#creepergar

It started when he was twelve.

When Michael Jones had been young, he’d liked puzzles. It was uncharacteristic of him—after all, who in the hell would think the cussing, stomping, loud-mouthed kid would like to sit quietly and fit tiny fucking pieces of cardboard together to make a goddamn picture?

Nobody. That’s who. Nobody would think that because Michael normally couldn’t shut his mouth for two seconds, let alone sit and do a puzzle. It certainly wasn’t possible, but even from an early age, Michael showed everyone that he couldn’t give two shits about what they thought of him.

He’d loved them ever since he was young. It was one of the ways to get him to calm down. The den was crowded with puzzles and Michael refused to even let anyone come near them with glue. No way were they going to glue his masterpiece. He’d tear them apart and then do them again and again until the coloring on the pieces rubbed off on his fingers. Which was how multiple puzzles had been ruined.

Maybe he’d always known that something was different about him. He was like the other kids, just a little more emotional. He had no problem showing emotion, and though people described him as an explosively angry boy, he wasn’t. He just refused to push his anger down and hide it and because he didn’t and expressed it in its full potential, it went away. He’d get furious and then he’d be able to be calm again. However intense his emotions were, he knew they would pass if he let them flow freely. So that’s what he always did.

Emotion was colorful to him. He’d always known that he experienced things a little differently. In the heights of his emotions, whether happy, excited, sad, or angry, the strings that held his reality together would start to tear and ebb and time would seem to slip away from his grasp. He knew that other kids didn’t see this, that their emotions would be more subtle and passive, but he didn’t mind. He enjoyed the wild heights of his emotions, especially since they made things more interesting, more vivid.

He’d been like that all his life. But he only starting jumping when he was twelve.

---

Divorce.

Michael wanted to scream. He wanted to shatter the windows, to punch the walls, to yell and scream and fight until there were no more words left to say. He wanted to bang his fists against the ground and throw temper tantrums and act like a little kid again. But he couldn’t. His baby brother was asleep, his parents were getting a divorce, and Michael wanted none of it to happen.

The only thing he could do was throw himself onto his bed, releasing a scream into the pillow, high-pitched and full of tears. His voice was muffle, so it wasn’t loud enough to wake his brother, and the punches he threw were all softened by the mattress. He kicked and screamed and punched, remembering the D-word rolling off his mother’s lips as she tried to calmly explain to him what was happening.

Divorce. They were getting divorced. His perfect little family was going to shambles.

She’d promised—She promised they would be family forever! She was happy! She had to be! What was so wrong? She’d promised him and in just a few moments, all of those promises had gone to shit and Michael felt like he’d never been so angry in his life.

She’d lied to him. She was the one who was always telling him not to lie. Now she was a hypocrite, doing exactly what she told him not to and trying to make the divorce look like a good thing. She couldn’t sugar-coat this. She’d lied and there was no way she could hide that now, and no way that Michael would let her just brush it off.

Things were falling apart around him, Michael clenching his eyes shut, balling his sheets in his fists, tears streaming down his face and into his pillow. Everything around him felt distant, even the sheets in his hands. They were far, far away, the bed below him fading away.

His head was spinning, whirling about, making him dizzy. He stopped noticing the surrounding room, and time came jumbled to him. How long had he been lying here? How long had he been away? How did he go back?

A part of him was aware that the seams that held the universe together were fading into his sea of rage, the red furious waters dulling until they were grey with confusion and Michael was paddling through, trying to stay afloat. There was no more bed under him. There were no sheets in his hands. He was floating, alone on a continent of grey waters, the cold soaking through him until he was forced to come back into himself.

He opened his eyes slowly, and what came into view wasn’t his bedroom. It wasn’t even his house.

He was in a room with a fire place, his mother and father sat on the couch, both of their eyes on the television. They couldn’t be the same people, though. His mother was younger, her red hair longer, her face less stressed. His father had no grey hair, no bald patches, and he was relaxed, his arm around Michael’s mother. They looked so different, and Michael could hardly recognize them with their younger faces and carefree attitudes. Besides them, nothing was the same.

The house wasn’t his house. Michael could see snow falling outside—this was somewhere else, too. He lived in Austin. It didn’t snow in Austin. These people couldn’t be his parents, this wasn’t his house, this didn’t even feel like his time. Something felt incredibly off. These people—his parents?—didn’t even seem to see him there. They acted completely oblivious to him, as if he were invisible.

—And worst of all, they never noticed the boy with the sandy hair and dark eyes in the shadows of the corner by the window, either. But Michael did. And it made him scared enough to jump again, this time landing right back in his own timeline, reality sliding back into the right places again, leaving Michael with his sheets balled up in his hands and an image of the boy about his age, standing in the corner with wide, dark eyes.

---

It happened more and more as time went on. Michael’s parents ended up getting divorced, but Michael didn’t allow himself to become so upset about it again. That first jump had been a bad one for him and he wasn’t itching to repeat that experience. He didn’t fully understand what had happened—it just felt like a vivid dream, like he’d cried himself into an angry sleep and his mind had created a world where his parents were still happy together. A dream. That’s all.

So it didn’t happen for a while. Somewhere in his mind, Michael made the effort, either consciously or unconsciously, to not get so upset about things. He was somewhat aware that the intensity of emotions was what caused it, even if he didn’t have a name for It yet.

He was fourteen when it happened again.

His team was winning. Thank fuck. The goddamned football team of the high school hadn’t won a fucking game in two years. Not one game. They were infamous for their sucky sports teams, whether it was football or anything else that required teamwork. But finally—finally, in Michael’s freshman year—they were winning a game. It was a good omen. The school year had just begun and this was the first game of the season. Things were going to be good from here on out—he could feel it.

It was a new start in a new school and holy fuck his team just scored another goal with ten seconds to spare, and they were already ahead. If they could just—just keep the ball, they would win! They would win their first game in two years and get the year off to a roaring start.

Michael was bundled up for the chill, grinning ear to ear, his cheeks bright red from the cold wind, as well as from the excitement, and his mind was happily buzzing away with the rest of the crowd. He could feel the heartbeat of the excitement, pulsing in time with the cheers from the stands. Michael was swept up in its warm arms and carried along with everyone else. He was part of a greater collective, yelling and jeering and singing the chants, a voice in a crowd with overflowing joy.

He didn’t immediately notice, this time, when things started to fall away. It wasn’t like before, either, where Michael was so angry that it’d torn the thread of his reality. This was different. It was a different kind of emotion, warm with joy instead of hot with rage.

He didn’t notice when the crowd around him started fading out, never taking note until they sounded far, far away, as if he were underwater, listening to the sounds of above the shore. Everything was muffled, and the sound was disconnected from his visual. The field before him started fading to white, blinding him just as his heart began beating to its own pace, separate from the heartbeat of the crowd and no longer in sync with it.

Bright—the light was so goddamn bright. It felt like it was burning Michael’s eyes out of his head, making him squint, the crowd behind him fading into one long hum. The cheers were no longer distinguishable, the jeering at the other team gone, all of it becoming a murmur in the background. He closed his eyes, trying to shut the blinding light out, his eyelids burning from its brightness.

It was happening again. His emotions had been too intense. He didn’t want to open his eyes. He didn’t want to be somewhere else. It was happening again, and he knew exactly what was going on, but opening his eyes meant he had to face it, to accept that what happened two years wasn’t just a dream, but an actual reality that happened.

But he had to open them.

There was no way to get out of this unless he opened his eyes.

His thoughts were met with a cold wind to his face, forcing him to bite back chills as he tried to slowly open his eyes. Every bone in his body shook with the cold and even though he found himself standing on the same bleachers he’d left, he knew he was elsewhere.

There were three things Michael could say he knew for certain in that moment—

One. He was not in the same place he’d been before. These were the same bleachers, but they were covered with ivy and moss, half of them buried under mounds of dirt. Hardly any metal stuck out from them. The football field was the same one he’d just watched his team play at, now overgrown with weeds and tall grass, the goalposts as mossy as the bleachers were. This was once the place he’d been, but not anymore.

Two. He’d jumped. It was as simple as that, and that was the first word to come to Michael’s mind. Jump. Because he’d jumped time. No, no, that couldn’t be right. This wasn’t another time. It was another place. Not a location. A different place on a different timeline. A different reality.

Three. He wasn’t alone. The bleachers were empty, save for two places—one where Michael himself stood, and at the top, where a gangly teenager with hair down to his shoulders sat. He was alone except for that. The crowd had disappeared. No one played on the field. No one was outside, wandering. It was just the two of them, an overgrown field, and the grey, ashy skies.

Michael could still almost hear the crowd roaring behind him as he took that first step, the sound of his foot hitting the exposed metal of the bleachers resounding through the area. He watched his ‘companion’ closely, and saw that he hadn’t moved an inch, not even to look for the source of the sound. So he took another step.

The air breathed coldness around them, pushing its fingers into Michael’s lungs, making him tremble even more. This was pointless—absolutely pointless. He had no reason to approach the other boy. None at all. He’d be back soon enough, just like last time. Back to fucking reality. Not this—dream-like one.

The idea of being in an entire other reality didn’t faze him. It didn’t even surprise him. He’d never been normal—and this had happened once before. It was no longer just his intense emotions that set him apart from other kids. It was this, the fact that when his emotions reached their extreme height, Michael would essentially become unstuck from reality.

“Hey.”

He’d approached the boy. He seemed about Michael’s age, with a soft face and a big nose. His sandy hair reached down to his shoulders, falling over his face as he stared down at the book he was reading. Michael frowned, glaring at him, unhappy that he hadn’t even cared to look up, let alone answer.

“Hey! You!” He shouted it, standing right in front of the boy now.

Slowly, he looked up, bangs falling all over his features, dark green eyes peeking from under his hair, eyes that Michael remembered as clear as day. He’d seen those dark eyes before, when they were on a shadowed face. He’d never forget the wide-eyed boy he’d seen when he first jumped.

“Piss off.”

Michael didn’t know what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been that. The kid’s mouth was set in a thin scowl, his voice heavily accented, his dark eyes glaring at Michael. He’d given off the look of some shy, soft-spoken boy, not one who boldly told him to get away. He narrowed his eyes at Michael, clearly irritated that he’d interrupted him, his face going from nonthreatening to intimidating in a matter of seconds.

Michael returned the expression, eyebrows furrowing together, his nose scrunching up in a show of disgust and anger. Who the hell did this kid think he was? Him with his stupid English accent and his shitty attitude.

“Hey, it’s not like I’m here by choice or anything!” He spat back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He hadn’t meant to come here. He’d forgotten to keep his emotions in check and had fallen from reality again. It wasn’t his fucking fault.

“Bloody Jumpers,” The kid gave him one last glare before hunching over again, going back to his book.

Michael honestly felt like kicking him, “What did you just call me?!” He shot it back angrily, hissing the words through his teeth. Michael might’ve been rude, but this kid was fucking intolerable. It wasn’t just the few words he’d said to him—it was his whole attitude. He seemed to reflect the greyness of their surroundings. The desolate word was mirrored in his bored, agitated face. He was clearly unhappy with Michael still being in his face, as evidenced by the way his huge nose was pushed upwards in irritation.

“A. Jumper.” He didn’t even look up from his book. “You don’t belong here. None of your kind does. Get out of my face and go away.”

That was it. That was fucking it. Michael Jones, notorious in school for fighting, with his raging emotions and short fuse, was pissed. All he wanted was a goddamned explanation, and all this kid gave him were unwarranted insults. He’d started this whole thing, being outright rude to Michael, who’d just wanted to get his attention and some answers. People like this were Michael’s worst nightmare. People like him—insolent and narcissistic, thinking they were better than everyone else. ‘Get out of my face’ God, this kid needed to be taught a fucking lesson. He was worse than the kids at school who provoked him.

So Michael did the one thing he knew, the one reaction he could resort to, and he pulled his fist back, just as the boy looked up and locked eyes with him, giving him a look that said every word he didn’t speak, ‘Try me’.

He swung. Hard. His fist immediately connected with something hard and for a moment, he was overjoyed—this kid would know not to mess with him again—

“Ow! Michael, holy shit! Don’t get so excited!”

Without any bright lights or confusion, he was back. Back in the bleachers of the football game, shivering in the cold, people around him cheering and screaming their team’s name. Ray stood beside him, rubbing his arm, where Michael had hit. Cold nipped at Michael’s freckled cheeks, his smile slowly falling from his face. He was back. Somehow he’d sewn reality back together. An intense emotion had forced it to slip from his grasp, and an intense emotion had brought him back.

As confusing as it was, it wasn’t rocket science.

He didn’t have to understand it. He knew what caused it and what it was. It didn’t matter why it happened or the reasoning behind it. It simply was, and once he started jumping, there was no way to stop.

---

Fifteen.

He was fifteen years old. His name was Michael Jones. And this was not his reality.

He didn’t know who’s reality this was. He barely remembered how he’d jumped—Something to do with sadness. It was one of those jumps, the ones where Michael struggled to remain on top of it. He was fifteen years old, his name was Michael Jones, and this was not his reality.

One, two, three, four—

He measured his breath in seconds. Four seconds in, four seconds held, four seconds out. It was alright. Even if he didn’t remember why he’d jumped, he still knew who he was and the fact that he didn’t belong here. That was enough for him, though he’d wanted more. For right now, it was enough.

The room was dark around him and it honestly smelled terrible. He was sitting on a stiff, springy bed, covered in hard sheets and smelly blankets. Across from him was a small television, a front door, and the door to a bathroom. The drapes were pulled, the only light streaming in from the cracks of sunlight filtering through the blinds, making lines on the walls and bed. Ugly wallpaper covered the walls and uncomfortable carpet the floors.

There was no doubt about it. He was in some sleazy motel room. This place took every motel or hotel room Michael had been in and extracted the bad parts of it, making the epitome of a shitty motel room. It was bare minimum, and Michael knew he’d never been here, though it did seem slightly familiar.

With the onset of puberty, Michael had been jumping much more. Usually, he was alone when he arrived. The other boy was only present sometimes, and Michael had given up trying to speak to him, since he was always dry and dismissive. He wasn’t all that strange, either—Michael saw certain people in multiple jumps. They never retained memories from jump to jump, though.

He sometimes struggled to retain his own memories. Usually, it was in cases like this, when it’d been a negative emotion that had forced the unraveling of his space. Happy emotions meant more awareness. Negative ones meant less. It was simple enough.

Michael also began to make more sense of things, too. He wasn’t jumping time—he was jumping timelines. There was his reality, and then there were a million more. Every decision he’d ever made, or anyone had ever made, there was another reality where that decision hadn’t been made, and yet another where the opposite decision had been made. His raging emotions caused the strings that held him in his reality to unknot and he’d be thrown into another, where he was still Michael, though a different Michael.

Sometimes, he did have vague memories of that other Michael, which he was thankful for, since it gave some context to the jump. There was nothing he fucking hated more than being tossed into a different reality where everything was different, without any knowledge of what was going on before he’d arrived. And this was one of those times.

He was older. He could tell that much. Even glancing at the mirror near the bathroom told him that. His hair was a bit more grown out, his face matured more. He was older, but not by much. And he was alone. In a shitty motel room. With no clue why he was here.

He’d fucking hit the jackpot of all bad jumps.

It’d be over soon enough, though. It always was. This reality would eventually give way to his and everything would be in the right place again. Eventually. Meaning he just had to stick it out.

And with that thought came a knock on the door.

God fucking dammit.

If there was one thing Michael Jones hated, it was interacting with other people when he jumped. It was something he didn’t think he should mess with, and he’d played more than enough video games and read more than enough books to know that messing with timelines was not a good idea. So he just stayed away from others as much as he could, not wanting to mess with his other self’s future.

But then again, there was always an exception. That exception was when he was forced to speak with another person. Times like these. Times where Michael knew that in order to get back to his reality, he’d have to do what instinct told him to—and now, that was to get off his ass and open the door.

The scratchy carpet felt even worse than it looked beneath his feet and it took him a few moments more than he would’ve liked to figure the locks out. After a lot of frustration, he was finally able to turn the knob and pull the door open, leaving him shivering in the cold morning, looking into the face of a person he’d seen so many times before.

He couldn’t even get a single word out—The kid standing opposite him said the exact thing that was on Michael’s mind, “—Not you again!”

Standing in front of him, skinny and gangly and just as rude as he always was, was the strange, insolent bastard that had appeared in many of his jumps. Michael had stopped engaging him after getting jack shit out of him, concluding that he was just one of those people he saw from jump to jump. He assumed the boy to just be quiet and shitty in every reality Michael jumped to, and that it was simply a constant that he didn’t like whatever version of Michael was in that particular universe. It made sense—there were a lot of constants like that.

“Pleased to fucking meet you, too,” He hissed back, preparing to step back and chain lock the door shut.

He expected the blonde boy to turn and get out of his face, distancing himself as far away from Michael as possible, just like he usually did. But he didn’t. He stayed right where he was, his eyebrows furrowing together, his mouth drawn upwards in a scowl, his hands balled into fists at his side. He was the poster child of rage, an emotion that had made Michael jump far more than any other. This weak-ass bastard, with his long hair and huge nose, was fucking pissed at him.

“God, I am so bloody tired of you!” He yelled, his voice cracking at its high pitch, his accent even heavier than it was before. Emotion made him far less understandable, and somehow, Michael found it funny—this weird British kid screaming at him outside of a motel. It was clearly early morning, the sky flooded with the bright colors of a recent dawn, the cars rushing past on the highway beyond the motel’s parking lot few and far in-between. Whoever this Michael was, whatever his reasoning was for being here, was going to really get it when this Michael went back to his reality. This damn kid had to be waking up everyone within a mile radius of the place.

“You and your—” He went on, stumbling his way through sentences, barely making full-fledged words. He honestly sounded a bit like a squawking bird. “—Your jumps—You and your shit constant—Can’t you just stay out of my bloody timelines?! I’ve never met such an insolent, careless jumper like you!”

Wait, that didn’t make sense.

That didn’t make any fucking sense at all.

This kid was supposed to be like everyone else—completely unaware of Michael’s jumping. He’d never told anyone about what happened when he felt emotions so violently. It was like talking to people during his jumps: he thought it would’ve broken the unspoken rules of the universe. But this kid knew. He knew and that meant the one other time he’d spoken with Michael hadn’t been the fluke he’d always thought it was. No, this kid knew about his jumping. He knew about every other time they’d seen each other, and he’d retained his memories of seeing Michael during jumps and obviously knew that he didn’t belong.

That had to be wrong. It didn’t sit right with him in the least. While Michael had always known he was different, he never really thought it was odd that he could jump into other realities. It was just a fact of life. His instinct told him it was alright and it didn’t usually fail him. He trusted it, and he especially did when it told him that something was off about this whole situation.

