Chapter Text
"My humble abode." Michael stood before his apartment building, gesturing grandly at the bland peeling paint of the outside.
"It's lovely, Michael." Gavin cooed.
"Sure. If you think boring apartment buildings are lovely." He said, walking towards the stairwell. "It's on the second floor, unfortunately." They stomped up the stairs- well, Michael stomped. Gavin more of hopped up the steep stairwell. Michael rolled his eyes at him as they reached the top.
"It's the one on the right." He motioned, pulling out a ring of keys and sticking one in the lock, twisting the handle, and stuffing the ring back in his pocket again. He tugged on the handle and swung the door open dramatically.
"And here it is--! Ray?" There was a thin Puerto Rican man (although not so Puerto Rican looking) sitting on Michael's couch, playing Call of Duty on intently on an Xbox.
"X-Ray!" Gavin exclaimed, also looking at the man.
"Hey Michael, hey Gav." Ray said, not looking away from the TV screen.
"What the fuck are you doing here? And how do you two know each other?" Michael asked, thoroughly confused.
"You never took back your spare key. Tina kicked me out of my own apartment because I 'need to get out more'. And I might have fucking done something if she went with me." He scoffed. "She's one to talk anyway."
"And how do you know him?" Michael's voice cracked pathetically on 'him'.
"Gav and I met through Halo. We got into a lot games together, so one time we messaged back and forth for a while when we realized we both live in Austin. So we met up and played games together and shit. And oh yeah, I'm X-Ray and he's Vav." He said all of this without looking away from his game for a single second.
"X-Ray and Vav?" Michael asked bemusedly.
"Yeah, it's a dumb thing we came up with. We're superheroes, and even have our own costumes."
"Costumes?"
"Yeah, our friend Anna Hullum made them especially for us." He smiled reminiscently at the memory.
"Do you wanna see them?" Gavin asked him, already pulling up a picture on his phone.
"Sure," Michael took the phone to see a photo of Ray and Gav in costume, Ray in a green and black spandex outfit and Gavin in a red and blue one.
"Oh, those are nice- oh.." Michael's face became uncharacteristically red as he glanced further down and noticed their nether regions, which were incredibly pronounced. He quickly handed back the phone, not minding Gavin's package but not wanting Ray's delivered to the wrong eyes.
"So, how do you and Ray know each other?" Gavin asked Michael, stashing his phone in his back pocket and leaning on a chair, almost knocking it over.
"We've been friends for a long time." Michael replied after a quiet snigger. "We were coworkers at a shitty job once. We didn't work there for very long since we fucking sucked at it. Literally the only good thing about that job was being able to hang with him." Michael explained. Gavin made a noise of acknowledgement.
"Well, this is wonderful, Michael!" Gavin said enthusiastically. "Now we can all play games together!"
"What, like Frosty the Snowman?" Ray mumbled quietly, but Michael heard anyway and cast him a dark look.
"Ray, are you crashing here?" He asked. Ray shrugged.
"Tina is expecting me to stay out all night and like, fucking make friends or some shit tonight." He laughed humorlessly. "So yeah. I'm taking the couch."
Gavin gave Michael a desperate look. "Where am I gonna sleep, then?" He got a look of deep horror on his face, thinking that Michael would kick him out.
"Well, ah... I only have one bedroom and one couch." He scratched his head uncomfortably. Ray cocked an eyebrow, giving the TV a slowly growing sly grin.
Gavin gave him an unimpressed grimace at his lack of accommodations.
"Hey, I don't want to sleep on the couch if you two are gonna be banging in there." Ray said, causing Gavin to redden and Michael to growl "Shut up."
"I can, uh, sleep on the floor if that makes you more comfortable." Gavin suggested, not wanting to press too hard into their relationship.
"No, you take the bed. You're the guest." Michael gave a sharp look to Ray as he snorted quietly.
"Oh, sod off. I'm not making you sleep on your own floor." Gavin said stubbornly.
"I'm not giving up the couch." Ray said, doing a small fist pump as the end round screen came up and he had the most kills.
Michael sighed heavily at the two idiots he had for friends.
