Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1994. 

No sooner had their prospective roommate lumbered down the front steps than Fred Andrews spins on his heel with a flourish and slams the apartment door behind him. 

“No way!” he declares cheerfully, crossing the room to where FP was mulling over some bills. “Let’s hope the last person is more normal than these four.” 

“What was the matter with him?” FP asks, a frown lining his face. He glances at the notepad where Fred had been keeping the names of possible tenants for their small spare bedroom. Every one but the last was crossed off. Vigorously. 

“You mean besides the fact that he smoked like a haystack?” Fred wrinkles his nose disdainfully and sails past FP into the small kitchen. “We said no smoking on the ad. You know I hate smoking. This place would smell like an ashtray.” 

FP let out a long breath and folded his arms over his chest, surveying his boyfriend as Fred stared into their empty fridge. He closes it. “I smoke,” FP points out diplomatically, trying to keep his voice even. 

“Yeah, but I make you do it out on the porch!” Fred cracks an easy smile. “Besides, you’re a cute ashtray. Look, let’s just hold out for our five-o-clock appointment. Maybe it’ll be someone young and cute.” 

FP can feel his jaw tightening. When the two of them had moved into a two-bedroom off-campus apartment at the beginning of FP’s sophomore year, they had optimistically hoped that they’d be able to split the rent and utilities between them. Only a few months in, though, the bills were starting to pile up. Money and tempers had been tight recently, which was why FP had been so relieved when they’d decided to put an ad out for a third roommate. 

Relieved, that was, until Fred had cheerfully turned each and every one of them down, with his same off-beat, unflappable brand of cheerfulness. Usually FP loved to see Fred happy, but the three dollars and fourteen cents he currently had to last him until his next payday had infused the situation with an urgentness that Fred seemed immune to. 

“We don’t need someone young and cute, we need someone who can write us a cheque. You can’t keep holding out for this imaginary cute roommate. They don’t exist.” 

Fred pouts, but playfully. His brown eyes are still warm, dancing with humour. “You’re just jealous. All right, all right.” He drifts closer and pinches FP’s cheek. “I already have a cute roommate. I don’t need another one.” 

FP clears his throat and looks down at the list of potentials, forcing himself not to be swayed from the task at hand by Fred’s big brown eyes. “I think it would be bearable. The smoking.” 

Fred shudders. “FP, there’s a difference between the occasional cigarette and whatever that guy was doing. You could smell it coming off him. He walked in here in a cloud of smoke! He must do three packs a day, easy. It’s not practical to live with.” 

A twinge of annoyance spears through FP’s chest. “Our room is upstairs. His room is downstairs. We can tell him to open a window. You don’t think you could put up with it for the rest of the year?” 

“No,” says Fred, folding his arms. “I don’t. I’m not trying to be difficult, but I’m not budging on this. It was on the ad.” 

“Then we’re going to have to go with one of the people we’ve already passed over. If they haven’t found another place yet.” 

“No, FP!” They’d interviewed four other roommates that week, and Fred had somehow found fault with all of them. FP had to admit some of the faults were pretty glaring. One girl had told them on the spot that she and her boyfriend were a packaged set and that he’d be over every night. Another was almost definitely a felon. “Let’s just wait and see who else replies to the ad. Someone nice is bound to turn up. You could make a new friend.” 

Leave it to Fred to be so blissfully, naively idealistic. FP groans and buries his face in his hands. 

“Fred, I have three dollars in my bank account! Not in my wallet. My bank account. My paycheck doesn’t come until Thursday, and even then, you know how little I make working part-time. We are drowning in bills, here! We have nothing to eat! Our phone is on the verge of getting disconnected! I had to pay for the bus yesterday with pennies! And you want to make friends!” 

“I know you’re broke! I’m broke too!” Fred lifts his shoulders in a what can you do gesture. “Everyone’s broke, FP. But it always works out. We’ll find a roommate who can pay and who we can live with. Okay?” 

“No, it’s not okay!” FP snaps, throwing his hands down. “We don’t have to like them, Fred, they just have to split the bills with us. We’ll see our five o’ clock appointment, but if they’re not the one I’m calling this guy. I mean it.” 

“But don’t you think it would be an added bonus if we liked them?” 

For once FP isn’t swayed by Fred’s angelic, hopeful expression. He starts pacing around the small kitchen attached to their front entryway, his eyes fixed on the floor. “Fred, you keep trying to talk me down, but I’m not hearing any solutions. I wish you’d take this seriously.” 

“Well, maybe it’s not as serious as you think it is! We don’t have to find a roommate today. And that guy had issues other than being a smoker, but you don’t want to hear them because you’re just all fixated- ” 

“What do we do when we turn all of these people down, Fred? Eat the utility bills? Move back to your mom’s house, a hundred miles away? Just so you don’t have to smell a cigarette once in a while?” 

Fred’s sunny disposition was rapidly falling. “Sorry that I’m not letting you make me the bad guy,” he argues, his eyebrows pinched together in a straight line. His voice is sharp and tense. “I want our apartment to be a nice, smoke-free place. I also haven’t heard you say anything about how you expect us to miraculously find someone who’s going to be okay with us sleeping together. That cigarette dude was a hate crime waiting to happen.” 

FP grits his teeth. The elephant in the room. He had no idea how he was going to introduce to any potential roommate the fact that he and Fred shared a bedroom, never mind the fact that they liked to greet each other with kisses and sweet talk in the mornings. We’ll make it work somehow, FP had intoned when they were discussing it, but neither of them were confident in a solution. Not that there was much danger of those kisses now. Fred’s evil eye was currently burning a hole through FP’s forehead. 

