#raspberryminute

It’d been a long time coming.

The weather reports only caught up twelve hours before the storm was destined to hit, at 11:30 in the evening, plastering all televisions and radios with loud warnings to shut and lock all doors and windows, find somewhere safe, and hunker down until the rolling doom passed.

Of course, Gavin never heard or saw any of the warnings. He didn’t need them, not really. Growing up in England, you tend to learn the signs of big storms pretty early on. In America, they talked about old men in rocking chairs babbling about aching joints when cold fronts were on their way, but Gavin had always found that listening to his senses told him everything that he needed to know. When he had calmly informed the rest of the office that there would be a storm carrying snow last year, they had all scoffed and called him an idiot. “It never snows in Austin,” they said. When he had calmly arrived at the office after a week of frost and occasional snowfall, everyone stared at him with wide eyes and muttered about witchcraft. After several more incidents of Gavin’s near-perfect internal weather tracking, his close friends stopped doubting.

When he and Michael walked out the door at 8:00 am on the day of the storm and Gavin froze mid-step, Michael turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow while Gavin stood still, eyes closed, breathing deeply through his nose.

“There’s going to be a huge storm coming in today, I think.” He said after several seconds of standing.

“That so?” Michael sounded thoughtful. The Jersey man pulled out his phone and confirmed Gavin’s prediction with a quick look at his weather app, which was plastered with warnings of lightning, high wind speeds, and torrential downpour.

“Should we call Geoff?” Gavin intoned after Michael showed him the bright, flashing warnings.

“Yeah. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave the apartment. All of the warnings say to stay indoors.” Gavin was already dialing his former host’s number.

“Hey, Geoff-”

“Don’t bother coming in today. The schools are all shut down and the other guys already asked to stay in. Except for Ray. That asshole is probably still asleep.”

And that was that.

  Michael insisted on being productive. He got to work setting up his recording equipment to make an episode of full play. Gavin, in the meantime, ventured into their bedroom to get a little bit of Halo in. It’d been awhile since he’d been able to just sit down and play.

That’s what he did while the dark clouds rolled in, and that’s what he did when the rain started. By the time the howling wind knocked over the first tree, he had switched to Peggle 2. He’s still playing Peggle at 11:28, when the lights flicker and then completely go out. He stares at the dark screen of the TV for a few moments, brain still catching up with the events before him.

He’s just put it together that the power’s gone on when the screaming starts.

Gavin rushes out of the room and through the hallway to the living room, where Michael is screaming abuse at his laptop.

“Michael! Michael, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” Gavin cries over his boyfriend’s shouting.

Michael stops yelling and shuts his eyes tight, clenches his fists, and just pants for a while. Gavin slowly sits beside him, as close as he can be without touching the other man. After seven months of living together, he knows that Michael doesn’t like to be touched when he’s well and truly angry, and this is definitely one of those times.

“I lost everything.” Michael hisses.

Lost... What? What could he have-

Oh. Oh. The fullplay footage. Sure enough, there’s a corruption notification sitting right in the middle of Michael’s screen, as well as one informing him that the auto recover failed. Michael had been filming forhours already.

“You can just start back where you were though, yeah?”

“I saved.” Michael sighs in defeat and opens his eyes. “Fucking fuck.”

“Well...” Gavin tries to think of ways to cheer Michael up. They’ll be stuck together in the small space of their apartment for at least another four hours if the forecasts were accurate, and angry Michael is not someone you want to be trapped in a confined space with. The closet incident of 2013 had taught Gavin that better than anything.

Problem is, without power, there’s basically nothing to do. There’s books, but Michael probably won’t be able to read without tearing the pages right now. Puzzles and board games... Similar problem.

An idea hits him. “I’ll be right back, lovely little Michael!” Gavin exclaims as he jumps to his feet, racing back into the bedroom. It should be... Ah-ha! Sitting in Michael’s bookbag- still laying where he’d tossed it after the call with Geoff- is his 3DS. A few rounds of beating up bug catchers in Pokémon is sure to cheer his boi up. Gavin hurries back into the main room and finds Michael standing at the window, staring out into the raging storm.

Lightning flashes. “Michael!” Thunder.

He turns. Gavin thrusts the DS out in front of him, but Michael just stares at his hands like they’ve just turned purple. “Gavin...” lightning flashes again, briefly turning Michael’s lean form into a silhouette. The thunder shakes their building a bit.