"Well, it's not late enough yet to consider sleeping, so let's just play fuckin' games and get drunk." He told the two, walking to his fridge and pulling out a couple beers and a water.
Michael threw Ray his water and motioned for him and Gavin to come sit in the three chairs he usually had set up for Ray, himself, and Geoff.
"How about we play GTA?" Gavin suggested, taking a swig of his beer and plopping down ungracefully.
"Sure," Ray agreed, shrugging. It wasn't his favorite game ever, but it had a fun fucking multiplayer.
"Alright," Michael stood up and shuffled through the games in a stack on the desk beside his Xbox, pulling out three copies GTA V and shoving them in each console.
He moved to plop down in his rolling chair, but Gavin cheekily pulled it out of the way. Michael had better reflexes, though, and he gave Gavin's arm an annoyed whack, eliciting an annoyingly bird-like squawk from him. He swiped the chair back, leaving Gavin to grumble and rub his upper arm.
Michael settled comfortably in his stolen-back chair and prepared for a long night of getting to know Gavin.
---
A sharp squeal rocketed through Michael's apartment, causing Michael to give Gavin's arm a quick smack.
"Shuttap! There are other people in this apartment building, dumbass." Michael scolded. "Do you want someone to call the cops?" He snapped, casually gunning down the mugger that Ray had previously set on him.
"Why'd you blow me up with fireworks, you sausage?" Gavin laughed, respawning and running into a street to find a car. "Oop!" He made a surprised Gavin noise as a car quickly mowed him over, taking over half of his health. He got back up and punched a large black truck, trying unsuccessfully to pull the driver out. The AI honked, and a redneck with a shotgun hopped out of it.
"C'mere, you prick-- ahg!" The man emptied a shell into him, and Gavin's character collapsed pitifully after only one shot.
"Smeggin'... Ugh." Gavin sighed, respawning again and going after a parked car. He clambered into it until a mugger pulled him out, shot him, and drove away with the SUV.
"Gavin, what happened?" Ray asked innocently, holding back his laughter at Gavin's inability to splutter real words in his frustration.
"Oh my god, Gavin, you suck!" Michael laughed, watching as his own mugger killed Gavin again on his way to a large dark gray sedan.
Ray's character shimmied up a ladder to the top of a building where he watched Gavin respawn on the street a few hundred feet away from him. He pulled out his sniper rifle with a quiet snigger and loaded its bullets.
Gavin's pissy mumbles were interrupted by more painfully loud screeches: there were bullets being shot at him so they'd whiz past his head and scare the shit out of him. He zigzagged, almost running into the bullets himself just by doing so.
"Uhp!" His shout as Ray put him out of his misery echoed around the apartment like the ringing end of the last bullet shot from Ray's gun. Ray just shook his head with a smile and stashed away his sniper to take out a rocket launcher.
"EAT SHIT, BITCH!" Michael's triumphant voice yelled as he collided forcefully with Ray and knocked him off of the building, Michael's parachute folded gracefully around him as he smacked straight into the side of a tall building. Ray's character landed with a crunch, leaving a small splatter of blood on the sidewalk.
"Did you just spend all that time getting a cargo bob so you could jump out and hit me?" Ray asked, watching the abandoned airship crash with a fiery explosion to his right as his character lurched up.
"It was time well spent." Michael shrugged, laughing again. "I just can't believe I actually hit you."
"Me either." Ray snickered.
Michael respawned, running down a road to hijack a car, just to be harshly barreled over by a huge semi. Gavin and Ray laughed loudly as Michael shouted at his monitor.
"What the fuck? Really??" His voice peaked, going up at least two octaves.
"You mong! You stepped right in front of me!" Gavin giggled, his laugh squeaking to a high pitch.
Michael huffed, maybe more dramatically than if he was sober. Ray just rolled his eyes, maneuvering down the street to wait for his slow ass mechanic. He watched on his screen as Michael's character popped into existence behind an unknowing Gavin, who was out on his feet after being pulled from the semi's cabin by yet another mugger. Michael quickly whipped out a pistol, which he aimed at Gavin's back.
"Ow! What's hitting me?" Gavin asked, watching his green bar dip into the red. "Michael!" He squealed again.
