Chapter Text
This is it, Gavin mused, red cup dangling between his fingers. I am bloody sloshed. What’s that fancy word that coppers use? Completely inebriating…inebriate? Ineribated? A sound escaped his mouth, something between a pitched giggle and a heavy sigh, as he got up unsteadily and accidentally spilled some unknown liquid onto the already stained carpet. Frowning in disgust, he pushed his dirty blonde hair out of his eyes. Where the hell am I, again? Off campus? Gavin blinked slowly as he adjusted to his surroundings. His friend had abandoned him a while ago for a rather good looking bird, and the guy trying to get in his pants was nowhere to be found. Right shame.
The party was still going at full speed – the rooms were dimly lit, silhouetting a large crowd; Gavin could smell alcohol, weed, and a few other familiar things his addled brain couldn’t process at the moment. Bass was pumping from the living room at an unholy level and drowned out the noise of people drunkenly socializing, dancing, and fucking upstairs, probably.
I could have been having some brilliant sex right about now, he suddenly thought, but immediately reprimanded himself.
This is exactly why you shouldn’t have come, you git. Terrible self-control. You said you would be better this year.
Head swimming, Gavin started pushing past the throngs of people in search for the door, already feeling the bile rise up in his throat. Just as his thin fingers closed around the cold doorknob, he saw a flash of blond hair out of the corner of his eye and groaned.
Gavin hurriedly whipped open the door, muttering “sod off” to the female voice shouting “Gavin, babe, where are you going?” behind him, over the music, and effectively cut her off as he shut himself out of the house.
The cool evening air hit Gavin’s face in a rush and quelled his churning stomach considerably as he breathed it in. Realizing he was still holding his drink cup, he chucked it into a bush and ignored the offended yell that came from behind it as the red plastic hit its target. Checking his phone and realizing it was half-past three in the morning, the more logical, less drunk part of Gavin’s brain decided it was better to call a cab than attempt to walk home. As he waited, he tried to remember how he got to…where ever he was, but came up empty. Frustrated, Gavin ran his fingers through his hair again, messing it up even more, and plopped down onto the grass lawn by the curb.
He was still plastered, and felt entirely unsatisfied with how the night went. And yet here I am, bloody hell. Didn’t even get to properly snog anyone, either. Even so, Gavin knew that getting home at this hour meant his flatmates would simply assume (which would be quite accurate, on the regular) what he had been up to, and he was so not about facing their silent but disappointed, judging looks right now.
“This’s your fault entirely” Gavin said aloud, to nobody in particular. “If youu didn’t go and get that…that smegging promotion at work, I would not be hereeeee right now.”
He was so much better off a year ago, dicking around with his B back in England, making videos and editing footage…he was more or less happy. But here in America, at the University of Texas of all places, Gavin felt insignificant and unfulfilled, even if he did put himself over here a year ago, in a moment’s decision fueled by bitterness and spite.
The nausea suddenly hit him hard, making him double over on the grass and wretch loudly, spilling the waste from his past few hours of hard drinking. His throat burned unpleasantly. Wrinkling his nose, Gavin wiped his mouth with his sleeve and ripped up some grass to cover up his vomit, flopping back down and childishly rolling away from the mess, towards the edge of the lawn. He laid there for a bit, listening to the familiar mellow thud of the bass coming from the house, the sound punctured by the occasional yell, scream or sound of something breaking; same old, same old. How dull.
This was exactly why Gavin had told himself to stop doing these kinds of things, going out to random house parties and getting insanely drunk only to wake up in a stranger’s bed the next morning; he was sick of it. He’d given away too much of himself, and he wanted to take it all back. Be nobody. Stop socializing. And yet, why is it that he immediately jumped at the mention of the kegger tonight? And drank with at least twenty different people over the course of four hours? And got so close to that hot brunet? Speaking of which, he could’ve been in a bed with that guy by now, too; the man would have definitely been a catch. Gavin wet his lips. He bet he would have been good, too, fingers raking down his back as their lips connect breathlessly, skin against skin desperately seeking the friction they need to –
Abruptly sitting up again, Gavin violently shook away the thought through his dizziness and instead wondered if Barbara was still looking for him. Biomed Barbara, one of his only real friends in this forsaken place where most of his “friends” were more or less acquaintances who befriended him just to be able to declare that “I know Gavin, yes, that Gavin; we’ve chatted before” to other people. Moving here, Gavin had quickly realized just how grossly attached teenagers here were to the idea of popularity, but not before he had been sucked into its black hole. “But this wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t come here,” Gavin whispered, flailing about.
Getting worked up again, Gavin tossed his hands up dramatically into the air, looking ridiculous, but he didn’t give half a gob in the moment. “Bloody Birmingham and studies and oh, Gavin dear it’s the proper thing to do, get a proper education!” he imitated his mother bitterly. Gavin had wanted to continue building up a portfolio for a career in cinematography in England, but his parents had shut him down at the first mention of it, insisting that he be more like his brother Jon, who studied business and had quite recently become a successful manager at a high-end restaurant back home.
Popularity. Prestige.
Gavin let his arms fall limply to his side just as a couple burst out through the side door of the house, giggling and clinging onto each other, messily making out and shrieking with laughter. Gavin closes his eyes, cab long forgotten.
He really shouldn’t have come out here tonight.
And so the taxi came and went, and four o’clock found nineteen year-old Gavin Free passed out on the hard ground, sprawled out with his phone lost somewhere in the grass nearby, nobody else in sight.
Some fifteen hundred miles away at a different party, on an entirely different university campus in a different state, a boy is kissing another boy for the first time. They’ve both been drinking, and god knows they needed it to work up the courage. They are hesitant at first, but the situation quickly devolves into sloppy kissing, hair grabbing and drunken whispers of upstairs, I know a room. The night closes on them panting, one riding the other heatedly until neither can go on, and that is how Michael Jones winds up losing himself in a haze of blissful blowjobs (yes, plural), even better sex, and unfortunate bad choices that eventually make themselves known and follow him home one day.
The boy in the grass and the boy in the stranger’s bed could not be further apart in this moment in time. They are strangers, and they don’t meet that night, or the night after that for that matter. Gavin Free remains in Texas, and Michael Jones remains in New Jersey, but life goes on to spin circumstances that eventually all cumulate in the two of them seated next to each other in an 8:30AM Physics lecture almost exactly six months from now.
They don’t meet tonight.
But they will.