“I’m sorry—who are you?” He couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice, but he did hide his confusion. He crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes into a glare, his mind split between anger and panic. Anger at this kid for—really, being a fucking asshole—and panic about what was happening, stemming from his lack of understanding.

And his tone just seemed to piss this kid off more, because his next words came with a shove, pushing him onto his ass on the smelly floor of the motel room, sending Michael spinning back to his own reality, colors meshing together until his vision faded back to the dark walls of his own room, his ears ringing with the last words he’d heard the kid say.

“Gavin Free.”

---

He was back on the overgrown bleachers.

It wasn’t strange—he’d jumped to the same reality multiple times. He didn’t have any control as to where he went.

Today it was here. The last time he’d jumped was when the kid—Gavin—had shoved him down. This was less than a week afterwards. He was jumping around more than he liked to, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He was a teenager. That was the bottom line—his reactions and emotions were hard to keep in check, and Michael had stopped fighting it by now. It wasn’t always an inconvenience, either. Sometimes it was actually interesting.

And sometimes he needed to get away. Unlike last time, Michael knew why he’d jumped and what emotion had set it off.

Anger and grief. Maybe. Michael wasn’t quite sure if it was really grief since he hadn’t lost anyone. Maybe it was more like guilt, though he did feel as if he’d lost his mother and the rest of his family.

He’d always thought his family was different, that they wouldn’t be like the people he heard about on the news. All good things came to an end, though, the day Michael decided to come out to his family. Today was the day he’d planned for weeks and weeks, the day he thought his family would be happy for him, and the day that they had insulted him and made sure he felt like the disappointment he was. He was glad he’d jumped. He didn’t want to go back and face that. At least not now.

Which was why he was lying on his back in the grass and moss covered bleachers, looking up at the cloudy sky. There was never any people in this reality, with the exception of the first time he’d come here. It was quiet, deserted, and Michael wanted to fall asleep here and never wake up to his own reality.

He was drifting off, his eyes slowly closing, arms wrapped around himself to keep his body heat in, when he heard the footsteps. They were far off at first, climbing the bleachers, rubber soles connecting with the hidden metal of the bleachers. Michael didn’t even have to sit up; he knew who it was without looking and as the footsteps grew closer and closer, Michael only got surer sand surer.

“Hey,” The footsteps came to a rest and Michael opened his eyes to the accented voice, seeing the face of the boy who’d screamed at him and shoved him come into focus. He’d cut his hair, his blonde hair short and somehow looking even stupider than it had before. His voice for once didn’t hold any anger, nor was his face scrunched up in rage.

Michael returned the absence of rage, instead stuttering out a bewildered, “Hey.”

The bleachers creaked and groaned as Gavin sat himself down at his feet, hunching over and looking from Michael to the ground and back again. Silence fell between them and it was louder than any words, but Michael had none to speak. He waited and waited until finally, Gavin locked his eyes on the ground and murmured something Michael could barely hear, “—Sorry about last time.”

He sounded like he didn’t mean it, and Michael knew it, but that wasn’t something that mattered. He’d said the apology begrudgingly, as if he was a toddler and his parent was instructing him to apologize, but Michael didn’t particularly cared. He was talking. That was what mattered. He wanted to talk to someone, someone who wasn’t his family, who wasn’t already judging him.

“Whatever; it’s fine,” Michael pushed himself up into a sitting position, swinging his legs over the edge of the bleacher so he was sat next to Gavin. “I’m Michael.”

Gavin turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow, “I know. I’m Gavin.”

“You told me that last time.”

“Wasn’t sure if you heard me.”

“I did,” Michael huffed. “Where the hell are you from, anyways? England? You’ve got one of those cockeyed accents.”

“What?!” Gavin scoffed, throwing Michael a glare. “My accent is not cockeyed!” Of all things, that had been the thing to offend him. This kid really was weird. But maybe it was a different kind of weird. The kind of weird that Michael didn’t find annoying. There was a chance that he didn’t think Gavin was irritating because of the fact that he wanted someone to talk to. That was a very real possibility—just not one Michael wanted to think about.

There was a huge elephant in the room, too, and Michael hated beating around the bush. He’d always been a blunt person, and that didn’t change even if he was upset, “What are you? Are you real?”

Gavin looked away from him, instead looking up at the sky, humming in thought before answering, “Hm. I think so? I mean, probably? I sorta… Wander. I’m not really sure where I belong. I stumble into a lot of other people’s minds. Only jumpers, though. I can’t stumblr into anyone else’s. I don’t jump, not like you. I wander. I sorta… enter someone’s mind.”

“You make no sense,” Even though he did. To an extent.

“Hey!” Gavin squawked back at him. “You just don’t understand!”

“Like hell I don’t understand!” Michael honestly tried to keep himself from laughing, but the imagery of Gavin squawking like a bird was too much for him. “It’s not my fault that you’re talking in circles!”

And as strange as it was, Michael found his first real friend that day.

--

Sixteen.

“Your mom’s a mean bird, Michael.”

“Eh,” Michael shrugged nonchalantly. “I guesso.”

“No, she is,” Gavin whined back at him. “She’s awful, Michael.”

“God, if you’re going to say my name, at least say it right.”

Things were bad at home. Michael’s family was as judging as ever. He jumped every day now, finding solace in his time with Gavin.

---

Sixteen and a half.

“How come you never talk about your fucking life?”

He was a little frustrated, though not at Gavin. At everything else. All Gavin did was his usual half-shrug, “Don’t have much to talk about. I told you, Michael. I don’t really know where I belong. I don’t think I have a home reality like you do.”

“What’s with the stupid accent, then? You had to have parents that taught you to speak.”

“Yeah, but I don’t really think I belong there.”

“Where’s ‘there’?”

Gavin paused, looking off into the distance again. They were in a city now. Michael had jumped to the rooftop, and Gavin had found him almost immediately. They were both leaning on the railing of the office building’s sunspot, looking into the city below, “Oxford. My parents life there. I guess I do, too. Things are hard there. I don’t belong. I never have.”

Michael raised an eyebrow, “So what? You just upped and disappeared?”

Gavin grinned at him and nodded, “I’m not like you, Michael. When I go into a different timeline, I don’t leave a body behind. I don’t come back to the next second in time. I leave completely. I guess I am a bit like you, but I can control it. You can’t.”

“Typical Gavin,” Michael shot him a fake-glare. “Ever told anyone where you go?”

“Nope. Except for you, of course.”

“Of course,” Michael copied his accent, laughing to himself.

--

Seventeen.

“Did you play the new Halo, Michael?”

“Is that really a question you’re asking me?”

If there was one thing Gavin liked to talk about, it was video games. Gavin absolutely loved video games and once he’d found out Michael also liked video games, he was even more all over Michael than before. Gavin had taken a lot of warming up to, but once they’d hit it off, Gavin was the loveable, idiot bastard that he was.

“You did! Oh, Michael, how was it? I want to play it soon, too! How’s the multiplayer? What kind of weapons did they add? Who’s your favorite character? Tell me everything, Michael, everything!”

“Jesus shit, dude, just play it for yourself. I’m not spoiling shit for you.”

“Oh, you’re so mean!”

---

Seventeen and three months.

“How are things at home for you?”

Two months ago, Michael had convinced Gavin to attempt to return to his reality with his parents. He had and while they had set times to meet every day, Gavin seemed to be a bit down, though more grounded. Michael didn’t know where Gavin’s reality was, but he was happy that the idiot had finally gone home instead of wandering through different timelines.

“Alright,” Gavin answered, running his fingers through the sand of the beach they were on. “I finally got the new Halo game. There’s this guy at school who plays, too. Dan. I think I’ve told you about him before.”

“Yeah, yeah,” He was even happier to hear that Gavin was actually interacting with people, too. He seemed more stable overall. Which was what Michael had wanted. It was still hard to believe that he was here with this guy, who wandered through people’s minds, who had screamed at him and gotten so pissed at him, who was now his friend, who Michael now talked to and saw every day.

Things were better at his home, too. He was learning to ignore his mother more. He had a job lined up for after high school—an electrician. It wasn’t great, but it paid okay.— and knowing Gavin had helped him work through a lot. His mood wasn’t all over the place anymore, nor was he having violent mood swings. He was doing better, and so was Gavin.

---

Seventeen and a half.

He’d fallen in love.

He’d fallen in love and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

He’d fallen in love with the wandering kid who he shared everything with, the kid who wasn’t even part of his reality, who didn’t even exist in his world.

It was one thing to fall in love with someone he’d never be with. That would be fine. He would totally be just fine with falling for a celebrity or an idol. No, this was different. Gavin wasn’t even anywhere on his plane of existence. He was permanently unstuck. His home reality was different from Michael’s. He only existed in Michael’s jumps. Not anywhere else.

He wasn’t real and Michael had fallen in love with him and it was the most devastating thing he’d ever done.

---

“Michael! Michael, where have you been?” Gavin was jumping at him, hugging him around the waist, just short of picking him up and spinning him around like a child. Gavin was waiting for him, just like he always was, just like he had always been for two years. His best friend, the one he shared everything with, the one constant in all of his jumps.

Michael hadn’t seen him for a week. It wasn’t by choice. He was having trouble jumping. It’d begun to get harder and harder to elicit strong, intense emotions. Lately, he’d just been thinking about his feelings for Gavin—his strong emotions towards him—and it would let him jump. Even that hadn’t been enough, though. He’d honestly tried for the past week, but it was hard, and the only thing that had pushed reality into letting him jump had been his frustration.

Puberty was calming down. His emotions weren’t as wild anymore. He was jumping less and less. He’d grown so used to jumping every day that he felt off when he was stuck in his own reality. And being in his own reality meant no Gavin. Michael was lost without Gavin.

Part of him had always known that there’d be a time when he’d stop being able to jump. It had to be by a fluke that he could do it in the first place. Everything about it felt like a mistake, like his reality was half-formed and melted away at an intense feeling. He’d hit puberty, gone through years of raging emotions, and now he was done with it and able to control his emotions better. Every time he tried, he’d feel things starting to slip through his fingers, but they’d always solidify again within a few moments. It was fucking frustrating.

The frustration was what had allowed him to jump this time and it was why he didn’t respond to Gavin’s hug. Falling in love with him had felt like the most natural thing in the world—and this, this gradual loss of his shitty superpower, was the only thing that felt off and out of place. Jumping to different realities had become so commonplace that he didn’t even consider it odd anymore. He was unstuck in reality and that was just fine. Nearly three years of it had done nothing but benefit him, giving him a place away from the frustrations at home and somebody to talk with, even if Gavin wasn’t real, by the dictionary definition of the word.

He was used to it to the point where he’d started to be able to control it. He’d begun being able to illicit those intense emotions for himself, enough to throw him into a different timeline. He didn’t have complete mastery over it, but it was enough to make him happy, enough to give him what he wanted. Enough that it let him control when he met up with Gavin and enough to give him the satisfaction of a friendship with him and enough to make him fall in love with him.

“I’m sorry,” Was all he could say, because for all Michael knew, this could be his last jump. He couldn’t, wouldn’t bring himself to say that, so instead he lied through his fucking teeth, “I’m sorry, Gav. I just got a little busy.”

There was nothing he wanted to do more than to kiss Gavin, because he was an idiot in love with a blonde boy who didn’t even exist in his reality. But he didn’t.

And that’s how Michael Jones left Gavin Free—without a goodbye and without even one last hug.

---

His life went on.

It went on slowly, but it went on. Time crawled by at first. Michael knew he was done jumping. This was his reality to stay in. It was where he belonged, even if he felt empty and incomplete in it. He should’ve stayed here in the first place, but didn’t. He’d jumped and he’d paid the price for it. He hadn’t even told Gavin goodbye. There wasn’t room for goodbyes and life would go on, as much as Michael didn’t want it to.

But it did. Crawling turned to walking when Michael moved out after entering a deep depression. He forced himself to keep going, so he did. He got his job as an electrician and moved out. He tried and tried to jump again, tried to force himself to feel, but it never worked. He never got it just right and he was left feeling frustrated and angry to the point where he couldn’t handle it and he still couldn’t jump.

The only thing left to do was put that anger into something. So, Michael filmed himself screaming at video games. It wasn’t an act—he really was that angry. He was pissed at himself, pissed at the world, pissed at reality and what he’d done and above all, how he hadn’t even had the goddamn decency to tell Gavin goodbye. The anger overloaded him, his previous feelings for Gavin still there, still just as intense, making his anger still worse and worse.

Then people started taking notice, though. People started watching him, and Michael started actually putting effort into his videos. He started taking the time to edit them, putting care into them, making them the funny internet videos people wanted to see. Life moved on and so did he. Slowly, slowly, Gavin started taking up a lesser part of his life. He still thought about the wandering boy he once knew, the troubled kid who he’d finally convinced to go home. He still wondered how he was doing, if he’d made friends with that Dan boy he’d been talking about, and above all, if Gavin had entertained the same feelings Michael had for him. But he didn’t think about him all day every day.

Thoughts of Gavin would pop up at random, seemingly out of nowhere, but they didn’t stick around for long. Michael learned to acknowledge them and move on. And that was what he did. He went on, even though he still loved Gavin, even if he still hated a part of himself for not saying goodbye.

He was starting his twenties when he got a job offer from a company in Austin. RoosterTeeth. He took it immediately and started January that year.

---

“We’ve got a new hire.”

That was the rumor going around lately. New hire this. New hire that. That was what everyone was talking about. Achievement Hunter was getting a new hire—Some British kid Geoff knew. He was still too new to the company to know about Geoff’s connections with idiot British kids. He’d been there for just a month and was just beginning to show his real personality. He was uncharacteristically shy, too afraid of losing his dream job to really let loose. He was starting to come out of his shell, little by little.

“Yeah? He’s coming today?” Honestly, Michael didn’t care much. They’d recently hired Ray, and a whole bunch of new people had been filtering into the other departments. Geoff had been talking about not just one, but two new hires. This one was supposed to be closer to Michael and Ray’s age, if Geoff and Jack were to be trusted. They seemed especially excited about it, too—Geoff had been grinning all day, enough that Michael had just slipped his headphones on and tuned everyone else out, anxious to get back to editing his videos.

“You bet. That’s all anyone’s talking about,” Ray told him. “He’s here. Geoff said so.”

“Tell me about it,” This was the only time Michael had actually seen the Achievement Hunter office empty. Geoff and Jack were showing the new hire around. Burnie and Joel were absolutely nowhere to be seen for once. Everyone except Michael and Ray were just gone. Whoever this guy was, apparently he was important.

“Oh—Michael, they’re coming in here now,” Ray shook his shoulder, trying to get him to look towards the doorway. “Michael, Jesus. At least say hi.”

“—This are our newest hires. Ray Narvaez and Michael Jones,” Geoff was saying, and Michael groaned, knowing he was obligated to look at the person.

He pushed his feet against the feet of his chair, spinning it around so that he was facing them. His eyes fell on Geoff, with his shitty beard and droopy eyes, his face alight with happiness, a much different expression from what Michael usually saw on him. Next to him was a man slightly shorter than him, his hair a sandy mess of hair, standing gangly, like he was almost too big for his own skin. He had tanned skin and—

“Michael, Ray, this is—”

Holy fuck.

Oh no. No, no, no no no. This couldn’t be happening.

He seemed to just glow, like he belonged here, like he was always meant to be here. The world around him burst with color, everything getting clearer, Michael finally sliding into place in this reality. It was like something had suddenly clicked, like for twenty years, Michael’s life had been leading up to this moment, this moment where everything finally made sense, where he finally belonged somewhere. The man in front of him radiated the feeling, mirroring it back at Michael, making Michael whole again, fixing the incompleteness he’d felt all his life.

Those eyes—Michael could never forget those eyes. That nest of sandy blonde hair and those soft green eyes, always betraying emotion, darkening and brightening with thought, and that huge fucking nose of him. There were lots of things about him that Michael would never forget, even though it had been years.

And fuck, if he didn’t lock eyes with Michael and fuck if he didn’t see the recognition there, and Michael had to check if he were imagining it when he saw the corner of those lips twitch upwards, seemingly carrying Michael’s name on them.

“—This is Gavin Free.”

Michael Jones finally belonged, and Gavin Free did, too. They’d found a home in the same reality together, years after they’d parted, the two of them stuck in the same universe with each other.

“Austin feels different.”

He didn’t remember this place. He didn’t know where he was or why he was here, and that was what his mind focused on, going over it again and again, searching for a reason, for a purpose, each time finding none, nothing coming to his head.

Gavin hummed against his shoulder, the sound reverberating against Michael’s skin, and he couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or acknowledgement that Michael had said something. He felt his breath on his neck, measured and rhythmic, fooling Michael into thinking he was asleep until he actually looked down to see Gavin wide awake and watching the sunset with green eyes.

“It looks different, too.”

“How?”

“I dunno,” Michael shifted so he was more comfortable sitting with Gavin leaning so much onto him. They looked out at the skyline together, and as Michael glanced around, he realized they were alone in what looked like a little park, watching as the sun dipped beneath the buildings of the city on the horizon, bathing everything in a sea of washed out pinks and oranges and purples, the set in of night seemingly moments away. No one was around, leaving Michael and Gavin sitting alone together on the park bench, the air around them eerily quiet and still.

His hand curled around Gavin’s waist, almost to its own accord, fitting easily against his hipbone, his thumb against the skin showing above the waistband of his jeans.

“Greyer,” He decided, never once taking his eyes off of the scene in front of him. “Less vibrant. Has it always been like this?”

He remembered Austin as a colorful, vibrant city with neon lights and a bright sunset, not as the washed-out, desaturated scene he saw in front of him. Everything was like that, from the park around to the sky above. It felt off, wrong, and it left Michael wondering if he’d just never noticed it before, as if he hadn’t ever looked closely enough to see it.

Gavin hummed against him again, not giving him a real answer, instead nuzzling against his neck. His nose pressed against his skin and Michael looked down again and saw that Gavin was as lively as ever. His green eyes were bright, staring off into the horizon, still very much alive and there, his tanned skin looking like the sun next to the nearly grey wood of the bench. He stuck out in the death of their surroundings, stark contrast against the dullness of everything else. He was just as sun-kissed and animated as Michael had always remembered him, sticking out in the midst of the gritty landscape.

He looked away from Gavin, instead glancing down at himself. It was the same way for him, too, the same brightness, the same energy he got from Gavin, but not anything else around them.

“Has it always been like this, Gavin?” There was panic edging at his voice, involuntary and inexplicable. His muscles had gone rigid, his shoulders tense, his back straight. He didn’t understand—he didn’t understand anything. It wasn’t even the different atmosphere. It was that there was no reason, there was no purpose and as time went on and Michael watched the sun barely move, he grew more and more restless. One moment it was because he didn’t know why he was here, the next it was the fact that he didn’t know where he was, and then, finally it was—

He didn’t remember how he’d gotten here.