“Oh, now you care about that,” FP argues, too pissed off to back down. “You never listened to me worry about it before! All you do is shrug and tell me it’s going to be okay, and we’ll find someone nice, and no one will care, and one day we’ll get married and our third fucking roommate will be so happy for us, but that’s not the real world, Fred. You have no idea what’s it’s like to be-” 

“Gay?!” Fred interrupts, his jaw hanging open. “You are seriously being such a martyr right now.” He throws his hands in the air. “I don’t even remember what we’re fighting about!” 

“You don’t remember because you never take anything seriously!” 

Fred slaps his forehead exaggeratedly. “Right, pardon me, you were having a breakdown about how if we don’t ask a chainsmoker to move in with us our world will end. And apparently you understand the perils of being gay so much more than I do, because you’ve clearly been sleeping with a straight guy all this time, right?!” 

“Fred!” FP could have screamed in frustration. “I’m broke!” 

“You’re also obsessed with getting lung cancer!” Fred drops into a chair, his legs splayed out in a position of fake nonchalance as he yells at him. He plants both hands on the table. “Stop acting like money is the most important thing in the world!” 

FP grits his teeth and approaches him. “Maybe this is brand new news to you, but money means the difference between life or death for some people. In case you forgot, I didn’t grow up in a nice suburban house. I don’t have a mom writing my cheques every month. My dad disowned me, Fred. The money I have has been mine and mine alone since he found out I was gay and turned me out on my ass. After nearly beating me to death, I might add. You say you’re broke, Fred, but you have a full time job. Your mom is helping you with the rent every month. I don’t have a parent’s checkbook to fall back upon. I don’t have a cushion like you do. This is my life, Fred. All of it.” 

Fred gets up quicker than a flash. In an instant, FP realizes his mistake. But it’s too late. The words are already out. 

“Fuck,” he says quietly, putting his hands out in front of him. “Fred, listen -” 

“You think I don’t know what it’s like to be broke?” Fred asks. His voice is trembling, but he manages to keep it low and even, despite the angry tears sparkling in his eyes. “You think I have it real easy, huh? I’ve just been sitting on my ass draining mommy and daddys’ trust fund, right? That’s how you see me?” 

“Fred-” FP speaks up, his shoulder slumping. Fred was right. He’d spoken without thinking and put his foot in his mouth. But Fred simply wipes a tear hastily from his cheek and faces him down, his face turning red with anger. The two of them were overdue for a proper fight - they’d been pushing each other’s buttons since the topic of roommates had come up almost three weeks ago. 

“FP, my mom’s money is MY MONEY!” Fred bellows. “I made it! If she bails me out on rent that is my business, and all of the money that she is sending me came from my job! Do you know why I’m not in college? Have you forgotten? You think you have the monopoly on struggling?” He stalks up to FP and jabs him in the chest. 

“I had to watch as my parents gave up everything they’d ever worked for to try and save my dad, and it still wasn’t enough! And it was me working all that time to pay for the funeral and keep me and my mom alive. Me, FP! Me trying to graduate high school and put food in our mouths at the same time! 

I know what it’s like to go to bed hungry! I know what it’s like to spend your whole paycheck on bills! And if you think my mom wouldn’t bail you out the same way she’d bail me out if you really needed it, you’re crazy. But sure , you’re right.” Sarcasm drips from his tone. “You’re a hero for coming here from the trailer park with a full ride scholarship, and I’m just some overprivileged jerk who works a sixty hour work week for kicks.” 

An angry sob explodes its way out of Fred’s mouth as he turns and starts striding furiously towards the door, which was being knocked on from outside. His hand on the doorknob, he whirls around. “If you still see me as some spoiled little middle class brat, then maybe you’d like to pay the rent on this place all on your own! Maybe I ought to leave!” 

“Fred-” FP yells, raising the volume of his voice to compensate for the pit opening up in his chest. “Will you just listen to me-” 

Fury snaps from Fred’s eyes like hot sparks. “I’m done listening to you! Oh, and one more thing, douchebag!” Fred yells over his shoulder, throwing the door open. “I’m just as gay as you are!” 

Thundering silence. The door had flung open to reveal one of the hottest girls FP had ever seen. Her dark brown hair was loose and fringed around her face, her deep brown eyes surrounded by long lashes and a liberal amount of smokey eye makeup. She was wearing a form-fitted leather jacket and had a guitar case slung over her back. She looks from Fred to FP and back again. 

“Hi, I’m Gladys.” She puts a hand out to Fred, flicking some hair out of her eyes and revealing an eyebrow piercing. Apart from cocking her head slightly to one side, she doesn’t comment on the hurricane of emotions she’d just walked in on. FP hurriedly checks his watch and stifles a groan. It was five already. “I’m here about the room?” 

“Come on in, Gladys,” says FP tensely, leading her past the kitchen and into their living room. Fred walks quietly at his side, his face smoothed over into an expression of polite nonchalance. Only a flush of pink high on his cheeks remains from the confrontation. FP touches his own cheek with the back of his hand and can feel his face burning like an oven. 

Gladys sets her guitar down and drops into their overstuffed armchair - FP’s favourite piece of furniture, a Fairwill monstrosity that Fred claimed was one broken spring away from a trip to the dump. This leaves only the sofa for Fred and FP, and they sit politely side by side, a gap of at least two feet between them. 

“So, you’re a student?” FP asks, when Fred makes absolutely no move to speak. Gladys crosses her legs, looking effortlessly nonchalant. She makes no mention of their screaming match, and neither of them acknowledges it. 

“At State, yeah.” She inclines her head with a pearly-white smile to indicate the vague direction of campus. “I’m an English lit major. Wait, let me guess.” She cocks a finger at Fred and FP in turn. “You look like a Fred, so FP must be you.” 

“Initials,” FP grunts as explanation. He feels like an idiot for not bothering to introduce themselves, but Gladys was clearly sharp enough to hold her own. 

“What year are you?” asks Fred politely, finding his voice, and FP lets out a deep breath. An unspoken truce shimmers between them - conditional on Gladys’ presence. The second she walked out they’d probably be fighting again. 

