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Nolan beamed at them from across the table. “Whaddoya think? Movie night, every Friday. No parents, loads of snacks, it’ll be great.”

Katherine looked thoughtful. “And we vote on the movies? I don't want to watch any of your dumb B-movie cheese.”

Nolan leaned back in his chair. “You’ll come around. Buncha friends all snarking at a terrible movie? There’s magic to it. You’ll see. Ava, how ‘bout you, you in?”

Ava looked down at the latte she had been quietly nursing. She didn’t do anything on Fridays. She honestly didn’t do much during the week at all. A chance to get out from her room would be nice. “Yeah, okay.”

“Ev?” asked Nolan.

Everett was staring out the cafe’s window at the passing cars. He looked pensive. “I can make the next three weeks, I think,” he began, and Ava could see Nolan lean back in to listen a little closer. “But after that I'll be away for a bit, so.”

“Away doing what?” asked Katherine.

“Yeah, what could be more important than hangin’ with us?” Nolan added.

Everett’s eyes followed a large SUV as it trundled past. “I have to go stay with my mom for a few weeks, over the summer.”

A wince was shared among the table. Ava could hear the carefully leveled tone of his voice, and his tightly clenched fists. She spoke up. “Are you, um, ready for that, Everett?”

Everett’s shoulders slumped a bit. “No. I'm not.” His voice wavered, and his fists unclenched and then reclenched.

Nolan leaned over to pat his friend on the shoulder. “Hey, it’s not like you’re gonna be totally out of our lives while you’re out there, yaknow? You can always vent to us over text, no matter what she gets up to.”

There was a moment of silence, as Everett continued to stare out the window. Then he sighed and turned back to the table. “Yeah, you’re right. It just feels so alone up there. Knowing you guys are all still back here, and I'm trapped in that house, with her.”

Ava’s hands twisted under the table. She just didn’t know how to help him. She wished she could hold his hand, and reassure him, and make sure he knew he wasn’t alone no matter where he went. She wished she could go with him, to help him deal with his mother a little easier. She wished that she could say something, but friendship coiled around her.

Friendship held her jaw shut, because it knew that if you say too much you could lose it. Friendship kept her hands in her lap, because it knew you couldn’t just hold a friend’s hand like that. Friendship kept her sitting in the chair, watching as Katherine stood up and walked over to give Everett a hug.

And then friendship let her go and join the hug, because now that Katherine had done it it was okay. She could feel Nolan join in the hug, and feel the warm feeling of unity rush through her heart, and Everett said, “Thanks, you guys.” And then Nolan detached, and then Ava detached, and then Katherine detached.

Nolan clapped his hands together and said, “Alright, well, we’ll just have to make sure these movie nights are the best ones!”

Then the conversation drifted into unfamiliar waters for Ava. As much as she enjoyed listening to Nolan and Katherine talk about movies, she didn’t know much about them herself. She didn’t really enjoy a lot of movies, especially not alone. Especially in her room, in the dark. It felt melancholy, and she could never really enjoy it.

So as Everett joined in the little argument Nolan and Katherine were having about their nominations for the first movie, Ava sat back and just enjoyed the company. It was nice, meeting up like this. It was peaceful.

And then Nolan asked if Everett would support his nomination, and Everett shrugged, and Katherine demanded that he support her nomination, and he shrugged again. And then Nolan and Katherine were in front of her.

Katherine went first, cutting off Nolan’s words. “Ava, c’mon, you’re the tiebreaker. Don’t you want to see a heist movie? It's a really damn good one. Disgruntled office workers deciding to finally reach out and take what they want. They’re hilarious and awesome and they bumble through the heist together and it’s great.”

Nolan replied, half to Katherine and half to Ava. “You have no taste. That’s just some dumb action film. Trust me, Ava, my film is way dumber. Made by some insane madman who hired porn stars to act in his masterpiece. It's so self-indulgent you would not believe it."

Ava looked at Katherine, and then she looked at Nolan. Action felt stressful. It felt hectic. And even around her friends she didn't really want to go for it. Nolan’s film would be terrible and dumb and fake, but it would be comfortable.

“What’s the movie called?” she asked Nolan.

“The King of Spell Rock,” Nolan answered, sounding almost proud of the title.

“Let's watch that one.”

Nolan pumped his fist. Katherine dramatically put her head in her hands, and said, “Goddamn it. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

There was a little more conversation after that, the sort of conversation that happens when everyone’s said everything they wanted to say and just talk so they don’t have to leave each other’s company. Most of their meetups ended that way. It was nice, honestly, that nobody wanted to part ways.

But they did, and Ava climbed the steps up to the L train, and she stood on the platform. And her mind went back to Everett, and to every angry text about her that Ava had received from him, and every frustrated conversation that he’d vented about her in, and she wished she could do more. She wished she could do something. Everett deserved happiness, he didn’t deserve his mom. Ava just wished she could be the one to give him happiness.

Ava’s hands twisted, and friendship draped itself across her shoulders, and she didn’t text Everett all the way home.

Synopsis: Ava, who is Cuff in civilian clothes, nervously attempts to court Everett, who is Tecton in civilian clothes. Naturally, as they hang out, and hang out with their friends Katherine (Grace) and Nolan (Raymancer), feelings get twisted and tangled. Only one way to find out where those feelings lead!

A/N:
I noticed that there was a disappointing dearth of shipfics available, and worse yet, that Cuff seemed largely absent from basically everything. So, you know what they say: become the fanfiction writer that you want to see in the world.

