Chapter Text
Jasper's POV
Jasper sat in the backseat of Evana’s car, parked in front of the convenience store at the gas station. Outside, the air was warm with the scent of summer, and the car smelled faintly like a mix of gasoline and the lavender air freshener swinging from the rearview mirror.
Elva sat beside him, scrolling through her phone, looking for the thing she wanted to show him.
“Have you done today’s Wordle?” she asked, hovering her thumb over the search bar.
“You’re old school, Elvie. There’s an app for that,” he teased.
She clicked her tongue in irritation and switched the tab to her Nerdle game.
“Look,” she said. “I guessed today’s equation in two tries.”
Jasper leaned in, grateful for the excuse to be closer. “Genius.”
Elva shrugged, mumbling something about luck and the numbers being easy to narrow down, though she was visibly flattered at the praise. She moved her thumb back to the previous tab and pressed on the search bar.
And then it happened.
She unintentionally pressed the letter “S”, and the search bar displayed her search history. He was still looking over her shoulder when his eyes caught a glimpse of a certain URL.
https://www.sneezefetishforum.com/forum/1-general-discussion/
He didn’t know how he caught that, considering the lights were dim and Elva’s phone screen was glaringly bright. He had to squint; he wasn’t wearing his glasses or contacts. She’d swiftly closed the tab and opened the app store before he could read it properly.
Elva's expression didn't change. She continued typing for Wordle in the app store and resumed the conversation as if nothing had happened.
“I can’t find the app.”
“It’s NYT Games. Here, let me—” Jasper offered before she quickly interjected.
“No. I got it. Thanks.”
While waiting for the app to load, Elva tilted the phone toward him again to show him some cursed-looking AI-generated advertisement. She was so… composed. Too composed. It made him want to test the waters. For all he knew, maybe she just had the Sneeze Fetish Forum open because a friend had confessed their weird fetish to her. People tended to do things like that with Elva. He’d even considered it himself.
“Hey, Elvie?”
“Mm?”
He forced a sharp inhale through his nose, enough to sound like sniffling or someone on the precipice of a sneeze.
Her hands tensed around her phone, and her eyes flicked to him for a split second and then flicked back to the screen.
Jasper smiled faintly. “Allergies. It’s kinda dusty in here." He leaned back in his seat.
She made a vague sound of sympathetic agreement. Her ears were pink. He was so going to hell for that.
This was new terrain. Jasper didn’t know whether to laugh, confess that he, too, frequented this strange blue site, or sneeze on purpose.
He cleared his throat and slipped into the far right seat, leaving a gap between them. He looked out the window so she wouldn’t see the stupid look of excitement on his face.
He'd been dying to confess to her since their junior year of high school. He's been trying since they graduated, but then they went to separate universities, and even though they weren't too far apart, life and academics got in the way. He planned to confess eventually when the timing was right, he had a clear-cut plan, and wasn't absolutely terrified.
His head was spinning with possibilities.
This was giving him ideas.
***
Elva's POV
Elva was trying not to freak out. She stared at her phone and trained her face into the most neutral expression as if that could override this massive slip-up that transpired within a millisecond. What is wrong with me? Elva, you fool! He couldn’t have seen that, right?
She didn’t dare look at him to check.
And then he sniffled, muttering something about allergies. Was he taunting her??
Elva couldn’t angrily call him out for anything because 1. in the case that he hadn’t seen it, she would directly be outing herself, 2. she wondered if she was just projecting her paranoia onto her poor best-friend, who genuinely was susceptible to allergens, and 3. if he had seen it… Well, she really had no way to tell because he couldn’t have, right?
She felt like an awful person.
Jasper was minding his own business now, looking at a random video of a sport she couldn’t care less about, but had some knowledge of because he played it. She wasn’t going to ask him about Wordle anymore.
Moments later, Evana emerged from the convenience store like her saving grace. The silence was getting too unbearable. Eva entered the car with a grape-flavored drink for Jasper and a carton of chocolate milk for her.
“I was thinking about getting coffee, but I need to sleep early tonight,” she said as she handed Elva her drink.
“Eves, remind me to send out that Google Form for the international students tomorrow,” Jasper chimed in. The conversation shifted to student council responsibilities, giving Elva an excuse to tune out because she didn’t go to the same school as them.
She stared out the window as the car began to move. She didn’t speak unless someone asked her something directly, which they didn’t. It was just Jasper and Evana bantering, a noise she would normally find comforting if she hadn't been feeling so distracted and anxious.
Elva didn’t know when it started, but sometime in junior year, she’d begun to suspect Jasper had a crush on her. She’d started noticing a tiny shift in their dynamic, though she couldn’t quite place what it was.
He never said anything, though. And she wasn’t going to admit that she’d started liking him right after this whole theory started playing around in her head. Jasper was supposed to be her best friend. Her annoying, overachieving, kind of too good-looking best friend. She’d only started noticing the last part very recently.
Somewhere along the way, she’d become increasingly aware of stupid little things like how good certain shirts fit him, how he squinted at screens like a grandpa, how high his voice could get when he was laughing...
It was all Mrs. Lorraine, their high school computer science teacher’s, fault. During their last few years of high school, she’d constantly pair her up with Jasper, which she honestly didn’t mind, but Elva hated how knowing she looked every time she handed them an assignment and insisted they do it in pairs.
“We’re a good team,” Jasper said once after class, slinging his bag over his shoulder with that easy grin. And she would nod but wish that he would just say something.
Fast forward into the future, and here they were, twenty-one and still very much in each other’s orbits, with Elva pretending she didn’t wish that Jasper would confess to her so she’d at least have a chance at deciding if she wanted something more.
She wasn't going to bring it up first. He started it. She wasn’t going to play this hinting game, which left her over-analyzing every offhand comment he made and his body language. It frustrated her because Jasper wasn’t a shy person, and yet he couldn’t say anything to her. Maybe that was the point, or maybe she was only a Plan B, or maybe she’d been misreading the signs, and maybe this whole crush thing was a delusion.
Elva wasn’t going to admit to anything, especially not after she’d almost exposed herself. Or exposed herself.
Because if he had seen it…
IF he had—
She swallowed and snuck a glance in his direction.
Jasper was laughing at something Evana said. He was literally on the edge of his seat and holding the front passenger seat to prevent himself from doubling over.
Elva looked back out the window.
He hadn’t seen it. Probably.