“Second year,” Gladys replies. “Sophomore.” 

“Me too,” FP answers, scrutinizing her. His gaze lands on the guitar case, and he hesitates internally as he remembers Fred turning down a prospective roommate who played in an accordion trio. 

“We’re a packaged set, unfortunately,” Gladys speaks up, as though reading his mind. She touches the guitar case reflexively, and FP notices Fred watching her closely. Before their eyes, Gladys unzips it tenderly and reveals a shining acoustic guitar. 

Fred’s eyes are glued to the instrument, and FP feels a sudden pang in his stomach. Guilt, recognition, but mostly sadness. Fred hadn’t touched a guitar since he was seventeen. He’d sold his prized possession when his family was struggling, and he hadn’t owned one since. There was always somewhere else for the money to go - car repair, help for his mom back home, some bill or crisis or medical expense. And even if he had the extra, FP felt sure Fred would never spend it on himself.

FP had always meant to buy back Fred’s guitar for him - any guitar - had fantasized about it for years, but the shape of his bank account wasn’t going to make that a reality any time soon. He locks his eyes on the side of his boyfriend’s head, already tortured by regret from their fight as he fixes his gaze on Fred’s caramel-highlighted hair. 

Once we make up, I will buy you a guitar. I will buy you the most beautiful guitar you’ve ever seen. Whatever it takes. 

“I do have to practice, but I promise I’m not awful to listen to.” Gladys’ voice cuts into his thoughts. FP had almost forgotten she was there. “I’d never play it in the middle of the night, or anything. I understand no one wants to take a chance on a roommate with a guitar, but I’m very courteous.” 

“Honestly, we’re a whole floor away from you,” FP replies. He can play nice. “We probably won’t even hear you.” 

“And we both like music,” Fred speaks up, his voice chipper and friendly. You’d have to have known him your whole life to hear the thread of sadness in it. “It’s no problem.” 

Gladys smiles. “I’m a very normal person, otherwise” she insists, idly scratching a tear in her ripped jeans. “No witchcraft - well, not much, anyway. I pull late nights sometimes, but I’m quiet about it. I’m not into the whole party scene, so don’t worry about that. Not on campus, at least. If I drink, I tend to go elsewhere. I’m polite and I’m good at doing dishes.” 

“As long as it’s quiet witchcraft, we can deal,” Fred chirps warmly, obviously smitten. He flashes Gladys his winning smile, and Gladys grins right back at him. 

“Do you want to see the room?” Fred asks, bouncing to his feet with a semblance of his old energy. 

Gladys nods, and Fred leads them into the small bedroom attached to the kitchen. When they’d rented the place, it was supposed to have been FP’s - that was, if anyone involved in the renting (FP, Fred, Fred’s mother) truly believed that they were going to sleep in separate beds. Gladys spreads her arms out and turns around, admiring the cramped, unimpressive space from all angles. 

“It looks great,” she declares, opening and closing the window in a businesslike manner. Low maintenance , FP decides, begrudgingly admiring her for it. She strolls back down the hall towards the armchair, already looking like she lives there as her hips sway from side to side.

“Do you smoke?” FP asks suddenly, placing a light hand on Fred’s elbow. 

Gladys raises her eyebrows. “I’m trying to quit.” 

“Perfect.” Fred slips out from behind FP and sticks out his hand. “Gladys, how would you feel about being our new roommate?” 

A gorgeous grin spreads across Gladys’ face. “If I write you a cheque for my share of the rent, can I move in tomorrow?” 

“Sounds perfect!” Fred beams, but makes the smile disappear when he and FP lock eyes. Gladys sits back down in the armchair and rifles through her bag, and Fred flops back onto the sofa, following suit. 

“I can do that right now,” says Gladys, opening a black-covered chequebook and uncapping a pen. She glances up at the pair of them. “Who should I make it out to?” 

“You can make it out to Forsythe Jones,” says Fred, his even voice betraying no outward animosity. FP winces imperceptibly all the same. “He’s the one chomping at the bit to get it in the bank.” 

Fred folds the cheque in half that Gladys hands him and holds it out to FP with two fingers. FP’s heart feels like it’s being squeezed in a vice as he takes it and tucks it into his shirt pocket. He’d deposit it on the way to class. And then maybe he’d start thinking of ways to get Fred to forgive him for being an enormous asshole about everything. 

Gladys and Fred chat for a bit, and then Gladys swings her guitar up onto her back and announces she’s running late for a music class. FP trails both of them awkwardly into the hallway, relieved and guilt-ridden at the same time as Fred hands Gladys her key. 

“I couldn’t help overhearing a bit of your discussion,” Gladys mentions as she’s zipping up her coat. 

FP freezes in place, and Fred’s smile slips a bit. Fight or no fight, FP wants desperately to lock eyes with him, but Fred looks away. 

“I’m very gay,” says Gladys confidently. “So I wouldn’t worry about a thing.” 

Fred had left for work as soon as Gladys was out the door, and FP had walked to the bank and his last class of the day before jogging to the football field for their nightly practice. He had stopped briefly next to the bank downtown to look in the music store window, and his heart had rushed up into his throat at the sight of the cherry-red guitar on the display. It was made for Fred, no doubt about it. Fred’s guitar - and a glance at the price tag confirmed it cost more than half of the cheque Gladys had just written him. 

For a second he’d wanted to just do it. But Fred would understandably throw a fit if FP had put on such a big show about their finances just to blow that much money on a present. 

Stowing his hands in his pockets, FP had walked back to campus as though under a raincloud. Somehow or other, he needed money. Christmas was coming up - he was starting to fantasize about leading Fred downstairs on Christmas morning and turning him to face a beautifully wrapped but unmistakably guitar-shaped object leaning up against the wall. It would be the only thing in their wide open living room besides the spindly, decorated-with-love Christmas tree they’d pull out of some pine lot together. Just the two of them, alone in their house like a newly-married couple, and Fred tearing into shiny wrapping paper just for his eyes to light up like a little kid with a new sled. That was what FP wanted more than anything. 