“Play a little. It might cheer you up.” Gavin grins.

Michael pinches the bridge of his nose and crosses his arms. “Gavin.” He repeats, this time with much more irritation. “I just need to be left alone.”

Gavin’s face falls. He lets his arm drop to his side and visibly deflates. “Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s... It’s fine. I’m gonna go lay down.”

Michael heads down the hall. Gavin follows after him silently. The redhead collapses onto the mattress and rolls over to his side, facing the wall. Gavin begins to climb in after him, but pauses when he sees his boyfriend tense up.

“Gavin. What are you doing.” Michael doesn’t turn to look at him.

“Laying down...?” The Brit tilts his head to the side.

“Dude, I just fucking told you to leave me alone.”

“Yeah, but...” Gavin struggles to put his thoughts into words. It’s a real problem for him, phrasing things; half the time, he gets his words all mixed up or says something in a way that makes no sense to anyone but him. He used to get teased for it quite a lot when he was still new, but most people just took it in stride when they could these days. Despite this, he feels a surge of anxiety; Michael is a very grumpy bear that Gavin just accidentally poked with a stick, and he has to be graceful. He hadn’t thought his boyfriend would mind Gavin laying silently beside him. Just say that, you dope, he thinks, but his mouth gets all tangled up, like usual. “Didn’t expect you to get all bloody peeved about it.”

Michael rolls slowly to face Gavin, still half-leaning onto the mattress. “Gavin. Get the fuck out.” His face is blank aside from the murderous look in his eyes.

Damn it, damn it, damn it, you stupid idiot-

“Fine. Go ahead and be a prick.” Gavin mutters as he slides his knee off of the bed and starts to turn.WHAT ARE YOU DOING. STOP.

 “Fuck off, Gavin!” Michael throws a pillow at him. Gavin slams the door behind himself. Michael groans with exasperation, and then the apartment is silent aside from the rain and occasional thunder. Gavin stomps into the kitchen and throws the fridge open, rooting around for something to take the edge off of his guilt and irritation. He always does this. He always messes it up for no reason. Why couldn’t he have just left Michael be?

Gavin sighs when he finds the fridge void of bevs. He had forgotten that they were planning on going grocery shopping after work that day. That also meant that the food selection was rather poor as well. He ends up grabbing an orange from the fruit bowl and struggling to peel it for five minutes before accidentally crushing it and covering himself in juice. He’s tempted to slam his head into the wall when he remembers that Michael is mad at him, and currently occupying the room where clothing is kept.

He heads for the bathroom and wipes as much of the sticky juice off as he can. It doesn’t come out of his clothes very well, and his chest hair is now plastered against his skin in a very uncomfortable way. The Brit gives up and decides to take a shower.

He runs the water as hot as he can handle and smacks the tiles with the side of his fist when he gags at the temperature change. The steam fills his nose and the water hits him in a soothing massage of heat. It draws the tension from his shoulders. Gavin lets himself relax.

After about twenty minutes, Gavin walks out of the longest shower of his life and dries off. His clothes are still a sticky mess, so he decides to chance sneaking into their room to grab a spare set. With nothing but a towel tied around his waist, Gavin exits the bathroom, gags at the cold air, and tiptoes into the bedroom. Michael is, to his great relief, fast asleep.

Gavin eases open the drawer containing his pants and socks, grabbing a pair of the former at random, and then picks up a random shirt and pair of pajama bottoms. He tiptoes back out of the room, carefully shutting the door behind him. Back in the living room, Gavin quickly shuts the curtains and changes into the new clothes.

The shirt is short on him. It must be Michael’s.

In a moment of vulnerability, Gavin pulls the collar of the shirt up to his nose and inhales deeply.

Michael.

He flops onto the couch. The shower made him all warm, and Michael’s shirt is making him all sad, and with the curtains drawn and the apartment dark, he finds that a kip sounds really fucking lovely. Gavin closes his eyes and tries his damndest to shut out the rest of the world.

    Michael wakes up at around 2:30 in the afternoon. His head is clear and sound, finally free of the clouded anger from losing his footage. Yeah, it fucking sucks, and he’ll have to come up with something to do about it, but for now, he’s very much over the situation. What he isn’t over is how much of a dick he was to Gavin earlier.