He didn’t remember ever coming here. He didn’t remember driving here. He didn’t remember why he was here or where he was or when he’d come here. He couldn’t remember anything. So many things were at just the edge of his memory, begging to be remembered, and he hit a block each and every time he tried to recall them. He didn’t remember Austin or moving here or where he’d lived before. He didn’t remember who he was or who Gavin was, even though it was there, pushing at him, pleading to be recalled.

He was Michael Jones.

He had no idea how old he was. He knew he had curly russet hair, freckles, brown eyes, and glasses. He also knew he was shorter than Gavin.

This was Gavin Free.

That much he knew. He also knew he was close to Gavin. Friends. And that Gavin could be really annoying and fucking stupid. There were a lot of things that irritated him about Gavin and he could name them all—he knew that, too. He knew Gavin; he knew himself. He just didn’t know who either of them were.

The last real memory he had was telling Gavin that Austin felt different, which had only been a few minutes ago.  That was where his life began, though he was completely positive there’d been something before. The shortness of his life, and the thought of it, the realization, sent hot sparks flying through him, irritation reaching down to his fingertips, making them curl against Gavin’s skin. This moment was his life—

“Nah,” Gavin sat up beside him, stretching and looking at Michael, his green the brightest

things Michael had seen in the world. “But does it matter?”

“Gavin—”

“Hm?”

Michael swallowed hard, an abrupt pause leaving him feeling cold, shivering from it, “I don’t remember.”

Something changed in Gavin. He stopped being the relaxed, carefree idiot Michael knew to associate him with, a dark air instead coming about him. Concern flickered deep in Gavin’s eyes as they narrowed slightly, his grin falling from his lips in an instant, eyebrows furrowing together. The sharp angles of Gavin’s body froze, gears stopping mid turn, all bouts of carefreeness and relaxation leaving him as if it hadn’t actually been there all along. His lips pursed together and then he opened his mouth, as if to say something and then didn’t, struck wordless by Michael’s simple confession.

“You don’t remember what?” There was no shock in his voice, only worry, his words laced with concern. It was obvious they didn’t share this problem, which led Michael only to wonder more about what was going on and what had happened before.

It made him hesitant to answer, pausing and just looking at Gavin before switching his gaze to the ground, “Nothing beyond this bench.”

Gavin sat back, a dark sigh coming from him, running a hand through his messy hair, not even looking at Michael anymore. He slumped against the back of the bench, his face in a deep-set frown that Michael saw before he hunched himself over and hid his face in his hands, sighing again, his exhale sounding something like Michael’s name. The surprise disappeared into something that looked like acceptance, Michael noted as he looked back at the ground.

After a few minutes of listening for Gavin to say something, not knowing what to do or how to react to the look he’d seen on Gavin’s face, the man beside him finally glanced up, focusing on the sunset in the distance, “It doesn’t matter.”

Gavin said it like it was a fact. Indisputable and unchallengeable, something that could not be contested or changed. So Michael took it as is. Gavin no longer seemed shocked by Michael’s memory. It couldn’t be that big of an issue. There were other things to think about, other things to do.

It was time to move on in more ways than one. Something urged at him, something hidden deep, deep in his mind.

“Let’s go home, Michael,” Gavin told him, getting up from the park bench and offering a hand out to him. Their palms pressed against each other, Gavin’s hand warm and wholly, completely, there in his own.

There, even when other things really weren’t.

He didn’t know the apartment they ended up back at. The walk had been a blur, the time passing incomprehensible to Michael. Neither of them spoke the entire way, the silence between them reflected in the empty roads and flickering streetlights. The city felt absent, full of buildings that reached into the night skies and places that reminded him of memories he couldn’t recall, completely vacant and empty, holding a potential for life but instead leaving a city of ghosts in its wake.

It felt like it haunted him, making him unable to stop staring at the darkened windows of shops and bars and homes. Every building caught his eyes, the surprise at the emptiness never subsiding; making him want desperately to get out, to go home. Everything felt off and he knew it, but couldn’t correct it, knowing right from wrong but not remembering what, exactly, was right in the first place.

The building was in a place he didn’t remember, but Gavin taking him up the steps to the complex felt familiar, and he could almost—just almost—take the lead. He didn’t, though, but he knew the way Gavin took him, leading him down the halls to ‘home’, a door to an apartment in the empty complex.

He stopped, hand on the door before Gavin could get to it first. Michael turned towards Gavin and looked him straight in the eyes. Gavin didn’t do anything for a moment, looking distracted, as if he were there, but just not with Michael.  

The number on the door was familiar to him, the place he was standing feeling as though he’d been here a thousand times, and yet, it was strange and uncomfortable. The lights in the hallways of the complex were out, the only light being from moonlight behind them, casting their shadows on the door, leaving them in almost complete darkness. It was as if the building had suddenly been abandoned, as if every other tenant had left and Michael was the only person living in it anymore.

Gavin didn’t live here. He didn’t live with Michael. Michael had lived alone. He knew that, standing here with him. This wasn’t Gavin’s home. And yet, Michael wanted him here. More than anything, he wanted him here. He didn’t want Gavin out alone in the cold and despondent world. He wanted him here, alone with Michael. He wanted his warmth, his liveliness, his color. He didn’t want to be alone, and from what he knew about Gavin, he wouldn’t want that, either.

“Stay,” The word came out of him suddenly, the first thing spoken since their walk here, feeling deafening in the silence of the rest of the world. It wasn’t a question or an order. It was a statement.

“Wasn’t planning on going anywhere, Michael,” Gavin looked down and smiled, a genuine smile and none of the mischievous grins and smirks he could easily imagine on Gavin’s face. He met Michael’s eyes a second later, raising his head from where he’d been looking at the floor. His smile seemed private, something Michael shouldn’t be seeing. Something he didn’t deserve to see.

“Good,” Michael’s hand tightened on the door handle and he felt the corners of his lips twitch upward and hoped Gavin couldn’t see it. “I hate the way you say my name. Asshole.”

  “I know,” That smile turned into a full-on grin, and for some reason, it felt more natural, like he’d seen that same shit-eating grin too many times to count. “You’ve told me before.”

“Yeah? Good. Maybe eventually you’ll start saying it right,” Their banter felt natural and the more he talked to Gavin, the more he felt like himself. He definitely hadn’t before, panicked and scared and feeling alone in a world he didn’t remember.

There was a beat of breath between them, and for the first time, looking at Gavin, the silence didn’t hurt his ears and didn’t resonate off the walls of the empty complex. It was filled with something else, a moment in which he shared a connection with Gavin, where Michael felt something else pushing at him to be realized, and for once it wasn’t a memory. It was something entirely different and Michael tried to reach out for it. The moment he forced himself forward, trying to grasp it, his back hit the hard door to the apartment, slamming against it and his hands were suddenly grabbing at Gavin’s hair, at his shoulders, at his arms, at anything to pull him closer.

He clutched Gavin’s hair in both his hands, fingers tangled in it, pulling at it, Gavin’s arms wrapped around his back in a near crushing grip. He yanked harshly at the hair between his fingers, begging for him to stay like this, to not go. He was warm against Michael, the heat of his hands burning through the fabric of his jeans, his lips on Michael’s feeling like they could easily set him aflame. A match had been struck the moment Gavin slammed him against the door, igniting a fire that was burning the two of them alive, violent and passionate.

(Lights flew at him, bright and white and coming straight at him behind his closed eyelids and were curling around his hips, under his shirt, resting against the small of his back and his lips were against Michael’s and in that moment, he knew it was everything he’d ever dreamed of and the lights were white and coming straight at him and Michael was nothing more than a deer in headlights—)

His nails dug into Gavin’s shoulders and he was unsure of when he’d stopped pulling at Gavin’s hair. He kissed Gavin as hard as Gavin pressed against him, the fire between them burning tenfold and the door behind him ice in comparison. Colors blossomed behind his eyelids, vibrant and blooming, so much unlike the greyscale of everything else, making him feel here, at home, existing for what felt like the first time in his life.

It made him feel a part of this reality, rather than the floating, confused way he’d been carrying on . Gavin had grounded him. Every part of him was suddenly alive with that fire, his fingertips seared with it, hot with the charged energy between them.

Michael was breathless when he finally had to pull away, and his hard breathing was echoed in Gavin’s. He could feel Gavin’s heart racing through his shirt, faster than Michael’s own quick one, and his green eyes were wide, his mouth half open, looking shocked at himself and shocked at Michael and shocked at everything around him. They stayed like that, Michael’s hands on Gavin’s shoulders, Gavin’s wrapped around his back, stuck in the moment. He didn’t want to move, not wanting to pull the heat between them, not wanting to go back to that shitty half-here feeling.

Gavin was the first to move and to Michael’s own surprise, it wasn’t to pull away from him. Instead, Gavin threw himself forward, until Michael had to wrap his arms around his chest to support him, to hold him up, Gavin’s legs seeming to have buckled under him. His head rested on Michael’s shoulder, his nose against the nape of his neck, his body miles of limp long limbs sagging against him.

He didn’t know how long he held Gavin like that. The relative time had dragged, holding Gavin up with ease, not letting him fall to the ground like gravity wanted it to be. At some point, he craned his neck to reveal Gavin biting his bottom lip, his eyes wide open and welcoming, just like everything else was.

“You alright?” Michael dared to ask, whispering into the dead air of the empty hallways, almost afraid of what other ears were around to hear it besides Gavin’s. He didn’t know what terrified him more—the prospect that there was no one around to hear or that there was someone besides them.

Gavin pulled away from him, grinning that stupid, shitty grin Michael had seen earlier, “Top, Michael. Sorry about that. Let’s go in.”

There were no more questions, though Michael had millions burning at the tip of his tongue. Gavin had just lost it, falling slack against Michael in what almost seemed like fear and desperation. Maybe—just maybe—Gavin wasn’t alright. Maybe everything wasn’t fine. Maybe it really did matter. But Michael said none of those things, simply following Gavin through the door of his own apartment, leaving silence in his wake.

2:07 AM.

It was raining when Michael had woken up, and the clock hadn’t changed since, despite Michael having been able to count out at least a hundred and eighty seconds. The sheets felt cold, Michael’s feet freezing until he pushed them back, quickly finding Gavin to rest them against, warming himself against his skin. He stared at the clock, listening to Gavin typing on Michael’s laptop beside him, his breathing and restless fingers providing a comforting background noise that Michael had easily fallen asleep to earlier.

Type. Pause. Type. Pause. Rustling as Gavin shifted himself closer to Michael. More typing. It was a rhythm Michael was grateful for, a break to the silence he was beginning to hate with every bit of his being. He couldn’t even begin to imagine it if Gavin had actually gone back to his home, rather than staying here. In the end, with as almost annoyingly restless as Gavin was, he was glad he had him here.

The clock eventually turned, though it was after countless more seconds Michael had spent mulling over in his head. When it did, he rolled over, his interest in the clock gone, instead meeting the glare of the laptop screen, bright and blinding, making him have to squint to make anything out. Gavin stopped typing, looked down at Michael and for the first time, Michael could’ve sworn he saw bags around Gavin’s eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“Everything alright?” Michael asked him, pressing himself close against Gavin’s hip.

Gavin hummed again, looking back at the screen, only giving him a real answer a few moments later, “Dan deleted his twitter.”

Michael pushed himself up on his elbows, raising a surprised eyebrow at Gavin’s remark, “Holy shit, really?”

Gavin’s expression didn’t change and he continued to stare at the screen, his hands on the keys, unmoving, “You remember Dan?”

“Yeah. Sorta.”

He did. The name had jogged his memory a bit. Gavin was from England and he had a friend from back home whom he did an internet show with. The guy was pretty important to him, which Michael could tell from looking at him now.

“I—He might just be mad at me or something. Dunno.”

“Weird,” Michael commented. “Doesn’t seem like something he’d do.”

Gavin made a sound of agreement and nodded. Michael instantly felt a pang of sympathy for him. He didn’t know why—there wasn’t much for him to be sad about. He knew Gavin and his friend were close and them fighting was odd to consider. But that didn’t make it sad, the pang of sorrow he felt for Gavin out of place, and Michael lingered on it for a long moment, struggling with himself, eventually letting the emotion dissolve.

This wasn’t him. This being—this wasn’t him. He wasn’t talking normally. He wasn’t feeling normally. He wasn’t even thinking normally. He wasn’t Michael Jones. Everything he did felt unnatural, like he was walking on a cloud, floating through time, and he hated it. He wanted his personality back. He wanted to be his true self again, not whoever this was. Gavin had said earlier that his lack of memories didn’t matter, and Michael had taken it as a fact of life, since he hadn’t wanted to panic about it anymore. But now—it did matter. It did matter, and it mattered a whole fucking lot. Because he wasn’t himself. He was some distorted, weird concept.

He felt it then, as the sympathy disappeared, the uncomfortably hot burning that clouded his head, anger at his situation, unnerving and uncontrollable since he could do nothing to change it now. He wanted to yell. He wanted to scream. He wanted to do a lot of things. But he didn’t, since Gavin leaned over, shoving the computer halfway onto Michael’s lap.

“I want to show you something,” He said, the screen pulled up to a photo where Michael could see a himself and Gavin together, Gavin looking blearily at the camera with red cheeks and an carefree look, Michael with his arm around him, looking about half as drunk as Gavin was. Gavin was flanked by a tall dark-haired man, who was grinning, clearly inebriated, at the man beside him. An older guy with a ridiculously handlebar mustache was next to Michael, looking fake annoyed.

“Shit.”

The word came out of his mouth before the rest of his mind caught up.

(white lights, white lights, white lights)

A bar. They were in a bar. Dan, Gavin, Michael, Geoff. Last night. The music was loud. Really loud. And he had his arm around Gavin’s waist and everything was alright with the world. Flashes of memory barraged him, quick and loud and carrying the stench of alcohol and buzz of warmth, blinding him and making him see the red lights of the bar and the flash of familiar green eyes and Gavin spilling his drink all over himself and Michael leaning over to lick it off his lips, hearing the following supporting jeer from Dan and the sigh of irritation from Geoff.

He’d kissed him, then, in a flurry of drunken stupor that made it impossible to stop him from what he’d wanted to do for so long, and Gavin had kissed him back, under the rosy lights of the bar, his lips tasting like booze and his skin smelling of it, too.

He remembered. He remembered everything from that night. He remembered the taste of Gavin’s mouth, the joking congratulations from Dan and the comment of ‘fucking finally’ from Geoff. He remembered taking this photo and he remembered posting it to twitter and he remembered kissing Gavin again and again, promising himself that he wasn’t going to let it go when he was sober. He remembered going to the bar after work, after the podcast, accompanied by a visiting Dan and a bored Geoff, and Lindsay and Barbara had come at some point in the night, too, and the music that had played and all the things he’d done in that night and how he’d felt.

—So why the fuck was he here?

Why was he here, here in this place he barely recognized? He hadn’t left the fucking bar. He could say that for sure, because he knew he hadn’t, and Michael Jones trusted his own goddamn memory. They’d been at the bar long after night had fallen, even though he’d watched the sunset with Gavin in the empty park. It’d only been a few hours. The alcohol should’ve been just wearing off now. But he was completely sober, completely grounded, his mind clear.

Not enough time had passed. That night in the bar had still been last night. He couldn’t see it as any different—not enough time passing on his bodily clock to be anything other than last night. It’d fucking been last night. Things didn’t add up—they didn’t add up at all and the more Michael thought about it, the less sense it made.

(white lights, white lights, pain—pain—pain.)

“What the fuck.”

He was breathing hard again, staring at the photo on the laptop screen, feeling as though he couldn’t get enough goddamn air in his lungs.

“I don’t—” He was running his mouth, speaking before he could think it through, anything and everything coming out all at once, his thoughts and words combining until they became one question, "I don't fucking understand"

“I know,” He’d almost forgotten Gavin was there and upon hearing him, Michael jumped, leaping to his feet at the side of his bed, feeling the carpet beneath his feet, cold air rush at him, feeling panicked and afraid and angry all at once. His hands curled into fists, his nails digging into palms. Gavin did nothing but stare at him with wide eyes, obviously surprised at his reaction, his face illuminated by the computer screen.

“No—Fuck. We were at the bar, Gavin,” His voice was anything but calm, rising into a yell, each word louder than the next until he was screaming full force into the open air and penetrating thin walls of his apartment. “We were at the bar! We went there after the podcast! Dan and Geoff came with and I—I kissed you and we drank together! Last night! We work together and we play video games for a living and we went out last night! I remember, Gavin—I fucking remember—I remember and I still don’t understand a goddamn thing—”

Frustrated tears streaming down his face, he stopped.  His screams dying out as he looked into the room, everything bathed in a blue-grey light, nothing as he remembered it and still, somehow, the imprint of his apartment remained. In the moonlight and the darkness, Gavin was the only thing with any saturation, everything else washed-out and dyed grey and blue, dull and boring against Gavin’s green eyes and vibrant colors. The room was cold, goose-bumps rising on his skin as the chill hit him, the air freezing and the heat of anger leaving him in a flurry as the atmosphere seemed to suck any and all warmth from him. He was mad, furious, and now suddenly, he wasn’t. He wasn’t fucking angry—he was confused. He was goddamn cold and confused and he just wanted things to make sense again.

“—I just want to understand,” He hissed it through his teeth, his voice breaking, slowly becoming the Michael Jones he knew he was, his own personality returning to him. He hated being left in the dark without knowing was going on, without full understanding of his situation. It sucked a whole fucking lot and it just frustrated him more and more by the second until he exploded into either a flurry of screaming and yelling or him just forcing himself into emotional numbness so that it didn’t matter to him anymore.

Gavin shut the laptop; setting it to the side of the bed, shading the rest of the room in darkness, save for the moonlight shining through the balcony windows. He didn’t have to say anything, Michael instead collapsing onto the bed, lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling and listening to Gavin’s now measured breathing.

He felt the bed dip and heard the sheets rustle, the springs groaning as Gavin moved himself towards Michael, until his hands were on either side of Michael’s head and he was leaning down, Michael’s arms reaching up to wrap around his neck as he kissed him. The same rush from before hit him again, a wave of emotions and wants, drowning him.

He moved his lips against Gavin’s, arms wrapped around his neck, slowly pulling himself up into a sitting position, never breaking away from him. Gavin’s hands were on his hips, holding Michael against him, everything gentler and much less urgent than before, though each moment was infused with confusion. He kissed Gavin, releasing every emotion he had in him, allowing himself to feel Gavin’s hands on him, his thumbs rubbing the skin just above his waistband. Gavin’s heart beat fast, and Michael could almost hear it thundering in his ears, feeling it through two layers of clothing as he pressed up against him, wanting nothing more than to just curl into him and disappear.