"You're dead, bitch!" Michael cackled, watching Gavin's dead body crumple into the street. The death message informed him that MLPMichael had eviscerated GavinoFree.
"You're a dead bitch!" He repeated, laughing with Gavin at their stupidity.
Ray's quiet chuckles were interrupted by a large yawn, which, of course, also caused Gavin to yawn. Ray glanced at his phone briefly, and it told him that it was far later than he thought it was.
"Guys, it's two-thirty in the morning." He yawned again tiredly. He'd gotten up earlier than usual for work that morning, but he'd had vigorous training in staying up late playing video games, so he was able to stay up late as hell.
"Holy shi-i-i-t," Michael yawned widely too. "I'm tired as fuck." He said, going to the pause menu. "You wanna stop, lads?" He asked the other two.
"Yeah." Ray said, exiting out of the game. He stretched, his joints popping pleasantly.
"Let's stop!" Gavin agreed, blowing himself up one last time for good measure before closing out of the game.
"Ray, you need anything?" Michael asked him.
"Nah, I've got everything I need." He shrugged, flopping onto the couch and pulling his spare blanket out from the ottoman beside the coffee table. "Oh, but I need a--" A quilted pillow smacked him hard in the face. "Thanks." He grumbled.
"Gav, you need anything? Like something to sleep in?" Michael asked, groaning as he got up from his seat to stretch luxuriously.
"Nah. I don't sleep in anything." One of Michael's eyebrows went up questioningly, and he backpedalled a little.
"I mean, I do sleep in something, I sleep in my underwear." The reaction Ray had was even worse: a sly smirk and raised eyebrows.
"...I guess I could use sweatpants or something." He sighed.
"Okay. C'mon, then." Michael said, beckoning for Gavin to follow him to his room. "Night, Ray!" He called back.
There was a small, sarcastic, "Goodnight, dear," and an even smaller, "I'm gonna need some fucking earplugs." from the couch.
Michael led Gavin to a plain door at the end of the hallway."It's not very big, honestly." He opened it up, and, as he said, it wasn't very big at all. It was sparsely decorated, although it had a few small posters on the wall of various games and movies. His bed had plain black bed sheets and quite a few random trinkets were scattered across his dresser and nightstand, including a small Banjo from the game Banjo Kazooie, some plushies of video game characters, and pictures of his friends.
Gavin walked over to his dresser, where there were Minecraft blocks in precarious stacks. He picked up some diamond ore and TNT block.
"Wow, these are top. These are made really well." He remarked, rolling them over in his palm. "Hmm. This is a nice dynamite." He commented, closely observing the TNT block.
"A nice dynamite?" Michael asked, chuckling. He picked up a square creeper necklace and diamond charm that he also had sitting on his dresser, a gift from Lindsay he'd received a few years previous.
"Oh! Now these are like 'nice dynamite'." He said, grabbing the creeper necklace away from him.
Michael laughed. "What?"
"What do you say when you find diamond?" Gavin asked him.
"Well, usually something like, 'fuck yeah'."
"Or, 'nice!', right?"
"...Sure." He agreed, grinning at Gavin's enthusiasm.
"And creepers explode, like dynamite!" Gavin told him, holding up the creeper charm.
"Huh." Michael hummed, taking the diamond necklace.
"So you're the nice and I'm the dynamite?" Gavin asked, clasping the chain around his neck and looking at the green creeper head hanging off of it in Michael's small vanity mirror.
"Sure, Gav. Team Nice Dynamite." He chuckled, also pulling the diamond pendant around his neck.
Instead of going to bed like big boys, they pooled the previously mentioned Minecraft blocks on the floor at the end of Michael's bed and played with them like little children.
Five minutes later, Gavin pointed to his precariously stacked cubes of four gold blocks and an obsidian on top. "I proclaim this the Tower of Pimps."
"Nice, boi. It would look better if the obsidian was on the bottom, though." Michael said, nodding towards it as he constructed his own roofless house out of wood planks while repeatedly steadying a tree in front.
"Ah, good idea, Michael!" He praised. He fixed his tower by knocking it over unceremoniously into Michael's newly built house.
