Chapter Text
The first thing Viktor says, when Phichit comes into his dorm room after his shower to find his best friend sprawled on his bed, is: ‘What an adorable, tiny little room!’
‘Your room’s the same size,’ Phichit points out, unimpressed. He walks over to the bed and lets the towel fall from around his neck onto Viktor’s head.
Viktor shakes the towel out of his eyes, the column of his throat like silver. It’s about nine or ten degrees Celsius outside, and cream-coloured sunlight sifts through the narrow windows, highlighting the porcelain bareness of Phichit’s walls. He hasn’t gotten around to putting up his family photos and posters yet. He’s thinking maybe he’ll go for the minimalist aesthetic, these three years in university. Lying upside down with his head on Phichit’s favourite hamster plushie, Viktor drags his gaze upwards to attack Phichit with the full force of his smile.
‘It’s bigger with me in it.’
‘That makes no sense,’ Phichit says, laughing, and smacks Viktor in the face with his towel until Viktor rolls out of bed. He sits down on the bed in Viktor’s place and cuddles the plushie to his chest. ‘How was your day?’
Viktor yawns. Outside, voices slant upwards from the cobblestones and the college front quad, coated now with the dry tinfoil of autumn leaves. Phichit’s bed sits snug against the wall, backlit by a lamp set deep into the oddly sloped ceiling Phichit bumps his head on every morning. There’s a desk wedged beside the window along with a set of drawers, and a tiny, unused fireplace where Phichit intends to store his books. The two wardrobes are identical and forbidding. The natural lighting’s very flattering in pictures. ‘It was awful, Phichit. I think I’m not cut out for university. I’m going to drop out and become a model.’
Phichit snaps his towel at Viktor’s ass. ‘One, you aced your A-levels without even trying. Two, it’s been three days. Classes haven’t even started yet.’
‘I did try,’ says Viktor unblinkingly as he settles himself in Phichit’s swivel chair, all long-limbed composure. ‘I tried very hard. Shall we go out tonight? There’s a party at St. Aidan’s and Stéphane told me to bring a friend.’
Phichit suppresses his wince. ‘Okay.’ Viktor’s really hard to offend; it’s okay. He cocks his head, contorts his mouth into the well-worn shape of his smile, and changes the subject. ‘Who’s your roommate?’
‘Some Canadian with a million boxes and an undercut.’ Viktor waves a hand dismissively. ‘He drove up with his girlfriend and two siblings and his parents, for some reason. Have you had a conversation with yours yet?’
‘No,’ Phichit exclaims, letting all the suffering of the last few hours spill out of him in his relief. ‘I don’t even know his surname. I don’t know what he’s studying. I don’t know what he likes to eat or whether he’s going to murder me in my sleep. I think he was this close to drawing a chalk line down the floor between our halves of the room. I had to get his first name from his email address! Stop laughing at me!’
‘I’m not laughing at you,’ says Viktor, who is definitely laughing at Phichit. He rests his chin in both hands and gazes at Phichit, half-lidded, amused, and Phichit says a silent prayer for all the souls destroyed by Viktor Nikiforov at Freshers’ Week parties. ‘So what’s his name?’
Phichit screws up his face, trying to get the pronunciation right. ‘Seung-gil?’
‘There! You’ll be friends in no time.’
‘Sure,’ Phichit agrees, hopeful.
‘Maybe you’ll even know the first few digits of his phone number by the time you graduate.’
Phichit chucks the hamster plushie at Viktor. Viktor catches it one-handed, as the universe has endowed Viktor with the ability to be literally perfect, thus forcing Phichit to increase his own coolness ratings by association. ‘You’re the worst.’ He picks up his phone, which is nestled innocently in a dip of the coverlet. ‘What did you tweet from my account while I was showering?’
‘Who says I tweeted anything?’
Phichit waves the phone in Viktor’s face. ‘Some day I’m going to change my password, and then you will suffer.’
‘Your password is the name of your first hamster. It’s been the same since 2009.’ Viktor flips the plushie’s little paws at Phichit and produces a series of uncannily accurate hamster squeaks. ‘Come to Freshers’ Fair with me! Look, she’s cheering for you.’
Phichit has seen the Student Union and the sports hall when they’re empty, and he can’t imagine squeezing the entire cohort of first-years into those two buildings. Despite himself, his chest tightens. ‘Vitya, it’s going to be so crowded.’
‘I’m very tall and Russian. I’ll protect you,’ Viktor says, firm. ‘Come on, don’t make me go by myself, you know I only have one friend.’