The fanfiction writer that I want to see in the world is one who cranks out updates for this story day in day out til either the story gives out or her fingers do. That in mind, let us begin!

This is being crossposted from SB, so sorry if there's formatting weirdness. I've never really used DW before.

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The Chicago Cultural Center had a statue of a cow in front of it, made of bronze. A small gaggle of tourists, having tasted the heady delight that was city life, were currently in the process of snapping pictures of it. Their children climbed on top of it, happy to be allowed to climb something. Ava smiled a little bit as she walked past. Tourists could be annoying, but in the end, they really enjoyed being here.

By contrast, the Chicago natives, eyes on the sidewalk, faces dour, ignored the cow entirely as they rushed past Ava, on their way to who-knows-what. Ava just headed for the door. She didn’t want to be late to meet Everett.

The entrance hall of the Cultural Center was expansive and ornate. A massive staircase dominated the center of the space, leading up to the concert hall somewhere above the high, decorated ceiling. Ava had plenty of field trips to explore the space in before. But she had a feeling she knew where Everett was. There were blank white hallways leading out of the entryway to the left and to the right, and the right hallway was where they put the art installations.

And sure enough, there was Everett, staring rapt with attention at the little model town laid out on a table in front of him. He had a notebook with him, he always did, but as usual he had forgotten it existed as soon as his attention was drawn elsewhere. She could see it tucked under one of his arms, open to a fresh blank page.

While Everett took the time to marvel at the models, Ava gave herself a moment to let her eyes sweep over Everett. He was broad-shouldered and square-jawed, and kept his hair cropped close to his head. His dark skin was, as ever, perfect, and Ava allowed herself a small moment to seethe with envy at that, and to hope her makeup looked alright.

Then Everett looked up, and met her eyes, and she had to shove a “Hey, Ev!” out her mouth before it got awkward. His expression softened from the rough crags of deep contemplation to the pleasant coolness of social activity.

“Ava, you made it! I was worried after Katherine canceled that I’d be downtown all by my lonesome.”

She smiled, just a little bit, just the good friend type of smile, “I wouldn’t want to miss out on getting kicked out of another Panera.”

Everett laughed. “Oh c’mon, that was just the one time! Besides, Nolan ain’t here, and it was absolutely, like, at least half his fault we got kicked out.”

“So, how’s your research going?” Ava asked.

A sweeping gesture from Everett indicated the table before him. “Behold! A modern marvel of tiny engineering.” He then launched into one of his impassioned speeches about the art and craft of painting tiny plastic people and gluing them to felt. At the end of it, a good ten minutes later, Ava remarked, “But of course, you’re not a nerd.”

Everett punched her lightly in the shoulder. “I’m not! I’m an artist. Trust me, if you could see the railway I have set up in my basement you would understand.”

Ava giggled, and Everett responded with mock outrage. “Why, you slander me, fair lady! I am an enthusiast, not to be lumped in with those buffoons who spend their time slaving over soldering irons-”

“Which you do,” Ava interjected.

“-coding line after line of meaningless gibberish-”

“You were complaining to Nolan about that yesterday.”

“-and getting excited about the next incremental increase in processing power that the new Horizon G6 brings to the table, which clearly places it head and shoulders above the Shogun XL processor, and that-”

Ava was giggling madly by this point. “Ev, stop!”

“Stop? Ava, I will not stop until I have proven conclusively to you that I am not a nerd! I have with me a collated spreadsheet of statistics-”

“Do you even know what collated means?”

“Nope!” Everett grinned at her.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Ava asked, trying to steer Everett away from more dramatic exclamations.

Everett shrugged. “Well, there’s this little Thai place my cousin showed me the other week. You in the mood for Thai?”

“Sure!”

And as they made their way out into the street, Ava quietly pretended to herself that this was a date, and that Everett’s smiles were a little more than friendly, and that his jokes were for her alone, and that if he wasn’t holding her hand that it was only because he was using them for gesturing. And Ava was happy.

They got their food, and Ava smiled, and Ava laughed, and Ava choked down her questions with gulps of iced tea, and swallowed her tongue along with her pad thai so that it wouldn’t betray her. Really, this was enough. Just talking with him, and laughing with him, and enjoying his company. And if her hands twisted and writhed together under the table as she talked, and if her eyes darted fearfully away from Everett as she smiled, and if she fumbled her chopsticks more often than not, really, that was okay too.

And when Everett’s face lost a little of its mirth, and he looked at her with a little worry in his eyes, and when he asked, “Hey, are you okay?”

Well, she could answer, “Yeah, I’m fine,” and smile, and it only hurt a very very small amount, and he dropped the subject, and everything would just stay simple and happy and enough.

The conversation meandered on after that, with Everett doing most of the talking. Everett was good at talking. He could talk about nothing at all, and it would still sound interesting. He talked about Nolan, and the latest funny dumb thing he’d gotten up to. He talked about his new game that he’d found, that he wanted Ava to come over and try sometime. He talked about a book he was reading, about architecture, about those old huge gothic cathedrals with spires that tried to reach up to heaven and were filled with stained glass and arches and pillars and carvings. It was all terribly, terribly interesting.

And when they parted ways for the afternoon, and Ava sat down on the L train to head home, and she nervously fidgeted with her phone, hoping he would text her for any reason or no reason at all.

That was fine.

That was just what friendship felt like.