They moved apart eventually, Michael breathing hard. Gavin leaned further against him, laying his head on Michael’s chest, head above his heart and arms slung on either side of him. He was warm. Shortly after,  Michael found himself lying with Gavin that way, his head tucked under Michael’s chin, Michael’s hands weaving through his messy hair, limbs in a tangle under the blankets.

He threaded his hands through Gavin’s hair, counting each beat of his heart, nearly asleep when he heard Gavin softly murmur, “I don’t understand, either.”

He dreamt that night of blood red and angel’s wings and startled awake several times in the night to a world of phantom pain, only to be comforted by soothing whispers and kisses against his collarbone, luring him back into that very same place.

It was fucking bright.

No—It was really fucking bright and it was horrible and Michael wanted to just roll over and go back to sleep.

He couldn’t, though, because the spot beside him was empty, Gavin gone from the bed. From the running water in the other room, he was still there, apparently in the shower, and as Michael listened to the water turn off, he was surprised he hadn’t woken up earlier.

He managed to doze off again, despite the bright morning light streaming in from the windows, the rhythm of rain hitting the roof of the apartment putting him back to sleep, and he woke up to the sound of Gavin back in the room, pulling his clothes on.

“—The hell are you doing, Gavin?” He growled, still half asleep, rolling onto his back so he could watch Gavin with half-open eyes. He was in the middle of pulling his jeans back on and froze before looking up to grin at Michael.

“Don’t smile at me with your pants half off.”

Gavin just grinned more, “Would you rather me smile at you with my pants all the way off?”

Michael groaned at Gavin’s sore attempt at flirting, too exhausted from having a rough night to respond with any amount of sarcasm, instead managing a, “Shut the fuck up.”

Gavin continued to get dressed, Michael still partially watching him, growing more and more awake as he wondered what Gavin was doing. He couldn’t be going in to work—he hadn’t woken Michael up for it. It had to be too early or maybe it was the weekend or—no, yesterday had been podcast day. Monday. Hadn’t it? He’d done the podcast with Gavin, went to the bar and then what? Everything had come back to him last night when Gavin had showed him the photo and now—now everything felt blurry again and Michael was tired and wanted to sleep more and wanted Gavin to come back to bed.

“I’m going out for a bit, Michael,” Gavin told him as he pulled his dark grey sweatshirt over his head. He sounded oddly serious, unlike before with his horrible attempt at flirting. “I’ll be back soon. Get some more rest while I’m gone.”

Michael pushed himself up on his elbows, fixing Gavin with a questioning stare, “Where you going?”

“Just for a walk. Might head over to Geoff’s for a bit and stop by the office. I’ll be back before noon,” Gavin turned away from him, heading towards the door before stopping and waiting for Michael to say something.

“See you soon, Gav. Tell Geoff I said hi.”

Gavin smiled back at him, “Yeah, yeah.”

He tried to sleep more after Gavin left. He honestly did. He was still exhausted and worn out from—from what, he didn’t even know. But he was exhausted. He tried to sleep, tossing and turning in the bed after Gavin left, unable to get comfortable or close his eyes for long enough to sleep. Eventually, he just gave up, not even giving the clock a glance, frustrated with himself and with everything around him.

He made his way to the living room and stood in the doorway, looking out into a room that was  similar to what he remembered but not quite right. Last night he hadn’t looked at the room. He hadn’t recognized it. He hadn’t remembered anything. Last night he’d barely known his own name, before Gavin had showed him the photo. He didn’t know how much he’d forgotten or how he’d forgotten it or even why, but it bothered him. It bothered him a lot, because the prospect of suddenly forgetting everything and the realization that things were getting blurry again, memories fuzzy and hard to reach, was fucking terrifying.

The room was ultimately the same, everything generally the same as Michael had left it, but something about it made it feel emptier. It was home. His apartment. But it was less bright, less warm, less of… his home. He was on the outside looking in on a place he didn’t know, a place that was unfamiliar, a place he didn’t want to be by himself  in. Honestly, it was ridiculous. This was the place he’d lived for years and for it to make him uncomfortable—it annoyed him a lot.

He tried to shake the feeling from himself, stepping foot onto the cold hardwood floor of his living room, almost immediately flopping onto the couch thereafter. He didn’t feel like doing anything. Actually—lying on the couch wrapped up in blankets sounded like a great idea. He could wait for Gavin to come home, since he really had nothing else to do but that. He didn’t feel like going out and not even Gavin was headed into work today, though Michael couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t linger on that, his mind refusing to let him do so, the blurriness returning and Michael too exhausted to stop it.

Instead, he flipped on the television, turning on a news channel and letting it play in the background as he watched through half-open eyes, listening to groundbreaking stories about what had recently happened in Austin. A murder, a drug ring busted, a horrible car crash—it was all the same and even in this state, it bored him. It bored him and he didn’t want to listen to it anymore, ending up instead putting in a movie, a shitty one he’d watched with Gavin weeks ago.

He didn’t fall asleep, instead actually watching the whole fucking thing, not paying enough attention to hear footsteps coming up the hall.

The next thing he knew, the door was flying open and then slammed shut so loudly it rivaled even Michael’s screaming. It rattled the entire apartment, shaking the screen that was playing the credits, making Michael jump out of his seat, ears still ringing from the sound, standing wrapped in blankets and facing Gavin.

Gavin looked like someone he’d never seen before.

Gavin had an expression on his face, a look in his eyes that Michael never could’ve imagined on him.

He stared right back at Michael, his drenched hair hanging in his face, his eyes narrowed in what Michael could tell was clear anger. His hands were fisted at his sides, his entire body tense. He was breathing hard, not saying a word, everything about him screaming rage. He was angry, and he was angry in a way that Michael had never seen before, a way that Michael had only ever experienced when he got too worked up, but multiplied by ten. Gavin was angry in a way he’d never thought anybody could be ever, and it scared him.

Michael was the first to move and he did so without thought, shifting almost as soon as Gavin did, dashing in front of the doorway. Gavin stopped in front of him, all that rage focused on Michael, and he was suddenly left wishing he’d never moved to block him.

“Get out of my way, Michael.”

His voice was tight, strained, monotone. Michael didn’t move.

“Michael.”

He still didn’t, not taking a defensive stance, his heart beating fast in his ears.

“Michael!” He was whispering now, and it nearly made Michael cringe, having never heard Gavin break and use that tone out of anger. “I saw Dan and Geoff cry today, Michael. Get. Out. Of. My. Way.”

He moved, and the next thing he heard was the door to the bedroom slamming harder than the front door had, the screech of bed springs as Gavin threw himself down on it, and a loud, shrill, muffled scream as Gavin shrieked into the pillows left on the bed, his screams wordless and high-pitched, and full of previously hidden frustration, anger, and sorrow.

He screamed. He screamed until his voice dissolved into curses and coughs and then he hit things. Michael could hear him, still frozen, powerless in the living room, as Gavin seemingly tore through drawers and broke every piece of glass he could find and punched the wall over and over again.

It hurt to listen to. It broke his heart. He didn’t know why Gavin was frustrated, why he was angry, what had made him angry when he was out. It didn’t add up—Geoff and Dan didn’t cry in the first place, and why that would make Gavin go into a fit of rage didn’t make sense. But right now, it wasn’t about things making sense. It was about the fact that Gavin was alone and screaming until his voice was hoarse and probably hurting himself unintentionally by breaking things, and there was nothing Michael could do about it.

So instead, he just listened. He listened to the plaster of the wall breaking. He listened to glass shattering. He listened to Gavin’s shrieks. He listened to everything, sitting there alone in the living room, waiting for the noise to die down, waiting for Gavin to calm down.

It was sudden when he did. There was glass breaking, a shout of pain, and then a thud.

That was when Michael went to him, finding him in his own trashed bedroom. Blankets and sheets were torn to shreds, everything pulled out of his drawers and strewn on the ground, pieces of broken glass, mostly mirrors, scattered everywhere, holes in the walls. It was a fucking disaster. He picked his way to the private bathroom, finally finding a still damp Gavin kneeling on the bathroom tile, clenching the wrist attached to his bloodied hand, the large wall mirror shattered, leaving a hole in the middle the size of Gavin’s fist.

“You broke the mirror,” Michael said, his voice soft. Gavin looked up at him, nodding slowly, coming down from whatever fit of rage he had. “You punched it?”

“Yeah,” Gavin muttered. “Sorry… Michael. I’m bleeding.”

He could see it was making Gavin sick to look at his own blood from the way he was pausing to gag and cough. Silently, he pulled him to his feet, Gavin limp and pliant under his hands, washing the cuts and pulling glass from his skin, bandaging them carefully. Afterwards, they slowly put the bedroom back together, and Gavin apologized again, leaning his head on Michael’s shoulder as they sat on the couch together when they finished.

“What happened?” Michael dared to ask before he forgot, before they turned on some dumb movie and didn’t talk about this.

“I saw Dan and Geoff cry today,” Gavin answered instantly, Michael able to feel each word against his neck. He didn’t expect Gavin to go on, but he did, speaking quietly, “Everyone cried, really. But Dan and Geoff—I’ve seen Geoff cry before. When he married Griffon and when his daughter was born. But never Dan.”

“I—” Michael didn’t know what to say to that, his mind a flurry of confusion and sympathy, wanting to give Gavin all the comfort he had, but not knowing how to, not when he didn’t know what, exactly had happened. So, instead, he just asked his first question again. “What happened?”

Gavin nuzzled his neck and he barely caught his next words, as broken as the hallway mirror, “Doesn’t matter.”

They didn’t talk about it again.

It wasn’t because Michael didn’t want to or because he forgot. It was because Gavin obviously didn’t want to talk about it.  So they didn’t. Michael didn’t bring it up, the way Gavin had screamed and broken nearly everything he could get his hands on still fresh in his mind. He didn’t talk about it, and Gavin slowly came back to him until he and Michael were arguing over video games back and forth as they always did.

Sunset fell, after what felt like more hours than were supposed to be in the day at all, and after too many rounds of games with him, Gavin stood up from where he was curled up next to Michael on the couch, stretching and hesitating a second before announcing that he was leaving again.

“Hey, Michael. I’m gonna take a walk. I’ll be back soon; I’m just gonna go check up on some stuff.”

“You’re going to make sure Geoff and Dan are alright?” Michael guessed, idly playing with the buttons on the controller, almost uneasy as he looked up at Gavin.

“Yeah. Won’t be too long. See you soon.”

Michael nodded and Gavin was out the door a second later, and Michael could hear his footsteps padding down the hallway, away from him. He watched him leaving, knowing that Gavin would come back, but still feeling the loneliness start to make its way into him. All that was left to do was sit and wait for Gavin to come back home and find something to do with himself in the meantime.

He was restless. He didn’t know what to do. The couch was a mess of games and controllers and blankets strewn around it, but it didn’t seem appealing, not when Michael was alone. He paced the apartment, wanting Gavin back with him, feeling empty and agitated without him. He wanted to call him, to send him a text, to just have some sort of contact with him, but—

Actually—

Where the fuck was his phone?

He hadn’t seen the damn thing in what felt like days and he hadn’t paid any attention to it. He was probably overloaded with calls from people and texts asking about him. He felt like he’d been cooped up in the apartment for longer than he had. Honestly, it felt like weeks, rather than just a day. He hadn’t actually left the apartment today and for some reason, he had no desire to, nor did he have any desire to go look for his phone other than to call Gavin.  He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Something tugged at him, reminding him that he should care, that the fact that he hadn’t seen anyone should matter, that he shouldn’t just pass over it without giving it much thought, but he didn’t, instead ignoring it.

He didn’t like it when Gavin wasn’t here. He didn’t like being alone with his thoughts. It was cold and dark and being alone just accentuated that, making Michael more aware of himself than before. Honestly, he felt like shit. He felt like absolute shit. He was hungry and tired and starved of contact, even though it’d only been a few minutes since Gavin had left, and all he’d done was sit and wait for him to come back, rather than do anything actually productive.

He paced the floor, tense and without purpose, trying to shake the way he was tight with stress but ultimately failing to do so. He didn’t even know what he was stressed about, continuing to pace, back and forth and back and forth and—

No. He actually did know what he was stressed about. It was crystal clear and right in fucking front of him, a sudden moment of pure clarity bringing it back to him, the cloud clearing from his head, letting him actually, really think.

There was something wrong.

No, again. There was a lot of things wrong. Everything was wrong. Everything was wrong and nothing felt real, from the chill that had goose-bumps rising on his skin to the way he looked at his own apartment as if it were a stranger’s home. It even felt wrong. His memory was missing, as he’d figured out last night. He’d somehow gone from being drunk at a bar with Gavin close to midnight to being completely sober in an empty unfamiliar park with him. There was a huge piece of information that was gone, missing from his memory, and somehow in the gap of memory, everything had gone wrong.

Even Gavin was acting strangely. He hadn’t quite noticed it until now, but he was. He never knew Gavin to stay in one place for so long, even if he had left a couple times. Gavin was fleeting and restless. He needed the contact of other people and he always needed to be doing something. It didn’t add up—Gavin hated being alone and yet, the only time he’d left the apartment today was to go out  and return by himself. For him to stay in one place for so long, with just Michael to keep him company, it was fucking weird.

Even worse was all this ‘It doesn’t matter’ bullshit. Gavin was goddamn annoying with that. He didn’t talk about his problems, and Michael could easily recall multiple occasions where he’d had to drag it out of him unwillingly. He was outwardly carefree and let things go because he claimed he didn’t want to be bothered by it, but was the complete opposite on the inside. But even this was odd for him. It did matter and Gavin was letting it show, with that screaming fit he had earlier. He was bothered a lot and wasn’t trying to hide it, though he still refused to tell Michael what it was, passing it off with a simple ‘it doesn’t matter’.

Which brought up another point. Michael had been letting it go without a second thought, taking his word for it, even when everything else screamed that it did matter. Something was wrong with him. Something was wrong with him more than  was wrong with Gavin and more than was wrong with everything else. He wasn’t trying to get the truth  out of Gavin. He wasn’t trying to figure out what was going on. He wasn’t doing anything, instead letting everything pass by him and just accepting it.

The missing memories, the dullness of everything, the weird passage of time, the empty streets, the lack of desire to leave his apartment, his clouded mind, what Gavin had said earlier, Gavin, Gavin, Gavin, himself—

(He closed his eyes and could still see the white lights, and he felt small and powerless and there were fingers gripping him, only to shove him away.)

Everything was wrong. Everything was so fucking wrong.

(And then there was pain. Nothing but pain.)

He wanted to scream. He wanted to shriek like he’d heard Gavin do today. Had it really been today? Somewhere, he felt his entire body crumple to the ground and everything hurt, his eyes clenched shut. Pain shot up his spine, sparking his nerves, his muscles aching. He couldn’t move, his heart thundering in his chest, his head felt like it was going to cave in on itself. He couldn’t even open his eyes, everything refusing to respond, and he’d never felt pain like this in his entire life. His blood was on fire, burning him from the inside out, lighting his body up and blackening his skin to a crisp.

He wanted to scream for help, but he knew his body wouldn’t let him.

(He heard his body break.)

He screamed, anyways, but he didn’t hear it, shaking and shrieking and weeping for help, and somewhere he heard the slam of the front door hitting the wall and footsteps rushing over to him and he wondered where and who he was.

It didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter.

(white lights, white lights, white lights)

He screamed more, his skin on fire, and he trembled, holding his ears in an attempt to get the roaring in them to stop, his heart thundering above it, his eyes still clenched shut, and he saw nothing but darkness and short bursts of white lights, blinding him and coming closer with each passing second. He struggled to pull his knees in, everything screaming in protest for him not to as he tried to curl further into himself. Hands were grabbing at him, shaking him, burning his nerves as they touched him, pain flaring out with each grab, and he wanted nothing more than to fight them off and just curl up here, on the floor, and wait the pain out, barely able to move and hardly able to make sense of what was what.

He was shaken violently, the hands off of him now, his body convulsing to its own accord. He tried to move, trying to reach up and claw at the hands he knew were still there, waiting to grab at him again, his body not working right.

There was a voice, saying his name softly in his ears, hands no longer forcibly grabbing him, instead holding his arms, warm and gentle and pulling him towards them. Fingers ran through his curls and then they were on his face, taking his glasses off of him, brushing against his skin. The voice was getting closer and eventually, Michael had returned to his body enough to place it as Gavin’s; Gavin’s voice soothing him in his ears, his arms wrapped around him, Michael’s head in his lap.

The pain was fading fast, and he struggled to remember what had brought it on, what he’d been trying to recall when he’d collapsed. It’d been important and it was still there, still fresh in his mind, but with Gavin’s voice in his ears and his warmth surrounding him, he couldn’t reach it, feeling it at the tips of his fingers, but never able to grasp out for it.

His head was still pounding, but the rest of his body was fine, the pain from before gone, barely leaving any soreness in its wake. His breathing eventually evened out and he stopped shaking and though darkness still surrounded him, he somehow found the strength to roll himself over and reach out to grab at Gavin’s sweatshirt, balling the material in his hands and pulling him towards him, trying to make things seem real again.

The warmth he felt from Gavin was definitely real. So was the fabric he was clawing at. Gavin was real. Gavin was solid, a familiar reality that he knew. Gavin was real and Gavin was here, with him, and holding Michael together in the darkness of the apartment. His vision slowly came back to him and he was able to raise his head enough to see Gavin staring back at him, bathed in dull oranges and reds that seemed to be the norm now, green eyes huge and filled with concern and shock and confusion. He was obviously as much at a loss as Michael was about what had just happened.

Michael didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even know where to begin, how to explain himself. So, instead, he said the one thing that had stuck in his mind, the one thing he had grasped onto and managed to carry through the whole thing, “Something’s wrong.”

Gavin continued to look down at him, locking eyes with him, “Everything’s wrong, Michael.”

  “You should rest.”

The apartment was lit, the sun still setting outside, draping everything in darkness. Gavin had flipped on the lights in the apartment, giving life to Michael’s home, making it bright and vibrant for what seemed like the first time since the previous night. It was finally starting to feel like his actual home, with Gavin clumsily messing around in the kitchen and the low noise of the television in the background, as well as whatever shitty music Gavin had put on. It was nice. Not to mention strangely domestic. He could get used to having Gavin here all the time.

They hadn’t talked about it, either. Gavin had done everything he could’ve, comforting Michael until he was alright again and forcing him to lie down for a while. Afterwards, they’d made dinner and ate together, never discussing what had happened, instead returning to their usual banter and arguments, everything else quickly slipping Michael’s mind. His head still pounded, the memory of the pain and the attack of whatever-the-fuck still right there in his mind, but he couldn’t seem to get himself to worry about it, preferring to think about whatever he and Gavin were arguing about instead.