It was a little unrealistic now - they always went to Mrs. Andrews’ house for Christmas morning, and they had a third roommate in the picture as of this afternoon. But he could get Fred that guitar. He could do that much. Somehow. 

Jogging from class to football practice always made him feel warmed-up and strong, but walking home in the dark after was a pain in the ass. Still, Fred had every right to take the car to work - the construction site was further from their duplex than the football field, and the hours of hard labour that Fred put in trumped even their coach’s hardest workouts. 

Today had been scheduled to be Fred’s day off, but he’d been called in at the last minute to cover the end of someone’s shift. He’d be home by ten, and then FP had every intention of groveling at his feet until Fred forgave him. If this was truly going to be their last night alone together before Gladys moved in, he wanted them to spend it making up. 

Walking home from football practice through the darkening twilight, his muscles aching with every step, he’s surprised to find the house isn’t as empty as he had left it. The front door is hanging open, a radio is blasting Joan Jett somewhere inside, and there’s a motorbike and a black truck parked in the driveway. As he walks up to the front porch he’s almost run over by Gladys, carrying a cardboard box with a stack of books overflowing out the top. 

“Woah,” says FP loudly, wondering if he’d made a mistake already. “I thought you were moving in tomorrow.” 

“I was, but my friend was only free to help me move today.” Gladys sets the heavy box down in the hall. “I’m crashing at her place, and she wanted me out. So here I am.” 

Just then, the friend in question skips up the front steps, her crimped blonde hair sticking up over the top of a box of cassettes. The newcomer is wearing snakeskin boots with a cleavage-baring top and fishnets that make Gladys’ gothic outfit look matronly by comparison. At the sight of FP she licks her lips, exposing a tongue piercing.

“Who’s this, your sorority sister?” FP cracks rudely. He’s well aware he’s not making any friends right now, but he’s still too touchy from his fight with Fred to care. Gladys really isn’t doing anything wrong, but she’s intruding on his perfect vision of the evening, and it’s enough to get his hackles raised. 

Gladys looks unbothered, but puts her hand politely on the blonde’s shoulder. “FP, this is Penny Peabody. Penny, this is FP.” 

“Mmm!” Penny’s eyes brighten, and she throws an arm around FP’s sweaty frame, squeezing him like a python. “Does he come with the place?” 

“I’m going upstairs,” FP grunts rudely, disentangling himself from her arm. 

“Out of luck, Penny,” he hears Gladys tease as he’s climbing the stairs. He pauses near the top, wondering if the topic of his sexuality is about to come up. But Gladys, to her credit, says nothing about it. “Now go get my movies, will you?” 

Penny glances up at the stairwell, giving FP an evil glare before heading towards the door. It slams behind her, and FP shakes his head, stepping into his and Fred’s bedroom and closing the door securely. 

He drops his football gear onto the floor before remembering that Fred hates tripping over his stuff. FP quickly opens the closet and shuts it inside. That done, he showers and shaves on auto-pilot, dressing in the sweats and T-shirt he wears to sleep and trying to focus on the book he had to read for class. When focusing becomes impossible he puts it away, staring up at the ceiling and rehearsing the apology he plans to deliver. 

From his bedroom, he gradually hears the radio turn off and the front door shut for the last time. He can’t tell if Gladys has gone out or if she’s just retreated to her room. FP stares out their one window, which shudders in the pane whenever a particularly strong gust of wind blows up against it. He’s so used to the sound by now that it can lull him to sleep. 

Around ten-thirty he hears the rattle of Fred’s car pulling up, and a moment later, the slam of the front door. He lets his shoulders slump in relief, the want of seeing his boyfriend suddenly blotting out all other feelings. His rehearsed apology has completely gone out of his head, but he doesn’t care. He just wants Fred to climb into bed with him and talk to him, wants to say he’s sorry and he couldn’t stand hurting him and he’d never ever do it again. That he loved him forever and the thought of this coming between them was too much to bear. 

He’d spend his whole life making it up to Fred if he had to. He’d iron his shirts, he’d vacuum his car, he’d give him foot massages, he’d carry him to bed every night, he’d - 

FP realizes that he’s been lying in silence for a long time. He waits, listening carefully, in case Fred had just decided to have something to eat in the small kitchen. But the wooden stairs - notoriously creaky - betray no approaching footstep. Fred wasn’t coming up. 

At quarter past eleven he creeps to the top of the stairs, where he can see down into the living room. The TV is on, and Fred and Gladys are both sitting in front of a movie, the blue light flickering on their features. Fred looks normal, happy even, if tired. Gladys has a smile on her face, Fred’s afghan pulled up over her legs. 

FP chews his lip, wondering if he should go down and join them. Maybe he could smooth things over. Or maybe they’d scatter, and he’d end up feeling worse than ever that he’d ruined Fred’s night as well. 

He’ll come up when the movie’s over, FP tells himself, resolved to wait. He retreats to his bed and stares at the ceiling, wringing his hands and running over his apology again. He’s just convinced himself that Fred couldn’t possibly stay angry at him after what he had to say when he drifts off. 

When he wakes up again it’s one in the morning. FP reaches out into Fred’s half of the bed, but feels nothing but cool, undisturbed sheets. His heart sinks as he lifts his head. Fred had never come up. 

FP opens the bedroom door and moves soundlessly to the top of the stairs. The living room is silent, but someone had left the TV on, flickering a test pattern. In the dim light, Fred’s sleeping form is perfectly visible on the sofa, bundled in a blanket. Gladys had clearly gone to her room. 

