Chapter Text
Knox Overstreet had always believed in grand gestures.
Not just in theory—he lived by them. Love, to him, was cinematic. It had soundtracks and sweeping declarations. It meant knowing, deep in your bones, that someone was it for you. You saw them and the world tilted, or snapped into place, or some other metaphor that made it into his poetry notebook.
So when Chris said, “You’re sweet, but I don’t feel that way,” the words didn’t just sting. They dismantled something.
The scene hadn’t played out like it did in his head. No confession beneath a blooming tree, no kiss framed in golden sunlight. Just a cold New England afternoon, her arms crossed over her chest, eyes kind but certain. A front porch. A polite goodbye. And Knox left standing there like an idiot, blinking into the autumn wind.
By the time he got back to Welton, the poetry started spilling out of him.
Not the good kind.
Knox sits curled in the corner of the dorm common room, hunched over a notebook like it personally offended him. He scratches furiously at the paper, pen etching out line after increasingly terrible line:
My soul, a hollow cup of grief,
filled once by her golden light—
Wait, no. Cup is stupid. Change that to chalice?
Across the room, Meeks glances up from his physics textbook. “Knox, I say this with love, but if you read one more poem about her eyes being like ‘autumn stars,’ I will set your notebook on fire.”
“They were like autumn stars,” Knox mumbles, cheeks warm.
Meeks gave him a pitying pat on the shoulder and made a quiet, unspoken exit.
Neil tries next. He waits until after dinner, when Knox is curled up on the worn green armchair in their common room, staring into space like a heartbroken Victorian heroine.
“You doing okay?” Neils, careful with his voice, as though approaching a spooked animal.
Knox doesn’t look up. “Do you think heartbreak can cause actual brain damage?”
Neil hesitates. “I mean… probably not?”
“I can’t feel anything. I thought I’d be crying, or… I don’t know, punching trees or something.”
“Please don’t punch trees.”
Knox buries his face in his notebook. “I wrote a poem comparing her laugh to a cathedral bell. I don’t even know what that means.”
Neil perches on the arm of the chair beside him. “Chris was kind to you, wasn’t she?”
Knox nods into the pages. “Yeah. That’s the worst part. She didn’t even make it easy to hate her.”
There was a beat of silence.
“That has to count for something," Neil offers.
Knox lets out a long sigh, the kind that practically deflates his entire body. “Yeah. It means I’m a puppy she didn’t want to adopt.”
Neil opens his mouth to respond—but someone else beats him to it.
“Jesus, Overstreet.”
Charlie Dalton’s voice rings out from across the room, where he’s draped dramatically across the back of a couch, playing his saxophone aimlessly.
“You got dumped, not exiled. Quit the brooding, it’s bringing the mood down, and that’s usually Cameron’s job.”
“Hey! Watch it, Dalton,” Cameron replied, scowling.
“I’m not brooding,” Knox says, clearly brooding.
“You’re using her hair ribbon as a bookmark,” Neil points out.
“It’s symbolic,” Knox says.
Charlie snorts. “Of what? Delusion?”
Knox slams his notebook shut. “You wouldn’t understand. None of you would.”
“Oh, please,” Charlie says, lounging across the arm of the couch. “You confessed your undying love after like, two conversations and a car ride. You practically proposed with a bouquet of metaphors.”
“It was romantic! ”
“It was a lot of things,” Charlie says. “Romantic’s... an interpretation.”
Knox glowers at him. “Just because you don’t believe in true love—”
“Correction,” Charlie says, holding up a finger. “I believe in it. I just think it takes more than a smile and a shared milkshake.”
There’s a long pause.
“...We didn’t even share a milkshake,” Knox mutters, defeated.
Todd wanders in then, notebook tucked under one arm, senses the mood, and quietly turns around.
Knox slumps further into the chair, arms crossed. “It’s not just that she said no. It’s that I don’t know what to feel now. I thought I was in love, and now I just feel… stupid.”
Charlie watches Knox for a moment longer. Then, in a rare moment of something gentler, says, “Look, man. I’m not trying to be a jerk. Just—maybe it wasn’t about her. Maybe it was about the idea of her.”
Knox opens his mouth, closes it.
He doesn’t know what to say to that.
Because he had been so sure. About what love was supposed to feel like. That wild flutter in his chest, the compulsion to write sonnets, the desperate need to be near someone.
But now, all that’s left is a strange emptiness. Not just sadness—but disorientation. Like someone replaced his heart with a very confused squirrel who doesn’t know where to store its acorns anymore.
He goes quiet after that.
Even dinner is a quiet affair—Knox picking at potatoes, half-listening to Neil and Meeks argue about modernist theatre. He laughs in the right places, nods at the right times, but his brain’s somewhere else. Somewhere back on that porch. Somewhere where Chris still maybe said yes.
That night, as the others drift off to their rooms, Charlie pauses by Knox’s door.
He leans against the frame, arms folded.
“Hey.”
Knox looks up from where he’s been lying facedown on his bed.
Charlie smirks. “You know, if you’re gonna keep moping, at least let me help.”
“Help?”
“I’m offering you a deal,” Charlie says, pushing off the doorframe. “An education.”
Knox blinks. “What, like... tutoring?” He groans. “If this is about trigonometry, I swear to God—”
“No, idiot,” Charlie says, grinning. “Flirting.”
Knox scoffs. “You’re joking.”
Charlie shrugs. “Think of it as... remedial charm. The Art of Getting Someone to Kiss You Without Writing and Performing a Terrible Sonnet First. It’s just educational, Knoxious. Like Latin. Except useful.”
Knox stares at him. “Why would you want to teach me how to flirt?”
Charlie’s grin widens just a fraction. “Call it community service.”
Knox snorts. “I’m not that pathetic.”
“Watching you pine is like watching someone drown in three inches of water. Sad. But mostly embarrassing. Plus, you’d be learning from the master himself.” He wiggles his eyebrows at Knox mock-suggestively.
Knox hesitates. He wants to say no. He should say no. But Charlie’s grin is infectious—and his heart feels so heavy lately.
He groans into his pillow. “Fine. What do I have to lose?”
Charlie claps once, delighted. “Atta boy. Lesson one starts tomorrow. Dress cute.”
And with that, he’s gone—whistling down the hallway like a man who hasn’t just upended someone’s entire emotional landscape.
Knox rolls over, stares at the ceiling, and whispers to no one:
“This can’t possibly backfire.”