He could feel Gavin’s breath against his neck behind him, could feel him pressing up against him, arms around Michael’s waist as he stood at the sink, washing the dishes after losing a fast bet. He had half a mind to tell Gavin to fuck off, still annoyed at his failure and his head’s pounding, but he kept him there, liking Gavin’s warm presence against his neck, enjoying how Gavin just gently pressed his lips against the place where Michael’s shoulder met his neck.

“You should rest,” Gavin repeated again, just below his ear, and Michael felt him lay his head on his shoulder and sigh.

“I have to do the dishes since I lost this fucking bet,” It came off with a lot less malice than he meant it to. Gavin still annoyed him, but there was something missing, something he couldn’t put his finger on, that prevented Michael from lacing his words with the usual irritation he could easily muster.

Gavin mumbled unintelligibly against him, not giving him a real answer, and Michael ignored it. Suddenly, it reminded him too much of before, of the time at the park, with Gavin’s head on his shoulder and him barely answering any of Michael’s questions, of the uncomfortable dream-like state that evening had been in and how he was slowly falling back into that state after what had happened earlier. He had a million questions, no answers, and was positive that Gavin didn’t know why earlier had happened either, or what ‘everything’s wrong’ had meant.

But he didn’t ask. The questions burned at his throat, begging to be released, but he changed the subject, instead, and it passed without a second thought, just like everything else, “I forgot to ask—How was that walk you took earlier?”

He felt the way Gavin froze, the way his breath hitched, how his fingers tightened momentarily on Michael’s hips, but it passed a second later, and Gavin was back to his usual self, “It was fine. Pretty nice evening.”

“That’s not really what I meant,” Michael frowned, almost turning towards him, instead throwing the pan into the drying rack with a noise that resounded throughout the apartment. “You went to go check on Dan and Geoff. How were they?”

He didn’t answer, hesitating for such a long time that Michael almost gave up on getting any words out of him, “Geoff was—Ah. Dan got into a fight.”

“What?!” He whirled on Gavin and Gavin leapt away from him, backing himself up against the counter in an almost defensive way, Michael still holding a half-washed plate in his hands as he stared at Gavin in shock. “Can’t he be deported for that? Did you stop him?!”

Gavin opened his mouth to speak, made a noise that sounded like a bunch of jumbled syllables, and promptly shut himself up. He seemed just as surprised at Michael as Michael was at him, the two standing as parallels, not touching.

Through the haze, Michael could still remember his friends and what they were like, and hearing something like that was definitely out of place. It did not make sense, another part that didn’t add up, just to add to all the other parts, frustrating him all the more. It didn’t make sense for Gavin to let Dan get into a fight, either. Gavin was a carefree restless idiot, but he wouldn’t let something like that happen. He wouldn’t.

“He was upset, ’s all, Michael!”

“You let him get into a fight. You could’ve stopped it! Why didn’t you try to stop it?!”

He didn’t know why he was so angry. He knew he shouldn’t have been yelling at Gavin. He knew he shouldn’t have been this loud. And he knew he shouldn’t have dropped the plate he was holding, and he realized it all the second it made contact with the floor, shattering into a million bits right in front of his eyes, hitting both of them with the debris. It didn’t stop him, though, from turning back to Gavin, his entire body burning with fury, white-hot, and seeing Gavin backed up against the counter, looking from the broken plate to Michael and back again. He didn’t know why he was so angry, but he was fucking angry, all of the missing reactions from things he’d been completely alright with in the past day coming out in the form of this.

He’d never left that bar. He’d never gone home. There was no empty park outside of Austin.

It didn’t exist.

Gavin should’ve stopped it. He should’ve stopped that fight. He shouldn’t have come back, not after letting his best friend get away with that and he shouldn’t have come back earlier, either, after he’d watched people cry and apparently done nothing about it. He shouldn’t have been here; he shouldn’t have come back to Michael. He should’ve stopped it.

And now Michael was angry. Really angry, all of it directed at Gavin, who just stood dumbstruck in front of him, not saying a word, mouth agape, continuing to make those jumbled noises from before, just making Michael all the more angry at him. He didn’t even try to come up with any excuses for himself, not even passing it off with his usual ‘I don’t care’ attitude. He didn’t explain himself, looking at Michael with those big green eyes, lost and confused and clearly not knowing what to say to him.

“Well?!” Michael didn’t know what he wanted. Excuses, explanations, accusations—he didn’t know. He shouldn’t have been this angry. That was something he knew for certain. But he was. He was angry and he didn’t quite know at what, but he was here now, screaming at Gavin for something he didn’t even know the full story of, demanding something out of him without knowing what.

All of it led up to Gavin breaking. It was Michael yelling and Gavin looking on confused and dumbstruck, and then it was the opposite, Gavin’s voice raising to a higher octave as he yelled back at him, his voice almost breaking and reminding Michael of his earlier screaming into the pillows in the bedroom, his tone the very same desperate and pained and everything else in between.

“I tried, Michael! I honestly, really tried. I tried as hard as I bloody could, but it wasn’t enough and I’m goddamn sorry it wasn’t. I’m sorry there was nothing I could do and I’m sorry I didn’t try hard enough and I’m sorry I was too slow and I’m—I’m sorry, alright? I’m damn sorry!”

Michael’s immediate reaction was guilt, leading him to change into a defensive position. Michael backed up against the counter now and Gavin as far away from him as possible in the tiny kitchenette, gripping the opposite countertop so hard Michael could see his knuckles going white. He paused, breathing hard, and Michael didn’t dare say anything else.

Something in Gavin’s face looked frightened, as if he was scared, his voice breaking as he continued to scream at him, stronger than Michael ever had been, “I could’ve stopped it; I—I know I could’ve and it’s my fault and I’m sorry I didn’t and I’m sorry for everything and if I could do it over with, I would, but I can’t and I don’t know what to do to make things better.”

Michael was shaking, trembling as Gavin finally stopped, wide-eyed and digging his nails into the countertop, red-faced with what definitely wasn’t anger, but some other emotion Michael couldn’t place. They weren’t talking about the fight Gavin had watched Dan get into. They weren’t talking about that and in that moment, it occurred to Michael that even during his angered yelling at him, that that had never been what they were talking about. It was something else entirely, something important that Michael felt like he’d forgotten, something that brought him back to the crystal clearness he both dreaded and craved.

He took a deep shaking breath as he watched Gavin sink to his knees in the scattered broken glass, supporting himself with his hands and staring at the broken pieces on the ground.

He didn’t want to be here. Not here with Gavin. Not here in this apartment. Not here anywhere. It was too much, and he could feel everything pressing down on him all at once, pushing to be noticed and more than anything, he needed air. He wasn’t angry anymore. He wasn’t seething. He was just frustrated and lost and the air was hot and charged and he just needed an out.

He ran, throwing open the door to the balcony and ducking outside, nearly drowning out Gavin’s last strangled words with the slamming of the sliding glass door.

“I wish I could make things right.”

Michael sat outside, waiting.

He waited for the haziness to come back. He waited for all of his emotions to be masked by cloudiness again. It never came, though, and it remained just as frustrating and confusing as it did before. Everything he’d seen mattered, and all of it was wrong but nothing added up. The easy naivety from before was gone, instead leaving Michael with a mind full of questions and no answers.

He sat on the balcony, forehead resting against the safety bars of the railing, feet dangling off as he stared into the empty streets below him. No one was out, the streets dead and grey, streetlight flickering on and off, the only noise in the world was the wind blowing against the buildings. He heard noises from inside too, a few things crashing in the beginning, right after Michael slammed the sliding glass door, and another strangled scream of frustration. Gavin seemed to calm down after that and instead, Michael heard footsteps and running water and Gavin cleaning up the plate Michael had shattered and whatever else he’d broken after Michael left the room.

Michael felt bad. He felt really bad, actually. He’d started their entire argument, yelling at Gavin and overreacting. It’d been odd—he didn’t know why he’d been so angry, but the anger was still there, and it was no longer directed at Gavin or because Gavin apparently hadn’t stopped Dan’s fight. It felt residual, lingering from the past two days, after all the times things had bothered him, but he’d just let them pass without even giving.

He hadn’t been himself. He didn’t remember the last time he’d been himself. He didn’t remember the last time he’d been the snarky, short-fused, blunt Michael Jones he’d always been. There was so much, all of it right in front of him, in the emptiness of the street and the way each second seemed to drag on and on, the wind blowing at him as he waited. And he’d just let it all go, like it was nothing, like it didn’t matter. It did, though. It definitely did matter, and it was making his head hurt the more he thought about it, the throbbing increasing as he leaned against the bars of the railing, eyes closed to the dead world around him, breathing slowly in and out.

Gavin had said it himself. Everything was wrong.

Everything. Not even those calm moments of lying down on the couch with Gavin felt right anymore. It felt odd, out of place, and he couldn’t even begin to understand why and how he’d ever ignored it, how he’d ever just sat there and let everything pass him by. He didn’t understand what Gavin’s thoughts were when that had made him break earlier after he’d come home the first time, or why he’d never worried about his sudden flashing memories that had brought on so much pain he’d collapsed from it, or how he’d shoved it all to the back of his head.

It was all wrong, wrong, wrong, and he’d been wrong to yell at Gavin like that, wrong to take his anger out on him, wrong to break that plate right in front of him, and he owed Gavin a huge apology. He owed Gavin a huge apology and then he needed to sleep, his head throbbing, his mind feeling overloaded with too much to think about at one time.

He was caught up in himself when he heard the sliding glass door open and Michael opened his eyes and looked back to see Gavin step out onto the balcony with him, sliding the door shut before sitting right beside Michael. He was close enough that Michael could feel him brush against his arm, taking some sort of comfort in his presence as he leaned his head back against the safety bars.

“Wanna drink?”

Gavin hadn’t waste any time, jumping straight to the chase, cocking an eyebrow as he held out a bottle of what looked to be some moderately strong shit from the back of Michael’s liquor cabinet. He eyed it for a long moment, and then went against his better judgment and held it to his lips, tipping his head back and taking a short swig of it, feeling the warm almost sickening alcohol hit the back of his throat a second later. He took it, as disgusting as it was, and swallowed, giving the bottle back to Gavin and wiping off his mouth.

“Shit, did you just get the nastiest thing you could find or what? Fucking Christ, that shit is bad,” He was still almost gagging from the taste of it, and yet, the buzz already was setting in, forgiving him his headache and letting him be able to ignore the pain and loose his thoughts. He watched Gavin, raising his eyebrows and waiting for him to drink too, presenting him with a challenge he knew Gavin would not back down from, “Well?”

Gavin wasn’t looking at him, having focused his gaze out into the empty distance of their surroundings, and Michael allowed it, letting a long moment of silence drop between them. He kept his eyes on Gavin, waiting for him to say something, watching as he took a drink from the bottle between them, getting it down without even so much as a gag.

They sat together, not saying anything. Michael continued to watch Gavin, entranced by the way he stared out into the lifeless world, the silence between them echoed in the city below. Even the wind had died down, no longer howling against the side of the apartment complex. The air was filled with the sound of his own breathing and then Gavin’s, evidence of the only liveliness within the world Michael saw before them.

He sat with Gavin, their arms barely brushing in the space between them and without thought, without looking down, Michael’s hand found Gavin’s, their fingers intertwining. Gavin’s warmth was a comfort to him, second only to the quiet sound of his rhythmic breathing, and it made Michael not mind the silence so much. He finally let himself glance out at the rest of the world, finding it just as empty and desolate as it’d been before, but somehow, it felt more familiar than it had yesterday. It wasn’t any less strange—not at all, really—but Michael was slowly getting more used to it and with Gavin’s warm comfort next to him, his hand wrapped in Michael’s own, it felt at least manageable.

He focused back on Gavin, preferring to look at him instead of the dead world around them, instead finding Gavin doing the same thing, bright green eyes meeting and locking with his, neither one of them looking away or breaking the gaze. Gavin was close to him, his hand in Michael’s and sitting so close that their legs touched. He looked at Gavin, at those half-lidded green eyes, at his sun-kissed skin, at the way his light red lips were pulled just slightly upwards in a private, barely-there smile, and for the first time, Michael felt comfortable with where he was.

This time, it was neither. Neither one of them moved first and neither one of them kissed the other. It was together, and as Michael moved in, shifting himself so that he could better reach, he saw Gavin doing the same, moving with him and leaning forward until Michael’s lips brushed against his and he recognized the faint taste of the sour alcohol and Gavin,

Gavin,

His free hand curled against Gavin’s cheek, rubbing against the hot skin there, his thumb brushing against the stubble of unshaved hair on his chin. He kept his eyes half-open, seeing Gavin’s eyelashes flutter shut, noticing so much he hadn’t seen before. Michael found himself wanting to take everything about Gavin in, from the way he kissed him gently, leaning into it but not pressing against him, to the way he looked like this, his eyes shut, his entire body relaxed, his face so close to Michael’s that he could see even the birthmark under his left eye up close.

It was slow and tender, Gavin’s lips soft against his, and when they broke away, it seemed to be a combined effort. Michael pulled away from him enough to breathe, Gavin’s eyes blinking open, stopping Michael from moving any further away. He hesitated, surroundings slowly coming back to him, but didn’t pull back away anymore, instead leaning his head forward until his forehead rested against Gavin’s, keeping his hand on his cheek and rubbing circles on his skin with his thumb.

He let his eyes fall half-shut and felt Gavin shiver from the cold before relaxing into his touch. They stayed like that a long time, unmoving, Michael sinking into the feeling of Gavin’s breath on his skin and the quiet thumps of his heartbeat under his fingertips.

He opened his mouth, his lips barely parting as he breathed in cool air, “I’m so—” He didn’t even realize he was speaking, his voice quiet and breathy, his mind not even processing the words. There was so much he wanted to say, so much that could be said, to Gavin, to the world, just in general—but he couldn’t think of anything, and there was one phrase that kept reentering his head over and over. “—I’m so fucking sorry.”

Gavin smiled, the corners of his lightish red lips turning up at his words in neither a smirk nor a grin, and Michael was suddenly hit by the feeling that he might’ve, just might have, gotten something right. His apology felt like more than just that and because of it, Michael felt like he was in it for the long haul, like Gavin wasn’t going anywhere now, like this was Michael asking for his forgiveness and Gavin’s answer was his smile, promising that he was going to stay.

“Yeah. Me too, Michael,” Gavin murmured, closing his green eyes again, and Michael didn’t ask him what he meant.

   He slept better that night, after they’d moved from the balcony to the bed and fallen asleep hours later, exhausted and content, Gavin curled around him, his miles of naked long limbs tangled with Michael’s in just about every way possible.

                  He woke up, though, after sleeping comfortably for hours, to Gavin frantically shoving Michael off of him, which violently tore him out of his peaceful sleep.

“Fucking Christ!”  It was dark, Michael’s own voice breaking the silence only previously filled with the sound of sheets being rustled and thrown away from there in a fit of hysterics. He heard Gavin’s rugged breathing, the way he was panting, struggling to get himself away from Michael, getting caught in the blankets and sheets, instead creating more of a fight for himself.

“—The hell, Gavin?!” It was nearly pitch black in the room, after Michael had pulled the shades to block out extra light, leaving him and Gavin in a world of darkness. He couldn’t see Gavin, only able to hear him thrashing around and feeling him squirming against him, his nails grazing his skin harshly multiple times. It all happened in a matter of a few seconds, Michael yelling into the void of the room, trying to move himself out of Gavin’s way.

“Michael, I’m—” Gavin’s voice was hoarse as he finally managed to untangle himself from Michael, and he erupted into coughs, shaking the entire bed. “I’m going to—”

Suddenly, he was on the floor, answering Michael’s unsaid ‘going to what?’ and Michael was able to get over and turn on the bedside lamp in time to hear Gavin cough and gag, kneeling on the floor in a way Michael had seen before whenever Gavin saw something particularly disgusting. He was less panicked now, since he partly knew what was going on, recognizing that Gavin felt sick for whatever reason and was going to throw up. He had enough time to sit on the edge of the bed and lean over to push Gavin’s messy hair out of his face, and that was it, Gavin coughing and retching under him, the sound and sight of it sickening, but Michael held out.

It didn’t take long, Gavin throwing up onto Michael’s wood floor, pausing after a few moments to cough more, shaking and fighting to hold himself up.

“Bathroom,” Michael told him almost immediately as Gavin stopped momentarily, Gavin just nodding and stumbling towards the en-suite bathroom, Michael following him and nudging him inside. He stayed, holding Gavin’s hair back again as he threw up more into the toilet, trembling and clearly suffering, coughing and gagging the entire time.

It was over pretty quickly, and Gavin collapsed against the side of the bathtub afterwards, breathing heavily, eyes tearing up from the strain of retching so much, leaning his head back against the side of the bath; staring up at the ceiling.

“You sick?” Michael asked, raising an eyebrow at him as started to clean up, shooting a glare at Gavin when he tried to get up and help.

“Nah. Just…” He trailed off, swallowing hard and then made a disgusted face for a second. “I dreamt about blood and well—you know how I am with blood and injuries and all that crap.”

Michael nodded, having cleaned up Gavin’s mess in the bathroom, leaving the main mess on his floor until he made sure Gavin was alright. “Yeah. I know you can’t take blood for shit,” He tried to joke around and got a half-smirk out of Gavin.

He’d seen Gavin throw up hundreds of times for one reason or another—even temperature change set off his goddamn gag reflex—but he’d never seen Gavin wake up sick. It was weird and concerning, and he knew for a fact that Gavin didn’t have nightmares, since Gavin had slept at Michael’s house too many times to count and never had he woken up in a fit of panic. Even at work he’d never complained of having bad dreams, though that was more understandable, since Gavin didn’t usually talk much about personal problems unless he was drunk or alone with someone he trusted.

Maybe it wasn’t that strange, but it still reminded Michael a little too much of his dreams from the previous night, of angel’s wings and blood red and phantom pain and how it had made him wake up in a state of absolute terror. Whatever had happened to Gavin felt similar, his terrified reaction close to Michael’s, even if Michael hadn’t thrown up because of it.

He didn’t give too much thought to it, though it wasn’t for the same reason he’d been ignoring everything else. He was just more concerned about Gavin, more focused on making sure he was alright. He didn’t say anything, running a cloth under the warm water from the faucet before stepping over to Gavin. He knelt down, wiping the wet cloth across Gavin’s face, forcing him to look up at Michael as he attempted to clean Gavin off. Gavin had ended up making more of a mess of himself than anything else, his face red and his breath still ragged, his shirt a mess of puke and saliva.

“Sorry.”