The most unrealistic bit of this experience is that Phichit has a friend from his hometown at university with him. Even better: at the same college. Trevelyan’s one of the smallest colleges, which is good for Phichit, and has a reputation for friendliness which Phichit’s hoping really hard will turn out to be true. Phichit liked the vibe of the place on Open Day and Viktor was fascinated by how everything was hexagon-shaped, so here they are. Not everybody’s so lucky. They aren’t roommates, of course, but they live in the same building and that’s more than enough for Phichit.
They only stay, like, half an hour, since there are indeed a lot of people. Phichit can feel Viktor tensing in preparation to snatch Phichit up, flip him over in mid-air and haul him through the double doors in a fireman’s carry. This invariably turns Phichit’s burgeoning panic attack into whoops of delight. Every once in a while, Viktor wonders whether the reverse effect would happen if he performed this on a non-panicking Phichit, and Phichit says when I develop a death wish, I’ll let you try, and they add this to their list of Serious Agreements beginning with the marriage pact.
By the time they leave, Phichit has signed up for the Coffee Society, the Animal Rights and Welfare Society, FilmSoc, Breakdance, Quidditch, Parkour, the Werewolf Society, Choc Soc, Photography, the Russian Society, and the Thai Society, and is examining the numerous other stickers that spackle his clothing. ‘I won’t have time to go to all of these,’ he mourns.
‘You’re right,’ mutters Viktor, carefully disentangling himself from the Cider Appreciation Society’s stand. Viktor is very encouraging. He takes the crumpled flyer from Phichit’s hand and turns it upside down to read it. ‘Do you even know how to pole dance?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Phichit says, and writes that down too with his LGBT-Association-provided pencil. ‘Well, I’m going there to learn, right?’
Viktor massages the bridge of his nose.
‘I’ll pick a different one to go to every week,’ Phichit decides, hooking his arm through Viktor’s while they pick their way towards the doors. Viktor casually trips over a chair and curses in Thai, loud enough that a path clears in front of them for a few seconds and Phichit can breathe freely. ‘Although…’ Phichit frowns. ‘That means every week will be my first time. That’s a bit scary. But I can’t just choose one, Vitya!’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Viktor says loyally. ‘I’m sure I’ll have a lot of free time.’
Viktor is studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics, because Viktor Nikiforov was gifted with many fine qualities except for some goddamned chill. Phichit just stares at him for a moment and lets the silence speak for itself.
Viktor sighs. ‘We’ll think of something.’
The party is kind of awful, though Phichit came here mentally prepared for that.
He’s standing in the shelter of the trees outside, trying not to get swept away, plucking at the shirt he only wears to remind himself of his grandmother and uncomfortably aware of all the eyeliner he’s got on. Shitty-great music and shitty-terrible music in equal quantities leak out from the interior of the college, taunting Phichit’s itch to dance. What do people do at parties except stand around? This one’s in its early stages, meaning that most people haven’t decided whether they’ll stay or move on to greener pastures. Phichit has been slowly yet surely taking root in the spot where he’s standing, shielded by postcard-coloured tree branches, feet absorbing nutrients from the soil, for the past twenty minutes. He tries to be thankful that he doesn’t know anybody here.
It doesn’t really help.
Somebody nearby jogs his elbow and Phichit nearly spills his drink. ‘Sorry!’ gasps this someone — curly dark hair, American accent — and Phichit opens his mouth to say it’s okay, maybe start a conversation, maybe talk to someone who isn’t the guy he’s known since he was ten years old, but she’s gone. Winding her way back into the crowds streaming out onto sunset-brown grass.
Okay.
Phichit sits down on the grass. It’s slightly damp, and he can feel the stains soaking into the seat of his nice jeans. Whatever, he’s got a great ass and everyone should notice it.
(Phichit isn’t sure which prospect scares him more: everybody staring at him as he walks by, or the throng brushing past him and through him and away, leaving him floundering in their wake, invisible, uncounted, unnoticeable.)
‘Phichit!’ says Viktor, reemerging from the liquid press of people at Phichit’s side. He plucks the cup of Tesco vodka and Coke from Phichit’s hand and replaces it with something less immediately identifiable. Phichit’s very thirsty. ‘Here, drink this.’
Phichit swirls the liquid in his cup dubiously. Viktor’s hair is stickily tousled and the colour already ripe in his cheeks; the evening blurs behind Viktor, bodies and small talk and music blending incoherently into a muddy watercolour background. Phichit and Viktor have an arrangement that if Phichit embarrasses himself, Viktor will simply take off his shirt and Phichit can escape amid the lust-fuelled chaos that ensues.