He was just trying to help, and Michael told him to fuck off. Real classy, Jones. Way to be a gentleman. He drags himself out of bed and glances out the bedroom window. Rain, dark clouds, howling wind; the storm is still raging. The courtyard outside of his and Gavin’s apartment is already completely flooded. Michael hopes that the drains don’t get clogged up and make the streets flood. That would be a pain in the ass to deal with.

Michael finds Gavin asleep on the couch and instantly feels incredibly guilty. He must have been tired. He wanted to sleep, and Michael kicked him out. Fuck. Thinking it not to wake him now, Michael quietly enters the kitchen and finds his DS on the counter. He picks it up and heads to the dining room table to sit down and play.

“What the fuck?” He gasps when his arms hit the sticky surface. Michael flinches and glances up at his boyfriend, but he continues to sleep soundly. He stands up and runs some paper towels under the tap and starts wiping the mystery stickiness from the table’s surface. Throwing them away, he see the mangled remains of what was once an orange sitting in the trash. Ah. That would explain the smell of citrus.

Michael returns to the table and starts up Pokémon. His character is still wearing the ridiculous polo that Gavin had insisted he buy the last time Michael had played. The thing is a horrible shade of green with bright blue horizontal stripes. It looks ridiculous and clashes with the pants he has on, but it makes Michael smile anyway.

He dicks around in the battle tower for a while. At around 3:45 pm, Gavin stirs. Michael looks up and watches his boyfriend sit up and stretch his arms. His shirt pulls up, revealing a bit of his furry tummy. Gavin’s wearing his Fluttershy shirt. He must have snuck in while Michael was asleep and grabbed a change of clothes, probably after whatever happened with the orange. The Brit finally notices Michael’s presence in the room.

He smiles. Then, he remembers what happened, and the smile fades. He bites the inside of his cheek and climbs to his feet. Michael quickly gets up as well, striding to meet Gavin in the middle of the room. They stand in tense silent for a moment about three feet apart. Michael is still trying to work out what he’s going to say when Gavin begins to speak.

“I’m sorry, Michael. I was a complete arse.”

“No, you weren’t.” Michael shakes his head. “I lost my shit over something stupid. I shouldn’t have been so mean to you. You were just trying to help. I’m sorry.”

“I bunged it up, when I went to lay down with you. I didn’t mean what I said, and I just kept talking-” Michael takes another step forward and puts one hand on Gavin’s hip, and the other on his chin. Gavin stops talking and they just stare into each other’s eyes. Then, Michael leans forward and closes the gap between their mouths. Gavin’s hands fall on the small of his back and into his hair, fingers threading through his hair.

They pull apart to breath, and Michael giggles. “We’re both a bunch of fucking teenagers, huh?”

Gavin grins. “Yeah. I slammed the bleedin’ door. Haven’t done that since Year Eleven.”

Michael pecks his lips. “What is that in American?”

“No bloody clue.”

At 4:56 pm, they’re lying on the bed wearing nothing but their skin and passing the time. Gavin’s reading a book, some Game of Thrones thing, while Michael, draped across his stomach,  plays more Pokémon. The lights flicker back on above them. Gavin shuts his book and runs his fingers through Michael’s hair.

“Do you want to play something, lovely Michael?”

“Yeah, boi. That sounds nice.” Michael smiles and they kiss for a few moments, languid and lazy. It’s ridiculously domestic in a way that makes Michael blush. He’s had the best time of his life, living with Gavin. It was a big step that they both hesitated to take, but he is so goddamn glad that he did. Thatthey did.

“I love you, Gavin.” The words fall from his mouth without warning, and Michael freezes in panic.

Gavin’s smile grows. “I love you too, Michael.”

Relief washes over him, and a grin strikes his features as his flush grows darker. Michael surges forward and connects their lips once again, reveling in the ring of those words.

The rain finally stops at 8:37 pm. The power remains on for the rest of the evening. At 9:14 pm, Gavin receives a text from Geoff:

'see u assholes @ work tomrrw'

Gavin sends Geoff his and Michael's collaborative response:

'wouldn't miss it for the world, Geoffry'

and at 8:00 am the following day, Gavin stops a few feet from the front door and gazes at the blue and white sky.

"What's up, Gavvy?"

He smiles.

"Absolutely nothing."

And it was true; the sky is free of ominous lighting and rolling thunderheads, and the air is empty of static.