LOST BOY - vance hopper x reader

4: research

Your last class gets out a few minutes early and you immediately make your way to the library. Although you haven't spoken to him since he stormed off, you've seen him quietly lurking around. Figuring you've offended his tough-guy sensibilities by offering to hold his hand, you let him keep his distance until he's ready to come back to you.

"Hey," you say, approaching the librarian's desk, "I'm new here but I'm doing a project on the history of the school. I was wondering where you kept the old yearbooks."

"They're at the back next to the bulletin board," the librarian says, gesturing in their direction.

"Alright, and how many can I take out at once?" you say.

"You can take three at a time, but you're welcome to stay here until we close and browse them, too," she says.

Damn. Only three? You were just going to grab a bunch of them and leave, but three won't be enough, especially for a whole weekend. You decide to stay in the library and look through at least a couple before taking some home.

When you reach the back wall you see a shelf full of old yearbooks, multiple copies from every year. That's good, at least, there aren't any years missing. But where do you start? You figure he looks like someone from the 70s or 80s, so you decide to start at 1989 and work your way back, taking the '89 yearbook off of the shelf and setting it on one of the tables in front of you. It's Friday afternoon, most of the other students wanted to go home, so the library is fairly quiet.

As you begin flipping through the yearbook you realize this might be a bigger task than you thought. Every book had hundreds of students, their grainy old photos lined up in rows on the pages. Finding someone without a name was going to be difficult, and you don't let yourself start skimming. You have to look at every photo before moving on and confirm it's not him, if you start skipping over the obvious cases you might get lazy and skip his by mistake. Then you'd have to start this process all over again. It was like a long, tedious game of Where's Waldo.

You're about halfway through 1989 when the ghost sits down with you, so quietly you don't even realize he's there. You look up and jump in your seat a little when you see that he's there.

"Find anything?" he asks.

"Just a bunch of guys with mullets," you say, flipping to the next page.

He leans in to look over it with you, mouthing some of the names as he goes. The students in this yearbook look a bit closer to him, aesthetic-wise, though you suspect you'll have to go a little earlier to find more of his fashion sense. Most were smiling, some looked like they were taking mugshots. You wonder if he smiled in his picture, or if he thought it'd be cooler not to.

"You recognize any of them?" you ask.

He shakes his head, "No."

You continue to work your way through the 1989 yearbook, and he sits quietly with you all the while, occasionally laughing at a hairstyle or outfit that he finds goofy but mostly just watching you work.

Something cold brushes up against your hand and you look over through the corner of your eye to see him lightly touching his pinky to yours. He moves it over slightly, one finger at a time until his hand is resting on yours. You keep reading and pretend not to notice, but you spread your fingers apart just wide enough that he can interlace his with yours if he wants.

And he does, giving you a light squeeze as your fingers intertwine. You don't say anything; he has to realize that you've noticed, but as long as you don't point it out it doesn't seem to scare him away like it did before.

Unconsciously, you see the end of the yearbook approaching and start to go a little slower so you won't have to get up and disturb him, and by the time you finish he's distracted by something else and pulls away.

"What day is it?" he says, looking over at the bulletin board.

"October 28th. Why?"

"Then that's tomorrow?" he says, pointing at the advertisement for the Halloween dance.

You've seen posters for it, and you knew it was coming, but truthfully it had been the furthest thing from your mind. If you had friends to go with it'd be fun but as it was you had no interest in spending more time at this school.

"Yeah," you say.

"Are you going?" he says.

"No," you say, "The last thing I want to do is stand against the wall drinking warm fruit punch alone for three hours while all the kids who hate me party it up."

He hesitates, biting down on his lower lip. "You could go with me."

"What?"

"Not because we're together or anything like that, just...I dunno, it's been a long time since I paid any attention to music, it might help jog my memory. Like research, nothing personal," he mumbles.

If ghosts could blush, you're pretty sure he'd be blushing right now.

"I...I've only been here a week and haven't really made a good impression on anyone, you know," you say, "I doubt they're gonna be nice to me if they see me there dancing alone."

Plus, Bri and Todd would be getting home late this evening and would definitely be going to the dance tomorrow. Maybe they've moved on to other targets by now, but you don't really feel like risking it.

"Who cares about those pricks? Besides, I know all the secret spots where you can be alone and still hear the music pretty well," he says, "And like I said. It's just for research."

You smirk at him. "Weren't you just telling me to get the hell out of your school?"

"If you don't want to go with me, just say so, geez," he says, and you can see that his over-defensive pride has been hurt once again.

"Hey, no," you say, putting a hand on his shoulder before he can get up and leave, which stops him dead in his tracks. "I'll go with you. I'd like to go with you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It'll be fun. And it could help you."

He smiles at you just for a split second before trying to play it cool, and that smile makes you question how much of it is actually for research. On his end, and on yours. It's getting close to the end of library hours, so you put the finished yearbook back on the shelf and grab three more (you can swap them out for another three after the dance, at least).

"I'll see you there, then," he says as you pack your things.

—

When you get home your head is spinning, and you collapse onto your bed. What a hell of a week it's been. Day one you were terrified, and pretty sure you were going to have to switch schools again.

Now you're here clutching a bunch of old yearbooks to your chest, trying to stop your heart from racing at the thought of your...no, you wouldn't call it a date. Like he said, it was just to help him figure things out. Then why were you getting butterflies in your stomach? Even if he weren't a ghost, he was still a jerk and not the kind of guy you should want to hang around with.

Right? Right.

You swallow the lump in your throat, and get to working your way through the next group of yearbooks so you can switch them out at the dance.