That’s looking more and more attractive by the second.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Trust me,’ purrs Viktor, who has proven time and again that he cannot be trusted on the subject of intoxicating substances. Phichit shrugs and takes a long draught anyway. Can’t get any worse.
During the coughing fit that follows, Viktor pounds his back helpfully.
‘Feel better?’
‘Much,’ Phichit chokes out. He wipes his eyes. ‘Thanks. Can we go inside?’
Viktor lights up with the smile that’s made dozens of parents want to run for cover. ‘Sure!’ He takes hold of Phichit’s arm and begins towing him towards the foyer, neatly sidestepping all the trees and shifting body masses in their way. ‘I just spotted the most beautiful creature in the world. Come and see!’
‘Huh,’ says Phichit, blinking. He’s a bit dizzy. The alcohol isn’t doing anything to clear away the feeling of bodies clogging up the space around him. But he hangs on to Viktor’s elbow like it’s a lifeline, and that gets him through the impossible trek from trees to the inside of the building. ‘What kind of dog was it?’
‘A boy,’ Viktor yells. Several people nearby turn their heads to look at them. Phichit grabs Viktor around the waist and clamps one hand over his mouth.
‘You point and show me.’
Inside is sweltering with the heat of countless other human beings, and (somehow at the same time) chilly with the influx of late-autumn air as doors clang open and shut. Phichit’s sweating. He pulls down the collar of his ratty old shirt, flicks open the first two buttons — hopes nobody’s judging him for that. This is normal, right? This is okay. Mild discomfort in new environments is okay. During those first solitary hours in his room, Phichit entertained himself by livetweeting every part of the ordeal, from the six flights of stairs with bonus suitcases to the silent horror of the bathrooms. Audience response was overwhelmingly positive. You’ve got to do something other than cower. Now — as Viktor looks round for the man of his dreams, fails to find him, and spends five minutes introducing Phichit to a tiny freckled boy who trails after Viktor like a fish behind a sperm whale — the thought occurs to Phichit that his Snapchat story isn’t so much amusing for his followers as it is pathetic.
He squashes down this heresy. If Phichit’s social life is going to be a trainwreck, he’ll damned well own every second of it.
‘So,’ he stammers. ‘You said… uh, Vitya said… Viktor is Vitya, it’s a long story… you’re doing the same thing as me, right? Combined Honours in Social Sciences?’
Whew.
‘Not exactly,’ says Fish Boy, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘I’m studying Criminology.’
He says this with the deep contentment of someone who has been told all his life that he can’t be Batman, and now gets to prove everybody else wrong.
‘Oh.’ Phichit looks up at the ceiling for help before realising this looks incredibly rude. He’s got half a dozen conversation scripts which all elude him at the moment. ‘So… you fight crime?’
Oh no.
Viktor swoops in to save Phichit. ‘Excuse me!’ he shouts over the blare of the music, turning away from dazzling some jaded second-year to focus the beacon of his attention on Fish Boy. ‘What’s your name again?’
‘Guang Hong,’ the boy answers uncertainly. Behind him, Phichit makes a terrified face at Viktor.
‘Okay,’ chirps Viktor, obviously forgetting the name at once, ‘bye!’ and he links arms with a lovely blond guy and vanishes into the crowd. Throwing Phichit in at the deep end and leaving him to fumble through social interaction is just how Viktor shows his love. Phichit hates Viktor. Phichit is going to kill him. Phichit will record the murder for Instagram, and the satisfaction of that will be worth his prison sentence.
He turns back to Guang Hong with his trusty take-me-to-your-parents smile, tacking on charm with the ease of long practice. As much as Phichit wants to say otherwise, he’s had most of this practice in front of a mirror.
‘I’m Phichit.’
‘I know who you are.’ Guang Hong scrunches up his nose in confusion. Phichit considers running away to Thailand, where no one will know of his shame and where he can die alone, in peace, mourned by nobody, remembered only by his hamsters, his family, Viktor’s family, the secondary school teacher who told Phichit he would achieve great things, and his total of over three thousand followers on various social media platforms who will wonder about Phichit’s sudden, unexplained silence for the rest of eternity.
Then Guang Hong spots a friend at the other end of the foyer and leaves.
Phichit sits down on a shitty plastic chair beside the open bar, and decides to get roaringly drunk.