His heart sinking, FP slides slowly down to sit on the top step. His instinct is to go downstairs immediately, if not to pick Fred up and carry him to bed then to shake him awake and tell him how ridiculous this was, that he’d spend the night on the couch and Fred was free to have the bed. But his boyfriend was nothing if not stubborn, and FP knew perfectly well it would just end in another fight. 

Couldn’t he at least go cover him with a warmer blanket? FP puts his chin in his hands, probably looking for all the world like a huge toddler pouting at the top of the stairs. If he woke Fred up, Fred would have plenty to say to him. He’d just had to go into work on his day off. It was an asshole move for FP to have to even risk waking him. 

There was nothing he could do. FP slinks back to his bedroom, his face feeling tight and his throat sore. They were awful at fighting. Tomorrow he’d have to insist Fred got the bedroom. He’d sleep in the bathroom for all he deserved. 

He doesn’t remember falling asleep again, but he must have done because the clock by his bedside reads 4:00 when he’s roused by someone tapping quietly on his bedroom door. The door swings open, and Fred’s standing there, still holding the blanket around him like a cape. 

“I hate when we fight,” Fred whispers, dragging the blanket across the floor. “Can I come in?” 

Trying not to spook him by seeming too eager, FP slowly pulls the covers and sheets open. Fred climbs into bed with him, blanket and all, his shining brown eyes unreadable in the dark. 

“I’m sorry,” FP begins. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.” 

“You really, really, hurt me FP.” Fred says shortly as FP reaches out tentatively to touch him, and the sight of the sudden tears sparkling in his eyes makes FP hate himself even more. Fred’s voice wobbles. “You really hurt me, okay? Just let me sleep.” 

He turns his back to FP in the bed, scooting away from him. Their bed is made up of two twin beds pushed together, creating lots of elbow room when they’re friendly, and almost an unbearable gulf when they fight. 

“Freddie,” FP offers uselessly, and Fred’s spine stiffens. FP swallows hard, keeping his hands clasped together in an effort to keep them to himself. “I’m sorry, Fred. I know that wasn’t fair. You’ve been through a lot, and I - I was really thoughtless, and -” He racks his brains for the eloquent apology he’d thought up and finds nothing. “I know you’ve been through a lot and I didn’t take that into account.” 

Fred doesn’t soften, but he turns back around to face FP in the bed, dropping his voice to a whisper. 

“What’s mine is yours, FP,” Fred whispers to him, tracing FP’s hand with a forefinger. “Everything I have. My safety net is your safety net. Okay?” 

FP swallows hard. “Okay.” Fred’s other hand is laying the gap between them, and he picks it up and threads their fingers together, encouraged when Fred doesn’t pull away. “And I’m really, really sorry. I promise I’ll never treat you like that again. I’ll listen to you from now on. I’ll be more optimistic. I’ll understand what you’re going through. And one day, I promise, you’ll never have to worry about money. I’ll take care of everything, and you’ll have the life you deserve.” 

A small smile flickers over Fred’s face. “You’re so fucking cute when you’re groveling, you know that? Fine.” 

In the dim light from the window, Fred’s soft lips find his. FP kisses him back. He still feels like a heel, but the knot in his chest seems to loosen somewhat. If Fred was kissing him this gently, it couldn’t be that bad. Then again, they’d never been bad at kissing one another, no matter how much they were fighting. 

“I love you so much,” FP whispers, peppering Fred’s forehead with a constellation of kisses. Even a year ago, he’d never have been able to say those three words so readily, no matter how true they were. But FP had come a long way since he’d been set free at university, emotionally as well as mentally. He was sober now. He was out - mostly. He was gentle and better in tune with himself. He had just given an effortless, genuine apology - that in itself was pretty impressive when he considered who he’d been in high school. 

“I love you, you big jerk.” There’s no malice in Fred’s tone, he’s being playful. Still, it’s a reminder that FP’s not completely off the hook. Fred turns over again, scooting away a little as if to push the point home. “Goodnight,” he drawls pointedly. “My back feels like crap. We’ve got to get a new couch.” 

“I’ll take it next time,” FP speaks up loyally, but he gets only a snore in reply. Fred’s already asleep. 

When FP’s alarm goes off the next morning, he slaps the snooze button immediately. It’s not an easy feat. Despite the distance they’d attempted to leave between them the night before, Fred’s burrowed into his arms, clinging onto FP’s chest like a spider monkey. 

Moving gently and carefully, FP unwinds Fred’s hands from around him and quickly shoves a pillow into his place. Fred cuddles up to it without waking, and FP regretfully pulls himself out of bed and heads down towards the kitchen. He’d put on a pot of coffee, and then he’d make Fred his favourite breakfast. They would start over from there. 

To his surprise, Gladys is at the table when he shuffles in. She has a mug of coffee in front of her, and a paperback book propped up in front of her face. An ornate bookmark with a red tassel dangles from the spine. 

“Morning,” FP says awkwardly, stepping around her to get at the fridge. Gladys just flips a page in her book, clearly absorbed in what she’s reading. 

“Morning,” she offers, her eyes still glued to the page. FP watches her pupils dart back and forth as she follows the words. 

Yawning, he removes a carton of eggs from the fridge, grimacing at its lightness. Right. Until today, he hadn’t had the money to go grocery shopping. “I didn’t peg you for an early bird,” he comments, closing the door of the fridge. He’d expected Gladys to be the type to sleep until noon. “Did your friend stay over?” 

Flip. “We’re not that kind of friends.” 

FP’s mouth falls awkwardly open. He hadn’t meant to imply anything of the sort - had really only begrudgingly been making idle conversation. When he thinks it over, though, wasn’t that really what he’d been asking? The thought makes him pause. He’d never really had the chance to talk to someone else who was interested in the same sex before. 