Gavin startled him, making him jump and take the cloth away from his face, still looking up at the ceiling. Michael couldn’t read the expression on his face, his emotions a mystery to him. Gavin himself was still very much a mystery, unpredictable and incomprehensible for the most part. He’d never seen Gavin like this, his face almost solemn, eyes unfocused  and dark. Michael could tell he was somewhere else, somewhere far away from  him, somewhere unhappy that seemed to be choking the life from him.

“It’s alright,” He said it automatically, without fully knowing what Gavin was apologizing for. He just assumed it was for throwing up so suddenly. His hand found its way into Gavin’s hair, brushing through his short strands as Gavin leaned into his touch, back with him, eyes closed.

“It’s not.”

Those were words he never thought he’d hear from Gavin’s mouth. To him, everything was alright. He put on a front that nothing ever bothered him and wouldn’t admit it when something did. To hear that something actually wasn’t alright in Gavin’s life—it instantly made Michael worry, his heart feeling like it’d dropped, his hand freezing in Gavin’s hair.

“It’s fine, Gav. I can clean it up,” He tried to comfort him, looking down at him. “It’s just some puke. Come on—you’ve thrown up in my apartment too many fucking times to count. It’s nothing.”

“No—That’s not it,” Gavin answered instantly, his voice quiet, almost a whisper, his accent heavy. There was no panic in it, no frantic tone. Nothing. He just sounded sad, leaning into Michael’s hand, eyes shut, his voice dripping with a sort of sadness Michael had never heard. “You don’t understand. You don’t get it. You—you don’t understand, Michael.”

He didn’t know what to say, what to tell Gavin. He’d just seen him throw up after a nightmare and now he was being told he didn’t understand and Gavin was—Gavin was right. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand anything. But Gavin did. Gavin knew. Gavin was living in this world with him. Everything that Michael saw that was wrong, Gavin saw too. He’d been there from the start, knowing what was going on, and yet, Gavin still had more of an understanding of everything that had happened.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Does it matter?’

It all added up to the same thing. Gavin knew. Gavin knew and Michael didn’t and Gavin knew Michael didn’t. Gavin knew he didn’t and he was admitting it now, broken and leaning on Michael. He’d known and he hadn’t told Michael and he was suddenly realizing that Gavin knew everything but wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t telling him, wasn’t clearing anything up when Michael was obviously frustrated by his lack of understanding.

“Gavin.”

His tone was cold, his hand frozen in the middle of brushing through Gavin’s hair. He shivered, shaking through his entire body and Gavin knew, Gavin knew, Gavin knew, and he’d always known. Everything was beginning to add up—Gavin’s shock at his loss of memory, his constant assurance of ‘it doesn’t matter’, how he didn’t question things, the way he’d fallen apart yesterday and had offered no explanation—all of it brought Michael to the same conclusion, over and over again.

Gavin was looking up at him now, mouth half-open, eyes wide. He was no longer relaxed, sat straight up, not even touching Michael anymore, “Michael, please.”

“Please what?!” Michael was angry, fucking flaming mad. He leapt to his feet, standing in front of Gavin, hands curled into fists at his sides. Gavin didn’t follow him, still kneeling on the floor, looking up at Michael in a mixture of shock and confusion. Michael’s nails dug into the skin on his palms, his flesh on fire, every part of him suddenly uncomfortably hot. “Spit it the fuck out, Gavin.”

Gavin didn’t break eye contact with him, eyes brighter than the bathroom lights, “You don’t remember what happened.”

Of course he fucking didn’t. That was the whole goddamn point. He didn’t remember and Gavin did and that was what was making him angry. He didn’t remember, and they’d established that back in the park that didn’t exist, back where Michael’s clear memory began. Gavin was just pointing out what was obvious, stating a fact Michael already knew, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t say anything after that, too shell-shocked by Gavin, and didn’t try to stop him when he went on.

He pressed forward, almost up against Michael now, never breaking eye contact, “You see, Michael, I don’t want you to remember what happened.”

                  It rained again.

It fucking poured and thundered, clouds blocking out the sun and making the room dark and grey and the bed suddenly felt uncomfortable and stiff. Michael was alone, the spot beside him still warm, the sound of the shower blending with the rain outside.

8:47 AM.

It felt like it should’ve been later. A lot later. He stared at the clock, counting out seconds for it to change, growing increasingly more aware of his frustration with each minute that passed in his head and not in reality.

He hadn’t argued with Gavin last night. He hadn’t even expressed his anger anything past his fists balled at his side, not yelling or screaming at him like he’d wanted to. He’d just left. He’d left Gavin in the bathroom, left him alone, pulled away from him and walked away. He hadn’t said anything more. He hadn’t done anything more. He’d thrown himself down on the bed and listened to the sounds of Gavin crashing around in the bathroom, letting out a few short bursts of frustration, and then Michael had been too spent, too tired, to do anything when Gavin had eventually crawled into bed with him.

Somehow, he’d found himself pressed up against Gavin, holding him from behind, his head resting against his shoulder and he’d decided it was too cold and too lonely to move away from him, resolving to be angry at him in the morning instead. Now that Gavin was gone from the bed, away from Michael, he felt like something was missing.

He tried to pull the sheets and blankets up further, attempting to wrap himself up and pull more warmth from them. Rather, he was left still shivering and now half-awake, listening to the thunder and the rain and Gavin in the bathroom, staring at his bedside table, watching the clock and counting each blink of the notification light on his phone.

On, off, on,

His phone. He was suddenly wide-awake, the slowly changing numbers on the clock completely forgotten about. He was awake and flooded by the same frustrations, the same anger he’d felt all last night flooding back to him and taking away his early-morning ignorance. Gavin was purposefully keeping him in the dark.

He didn’t want Michael to know. He’d said that last night and Michael hadn’t asked why. He’d been too furious to and had just walked away from Gavin, not wanting to see his stupid fucking face anymore or hear that goddamn voice or be reminded of him in any way at all. He didn’t want to talk to him now, either, not after last night.

It wasn’t fucking fair. Nothing was fair. There was something really, horribly wrong, something that was slowly working its way into every aspect of his life, and Gavin knew what it was but had made the decision not to tell him. Gavin. It all came back to him, no matter how many times Michael ran over it in his head. Gavin was here and Gavin had been the only person he’d seen since this entire thing happened. He remembered other people—Geoff, Dan, Lindsay, Barbara, everyone else they worked with—but his real, tangible life that he could clearly remember started that day in the park with Gavin and he hadn’t spoken to, heard from, or even seen anyone since then. The city streets were empty, the rest of his building silent, the only evidence that there were other people in the world came from Michael’s blurry memories and the few minutes of news coverage he’d watched when Gavin had left.

Gavin hadn’t even gone back home. Michael had told Gavin not to leave, to stay here with him. It was weird—Gavin and Michael in this reality together, seemingly alone, and Michael couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than this, than the empty streets outside, than the idea that all those buildings, the place he worked, the apartments next to his, were completely empty.

His hands shook violently as he slowly sat up and reached for his cell phone, sat on his bedside table, the notification light on it still blinking, on, off, on, off, on—on—on

He wanted to go back to his old life, where everything was fine and his biggest worry was how late he had to stay to finish editing a video. That part of him was so far away, so distanced from now, and all Michael wanted to do was reach out and grab onto that part and hold it so that it couldn’t get away from him again. He’d been happy. Really fucking happy. He had a great job, found a family within his coworkers, and that night—that night in the bar, before all this, he’d found the final piece to the puzzle and had kissed Gavin and everything had been great in that world and now nothing was.

Michael held his phone in his hands, fingers running over the smooth surface of it, both his hands shaking. The light went on then off and back on again, blinking and tempting and he’d stopped listening to the rain against the walls or the shower running in the other room and he’d stopped thinking about how mad he was at Gavin and how much he hated being lied to. His entire world rested here, in his hands, with the light blinking on and off and something screamed at him, telling him not to do it, telling him not to reach out of this world, not to step outside of his little reality here with Gavin.

                But the rational part of his mind told him to do it, since there was no real reason he shouldn’t and there was nothing wrong. He listened to that part, shoving everything else into a category of irrational fears and thoughts and for the first time in what felt like forever, he opened up to his lock screen, immediately met with dozens of messages, emails, voicemails, and social media notifications.

No—There were hundreds of them, too many to count, all people trying to get a hold of him, and he had no idea how, no idea why, and no idea where to even begin going through them all. It’d only been three days. Why were people trying to contact him so much? It hadn’t even been that long, and though it was strange Michael hadn’t even spoken to another person, he’d assumed that if something was really wrong, someone would’ve come looking for him. That was how it went. People called and when they didn’t answer, people looked and worried and searched. They weren’t going to leave him be, because he was right here, right in his apartment, staring at the hundreds of messages he had on his phone, unable to comprehend them all.

There had to be some sort of explanation. Something had to give.

Michael, Gavin, Dan, Geoff, Lindsay, Barbara. The six of them had been together that night at the bar. The last thing he had was a confused memory from that night:  having his arm around Gavin’s waist and laughing with everyone else. He’d never left. He’d never gone to that park. That morning had never dawned.

Michael: We’re at sixth street for post-podcast bevs if you wanna come

Lindsay: Alright! I’ll be there soon!

Lindsay: Bringing Barbara!

Lindsay: Oh my god Michael tell me what I heard isnt true

Lindsay: Michael…

Lindsay: Oh my god no no no…

Barbara: Coming with Linds for drinks

Michael: Great. Ask the rest of the podcast crew if they wanna come. I’ve got Geoff, Gav, and Dan.

Barbara: Cool, leaving now

Barbara: Where’s Gavin?

Barbara: Where are you?

Barbara: Come ON Michael this is important

Barbara: ANSWER ME

Barbara: That person was you.

Barbara: Tell me that person wasn’t you tell me that wasn’t Gav

Barbara: Oh god Michael

There were no dates on the messages. He couldn’t tell when they were sent or when he’d received them. He stared at each conversation, barely breathing, not moving, almost able to feel his heart stopping. He’d gone to Lindsay and Barbara first, thinking they were the most reliable and easy to understand and he’d been left in even worse shape than before. They were both panicked, both saying similar things, both of them begging him to reassure them when he didn’t even understand what it was.

He tapped the screen, looking blankly at the touch keyboard that came up, his mind unable to process the lines of the letters, not forming words or sentences or anything intelligent at all. The phone buzzed in his hands, a new message coming up, and Michael mouthed the words as he read them.

Service: Your service will be disconnected in 2 days.

Disconnected disconnected disconnected…

disconnect

discon…

Then, there was nothing.

There was no color, no warmth, no space. He was still in his room, still sitting on his bed, still holding his phone in his hands, but the color had drained even farther out of everything but his own self, leaving him in a world of complete greyscale and disconnect. The bed suddenly felt like rock beneath him, his phone feeling neither hot nor cold. He looked up, his eyes huge, everything shades of grey, not even the desaturated color he remembered from the last few days. Grey. Everything was grey and dead and Michael felt like he was the only thing here, the only thing still living and when he closed his eyes, all he saw was white, and he felt a horrific pain’s conception at the bottom of his spine, racing up his nerves and nothing was alright and everything was wrong and

  The burning sensation in his hands was gone, his phone torn out of his grasp, and it only took the deafening crack right above his head to ground him again, bringing him violently down to earth. His phone hit the wall to his side, right above the headboard of the bed, hitting it with a sickening crack that broke it instantly, spraying Michael with plastic debris.

“What are you doing?!” Gavin’s voice was shrill, screaming at him in what was unmasked fear, and he was grabbing Michael’s wrist, nails digging into the skin so much that Michael glanced down to see blood beading at the place Gavin had his nails.

He hadn’t heard Gavin approaching and he hadn’t thought to hide what he was doing and he knew now what had happened, knowing Gavin had yelled his name the second he’d seen him and a moment later, he’d taken Michael’s phone from him and thrown it against the wall. Michael looked at Gavin’s hands, how he’d tugged him off the bed, forcing him to stand up, pulling him back into himself until Michael finally felt like he was fitting the form he remembered, and he was finally Michael Jones again, finally himself.

Michael was himself and Gavin had him trapped, pinned in a way Michael hated, holding his wrists so tightly that his nails were cutting into him, and Michael knew it was just a matter of time—Gavin would let go of him eventually. The blood would make him sick and he was fucking weak and wouldn’t be able to hold his ground for long, even if he didn’t care that he was hurting Michael.

But he wasn’t waiting for that.

He wasn’t going to sit here and wait for Gavin to realize what he was doing. He’d already done it, Gavin’s rash mind thinking before he could catch up with it, and Michael wasn’t having it. He wasn’t putting up with it, not with Gavin doing this to him and not with him not telling Michael what had gone on . He was going to get it out of him and he was goddamn determined to do it.

He tore himself from Gavin’s grip, looking shocked, eyes wide and glancing quickly from his bloodied fingers to Michael’s arms and back to Michael’s face. He didn’t make any move to grab at him again, not actually doing anything to Michael, just standing there completely dumbfounded.

Their eyes met and that was the instant Gavin started backing up, holding Michael’s gaze, slowly backing down from him. Michael understood why immediately—he was fucking furious. He breathed hard, scowling at Gavin, his eyes narrowed in a glare, staring right into Gavin’s green eyes, everything surrounding them black, white, grey.

Gavin was colorful, vibrant, alive.

And yet, at that moment, Michael didn’t care.

He didn’t care because that wasn’t comforting now. He didn’t care because Gavin’s warmth wasn’t enough. He didn’t care because Gavin had been leading him on this entire time, fully aware of their situation, whatever it was, and wasn’t telling Michael. Gavin didn’t want him to remember, leading him through a false reality and trying to make it seem like everything was alright. He’d made the choice for Michael, rather than letting him make it himself, forcing Michael to go along with what he’d wanted this entire time, all because he didn’t want Michael to remember anything.

“What the hell are you doing, Gavin?!” He screamed at him as Gavin kept stepping back, raising his hands in a sort of defeat, the blood from the scratches on Michael’s wrist still on his fingernails. “Breaking my phone like that—What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“I— I—Michael, I’m—” He stuttered, making stupid sounds with his stupid mouth, not making any coherent sentences. Michael didn’t advance on him and Gavin stopped trying, stopped backing away from him, stopped talking.

“Spit it out, you piece of shit!” Michael screamed at him, knowing now that there was no one else around to hear it, not caring otherwise.

“I—Michael, what did you see?” He didn’t sound accusatory, his voice anything but. He was panicking, his hands and his voice shaking, his accent considerably thicker and tone higher-pitched until Gavin was nearly squeaking the words out at him. He was completely panicked and part of it—probably a huge part, actually—was due to Michael standing here, angry at him rather than at the world, and Gavin clearing knowing just how guilty he was.

And that pissed him off even more. Gavin wasn’t making any attempt to apologize or acknowledge that he was wrong. He was just continuing on, trying to stop Michael from getting what he wanted, preventing him from putting those final pieces of the puzzle together. It was Gavin he’d taken comfort in earlier, Gavin who’d provided the warmth and distraction to Michael’s frustration, Gavin who’d been here for him this entire time and now, Michael felt like he was taking the side of the villain. He’d taken comfort in Gavin because he’d provided that distraction, because he’d told Michael that everything that was wrong didn’t matter, because Gavin had tried to stop him from finding anything out, and now the world was black, white, and grey and the color Gavin gave off seemed to burn their surroundings, scorching them until Michael could feel the fire in every nerve of his body, burning him alive.

Gavin was trying to keep the fantasy up, even if he wasn’t consciously doing it to harm Michael, and Michael had just taken a step outside of this and into the reality he knew and he wasn’t going back.

He wasn’t going to slip into that burning house again. He wouldn’t let himself. He was finally back, finally himself, finally Michael Jones, and he wasn’t going to let that slip from his hands again.

  He felt the entire world shift around him as he said it, the silence that fell deafening to his ears. He wanted to scream at Gavin, to just let everything out and make sure he knew exactly how Michael felt, but he didn’t. He wanted Gavin out. He didn’t want him here and he didn’t particularly care where he went. He couldn’t stay here, though, not with the effect he had on Michael and with the way he was trying to make everything alright. He had to go. If Michael was going to figure this out, Gavin had to go.

“Out.”

  “What—?” Gavin’s voice was quiet, astonished at Michael.

Michael repeated himself, looking Gavin right in the eyes, “Get. Out.”

The panic returned to Gavin’s face, flooding his eyes, and Michael wanted nothing more than to hit him, to just reel back and punch him right in the fucking face because this was all Gavin’s fault and Gavin wouldn’t leave him alone and it was his fault, his fault, his fault.

“No—Michael—” Gavin wasn’t going anywhere, louder as the panic seeped into his voice and it was the closest to him breaking that Michael had ever heard, closer even than when he’d come home drenched. This wasn’t angry. It wasn’t sad. It was pure, whole desperation and panic. He didn’t want to go.

“Fucking leave!” Michael was done being nice, back to shouting, cursing at Gavin and running his mouth, saying whatever came to his mind. He’d broke before Gavin did, his filter gone, feeling every emotion at once and wanting everything to just go away. “You’re giving me a goddamn headache! Get the fuck out if you’re not going to do anything! Get out—go! Just fucking leave, you piece of shit!”

“No—Michael—please,” He was using that annoying tone again, the one Michael associated with his whining. He’d never heard him beg before, but it was the same irritating, high-pitched tone from before. “Michael, please. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Bullshit!” He didn’t think about it, didn’t let the silence fall between them again, keeping up the fight. “Go back to where you fucking live. Go back to Geoff’s house. I don’t care where you go; just go!”

“I can’t,” Michael heard Gavin’s breath hitch and saw the way he looked away from Michael, instead staring at his floor, at his feet, anywhere but at him. “I can’t. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t go back to Geoff’s house and I can’t go anywhere else. Michael, please don’t make me go. Please. Please don’t leave me.”

Michael had no words. He had no more insults or demands or anything at all because Gavin was on his knees now on the ground, looking up at Michael with an expression that he’d never seen before, neither on Gavin nor on anyone else. He wanted to think that Gavin was lying, that he didn’t mean what he said, that he just wanted to stay with Michael because he got some sort of sadistic enjoyment in leading Michael into thinking that everything was alright. But looking at him now, as Gavin begged him to not make him leave, he didn’t see Gavin as someone who was trying to hurt him, someone who was selfish and horrible. This was Gavin, the Gavin he knew, Gavin when his façade was stripped away, when he was weak and vulnerable and everything he usually tried to hide.

“Don’t leave me, Michael,” His voice was breaking, cracking his façade the rest of the way, making Michael torn between wanting to punch him and wanting to hold him and tell him he wouldn’t leave. He did neither, stuck between the two, unable to move or speak or even think. He stood there, in front of Gavin, breathing slowly, his heart fast in his chest.

“Michael, please—”

“Tell me.”

Ignorance had always been a thing Michael hated.