Eleven jello shots later, the walls are wavering in Phichit’s field of vision, an appealingly top-hits-of-2006 mix is thumping over the house speakers, and tonight has gone from awful to awfully amazing. Phichit may be a lightweight. If he leaves his room at all during the next three years, he’ll have to investigate this hypothesis. Phichit finds himself on the front steps of the college, swaying gently in the breeze and being talked at by some uptight guy about his twin sister, whom Phichit isn’t sure exists. Did he say Sara or Sala? Either way, it sounds fake. The double doors wink open and closed at their backs, pouring laughter and cheap booze into the metallic sweetness of night air. Phichit bounces on the balls of his feet to warm himself up.
‘Sorry,’ he says dazedly, prying himself away from Michele’s story about the USA road trip, ‘I have to, uh, I think I need to puke,’ and he wanders back inside the college. There’s newspaper crunching underfoot and a sticky yellow stain inching across the stone floor. After getting his hopes dashed by his roommate, Phichit took to leaving his door open whenever he was inside alone, having read that this was a good way of making friends in your first week. All it did was give him heart palpitations whenever someone walked past the doorway. Coming to this party was a much better idea. Phichit is surrounded by warm-mouthed, open-hearted strangers whose judgement is seriously impeded by their alcohol intake, and he’s never been more scared in his life.
He’s got that hot, loose, dangerous sensation in his fingertips that makes him think of a car on the highway whizzing towards instant doom. Phichit shoulders his way towards the common room to snag himself another drink.
There he finds Viktor, cheerfully outdrinking a group of unspeakably posh first-years, and getting mooned over by equally cheerful people of various genders and in varying states of dress.
‘Phichit!’ Viktor calls, stretching up to wave wildly in Phichit’s direction so that his shirt rides up and the entire room is treated to the bare small of his back. The music’s too loud for regular conversations, so Phichit has to read Viktor’s lips, which is… which is, yeah, a very good thing to focus on. It helps to pick something to concentrate on doing. ‘I’ve been looking for you!’
Phichit has no doubt that eight-drinks Viktor has tried very hard to find Phichit. He’s just been distracted along the way by many distracting things, such as being an attractive, intimidating person at a party full of attractive, intimidating people. Phichit doesn’t hold that against him. University’s about learning to be independent and an adult, after all, and that includes having to function in social situations without Viktor.
At this point, five or six friendly faces look up at Phichit from the weatherbeaten sofa on which Viktor is magnificently losing a poker game, and Phichit discovers that he cannot, in fact, function in social situations without Viktor.
‘Um,’ he squeaks.
‘Hey, are you a first-year too?’ roars a scruffy bearded bloke right up in Phichit’s face — the music here is way louder than it needs to be — and this is far too abrupt and too close. Oh dear. Against his best wishes, Phichit takes a step back.
He bumps into the sagging pool table behind him and it’s here that Viktor’s hand shoots out, grasping Phichit’s wrist and not letting go.
‘Ah,’ says Viktor in a voice like satin, easing Phichit down onto the fold-out chair beside him, ‘I was thinking you should meet —’
‘Actually, I-I was just leaving,’ Phichit gasps. Oh god, it’s back. The stutter is back. He raises his voice to be heard just barely above the grind of bass beats. ‘I… uh, I’m just going to walk back to Trevs. Okay? Okay.’ He’s seriously tempted to buy everyone at this table a round of drinks so they’ll remember him kindly in the morning. Wait, the bar is free. Even better. ‘You have fun, okay, Vitya? Use protection!’
‘Phichit?’ Viktor leans forward, hair in his eyes, flush spreading richly down into the dip of his shirt. Phichit steals a glance at the guy he’s just accidentally blown off, who looks nice, really, even if there’s no way he can be a first-year. Phichit feels guilty. ‘Are you okay? Do you need me to come with you?’
‘No!’ Phichit grabs the back of the sofa to hoist himself up. ‘No, don’t come.’ He flicks a glance at the beautiful dark-haired boy who’s snuggling into Viktor’s lap, white shirt half-unbuttoned. ‘Hey, you, don’t harass my son.’
‘I’m older than you,’ says Viktor, who was held back in school due to some intricacies of the foster care system that needed to be worked out, and holds their five-month age difference over Phichit’s head at every opportunity.
Phichit frowns at Viktor. ‘You’re my son.’
‘I think he’s harassing me,’ says the boy, his eyelashes inky-black behind his glasses. And then Viktor puts his hands on the boy's waist and he leans in and licks into Viktor’s mouth in a manner that defies what he just said, so Phichit leaves them to it. Phichit slides towards the safety of the double doors, his head buzzing loudly. He’s never been more grateful for the fact that most people have migrated to various pieces of furniture and suspiciously moving shadows on staircase landings, leaving the exits clear. He doesn’t think anyone will notice he’s gone.
The walk back to Trevs is very lonely in the dark.