Archive of Our Own ^beta

Carla had a problem.

A very, very big and annoying problem.

Somehow, through means that were likely a punishment from the gods themselves, she has caught feelings for someone.

Carla has never been big on romance. It’s not that she was against it necessarily, she just never saw the benefit of pursuing a relationship. The only thing she had ever fallen in love with was creating highly destructive gadgets like bombs, and figuring out the best ways to go wherever she wanted in school.

At least, that was how it used to be, but that all changed once she reached high school.

Now, Carla was no stranger to the effects puberty had on a person. She had done her research in advance so that she would at least know what she was getting into, and she knew one of the things puberty did to you was make certain feelings become more… pronounced.

But even with that pre-existing knowledge, Carla could never have possibly predicted what would happen when she started experiencing those feelings herself, or rather, who she would end up having those feelings for.

Montgomery, or “Monty” as he preferred himself to be called, was a kid she always had a complicated relationship with. When he and the rest of his weirdo classmates transferred to her school she felt nothing but vitriol for the boy, seeing him as little more than a thief trying to get in on her business as the best smuggler in the school. Not to mention that silly little wheel chair he was always rolling around in.

Now Carla didn’t necessarily have anything against with the physically disabled, as long as they weren’t getting into her business she didn’t care how many bones they may have broken or if they were completely paralyzed. To her they were just losers that she sometimes took the piss out of for shits and giggles, but even then that was only for a laugh, not because she actually had a problem with them. But something about Monty in particular really pissed her off and she couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

The only thing she did know was that once he got his legs working again, Carla’s bitterness towards him only seemed to grow worse.

The boy had taken over her mind and absolutely refused to leave her alone. He didn’t even have to be around for her to end up thinking about him. She could be at home, peacefully working on her next explosive project when his annoying freckled face would suddenly pop into her mind completely uninvited, and every time it happened, it would almost always be followed by her body temperature accelerating to vicious degrees. 

She figured it was rage then. That simply the thought of him was enough to get her blood boiling. Something which, to her credit, wasn’t entirely incorrect, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.

The first time she began to question if what she felt for the boy was truly just hatred was when Lily and Nugget got together. Everyone had seen it coming of course, the two had been shamelessly flirting with each other for months already, to the point where most thought they were already dating.

Carla was happy for them of course. Sure she may not have liked Nugget all that much but she respected Lily enough. She deserved to have someone who loved her and, for as weird and shifty as Nugget was, no one could deny how head over heels he was for the girl.

Upon the announcement that the two had made it official, the idea of getting a boyfriend/partner herself suddenly came to the forefront of her mind.

It had been a passing thought in her mind for awhile. Sure she might not have been clamoring to get into a relationship or anything, but she’d be lying if she said the thought of having someone to be intimate with didn’t sound at least a little appealing.

She wouldn’t settle for anyone though. If she was gonna get into a relationship her partner would need to be able to keep up with her, they’d need to have similar street smarts as her, they’d have to be exceptionally intelligent for their age. Call her standards high but she wasn’t about to hand herself off to just anyone.

And that’s when he came to mind.

Monty.

The one who she’d hated for years.

For some ungodly reason the moment she began to think about the possibility of entering a relationship, the first person she thought of was him.

As you would expect, Carla did not react well to this. Who does he think he is? Thinking he can just… invade her mind like this…! He had no right to be there.

And yet he was.

From that day forward Carla found it nearly impossible to stop thinking about him. Any time she was doing anything he would always be there taunting her, and whenever she saw him passing by one of the school hallways or shared the same class as her, her gaze would always linger on him for just a moment longer than it should have.

She couldn’t believe it, she refused to believe it. To stoop so low as to start pining for the nerd, it made her want to scream.

For weeks it went on like this. Every time Monty popped into her mind she would fill it with enough white noise to make it go away. It would work for about a day or two, but then she’d see him walking by again and all that work would be washed away in an instant.

She finally reached her breaking point when the stupid thoughts got in the way of her master plan to break into her high school’s teachers lounge. It had her distracted just long enough for one of the teachers to notice her and send her off to detention.

That was when she decided enough was enough. She couldn’t just ignore these feelings anymore, she needed to get to the bottom of it, and getting to the bottom of it meant confronting a reality she tried so desperately to deny.

She might have feelings for the black market nerd.