‘Ignorance is bliss’ was a bunch of grade A bullshit. Ignorance was shit. Ignorance was not knowing what was going on and ignoring it all and Michael Jones could not live in ignorance and he couldn’t continue to live with Gavin Free, who was the literal embodiment of naivete.

“—Please don’t leave.”

“Gavin,” He was the calmest he’d been since starting this whole fight with Gavin. He said his name firmly, not yelling or insulting him, only trying to get him to focus on what Michael was asking. Gavin was panicked, his breathing labored, his entire body shaking, eyes watering, and Michael couldn’t tell if Gavin was actually crying or if he was just so far into having a panic attack that his eyes were watering.

“Please don’t make me say it,” Gavin breathed, tears running down his face, streaking down his cheeks and leaving trails on his skin.

“Come on, Gav,” He was trying to get him to calm down, knowing he was too erratic to tell Michael anything. “We never left that bar, Gavin. We never went to any park together. We never left; I know we didn’t. What fucking happened?”

A single bit of silence fell between them. One beat, a moment in time where everything was still and clear, where the world really, truly seemed to stand still. He looked at the tears running down Gavin’s face, the way he was so bright against the grey, the colorlessness of everything else around them, the lack of warmth—everything. It all felt so strangely normal and in that moment, he wondered when he’d stopped being shocked at it. Nothing surprised him anymore; it all just worked to frustrate him, everything that was wrong not shocking him but rather making him miss his reality, his world, his life all the more.

He missed the color. He missed the warmth. He missed his family, his friends. He missed Gavin. He missed everything. He missed it so fucking much and he just wanted to go home and this wasn’t his home—it never had been. This was just—just some distorted, shitty rendition of his apartment.

“We left.”

He barely heard Gavin’s voice. It was hardly audible, a whisper against the storm of the world around them.

“We left. We left the bar.”

(Gavin’s lips on his, a smile tugging at his lips, the night air around them cold.)

No, no, no, no.

No no no no

They hadn’t left. They never had. He didn’t remember. They couldn’t have left. He couldn’t remember it. They hadn’t. They’d never walked outside that fucking door.

He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, louder than anything he’d ever heard before, thunder to the little whisper of Gavin’s voice. There was a hole in his chest, sucking all the life out of him and he suddenly wanted to tell Gavin to stop, suddenly understanding why, why he’d kept all this from him, why he’d insisted everything had been fine. He understood the concept, but he couldn’t comprehend the words to explain it, and deep inside him, a feeling arose,  feeling he remembered somehow of fear, deep and life-threatening and—

He had to run. He had to get away before Gavin said it. He couldn’t stay here. Fight or flight and Michael needed away now.

  But he needed to hear it. He couldn’t keep this up.

  “We died, Michael.”

  Colors burst before him, the world in a new vibrancy Michael couldn’t have ever imagined, blooming right before his eyes and spreading across the room. It was more than he’d ever remembered, colors and values forgotten in the dullness and greyscale, shoved to the back of his memory and grown so old that it was new to him, every color entrancing him as life flourished before him. He watched it happen, watching everything  with his own eyes as it came to life, the colors around them finally matching Gavin’s and his vibrancy, making them fit in with their surroundings at last.

Rain roared against the roof and the side of the apartment, thunder rolling close by. The sounds of Michael’s surroundings filled his ears, muffled car engines and horns and the sounds of life filtering into the mix, fading in with the colors until Michael was part of a world of life, a world he vaguely remembered, a world with color and warmth and sound and still, somehow, it didn’t feel right.

  “We died that night.”

  Gavin kept talking, whispering, louder than the noise from outside, the noise that now surrounded them. Michael still didn’t understand, Gavin’s words nothing but nonsense to him, a mess of jumbled syllables and noises he didn’t get. He struggled to understand, trying to wrap his mind around it and it took one more time, one more repetition from Gavin, his words plain and simple.

They were kids that I once knew Now they're all dead hearts to you

“Gavin—”             “Hm?”             Michael swallowed hard, an abrupt pause leaving him feeling cold, shivering from it, “I don’t remember.”

2. Counting Stars

And I feel something so wrong By doing the right thing I couldn't lie, couldn't lie, couldn't lie Everything that drowns me makes me wanna fly

“Stay,” The word came out of him suddenly, the first thing spoken since their walk here, feeling deafening in the silence of the rest of the world. It wasn’t a question or an order. It was a statement.

 “Wasn’t planning on going anywhere, Michael,” Gavin looked down and smiled, a genuine smile and none of the mischievous grins and smirks he could easily imagine on Gavin’s face. He met Michael’s eyes a second later, raising his head from where he’d been looking at the floor. His smile seemed private, something Michael shouldn’t be seeing. Something he didn’t deserve to see.

3. Anna Sun

What do you know? this house is falling apart What can I say? this house is falling apart We got no money, but we got heart We're gonna rattle this ghost town This house is falling apart

“I don’t—” He was running his mouth, speaking before he could think it through, anything and everything coming out all at once, his thoughts and words combining until they became one question, "I don't fucking understand"

“I know,” He’d almost forgotten Gavin was there and upon hearing him, Michael jumped, leaping to his feet at the side of his bed, feeling the carpet beneath his feet, cold air rush at him, feeling panicked and afraid and angry all at once. His hands curled into fists, his nails digging into palms. Gavin did nothing but stare at him with wide eyes, obviously surprised at his reaction, his face illuminated by the computer screen.

4. Alone Together

I don't know where you're going But do you got room for one more troubled soul? I don't know where I'm going But I don't think I'm coming home and I said I'll check in tomorrow if I don't wake up dead This is the road to ruin And we're starting at the end

Gavin shut the laptop; setting it to the side of the bed, shading the rest of the room in darkness, save for the moonlight shining through the balcony windows. He didn’t have to say anything, Michael instead collapsing onto the bed, lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling and listening to Gavin’s now measured breathing.

He felt the bed dip and heard the sheets rustle, the springs groaning as Gavin moved himself towards Michael, until his hands were on either side of Michael’s head and he was leaning down, Michael’s arms reaching up to wrap around his neck as he kissed him. The same rush from before hit him again, a wave of emotions and wants, drowning him.

5. Dreams So Real

All the unknown, dying or dead Keep showing up in my dreams They stand at the end of my bed. Have I ever really helped anybody but myself--?

“Get out of my way, Michael.”

His voice was tight, strained, monotone. Michael didn’t move.

“Michael.”

He still didn’t, not taking an defensive stance, his heart beating fast in his ears.

“Michael!” He was whispering now, and it nearly made Michael cringe, having never heard Gavin break and use that tone out of anger. “I saw Dan and Geoff cry today, Michael. Get. Out. Of. My. Way.”

6. Bleeding Out

'Cause I'm bleeding out So if the last thing that I do Is to bring you down I'll bleed out for you So I bare my skin And I count my sins And I close my eyes And I take it in

He screamed, anyways, but he didn’t hear it, shaking and shrieking and weeping for help, and somewhere he heard the slam of the front door hitting the wall and footsteps rushing over to him and he wondered where and who he was.

It didn’t matter, it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter.

(white lights, white lights, white lights)

7. How to Save a Life

Between the lines of fear and blame You begin to wonder why you came

He ran, throwing open the door to the balcony and ducking outside, nearly drowning out Gavin’s last strangled words with the slamming of the sliding glass door.

“I wish I could make things right.”

8. I'm Like a Lawyer with the Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off

Me and you Setting in a honeymoon If I woke up next to you-- If I woke up next to you.

He let his eyes fall half-shut and felt Gavin shiver from the cold before relaxing into his touch. They stayed like that a long time, unmoving, Michael sinking into the feeling of Gavin’s breath on his skin and the quiet thumps of his heartbeat under his fingertips.

9. Little Talks

Well tell her that I miss our little talks Soon it will be over and buried with our past We used to play outside when we were young And full of life and full of love.

“Gavin.”

His tone was cold, his hand frozen in the middle of brushing through Gavin’s hair. He shivered, shaking through his entire body and Gavin knew, Gavin knew, Gavin knew, and he’d always known. Everything was beginning to add up—Gavin’s shock at his loss of memory, his constant assurance of ‘it doesn’t matter’, how he didn’t question things, the way he’d fallen apart yesterday and had offered no explanation—all of it brought Michael to the same conclusion, over and over again.

Gavin was looking up at him now, mouth half-open, eyes wide. He was no longer relaxed, sat straight up, not even touching Michael anymore, “Michael, please.”

10. Boulevard of Broken Dreams

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating

Then, there was nothing.

There was no color, no warmth, no space. He was still in his room, still sitting on his bed, still holding his phone in his hands, but the color had drained even farther out of everything but his own self, leaving him in a world of complete greyscale and disconnect. The bed suddenly felt like rock beneath him, his phone feeling neither hot nor cold. He looked up, his eyes huge, everything shades of grey, not even the desaturated color he remembered from the last few days. Grey. Everything was grey and dead and Michael felt like he was the only thing here, the only thing still living and when he closed his eyes, all he saw was white, and he felt a horrific pain’s conception at the bottom of his spine, racing up his nerves and nothing was alright and everything was wrong and--

11. Iris 

And I don't want the world to see me 'Cause I don't think that they'd understand When everything's made to be broken I just want you to know who I am

“—Please don’t leave.”

“Gavin,” He was the calmest he’d been since starting this whole fight with Gavin. He said his name firmly, not yelling or insulting him, only trying to get him to focus on what Michael was asking. Gavin was panicked, his breathing labored, his entire body shaking, eyes watering, and Michael couldn’t tell if Gavin was actually crying or if he was just so far into having a panic attack that his eyes were watering.

“Please don’t make me say it,” Gavin breathed, tears running down his face, streaking down his cheeks and leaving trails on his skin.

12. Welcome Home

All my nightmares escape my head Bar the door, please don't let them in You were never supposed to leave Now my head's splitting at the seams And I don't know if I can

There was nothing that made Gavin Free more anxious than anything dealing with immigration.

And yet, here he was. Twenty-five years old, sitting alone in the badly lit waiting room of an immigration office, having received an urgent call just hours earlier that he was to come down here. It'd been a long time since he'd felt anxiety like this, the last time probably having to be when he was back in school. Actually, the way he felt now was strikingly similar to how he'd constantly felt in high school, and it was a feeling he thought he'd left behind when he'd graduated.

He had no bloody idea what this was about. None whatsoever. All he'd gotten was a call, an urgent notice, and a ride here from Burnie, who'd offered to accompany him in. It was that unknown thing, that reason he couldn't seem to find, that was making him nervous. He'd done everything right—he had his visa, he and Burnie had recently submitted it to be renewed, and he hadn't been in any trouble with the law—which was something he was constantly careful of. Nothing was wrong, and no matter how many times he wracked his mind for some mistake, some sort of error, he always came back without rhyme or reason. And that was the most terrifying part of this.

There was no way a trip to the immigration office could be good. They didn't tell people to come to this place immediately to give them a pat on the back and encourage them to someday become a fine citizen of the United States. No, they called people down here for bad things. Gavin had never actually seen the inside of an immigration office before and honestly, it looked about as bleak as his thoughts. The whole process of getting his visa in the first place had been done over the internet, through lawyers, and by phone. He'd never actually had to meet with one of these agents in their own offices, nor had he ever wanted to.

He didn't need to be told it to know—the only people who saw the insides of this place were either the idiot agents themselves or people who were in trouble. Unfortunately, that shoved Gavin into the second group. Even if he couldn't think of a single goddamn reason he could be in any trouble, the fact of the matter was that he was here now, meaning that it didn't matter if he could think of one. He was here and already done with whatever he'd done to land him here, so there was no point in bothering to go over the details and be stuck wondering. All he had to do was wait now, and if there was one thing Gavin hated more than not knowing what he was here for, it was waiting to find out.

The seconds ticked by, slowly becoming minutes, and Gavin sat and watched the clock through it all, counting each tick. There was nothing else to do, leaving him staring up at the clock on the wall and waiting, waiting, hating every single moment of it.

He was alone in the grey room. The only other person was the receptionist, who hadn't even bothered to ask his name and had immediately just ordered him to sit down. Waiting itself was excruciating. Waiting alone and having no idea what he was waiting for was one of the worst things he'd ever experienced. With each second that passed, he found himself wishing more and more that he'd taken Burnie up on his offer to come with him. He'd wanted at least a bit of dignity left once he was through with whatever here, so he'd refused any help—a mistake he now saw as naïve and bloody stupid.

To make matters worse, he was getting no phone reception up here, so he couldn't text Burnie or anyone else or even busy himself with answering emails and checking his schedule, throwing him into a figurative hell on earth. It was the last bit on top of everything else—being rushed here, having no idea what was going on, being forced to sit and wait on some grey-faced immigration agent, being here alone, and, to top it all off, not being able to do anything to keep himself distracted. A figurative hell on earth, and Gavin had half a mind to just walk out of the building and let them come to him on his time.

He wouldn't though. Not because it was morally wrong or because he needed to know. He was just almost completely sure that that was actually illegal in some twisted way, and really, giving them more reason to dislike him wasn't currently on the top of his list of things Gavin Free should do in the case of apparently having immigration customs breathing down his neck. So he decided to just stay put and sit still. If he couldn't get ahead and get on these people's good side, then at least he could stop himself from getting on their bad side.

"Gavin Free."

All-too-eager, Gavin looked to see exactly what he'd expected—an aging grey-faced immigration agent who looked as if he had the worst job in the world. Wordless, he got up and followed him through the door, the walk down the hallway to his office feeling like the longest thing in the world. It was then that he realized it, finally coming to the conclusion he'd been verging on in the waiting room—he still couldn't place what he'd done wrong, but he knew right now that he'd be leaving this building with a for-whatever-reason revoked visa and a one way ticket back to England.

It was a natural conclusion to come to, given what the facts were. He'd been called here on 'urgent notice'. He was forced to meet with an agent in person. He hadn't heard anything on his visa, which he'd recently submitted for renewal. He was being kicked out of the country, leaving the one word Gavin feared stinging on his lips and biting at the tip of his tongue.

"You're deporting me."

He said it as soon as the agent closed the door to his office, a tiny, badly lit room with a desk covered in papers and an uncomfortable looking chair Gavin didn't even bother to sit in, even though the agent pointed him towards it. He shook his head, standing against the door as the agent sat behind his disorganized desk.

He sighed heavily, as if he'd been through this hundreds of times already today. Gavin didn't doubt that he had. "Mr. Free—"

"You're. Deporting. Me." Each word sounded horrible on his lips as he hissed them out, cursed words he'd never thought he'd have to say. He'd never imagined himself here, in this office, having to say these words. He'd never thought he'd have to grasp desperately for a reason, a reason the life he'd built for himself was being forcibly ended. And yet, here he was, just seconds away from being told that yes, he was being deported. He'd walked in this office free and completely legal and he'd leave an outsider, someone who was here but wasn't supposed to be.

The agent just slowly nodded, looking everywhere but at him, as if he didn't want to even face him, "Mr. Free, please understand—"

"This is bullshit."

"Mr. Free—"

"If you're going to deport me, at least have the bloody decency to use my full name!" He was yelling now, his voice high and strained, echoing in the tiny office. He threw every bit of himself into it, forcing all of his rage to come out right here and now.

This wasn't fair. He'd worked for this. He'd worked to get himself here and he'd worked to stay here and now, all with a single visit, a single walk to an immigration agent's office, it was all over. Everything he'd done, everything he'd worked for—it was all gone. He'd built a life for himself. He had a job he'd dreamed of having when he was younger and relationships he'd never been able to build back in England. Everything was perfect—his job, the people he'd gotten to know, the people he considered family now—and with just a single visit, that was all ripped away from him. It wasn't fair.

Nothing about this was fair. He had everything. And now he had nothing. He didn't know why and frankly, he didn't really care. Whatever reason it was, he was still being deported. Nothing would change that. No amount of arguing or fighting or yelling would change that. None of that mattered so, despite being angry to the point that he could hear his own accented voice echoing off the walls, he wouldn't bother with that.

"It's not fair."

He sounded vaguely like a child arguing with a parent. He was completely aware of such and he made no attempt to act more maturely, fighting to keep the controlled, calm demeanor he usually had. His hands at his sides had curled into fists, his nails digging so far into his skin that he swore he could feel blood beading at his fingernails. None of this was fair and that bothered Gavin, who hardly ever let anything matter enough to bother him. This was different, though. This was his entire life being taken away from him, the control he had exerted over his life being torn away from him and placed into the hands of an aging immigration agent.

He didn't have any control now. That was all long gone. He wasn't allowed to stay here, here where he'd finally found home, meaning he'd have to go back to England, back to living with his parents in a state of constant depression and loneliness. He'd been raised in the UK, but it'd never been home to him. Even when he'd been an adult he'd always been between filming jobs, being flown from one place to another, staying in a different and unfamiliar hotel every night in a different and unfamiliar place, as if he'd needed anything to accentuate his lack of a real home.

This was his home. Here, in Texas—this was his home. Burnie had worked to get him here and he'd gone through months of constant anxiety and depression while waiting, waiting to find out if he'd be able get approved for a visa. This was where he'd always wanted to be. Even as a teenager, all Gavin had ever wanted to do was work for the people who'd made Red Vs. Blue and film in slow motion. And now—now he had that. He couldn't imagine a better job than working at RoosterTeeth. He couldn't imagine living anywhere else than in the studio apartment at the Ramsey house. The people he worked with and saw on a daily basis—those people were more his family than anyone else had ever been. He had friends, close friends, family. And he was happy. Really, truly, actually happy. It was all he'd ever wanted.

But now it was being forced away from him and it was all so far out of his control that Gavin couldn't even grasp for the edge of it and try to regain ground. His entire life rested in the hands of the agent behind the desk, the man currently at a loss for words as his eyes scanned a file. His, Gavin presumed. He'd fought for this happiness and he'd finally gained it and had been able to enjoy it and now it was just—all gone.

"Please understand that—"

The crash of nearly every paper on the agent's desk resounded throughout the entire building, shaking the floor beneath his feet as Gavin threw just about everything he could reach on the desk to the ground, the pushed-off papers spreading on the floor, making an even larger mess as the agent just stared, wide-eyed with his mouth agape, not saying a word as Gavin stormed out of the office, making sure to slam the office door behind him as he left.

…

"Let's do a Rage Quit together."

Michael looked at him over his laptop, raising a questioning eyebrow.

"I don't have any recording equipment here," He told Gavin, looking back down at his screen. Gavin wouldn't let up, though.

"Geoff and I've got a whole recording station in the living room at home. Could swing by there and pick it up."

"No."

"Why?" Gavin, persistant and relentless as always. No surprises there.

"My neighbors would complain and I'd be kicked out of my apartment," Which was why he never took his work home with him. Thin walls meant anyone could hear everything he'd say. Michael Jones had gotten famous for screaming at video games. It wasn't a talent he wanted to show off in the thin-walled apartment complex. At work, it was a different story.