"What the fuck?! Gavin, you fucking ass!" Michael screeched, watching his hard work tumble sadly across the carpet. He tackled Gavin playfully to sit heavily on his legs and punch him (not too hard, though) in the arm a few times.
"You fuckin' bitch!" He yelled, a joking smile on his face. "You idiot!" Michael slowly rolled off of him and laid on his back on the floor, giggling in a manner usually not acquainted with 26 year olds. Gavin sat up, also dissolving into childish giggles, his smile wide and infectious.
"Pleb." Gavin murmured, slapping Michael on the arm.
"Yeah, I'm the pleb." Michael chuckled.
"Your house was in the way." Gavin scoffed.
"Asshole." Michael shot back affectionately, pushing him over casually. Gavin tipped sideways to flop on his back again contentedly.
They stayed like this for a while, Gavin and Michael lying side by side, staring at the plain ceiling together in a comfortable silence.
"Hey, Michael?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever wonder... Nah, never mind." He brushed it off, blowing out a noncommittal breath of air.
"Tell me."
"No, it's dumb." Gavin chuckled.
"Everything you say is dumb." Michael countered, and Gavin gave an agreeing noise.
"What if.. your legs didn't know they were legs?" He asked seriously, his face contemplative.
Michael gave a tiny snort, but he looked over at Gavin and his unsmiling face was simply staring at the ceiling, deep in thought.
"Are you... Are you serious?" Michael asked, a small smile creeping on his face.
"Yeah," He hummed. "Do you think you could break your lungs if you only breathe in?" He asked philosophically.
"No, I don't think so." Michael answered, suppressing a laugh that bubbled to his lips.
"How does a dog know when to stop growing?" Gavin said, a furrow between his brow.
"Is this what goes through your head all day?"
"What happens when astronauts think that they're upside down?"
"I... What?"
"Can you ever be too fast for your legs? Do animals know what animal they are? Has a person ever been born without a body?" He turned on his side to look at Michael, propping himself up with his elbow.
"You fucking sound like you're Google." Michael replied, a chuckle rising to his lips. He also leaned on his elbow, quirking an eyebrow at him.
"People have actually told me that my questions sound like Google." Gavin boasted proudly.
"Yeah, they definitely could be." Michael laughed.
"We made a game of it once, one I played with my friend Burnie and Barbara and sometimes Gus." He explained. Michael hmmed at him, urging him to continue.
"Burnie would give me the start of a question and I would give him a question that came from my brain. It's all in the brain, y'know."
"Yeah, m-hm."
"And then they'd try to guess the difference between my question and the Google suggested questions that other idiot people guessed."
"That sounds fun as fuck."
"Maybe you should come over sometime when Burns and Barb and I are having a game night."
"Maybe I will." Michael murmured, watching Gavin as he shifted back into his previous position of lazily watching the ceiling. He gazed at Gavin as the man became enveloped in his own thoughts again.
He really didn't want to admit it, especially because Gavin wasn't his soulmate, but he liked him. Not like that middle school crush where you "fall in love" with someone and "go out" with them for a few days before breaking up, or in high school where you fuck a few times and get over it. No, definitely not like that at all. This was the kind of love that you unwillingly trip into, made so much more intense by the way you get to know each other before the love even comes around.
"Hey, Gav?"
"Yeah?"
"What, uh, what are we?" Michael asked, fully expecting him to tell him he was dumb, and they were just friends.
"What do you want us to be?" Gavin questioned, turning his head towards him to give him his full attention. He gave him an inviting smile, which Michael returned automatically.
"I'm not gonna lie, I like you, Gav." He confessed, his grin unfaltering.
"Aw, Michael. I like you, too." He chuckled quietly.
"When I saw you at the bar... I was pretty fuckin' nervous that you were going to be just someone I saw and immediately lost again. I'm glad you took the chance and talked to me. I'm a wuss when it comes to that bullshit." Michael said softly.
"I'm glad I talked to you." Gavin cautiously took his hand, lacing their fingers together. He laid his head down next to Michael's. He could inhale Michael's musky scent from this position, which he did. The smell made his head absolutely whirl from pleasure.
"Gavin, I've gotta confess something." Michael said guiltily.