Of course, she wasn’t going to accept this, at least not immediately, she needed some kind of confirmation that this really was what she was feeling. She didn’t want to be wrong after all, there was still a chance that she was completely misinterpreting how she felt. She just needed to be one-hundred percent certain of the truth, and she definitely was not doing this because she was desperate to deny her feelings and needed an excuse to deny them.

And so, in her journey to fully understand her own feelings, Carla decided to consult the one person she knew had experience in this sort of field.

“Yo flower nerd!” Carla called out as she approached her target who was currently busy sorting through her locker.

“Oh, Carla! I didn’t see you there!” Lily said, turning around to face the other girl with a bright if not slightly strained smile.

“Did you need something?”

“Uh… yeah actually.” Carla said, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly.

“Listen… I kinda need to ask you about something.”

“Oh? And what might that be?” Lily asked, rocking back and forth on her feet, workbooks clutched in her hand. Carla could tell from the other girl’s disposition that she was eager to get to class, but she couldn’t let her go, not until she got what she came for.

“So… you’re in a relationship with the bug-eyed freak right?” The girl asked bluntly. Lily’s face dropped immediately, giving way to irritation.

“His name is Nugget and yes, yes I am.”

“Right so… how did you like… figure out you had feelings for him?” Carla asked, fidgeting nervously. She hated how nervous she felt right now. She was normally way more confident than this.

Lily blinked, seemingly taken aback by the question.

“Oh well uh…” She trailed off, face flushing.

“That’s kind of a difficult question to answer. I mean, it sort of just… happened I guess, there were no real obvious signs of it.” She said, scratching the back of her head, gaze averted.

“Though if I had to name any signs, I guess the fact that I found it hard to stop thinking about him would be one of them. I would also get really flustered whenever I was around him for long periods of time, not to mention I’d catch myself staring at him for prolonged periods of time and- Carla?” Lily stopped, only now noticing that Carla had seemingly stopped paying attention.

“Carla? Hey! Are you listening to me? Hello?”

“...Fuck.” Is all that slipped out of the girl’s mouth in response.

“Huh? Carla what-”

She hadn’t heard whatever else Lily had to say, as she had already make a run for it.

Slamming open the door to the girl’s bathroom, Carla ran over to the sink and began to lean over it as a long string of Spanish curses left her mouth.

Fuck.

God dammit.

Why?

Why did this have to happen?

This shouldn’t be happening, and yet it is.

Staring herself in the bathroom mirror, her own horrified reflection met her in return.

There was no denying it anymore. She had gotten all the confirmation she needed.

She liked Monty.

She actually liked that stupid, glasses wearing nerd.

With a single, anguished groan, the girl planted her head in her arms and let out a resigned sigh.

“Mátame ahora…”

The days that followed this revelation were filled with hatred, confusion, and oddly enough, a lot of introspection.

With how her perception of feelings she thought were simple and easy to understand were completely flipped on their head, she was left to question if she ever truly understood her own emotions.

How did she really feel about Monty? How did she feel about those like him?

What did her picking on those she saw as “less capable” really have to say about her as a person?

She always saw it as a game, a means to an end, but she also couldn’t deny the joy in being able to knock someone you perceived as lower than you down a peg. But why? Why were they the easiest to pick on for her?

She eventually found her answer, and it wasn’t one she was especially happy with. She was projecting.

She was singling out the people she saw as “different” as a way to distract herself. As confident as she liked to portray, she always felt a small bit of insecurity in how the schools she went to were mostly populated by non-hispanic kids, leaving her to almost always be the odd one out.

It’s not that she disliked her ethnicity, she wore her culture on her sleeve, but she couldn’t deny how lonely it felt sometimes.

It sounded so stupid in her head, so petty, being insecure about your own differences so you decide to take it out on the disabled kids, yet it also made a lot of sense, and that’s what she hated about it.

Carla always prided herself on being in tune with her emotions, but now she couldn’t even be sure if she could trust them.

It pissed her off, and it was all that damn nerd’s fault.

If only Monty didn’t exist, then she wouldn’t have to think about all this stuff. She could live in a happy land full of simple, blissful emotions.

She ended up sticking a picture she sketched of him to the wall of her bedroom and began throwing darts at it as a way to vent her frustrations. It didn’t help much but it did keep her busy for a short while. Was it weird? Sure, but she honestly didn’t care at this point. She was emotionally exhausted and needed a way to cope. So sue her, she was a teenager for crying out loud! She was allowed to do weird, immature things! It’s a part of growing up!