"But Michael—"

Michael looked at him over the top of his glasses, his eyes narrowing at him, "If you start whining at me I'll take that bottle of whisky away and you can go dry for the rest of the night."

That got him to shut up at least. It was a start. A start to what, exactly, Michael didn't really know. Gavin was—acting strangely. It wasn't the annoying talking or whining that was strange. Those were normal and still continued to ebb at Michael's thin nerves. It was the fact that Gavin had called him to pick him up from inner city Austin near a bunch of bullshit corporate and government buildings without even telling him why and had insisted on coming back to Michael's apartment. He didn't exactly have any objections—Gavin usually spent the weekend here, anyways, crashing at his place when Michael was too exhausted or drunk to drive him home after going to a party or a bar, and even stayed some weekdays, too—but that wasn't the point.

The point was that something was going on. Michael wasn't stupid. He could be rash and blunt, but he wasn't stupid. Gavin was obvious, locking up whenever Michael tried to ask him about what the hell had happened earlier, and was currently drowning himself in alcohol, most likely to forget whatever had happened, and that alone made Michael curious. He knew Gavin and he knew Gavin well. Gavin was the type of complete idiot who, really, had the whole complete idiot thing on for a show. Not a lot of things usually bothered Gavin because he found ways to walk away from it or prevent it from getting to the point that it actually bothered him. So seeing him like this, obviously upset over something, was strange.

Maybe even—worrying? He did care about Gavin. For Christ's sake, Gavin was his best friend. So yeah, he was worried, and ready to admit that. But he did know Gavin. And that meant he also knew that when he actually was bothered about something, he didn't talk about it. He kept it hidden and inside so he wouldn't have to deal with it and so that others wouldn't have to deal with it. That was what he was currently doing right now, drinking to forget and drinking to get to the point that he wouldn't have to think about it. Michael let him. Because he knew Gavin. And he knew that if he got Gavin drunk enough, the idiot would really tell him anything.

Gavin leaned his head back, resting it against the arm of the couch and closing his eyes, "I wasn't whining."

"'But Michael!'" He mocked Gavin's accent, drawing a childish scowl from him as he put on the high voice and cockney accent. "Does that sound like whining to you, Gavin? Because it sure does to me."

There was a pause and Michael took the short moment to go back to writing the email to Burnie and Matt about an idea he'd had for a new RT Life. All too soon, Gavin was back at it, "We could go back to the office. It's only eight. No one would mind."

This was useless. Michael shut his laptop, pushing it away from him as he did, sighing and rubbing the bridge of his nose. He had no idea why Gavin was so persistent and why he wanted to record a Rage Quit so much, but then again, Gavin could be completely and utterly unpredictable, so Michael had learned over time that he couldn't be surprised if he didn't expect a lot from Gavin.

"You've been drinking and I'm about to start. That's not a good idea," For the first time, he gave Gavin his full attention, and what he saw surprised him—Gavin wasn't returning his gaze, his eyes downcast and his mouth set into a disappointed frown. That was odd—he'd really just assumed Gavin was in the mood to fuck with Michael while doing a video with him and that was why he was so intent on recording something. Unfortunately, that didn't appear to be the actual case. He couldn't quite remember a time Gavin actually looked so disappointed. "We'll do it tomorrow, Gav. We can go in early together before anyone gets there and record it. There's a new expansion out for that Surgeon Simulator game, anyways. People would probably love to see us do that."

That at least made Gavin stop frowning as much and he actually met Michael's eyes, holding his stare for a long moment before speaking again, "I want to yell, too. Like you do."

"—What?"

If he didn't expect any specific reaction out of Gavin, then he couldn't be disappointed. He'd accepted long ago that Gavin Free was unpredictable and didn't usually fit to people's molds of him. That being said, Gavin was still Gavin. However unpredictable he might be, Gavin was still the absolute little shit who was Michael's best friend and after two years of being around him, he knew Gavin. Gavin was excitable and energetic and it took a lot to actually fully piss him off. Even when he was pissed, Gavin didn't yell or scream like Michael did. All he usually did was stomp off and come back once he was calmer. His anger seemed to be more on that annoyance and irritation side of things, while Michael's was more furious.

Then there was the fact that Gavin didn't even like yelling. He thought it was funny as hell when Michael did it, but that was about as far as it went. He hardly ever yelled himself, the closest he ever got to it being his voice getting high-pitched and rising in volume when something started to push at his limits. So it was beyond him that Gavin would actually want to scream at something like Michael did during his signature series and it only further shoved his assumption that something was actually wrong with Gavin and the fucking idiot was being his usual self and not saying anything about it.

Gavin was like that, and taking into account every single other thing he didn't like about Gavin—the fact that he was too easy going, when he intentionally made Michael angry, his usual disregard for other people's feelings, the way he talked so badly about himself, among a lot of other things—that was perhaps the worst thing about him and it drove Michael up a fucking wall. Gavin was one of those people who constantly kept up a front that everything was alright. He didn't let anyone in, always building a wall between himself and other people, and hid it away so that all people would see was the British idiot who enjoyed messing with other people more than anything else.

"What's going on?" He came right out and asked it. He'd known Gavin long enough. Gavin would evade the question as much as he possibly could and would turn it around or accuse Michael of something. If he didn't come straight out and ask it, Gavin would do what he was best at and steer the conversation away from himself so he could avoid it.

Gavin held his stare, lying to his face, "Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"I said it was nothing!"

He had to keep this up. Gavin was fidgeting, playing with the band of his watch in what Michael had learned was one of his nervous impulses. He stood abruptly, facing Gavin, his voice raising to a near-yell, "It's not nothing, so stop feeding me shit and tell me what's going on."

"Michael—"

There was that high pitched whine Gavin always put on to annoy him or get him to stop pressing him for information. The sound of it sent sparks of irritation flying up Michael's spine, making actual anger start to prick at him. It was times like this that made him legitimately angry at Gavin—none of that fake anger he acted out in videos or recordings. Actual, real anger at how goddamn stupid he could be when Michael was right here, willing to listen to whatever he had to say, and Gavin still didn't trust him, his best friend with whatever was bothering him. He hated when Gavin did this, when he tried to keep it all in and hide it, when he thought he could deal with it on his own when in reality, he obviously couldn't and it was affecting him.

"Tell me," He forced himself to level his voice and try to stay calm. Gavin was still sitting on the couch, his forgotten about glass of alcohol still in his hand. His green eyes were wide as he stared up at Michael, the one thing Michael could be grateful for being that he actually had Gavin's full attention. For a moment, Michael actually thought he had him. He watched him, green eyes wide open, his mouth slightly agape, as if he were about to say something, about to confess what was actually going on and admit, for once, that it wasn't actually nothing. The room went silent, the only sound being Gavin's quick, almost panicked breathing and then—

"It's nothing."

Two words, and they made Michael want to scream every insult in his colorful vocabulary at him. He didn't know what else to do, what else to say, so he just went over the facts again in his head, desperately trying to keep himself even and grounded in the face of Gavin's obvious denial. He'd gotten a call from Gavin to come pick him up, his directions making Michael wind up in the part of Austin where multiple government buildings were located. Gavin was at a park and had been quiet almost the entire ride back to Michael's apartment, only commenting once to ask if he could stay the night. His quietness had been the first indicator, strange when put up next to his constant talking and ridiculous questions that usually kept Michael entertained in the car with him.

They'd arrived back here, Gavin had promptly started drinking, not giving any sort of an explanation. Michael had given him an odd look and accepted it, since there wasn't anything Gavin wouldn't tell him if he was drunk enough. And then there was what had set him off, bringing the two of them to this point—Gavin had insisted on doing Rage Quit with Michael and when he'd finally agreed to do it in the morning, had told Michael that he wanted to scream and yell in the recording, something that was both uncharacteristic for him, as well as the most worrying thing that had happened, since Gavin was by-nature not an angry person.

"It's not nothing!" He'd run out of things to say, so they were back at this, winding up back at the 'it's nothing!', 'it's not nothing!' part of the argument. He wasn't getting anywhere with this, but he wasn't about to give up on it. "I can't—"

There was a ground shaking shatter that cut him off as Gavin stood, glaring at Michael in a way he'd never seen before. The glass previously in his hand fell to the ground, shattering into thousands of pieces, making a mess of liquid and tiny sharp pieces of glass on the floor. Gavin jumped at the impact, leaping back at the noise and straight onto the bulk of the damage, his right foot going straight into a pile of glass shards accompanied by a puddle of whiskey. Michael just watched in shock, watching Gavin yell out in pain, a string of curses he rarely heard from his mouth echoing throughout the apartment.

Goddammit.

God fucking dammit.

He cared about Gavin a lot, but right about now he fucking hated him with every fiber of his being. He could almost hear his neighbors calling management to complain about the drunk British man yelling curses at the top of his lungs. The mess was too much, scattered over the whole floor, all Gavin's fault and all because he wouldn't just fucking say what was bothering him. There was never quite a moment like this before, a moment in which Michael was completely and wholly consumed by the want to lunge forward and punch his coworker and best friend in the fucking face.

He might've, too, if it hadn't been for the expression on Gavin's face, the way he was doubled over, his face red and his breathing heavy, his eyes clenched shut with was the pain stemming from the foot he still had in the glass, which was only adding to the mess by spewing blood.

That wasn't what stopped him, though. It was the way Gavin looked up at him, the strangled cry of what could only be a plea for help falling from his slightly parted lips, his eyes watering. It was the way it didn't seem to be just the pain or just the glass in his foot that was causing this. And above all, it was what he said, his voice quiet and strained, and so utterly filled with emotion that it left Michael's mind blank and at the same time, swirling with thousands upon thousands of words.

"I'm being deported, Michael."

--

"Deported—?"

Michael repeated the word back to him and it sounded as if he were trying to sound out a completely foreign word, struggling to make it sound right.

"Deported. Yeah."

Gavin breathed out each word, his hands in fists and his teeth clenching as pain continued to shoot through him, up through his foot, where he had shards of glass stuck in his skin, traveling up his spine and shaking him at the core. He struggled to still stand, trying desperately to keep himself upright without his legs buckling under him and without yelling out even more in pain.

Every bit of anger fell from Michael's face, all the irritation going from him as soon as Gavin finally told him what was going on. What was left in the wake of his fury was pure undulated shock, his voice quiet and disbelieving, his brown eyes huge as Gavin watched him try to wrap his mind around him. A second ago, he'd been ready to no doubt throw Gavin out of his bloody ass for accidentally making such a huge mess and tell him that if he was going to act like that, then he might as well get out. That had been just a second, a single moment ago, and in the time span of a single beat of conversation, that anger had been completely drained from him by four words from Gavin's mouth.

"How—why—?"

"Oh, fuck," For once, Gavin didn't mean to evade the conversation. He hissed out the curse from under his breath, leaning his entire wait on the arm of the couch and worked at finally moving himself from the scattered pile of glass on the floor and into a sitting position. He let out another cry in pain, gagging at the sight of the blood, his blood, on the floor, dreading looking at the damage he'd done to himself when he'd jumped back in surprise at the glass breaking against the floor.

"Holy shit—" Michael had finally torn his eyes from Gavin, looking instead at the injury he'd given himself from pure carelessness. "Hang on—just. Hang on. I'll get you something."

"Your floor—"

"Shut up. I don't give a flying fuck about my floor. Sit still."

So Gavin did just that, sitting still and doing whatever Michael told him to do until his bleeding foot was taken care of, the entire world seeming to move around him in a blur. It'd been like that since he'd stormed out of immigration office, slow moving and still moving too fast for him to catch up and understand it all. He'd thought it'd be fine, that he'd talk to Burnie in the morning and ask him what to do and not tell anyone before then, but things were never easy with Michael. Michael had demanded to know what was wrong, an argument got heated, and now Michael knew and there were a million shards of glass on the floor.

The gentle buzz of alcohol dulled the pain at least, warming his cheeks and providing at least a bit of solace from his swarming thoughts, letting him finally breathe for the first time since Michael picked him up. For the first time in a long time, he allowed himself to just not think as the world blurred and moved fast around him.

"There has to be a way to get out of this," Michael was saying, pacing back and forth in front of Gavin, their previous argument completely abandoned. Gavin almost wished they could go back to arguing about Rage Quit, or really, anything other than this. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't even want to deal with it right now. He just wanted to leave it until morning. Burnie would know what to do about it. Burnie always knew what to do and would figure out a way to get Gavin to stay.

"There has to be."

Gavin sighed, watching Michael as he continued to pace, "Like what?" If he couldn't figure a way out of it on his own, then how could Michael? He didn't even know why Michael cared so much. When Gavin had confessed he was getting deported, everything had drained out of Michael's face, all the anger leaving and being replaced by pure shock. He'd never seen Michael look so shocked, so confused, and ever—distraught.

Michael stopped, fixing Gavin with a long stare, "I don't—I don't know." A second later, he was pacing again, Gavin's eyes following him as he paced back and forth, back and forth. "What if—isn't there a way to contest it?"

"Don't know," Gavin's voice was monotonous, but he wasn't disinterested. There was no way Michael could come up with something Gavin hadn't. He'd gone over everything multiple times, trying to think of a reason, even though he previously hadn't really cared for one. If he had a reason, at least he could figure out whether or not it was a legitimate reason for being deported, but over and over again, he came up with nothing. He hadn't broken the law. He hadn't been arrested. He hadn't messed up in resubmitting his visa. He'd gotten it in on time and had figured that just like every other time, it'd be renewed without much of an issue. It could be a screw up on the immigration agency's part, but even that seemed unlikely. After all, it was a government-run agency. They had to have checked everything over at least twice.

He wasn't stupid. He might've been buzzed, but he wasn't stupid. His thoughts were dulled to a manageable amount, but he could still think just as clearly as ever. He knew they wanted him out as soon as possible and even if there was a mistake or an illegitimate reason, contesting that would take time, effort, and money, and would cause a lot of people to get involved that he hadn't necessarily wanted to get involved in the first place—lawyers, the Ramseys, the rest of the company, their HR department—and in the midst of all that time, effort, and money, his time would more likely than not run out and land him on the first one-way flight back to England.

It really seemed like there was nothing to do in this situation. It felt like he was out of options, that there hadn't even been an option to begin with. He might as well go home and pack up all his shit and have Geoff drive him to the airport first thing in the morning. That was essentially what he was waiting for, anyways. He was hopeless and optionless, leaving him watching Michael struggle to grasp onto a way, a reason, a solution to an equation Gavin had already tried multiple times.

"What if we called that guy—the agent you told me about—and asked him why you're getting deported?" It was obvious Michael was just throwing any suggestions out. Gavin didn't know why he cared or why he was trying to find that solution Gavin had tried so hard to solve, but at least it was something. He hadn't thought Michael or anyone else would really give that much of a shit about what was going on. Sure—they were his coworkers. He knew they'd be disappointed, but he hadn't expected this. Michael was refusing to give up on this, refusing to just accept it and take it as it was.

"Didn't get his number," Gavin just shrugged it off with another sigh, waiting for Michael's next suggestion. Unfortunately, whatever he said was nothing Gavin hadn't already thought of, nothing he'd already lingered on and had dismissed once he found the problem with. For Michael's sake, he almost wished he had stuck around to hear the reasoning behind his deportation, just so that Michael could at least have a bit of closure and so he would stop pacing back and forth and racking his head for a reason and a loophole.

"This is fucking bullshit!" Michael threw his hands into the air and Gavin flinched as he screaming each word into the thin-walled apartment, his face red and his body tense with anger and frustration. One thing about Michael was that he always threw his everything into it, pushing all his anger into his voice and using it to channel his fury into something. He'd get so worked up sometimes that it actually made Gavin laugh, but not now, not when that was actual, real anger, making Michael so frustrated that he was yelling, having apparently stopped caring who heard what. "This is bullshit, Gavin! They can't do this to you! They can't just—they can't suddenly call you up and tell you that you need to leave the fucking country! They can't do that! You have a job! You've done nothing wrong—you're actually fucking happy and you're my best fucking friend and I'm not going to let this happen, Gavin. I'm not."

He was watching Michael more intently now, hanging onto his every word and movement as Michael paced and ranted and yelled everything into the quiet apartment. Michael didn't want him to leave. Gavin could see that. And he was willing to fight for him. That was actually—comforting. It was good to know that someone besides Burnie would protest and help figure out what was going on and how to stop it. It wouldn't be enough, though. Gavin knew that it usually didn't take very long for someone to get deported. He had maybe three weeks. Even with their power on the internet and standing in the community, that wasn't enough bloody time. It wasn't enough time to gather people and resources and it wasn't enough time to make a big deal out of things and it wasn't enough time to get his probably rejected visa back to being valid. If they were going to do anything, they were going to have to do it quick, and there was nothing quick enough that would actually be possible and legal.

Michael went on, his voice getting louder and louder, pacing faster across the living room he'd just cleaned up, "Come on, there's got to be something. What the fuck do people usually do to stay here? Citizenship would take too long. Getting another visa would, too. Passport? You could stay for ninety days? No, then you couldn't fucking legally work here. You can't stay illegally, either, since we work for a goddamn internet company. Come on, there's got to be something. Other people have got to have had this problem. What do they—"

Gavin's head snapped up, his eyes going wide, "Oh my god."

Michael stopped in front of him and turned to him, raising an eyebrow, "What? You got something?"

"We're such idiots, Michael."

They were. It'd been right in front of him all along. A solution too simple, too obvious, too completely possible that Gavin had just overlooked it. There was no way it couldn't work, and he'd been too much of a dumbass to have not seen it. It'd take some more planning, probably a change in living arrangements, and a bit of acting, but it was nothing he couldn't easily pull off. Plus, it'd leave him coming out on top of things and in a better position than he had been beforehand.

"What? What is it?" Michael stepped towards him, clearly more confused than ever. Gavin didn't respond at first, going over it again. There had to be an issue somewhere. It'd recently become legal. They were already best friends. It was completely believable. It wouldn't take too long. There had to be a downside somewhere, a loophole. It was too perfect to be true.

But there wasn't. No matter how hard he thought or what he went over, reworking the problem again and again in his head, it always worked out to the same infallible solution. As long as Michael would agree, as long as he could convince him to go along with this—it would work. It would actually bloody work. And if it worked, he could stay here. He wouldn't be deported. He wouldn't be shipped back to England. He could stay here. This was the only actual home he'd ever had and the people at RoosterTeeth were the only actual family he'd ever had. This was where he belonged, right here in Austin. As Michael had said, he was actually happy for once. He didn't want that all to be ripped away by the hands of some immigration agent who'd barely bothered to learn anything past his last name.

So he leaned forward, barely breathing, "Michael, what are you willing to do to keep me here?"

Michael shook his head and answered immediately, without missing even a beat, "Anything, Gav.