"Hm?" Gavin purred, sounding incredibly content, his eyes closed and head nestled by Michael's shoulder.
"I'm actually nervous about how we're like, not soulmates or whatever." He burned a hole in the ceiling to avoid looking in Gavin's eyes.
"I am, too." Gavin didn't look at Michael either, but for another reason.
"My parents weren't soulmates. They rushed into it and they just said 'fuck it', and didn't bother to find their real soulmate after that." Michael sighed.
"It's been known to happen, two people who aren't fall in love and like, fate or some crap changes." Gavin reasoned.
"My mom and dad never told me anything about how it happens. I'm still in the dark about all this shit." Michael said grumpily. Gavin hmmed an apologetic noise, remembering how fascinating his parents' stories were.
"I'm just," Michael sighs. "I'm tired of how fucking bland the world is. I want vibrancy and color in it, and someone to share it with."
Gavin smiled kindly. "Me, too." He shifted his gaze away to the walls, which were a gorgeous light baby blue, a color that Michael might never see. Gavin's not the kind of guy to just give up on someone, though, and he had already vowed to keep trying.
"Michael, can I try something?" Gavin asked.
"Um, sure." Michael agreed, a little wary.
Gavin sat up and leaned into Michael, placing his free hand on his freckled jawbone gently. He dipped his head in and kissed Michael sweetly, letting him feel comfortable with the contact and move into it on his own terms. Gavin pulled away after a tantalizingly short amount of time and Michael kept his eyes closed to savor the moment, a smile gracing his lips.
He opened his eyes, ready to say something to the extent of, "What took you so fucking long?" but stopped when he saw Gavin's brilliant green eyes staring back at him expectantly.
He opened his mouth wordlessly, gaping uncomprehendingly. The flame igniting in his chest told him he really hadn't imagined Gavin's twinkling eyes and wasn't ever truly out of the running when it came to love. It was like he'd been intoxicated with a straight up shot of pure Gavin, and it slowed his world to a halt as he tried not to drown in a sea of passion.
Without a second thought or care in the world, eagerly pulled Gavin's face down for another long, deep kiss.
---
Gavin knew as soon as those gorgeous, chocolate brown eyes opened that he was gone, and his world was about Michael and only Michael until they were dead and rotting in their graves, and maybe even after that. It sounded cliche, it sounded cheesy and dumb, but that was just how it was supposed to be, Michael and Gavin for as long as the sun burned in the sky and the stars shone in the endless galaxy.
After they broke apart, he let Michael hop up and prance excitedly about the room for a few minutes, allowing him to drink in the glittering colors. Gavin pulled him back down to earth by wrapping his arms around his waist from behind and pecking small kisses to his neck.
"Gav, why aren't you as excited as I am, you crazy fuck?" Michael asked, gazing at the comparison of their skin tones as he rubbed a thumb over Gavin's supple hand, completely at ease.
"My world lit up when we were in the bar, love." He replied simply.
"Oh yeah, you fucking looked like an excited puppy and I had no clue." Michael chuckled.
"Isn't it just amazing?" Gavin murmured into Michael's ear, observing the colorful trinkets in Michael's room.
"Yeah." They were silent for a few minutes, content to just look around at the room.
"Guess what we can see now?" Michael grinned. Gavin just gave him an encouraging smile.
"Sunsets. Sunrises. The sky when it's cloudless. The sky when there's a storm about to hit. The waves on a beach. Tropical birds and cardinals and blue jays. Spring flowers and summer grass, fall leaves and winter icicles. Trees- pine trees, palm trees, fuck, even oak trees. And the best of all?"
"What?"
"Video games." The grins that surfaced on their faces split their peaceful expressions into ecstatic ones.
"Oh, the HD." Gavin groaned, anticipating it greatly. "Can--" He started, but Michael hushed him with a finger on his lips, replaced quickly with his own.
"We have the rest of our life to fucking play video games." He grinned, running his hands up and down Gavin's sides. "Let's not talk anymore."
"Yeah. Talking is overrated anyway." Gavin muttered slyly, tugging Michael onto the bed and beginning the first night with him for the rest of forever.