Eventually though, throwing darts at a picture of your crush wasn’t doing it for her anymore. It was nice for a while but it did nothing to quell her own emotions, if anything it only heightened them, so she eventually threw the picture away and began looking for other methods to cope with her newfound feelings.

One thing she always heard other people say was that a good way to deal with your thoughts and emotions was to write them down, so that’s what she did. Each day she would grab a piece of paper, throw together a paragraph of sloppily written text describing her feelings before promptly throwing the stupid thing out.

She hadn’t expected it to do much, but surprisingly it actually made her feel a lot better, to the point where she began doing it during school hours whenever she had free time on her hands or a class she really didn’t like.

Some might say it was a risky move to write such vulnerable, emotion-fueled pieces of text in the very same school where the person who caused said emotions to spiral could see it, but Carla wasn’t worried, she made sure to throw them out after she was done with them anyway. Only a complete weirdo would go through someone’s trash.

She should’ve been more careful.

It had started out as a completely normal school day. She went in, doodled plans for future projects, slept through a majority of her classes, wrote down her feelings about Monty on a piece of paper, rolled up said piece of paper into a ball, and throwing it in the trash.

Well, trying to throw it out anyway, she actually ended up missing the trash can. She didn’t bother picking it up, the janitor would probably get it anyway.

Oh how naive she was.

Upon the end of the day bell ringing, Carla grabbed her things from her locker and made her way to the school’s exit when a sudden yet familiar voice startled her.

“Goin’ home eh?”

Recoiling slightly, Carla blinked upon seeing the sight of Monty leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

“Uhh… yeah?” The girl responded, confused.

“That’s what most people do when the day ends.”

Monty chuckled, pushing himself off the wall and approaching her. She took a step back, a sudden rush of nerves hitting her, something which Monty caught onto immediately.

“What’s wrong, contraband girl? You nervous?” He said teasingly. She felt heat rise to her cheeks though she tried to brush it off, frowning at the boy.

“No? Of course not. Why the hell would I be nervous?” She said, trying to maintain her composure. She continued taking slow steps backward until she found herself backed against the wall.

“Shit.” She muttered to herself, eyes darting around for a way of escape as Monty continued his approach.

“God dammit, come on Carla! You’re normally good at this kind of stuff, why can’t you do it now?!” She mentally reprimanded herself. Coming to a stop about a foot away from where Carla was standing, Monty eyed her with a smirk on his face. From his expression alone she could tell that this boy was planning something. Exactly what she didn’t know but she had a sneaking feeling that it would be her downfall.

“So I stumbled on somethin' recently.” Monty started, placing one of his hands in the pocket of his green sweater.

“Somethin’ very interesting.”

Carla glared, narrowing her eyes.

“Did you now?” She replied, attempting to add bite to her tone, though it hardly deterred the glasses-wearing boy.

“Indeed I did.” Monty said with a nod before pulling out a crinkly piece of paper from his pocket.

“The hell is…” Carla’s eyes widened as sudden realization dawned on her.

No…

It couldn’t be could it?

Surely not.

“Judgin’ by your expression, you already know what this is, and if you do then you know what’s comin’ next.” Monty said, smirk somehow growing wider.

“See, I noticed your attempts at throwin’ this piece of paper away and well… you know me, I can’t help but be a little curious… so I unfurled it and gave it a read.”

The moment the words left Monty’s mouth, Carla’s stomach dropped. Just like that, all of her worst fears had been realized.

“M-Monty, w-wait you… you don’t understand I-”

“Now of course, while I did see you throwing this thing away, I still can’t be one-hundred percent sure it was from you. So how about I recite it so that you and I can both verify that it was indeed you who wrote this.” Clearing his throat, Monty clutched the paper in both hands and took a deep breath.

“Since I first met you, I thought I despised you. I saw you as an enemy, an obstacle, a thief, one who challenged my own individuality. I spent so long harboring these feelings against you, only to realize that none of it was true. You’ve invaded my mind and taken my heart, your presence alone has torn me apart. You have left me weak, vulnerable and frail, took what made me strong and left me unable to heal. I hate how you make me feel and I wish you would stop. I have fallen for the nerd despite being certain I would not.”

As he finished reading the text, Carla could only stand in silence.

She wanted to scream, wanted to shout, wanted to tear that stupid piece of paper out of his hands and rip it to shreds. But it was too late now. The truth was out. Try as she might to deny it, Monty had already figured her out.

With a look of defeat, Carla sighed, leaning against the wall in resignation.