“Um…” FP sucks in a breath through his teeth. Truth be told, Gladys intimidated him. “I didn’t mean-” 

Gladys shrugs and turns another page. FP busily opens the carton of eggs, and then the fridge, as though hoping more food might materialize there. No luck. To make his boyfriend’s romantic breakfast he had exactly two eggs, no bacon, no juice, no cheese, and no bread. So much for an omelette with bacon and toast. He might have to get creative. 

FP bites his lip. There was a convenience store about a block away, and he could at least snag some milk and bread. But if he was out when Fred came downstairs, he’d look like an asshole. Ditto if he went out and only bought the bare minimum when they needed a larger shopping trip. But he couldn’t very well go spend the morning shopping. 

“I never asked, what’s your major?" Gladys questions him, lifting her eyes momentarily from her book. 

“I’m a football player,” FP replies. 

It’s actually dodging the question - he was supposed to declare a major within the next few months, earlier if you were someone who actually had a plan for their life, which he didn’t. But most people let the subject go when they happened on that information, assuming correctly that his sports scholarship was the most interesting thing about him. 

Apparently Gladys isn’t one of them. “Can’t major in football,” she says casually, closing her paperback to look at him. FP swallows a sharp retort and opens a kitchen cabinet, scrutinizing the empty shelves as though they’re the most fascinating things he’s ever seen. 

Truth be told, he had no idea what he wanted to major in, and the thought of making such a significant life decision this year was terrifying. But he didn’t want to come across like some lazy joke either. FP was trying very hard to make something of himself at college. 

Most of his football teammates coasted by with two or three bird courses a semester, scoring incompletes or pass/fail marks in the others by virtue of a very lenient academic office that valued donations to the athletics department as much as they did grades. FP wasn’t like them. Determined to be more than a dumb jock in his lifetime, he’d chosen his courses carefully and worked very hard in them. If his high school self had seen the hours he logged at the library, he wouldn’t have recognized himself. 

The problem was that none of the classes he’d been taking felt right enough to dedicate the rest of his diploma to. None of them seemed to lead him on a promising career path, either. He didn’t trust himself: what if he chose the wrong thing? What if he tried to major in something that was just too hard? What if he became a laughingstock? 

FP’s only real interest was chemistry, but he struggled so much with that textbook sometimes that he knew majoring in any kind of science would take away from his playing. He also had no interest in working in a lab for the rest of his life - he couldn’t picture spoiling Fred at a job that forced him to wear a lab coat. 

“I’m undecided,” he says, uncomfortable with how unambitious it makes him sound. Gladys raises an eyebrow, but lets it go. 

“Well, I’m meeting some friends from my study group for breakfast,” she says conversationally. “I’ll probably see you tonight.” 

“Didn’t need your life story.” FP pulls a bowl down from the cabinet, figuring that Fred rarely eats more than two scrambled eggs anyway. He knew he was being unbearably rude, but he didn’t care. Besides, he had the feeling Gladys was judging him no matter what he said or did. 

Behind him, Gladys gets up and stretches, crossing to the sink to rinse and wash her coffee mug. She deposits it upside-down in the drain tray and heads back to her room, the book tucked securely under her arm. “I put a pot of coffee on,” she tells FP as she sails past. “It’s still hot.” 

FP lifts the pot out of the coffeemaker and gives it an experimental sniff. No matter how uncomfortable she made him feel, Gladys clearly made good coffee. Maybe she was better to have around than the smoking guy after all. 

He opens the cupboard above the coffeemaker and shuffles through a few boxes, a smile cracking his face at last when he comes upon an old, crusty box of pancake mix. 

His gaze lands on the windowsill, where Fred had brought a single, overripe banana home in his lunch pail. FP peels it and dumps it into a large bowl, adding a scoop of the pancake mix and following the directions on the back of the box. 

Fred loved banana pancakes. Granted, they usually had them at the cafe on the quad, and FP had never really tried to make them himself, but how hard could it be? 

It takes awhile to coax the mushed banana into the batter with a fork. Once he’s struggled through making something that approximates batter, FP crosses the room to the screen door that connects their kitchen to a small, weedy backyard. In lieu of a vase of flowers, he pulls two yellow dandelions off of a dangerously tall weed and arranges them in a nice looking shot glass, which he places on a tray. 

He pours the batter into a pan, trying and failing to make perfectly round circles. In another bowl he scrambles the eggs, dousing them once in the pan with a liberal dusting of cayenne pepper - Fred’s favourite. FP doesn’t use maple syrup anymore: a childhood spent in his hometown had cured him of that, but Fred was fond of using cheap corn syrup. FP searches fruitlessly for a pitcher before filling a shot glass with it instead - the one Fred had bought him in high school that said TEXAS on the side. Neither of them had ever been to Texas - Fred had found in a charity shop and liked the fact that it was shaped like a boot. 

FP checks the clock as he shuffles the slightly charred pancakes onto a plate. It was 6:25. Fred’s alarm went off at 6:30. Forcing a smile on his worried face, he arranges the breakfast and flowers on the tray and carries it up the stairs. 

“Morning sleepyhead,” he whispers, bending down to kiss Fred on the cheek. Fred stirs and opens his eyes slowly, and FP notices with regret that the skin under his eyes is lined with tired, purplish bags. Fred groans sleepily and pushes FP away, his face puffy and disheveled from just waking up. 

“You need a shave.” 

FP holds out a mug to him. “Taste this.” He’d tasted some of Gladys’ coffee out of the pot, and he had to admit it was amazing. Fred sips and then raises his eyebrows. 

“You made this coffee?” 

“Gladys did.” 

“Mmm.” Fred looks down at the tray of food and laughs as FP places it carefully over his legs, pulling the blanket up beneath it. “Okay, stop it, stop it. I forgive you.” He pinches FP’s cheek lightly. “I told you you’re too cute when you’re groveling.” 

