Black Velvet (44) (Patreon)

(A/N:  Hey guys! Sorry about the change to this chapter!  I'm focusing on developing the friendship/romantic aspects of Tobias and Oliver's relationship before/during the *spicier* scenes.  So the scene that was ORIGINALLY HERE, shhh OG readers, will still be here, just later on.  I have another scene coming up instead.  I'm reworking scenes, but all the OG scenes that you guys enjoyed will still be present, just at different times.

Wicked Boy and The Blue House of 1478 are next!  Thanks for your patience! I'm a medical assistant, so I've been working extremely long shifts this month, so I have to leave for work an hour early even to have the chance to write!  I really apologize!)

—

"Um, hi." The light from the hallway seems too bright, and I reach an ungraceful hand out to brush against the switch, darkening everything but my room.  Tobias' regard shifts from my hand and back to my eyes.  I stare up at him because, right now, it feels like I'm allowed to.

"Hi."

"Nic might wake up."  I wave towards the dark house, like Nic isn't the heaviest sleeper known to man, and the light only really bothers me.  Tobias nods, but his gaze is still studying and unsure.  I think he may have used all his courage already.

But I don't want him to leave.

"...Do you — you like space, right?" I feel my face heat when his eyebrows lift, "Everyone likes space.  Duh.  I think.  I mean, if you don't, that's okay.  People can have different hobbies —"

Oh no.

I take a step back into my room, shrugging off the onslaught of sudden insecurity.   It's slim to none that Tobias is interested in my science addiction.  I can't think of what else to talk about.  I'm not the best at reading people, but it's definitely not what he came to my door for —

"Never mind, I, uh." I wrinkle my nose, feel my hands curling around the doorknob,  "I'm just kind of nervous,"

"I do."  Tobias cuts in as I'm almost through my door.  I watch how his free hand taps against the balcony in a steady rhythm like he's contemplating something in his head. He finally takes a step towards me, fingers sliding from the wood.

I blink up at him, nose wrinkling,

"You're just saying that."

"So?" The dark-haired man smirks with his comment, especially when my sting of nerves settle, and lifts his chin like he's challenging me.  "You wanna talk my ear off about it or not?"

I dip my fingers together shyly, smile back at him,

"Kind of?"  I gesture back into my room, and Tobias steps forward.  "Um.  I just got a new magazine."

-

It's surreal that Tobias is perched in my desk chair.  He has his fist curled under his chin as I ramble on about the article I was having trouble focusing on before my run-in with him.   Now I can focus because no matter how much his interest is possibly feigned, I could go on and on about space to anyone willing to listen.

He hasn't said anything at all, just lent his ear for the past half hour,

Impressive.

"So, I spent like five hours in video-chat with my project partner," I spread my arms out in front of me, like I'm displaying every image that's currently occupying my brain, "just talking about black holes!"

"I'm shocked." Tobias snarks, finally, voice low with the lack of use. He rolls his shoulders when I glower back at him, the side of his lip curling upwards.

"Rude, anyway.  So, he thinks that if the sun collapses into itself, that it's a large enough star that the black hole left behind will just — you know like," I wave my hand around, "suck up earth. Do you believe that? The sun's not big enough. It's not big enough to make a black hole. And I was partnered with him, against my will."

"This guy is in your physics class?"

"Yes. It's ridiculous, I know."

"Look at you making friends," Tobias quips, light from the outside street lamp flooding through my window against the cut of his jaw. His dark eyes are trained on me, interested, "Shouldn't you be getting along with people who like astronomy as much as you?"

I roll my eyes, sighing. I cross my legs against my bed, tugging at the edge of my sock,

"I never get along with people who like astronomy as much as me.  They can't obsess the way that I do."

Tobias laughs softly, twisting in his chair quietly.

"Well.  I didn't know that about the sun. What would happen, then? If it turned to a black hole?"

"Well."  I squint. "Wait... Am I talking too much?"

"No," Tobias' head tilts, and he leans forward, his arms between his knees, "that's why I'm asking you to talk more.  Go on."

"Okay," I smile at that, though I try really hard not to.  I scoot to the side of the bed, dropping my legs over the edge, "well, even if a sun were — somehow to become a black hole, with the same mass as the sun, planets would just continue to orbit it.  They wouldn't like — get sucked in.  No way."

"How big would the sun need to be?" Tobias' brows gather, and he leans back in the chair. His long legs drag out against the carpet in front of him, almost enough to where his socked feet touch mine. "To become a black hole?  Isn't the sun huge?"

"Relatively to the earth," I nod, excited that he's even listening because science is awesome, and space is even better, "the earth could fit into the sun a million times over. But it'd still have to be twenty times the size that it is now to supernova and then collapse into a black hole."

"What's on the other side of a black hole?" Tobias wrinkles his nose and splays his fingers wide against the armrests.  Even if he's a cynic, he's interested, "do they know?"

"You'd literally be turned to spaghetti before you'd ever find out," I pull myself to my knees and let my gaze shift to the stars on the blankets under me, "yikes."

"Morbid."  He raises a brow, "Spaghetti?"

"Yeah, okay, Morty McMoody, I'm the morbid one."  I pick at the blankets, "This scientist guy called a body being reduced to strands of atoms spaghettification. I'm dead serious. It doesn't leave your brain after that."

"Scientist guy compared a body to spaghetti."

"It's a term they use."

"Really?" Tobias, who has his eyes narrowed like he doesn't believe me, pushes up from the chair and steps over to me, "In your magazine, someone said spaghettification is a real term?" He's reaching for it already, and I bat his arms away,

"Hey, hey," I frown, pulling the magazine from his grip when he finally grabs onto it, "I watched it on an Astrophysics documentary last year; it's the complete truth.  Stephen Hawkins himself says spaghettification. I don't lie."

"Bull."

"It's a thing."

"Hmm." Tobias frowns pointedly, crosses his arms as he picks at one of the plain silver rings that adorn his fingers.  I glare, pointing at the tv,

"It's true."

"Sure.  You aren't showing me any evidence."

"I so just watched it. I watched it like," I try to think of the day, mind going conveniently blank. "Well, I don't remember, but I watched it."

"Prove it," He shoves me to the other side of the bed with a swift jerk of his arm, and I laugh as I hit the mattress, and he sits in the commandeered space. "What's the documentary called?"

"Woah," I shake my head, righting myself and reaching for the remote.  "...You could've just asked me to watch it with you."

Tobias glares.  There's no heat to it, for once.

--

Previous Chapter  |  Next Chapter  |  First Chapter