“Well there you have it… everything I tried to hide is out in the open. Congratulations.” She spoke in an uncharacteristically low tone.

“You can go ahead and make fun of me now.” She said, looking away.

She had expected him to laugh, expected him to gloat about how he won her over with his charms, she expected anything. Yet all she got was a confused stare.

“Now why would I do that?”

It was Carla’s turn to look confused, giving Monty a quizzical stare.

“That’s what you’re here to do right? I mean, you've cornered me and recited my love poem, I figured that was the reason.”

What happened next was something Carla both did and didn’t expect. Monty laughed. She had expected a reaction like that, the reason behind it not so much. She had expected him to mock her, but if anything he seemed to be laughing at the prospect of doing such a thing.

“Carla, Carla, Carla, it seems that you still don’t truly understand me all these years later.” Monty said after calming down.

“I ain’t doin’ this to make fun of ya. While seeing your reaction was definitely a part of it, it ain’t really the bigger picture.” He explained, walking back and forth.

“After all, it ain’t every day that you find a discarded poem from ya childhood crush where they proclaim their love to ya.”

Carla paused. 

Had… had she heard that right?

Did he just say…

“Childhood… crush?” She said after a moment. Monty stopped, his smirk softening into a more sincere smile.

“What? You sayin’ you never realized? I like you Carla, always have.”

If a human being could short circuit, then that was what Carla was doing right now.

“You… You do?” She said, voice almost timid.

“Course I do! I’m surprised you never noticed. I wasn’t exactly subtle about it back then ya know?”

She was at a loss for words. Monty liked her? This whole time? And she never noticed?

“But… Why? I- I was nothing but a jerk to you back then! What the hell could you have possibly seen in someone like that?!” She exclaimed, not fully believing that this wasn’t some bullshit lie Monty came up with to humiliate her.

Monty shrugged.

“Eh, maybe, but you were also smart, you were put together, you knew what you were doin’ and didn’t let others boss you around. You have a spine, I like that in a woman.” The boy explained, leaning back and forth on his prosthetic legs.

“I… I don’t know what to say.” Carla admitted, a hint of almost shyness in her voice.

“Why didn’t you say anything until now?”

“Cuz I didn’t think ya liked me back.” He stated bluntly.

“That… is fair honestly. I mean, I didn’t either until recently.” She admitted, shoulders sagging.

“Heh, guess we both learned something about each other huh?” Monty said with an air of playfulness in his tone.

“Yeah… I guess we did.” Carla agreed.

A short silence washed over the two teens as they stared at each other. It was apparent that neither of them knew how to continue this conversation. That is at least until Monty spoke up once more.

“So I’ve been thinkin…” He started.

“There’s this new restaurant that opened down the street which I wanted to try out and…” Trailing off, Monty looked away, a slight blush now dusting his cheeks as he scratched the back of his head. 

Picking up on this, Carla raised an eyebrow.

“Are you asking me out on a date?”

His blush only seemed to deepen at her inquiry.

“...Maybe. N-Not that it has to be like that! We can just hang out if you want I don’t-”

“Sure.”

Monty stopped. Blinked twice, then stared with wide eyes.

“Wait really? You’ll actually go on a date with me?”

Carla rolled her eyes.

“Duh, I already admitted to having feelings for you idiot. Of course I’ll go on a date with you.”

“Ah… right, yeah. Guess that was kind of a stupid question.”

The girl chuckled, thoroughly amused at the others' antics.

“So when are we going?” She asked, crossing her arms.

“I was thinkin’ maybe next Saturday?” Monty proposed.

“Works for me.” Carla said with a shrug.

“Great, I’ll meet you at the school around five.” Monty replied with a hint of excitement in his tone.

“Alright then, just don’t be late. I don’t like waiting around after all.” Carla said, agreeing to his terms. Smiling, Monty gave the girl a nod and a salute.

“Roger that, I won’t let you down.”

“Then I believe we’ve said everything that needs to be discussed.” Carla replied with a satisfied smirk. Leaning forward slightly, the girl brought her mouth close to Monty’s ear and whispered.

“I’ll see you around cariño~”

With that, she turned away and began to walk off. 

Casting one last glance over her shoulder, she could see that Monty’s face had gone a bright red, just as she intended.

To say that things didn’t go the way Carla thought they would would be an understatement. What she thought would’ve been her own undoing ended up being a brand new beginning, and for the first time in awhile, bombs weren’t the thing that she was excited about.