FP smiles, but the knot in his chest refuses to relax. “They’re banana pancakes,” he explains hurriedly, pointing out the misshapen lumps on the thrift-store china. “We didn’t have any bacon, but I’ll go to the store today and do a shop. And-” 

“They’re perfect,” Fred interrupts. He spears a bit of scrambled egg and sips again from the coffee, shaking his head amusedly. His voice is tired and hoarse with sleep. “You’re adorable.” 

FP watches as Fred devours his pancakes and scrambled eggs, drizzling the corn syrup over them. Sensing FP’s eyes on him, Fred swallows and gestures to the plate. “I love the big lumps of bananas. You got them just right.” 

Big lumps of banana hadn’t been FP’s intention whatsoever, but he’ll take it. Fred chews the last mouthful of breakfast and slips out of bed, setting the tray carefully aside. “I gotta get a move on. Thanks for spoiling me.” 

FP wets his lips nervously. “Fred - wait.” 

Fred pauses in the doorway, a hand on the frame, and FP pats the bed next to him, biting his lip. “I want to say sorry again. I didn’t give you enough credit for everything you’ve been through. I’m sorry for what I said.” 

Fred crosses the room and sets his hands lightly on each of FP’s shoulders. 

“I forgive you. And I’m sorry too. Just because I’ve had struggles, doesn’t diminish yours.” 

FP pushes himself to smile, and Fred returns it, kissing him lightly on the cheek and padding down the hall towards the bathroom, his work clothes wadded under his arm. But despite the easy reconciliation, FP still feels sad. 

Fred had forgiven him, they’d said all the right words. But his heart still feels heavy, like a piece is missing, or they’d left something unfinished. He sits on their bed as he listens to the shower running, the comforting noises of Fred getting ready. 

“Have a good class,” says Fred, returning to the room with damp hair to grab his hat and car keys. He doesn’t kiss FP again, just shoulders his work bag tiredly and heads toward the stairs. “Love you.” 

“Love you,” FP echoes, watching him go until he’s out of sight. He plucks a dandelion from the makeshift vase and rubs it between his forefinger and thumb, his eyes trained on the little flower. He had an 8:30 class to get ready for, but he doesn’t bother to budge from the bed. 

You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me , he thinks seriously. I do love you. I swear to God, I’m going to prove it. 

Chapter Text

Okay, the room she’d found isn’t perfect - it’s small and cramped, and borders the kitchen, so she’s bound to be woken up one day to the clanging of pots and pans or the smell of burned breakfast - but it’s hers. As Gladys climbs the steps of the slightly dilapidated front porch, swinging her brand new house key in one hand and the bag containing her literature homework in the other, she can’t think of anything better. 

Much as she was grateful for Penny taking her in these past few weeks, it was a relief not to have to come home to the girl. Penny’s friends were loud, obnoxious, and always around - showing up just as Gladys had settled down to read or practice with intentions of throwing a party, snorting coke, and playing the worst music Gladys had ever heard. Most of them were scary-looking, chauvinistic dudes who Penny always seemed to be fighting with - physical fights that left the kitchen in pieces, or high-pitched screaming matches over the telephone at four in the morning. Very few of them were students, most were townies from the surrounding area who Penny picked up at the local bars. 

Gladys could hold her own against scary guys, even ones high out of their minds and pissed off at her roommate. But her grades had started to suffer as a result of her living situation, and Gladys prided herself very highly on her GPA. It was high time for a change. And since she and her previous girlfriend had called it quits, this duplex was about the best she could hope for. 

She turns right in the short hallway inside the front door, and steps into her new, bare bedroom. Dropping her books in a stack on the futon where she sleeps, Gladys unzips her guitar case and affectionately settles the instrument in her lap. 

Both of her new housemates were out, so it was the perfect time to make good on her promise that her playing wouldn’t disturb them. Stroking the polished instrument with an affectionate hand, she opens a book on her small wire music stand but ignores the sheet music after a while, putting away the guitar pick and experimenting. She’s lost in the melody when she hears the front door open and close, and the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. 

The footfalls are too light for a football player - she’d only known FP a day, but she knew he crashed and lumbered everywhere - so it must be the smaller one, Fred. They’d clicked almost instantly upon meeting, but Gladys hadn’t talked to him since. She hears his footfalls pause lightly outside her door, and wonders if he’s going to ask her to stop playing. But then he starts walking again, runs some water in the kitchen for a while, and goes up the stairs to his room. A welcome change from Penny, who made everything Gladys was doing her business. Gladys smiles to herself, the last lingering uncertainties about her living situation disappearing. 

Immersing herself again in the guitar, she’s startled by a light knock at her door some ten minutes later. “Come in,” she calls, and the door swings partially open to reveal Fred leaning against the doorframe. 

“You sound awesome.” Her new roommate beams encouragingly at her. He’s clearly just out of the shower, his short hair tousled damply above his shoulders, his feet bare on the uneven wood flooring. One leg of his sweatpants is shoved up to his knee, giving him a lopsided, goofy appearance. Generosity and excitability shines out of his face: she can tell already he’s the kind of person who would be picked to lead campus tours, luring students in with his buoyant, unscuffed optimism. “I’m sorry to bug you, I just wanted to say something. You’re really good at the guitar.” 

Gladys gives him a tolerant smile. “You don’t even know what I’m doing.” 

“You’re fingerpicking the riffs from Don’t Fear the Reaper, aren’t you? ” Fred replies, sliding off the doorframe and taking a few steps into the room. His eyes sweep over the guitar as he moves, and though he looks her in the eyes while he’s talking, they keep jumping back to the body of the instrument. “I’m impressed. You’ve got killer technique. And I don’t know if you’re trying to do this, but it’s so smooth, you make it sound like a love song.” 

She had been doing that, on purpose. “Do you play?” Gladys gives him a more thorough once-over. He’s handsome, no doubt about that, the bland all-American type with strong, clean features. A little skinny for her taste, though the muscles in his arms are clearly defined. Up close she can count a few freckles, and his tired brown eyes shimmer with joy and mischief. 

