waves, twisting his guts to sick gristle from such self-exposure. If she hadn't spun his arm behind his back he might've rolled into an early grave.
"You know how you think my being such a good guy is just bullshit? Well," he reeled off, wetly, "you're fucking right. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't help myself. Honestly, you have every right to treat me like—like trash for doing something so—fucked up," he hissed in disgust, "for wanting to…"
Oh, God, though. Her silence this time.
Unreadable and intolerable, truly, like trying to stay alive in a goddamn vacuum. Left alone with just himself, and the stomach-turning fact that he'd actually had the audacity to ever consider himself a victim in all this, when he'd only found himself in this whole situation because he'd put himself in it, and used his own guilt and wrist-slapping as an allowance.
Hell, came a conspiratorial, festering thought that grit his teeth, I bet the real reason you even agreed to trespass in the first place was because you wanted to be in here, and Gerald's beggingfinally gave you an excuse you could actually accept.
You missed her, after your fuck-up at the cabin, after she'd gone distant and cold.
And that bothered you, didn't it? It bothered you so fucking much.
You could have stopped yourself. All along.
But you just didn't want to.
"Just—yell at me already," he pleaded, dreading what came next but writhing unbearably in the present, in his own skin. "Kick my ass, kick me out, or—whatever you want. I won't," his voice went scratched, small, "...bother you again. Ever."
She must have known this was torture because she didn't respond, leaving him in a wait that just pulverized.
Until, at last, she spoke.
"And…that's it?" she scrutinized expectantly. She'd pulled that sharp fury of hers back, but kept her guard. "Anything else deeply…private? That you shouldn't have seen, or heard?"
Arnold knew better than to trust the odd shift in her tone. He was dead and he knew it. And the answer was still, of course, that he had, but his decision not to mention the used toy she'd left out on that soiled towel of hers, didn't budge.
She seriously doesn't need to know that…
"No," he lied, and scorned his arm and its searing cry for relief. She could pop it out of the socket for all he deserved.
Still. For a spell, all she did was just…breathe, above him; he could feel the way the air moved through her in the flex of her grip, in the way her weight shifted.
"And you couldn't," she spoke in a hush, "...help yourself…?"
He knew every word, every utterance she made threatened danger, and was acutely aware of the neck-breaking distance between them, but puzzled. He couldn't place her inflection, but…she didn't sound pissed.
The blurred closet between her fingers split once again into twins.
Why didn't she sound pissed…?
"I tried…" he began, then scowled. "At first. But, it'sno excuse."
Arnold deflated beneath her, sinking him even further into the mattress with a weary sigh.
"Helga, I know it doesn't make a difference, but I'm," his stomach spasmed in anguish, roiling and heavy with—with everything, "I'm sorry, and I know I can never make it right."
'Maybe if you weren't such a pain in the ass, your family would've wanted you there!'
"I can't make anything right. Fuck, just me hitting you up today, and after everything I'd…God, I can only imagine how knowing all this must make you feel…I should never, have…"
A wash of despair took the words from him, overflowing and emptying him out like a tide. And realized, he was finally resigned to it.
Miserable, yet ready for the end to come.
Helga kept the commanding press of her hand across his profile, but the weight boring into his cheekbone lessened as she shifted again, adjusting above.
"Oh…" she breathed, voice lowering and slow in a tone he still couldn't read as her knee slid off his smarting back. "Arnold…"
His lungs drew deep and stopped. This was it.
He knew it, and knew better than to guess why she dropped his throbbing arm, the release sending a searing race of pins and needles that lodged a groan of discomfort and surprise in his throat. He felt the break of cool air against his cheek when she finally drew her hand back, unexpectedly, and that breathy tone lingered when she spoke again.
"Turn over."
Arnold's heart pounded, nerves scattering as he questioned why she'd want him to face her.
Maybe she wants to look me in the eye as she kills me.
Make it personal. And really. Could he blame her?
Either way, he wouldn't dare deny her the right.
Trembling, body aching in protest, Arnold dragged himself up enough to shift his hips and turn onto his elbows. Gaze lowered, avoidant, he saw her kneeling, knees apart and gripped with tight, flexing fingers.
Sweat trickling cold, he sucked in a breath and dared to lift his eyes, feeling so deplorable he could offer no more than a squint when he finally met hers.
A gasp tore through his whole body like he'd been completely doused with ice water from the way she rushed him, but not just.
Far from just.
From the sound his throat made she may as well have choked him as she sought and grabbed his cock through his open fly. The warmth of her breath fanned his cheeks as she panted, palming him up and down through his boxer briefs.
His jaw dropped, caught in her stare as he panted back, hardening and shaking in feverish shock.
"You couldn't help jerking off, trapped in my closet?"
She'd huffed the question, teeth showing, hungry and fierce in a way he'd never seen on a girl. She wrung out a moan he couldn't help as she felt around him and clenched.
"Listening to me?"
Helga kissed and bit his lip, wet and rough, and distantly swore he could feel his neurons fry when she reached under the elastic band, closed her hand around his cock, and pulled him out.
Arnold forgot how to breathe as he watched her slide her hot grip on him up and down, jerking off his cock, and the smirk in her deepened voice was undeniable.
"Didn't know you were such a freak, Football Head."
… … …
Author's Note: Alright, had to stop here because what comes after is OH boy… jumping this fic up to 20 chaps now… you probably know me well enough by now to suspect I'm not gonna just let things go smoothly from here on out, right? ;) Hope you enjoyed a bit more of that cabin tease!
Many thanks to my buddy Brandie for helping me see through this chap, and of course, to all you guys! Your feedback keeps me GOING on these long-haul fics.
ALSO… strongly recommend following me on A03 if you want new chapter alerts, as I keep finding this site's notifications to be pretty iffy