“I did.” Fred’s wholesome face breaks into an adorable, self-deprecating laugh, and his fingers fidget together. “I was in a band in high school.” 

“Oh yeah?” Gladys scoots over a little so that he can sit down, her hand resting gently on the glossy front of her guitar. “Me too.” 

“Birds of a feather,” says Fred, eagerly taking the spot she frees up for him. “Keep playing.” He crosses his legs on the duvet, and Gladys obediently picks up the song. Fred leans back against the headboard as she plays, shutting his eyes for so long that Gladys wonders if he’s fallen asleep. She hums lightly to accompany her playing, finishing the song with a flourish. Fred opens his eyes and applauds, acting like there’s truly nowhere in the world he’d rather be than slouched on her rickety bed listening to her practice. 

Gladys tries to hand him the guitar, curious. “You play something.” 

“Oh, I haven’t played in ages.” Fred’s words say one thing, but his face is lit up like a child on Christmas morning, his hands already reaching out for the guitar. When Gladys passes it over, he settles it in his lap so naturally that it seems to become a part of him. In his State U hoodie with cut-off sleeves, a huge smile rising on his face, he could be a poster boy for her guitar program. 

Fred caresses the strings for a moment before striking a loud chord. His eyes light up at the sound, his fingers settling lightly into place. Then he opens his mouth to sing, transforming before her eyes from an apologetically wholesome college boy to a brash and confident musician. 

“Born down in a dead man’s town, the first kick I took was when I hit the ground, 

End up like a dog that’s been beat too much,

Till you spend half your life just to cover it up, yeah,” 

He sings like he’s drawing the air out of the rest of the room, loud and strong and full of energy. The uncertainty leaves his face, replaced by joy. He belts, but wonderfully. Gladys marvels at how it seems to unfurl something true in him: how he transforms from someone she would pass by without a second glance to someone her eyes are drawn to. 

“You were the lead singer, weren’t you?” she asks. 

“Do I look like it?” Fred keeps strumming, bobbing his head subtly to the song. The music makes him beautiful, his lined face suddenly years younger, his eyes shining with childlike bliss. He laughs, giddy, and slaps the face of the guitar as he stops. 

“Oh, please. The way you were singing just now? You love the spotlight. Don’t lie to me.” 

Fred smiles sheepishly, fingers picking at the strings again. “I was. And I bet you were the bass player.” 

He’d got it in one, but Gladys purses her lips at him as though he’d been wrong. “What makes you say that?” 

“Easily. You have that coolness factor. Drummer was my next guess.” 

“Drummer!” Gladys declares, pretending to be offended. “Do I look like a drummer?” 

“Don’t knock it! FP was our drummer.” 

Gladys jerks her head towards the door. “Mr. Gridiron was in your band?” 

“Yeah, he used to be cool. Now he’s a square.” Fred delivers the insult mildly, laughing at his own joke. “Nah, I’m kidding, he played football then too. And he was good.” Her new housemate’s eyes shine with stubborn pride. “He was recruited by three other schools, you know.” 

Gladys puts up a hand before she has to hear more. “Spare me. He told me over breakfast he’s here on scholarship. What are you studying?” 

“Oh, I’m not a student. I’m working construction around here while FP goes to school. My dad died my last year of high school, and I have to support my family.” 

He tells her this as easily as if he’d been discussing the weather, and Gladys begins to like him. Really like him. Fred plucks out a last few chords and then hands the guitar back to her, hesitating just a moment too long with it in his arms. 

“I had to sell mine,” he explains, a reticent look on his face as she lifts it out of his hands. “I haven’t held one of those in awhile. You could probably tell by my playing.” 

“You just need practice,” Gladys replies, and then with uncharacteristic generosity: “You can come by and play on mine sometimes, if you want. Since we’re living in the same house.” 

“You mean it?” A slow, steady smile climbs over Fred’s face. “I work most of the time, anyway, but maybe once or twice… that would be nice.” 

Gladys smiles back at him, privately dumbfounded by how quickly she’d taken to him. Fred looked as clean-cut and wholesome as she was radical and dark, never mind that he was dating a prize idiot. All things combined, he was worlds away from her usual company. Still, she has the unmistakable feeling that they’d just become friends. Fred certainly seems to think so, making no move to inch away from her on the bed. He starts looking around the room as though he’d been asked to stay. 

“I like your room. Very minimal.” 

“You mean small.” Gladys had managed to crush her futon, her bookshelf, and an end table into the room, but most of her belongings were still heaped in boxes that cluttered the remaining space. “I’ve been meaning to go buy a dresser and a mirror, but I don’t know where I’m going to fit them.” 

Fred purses his lips, scrutinizing a small alcove where the wall juts into the room to compensate for the kitchen stove. He hops up from the futon and lays a hand against the peeling white paint. 

“You could easily convert that little alcove into a closet. Were you going to put a desk there?” 

“No. I always work on my bed.” 

“It’d be easy, then. All you’d need is some dowels from a hardware store. I’ve got a hand saw in my bag so we could cut them to length.” Fred stands in the small gap and points towards the ceiling. “You could put one up here, and one about here for more storage space. I think I’ve got some brackets we can use. And if there are studs in the wall, we can put up some shelves. In fact, there should be, because I put up a shelf in the kitchen last year.” 

Gladys raises an eyebrow, silently evaluating his rapid-fire assertions. “Aren’t you tired from work?” she asks. His skin is scrubbed clean from the shower, but she’d noticed the crescent-moons of dirt ground into his nails, the evidence of hard labour. 

“Exhausted.” Fred rubs his hands together. “That’s why we should go now, before it catches up to me. Wanna go to the hardware store? I need some stuff anyway. Then we can stop for food somewhere. If I know FP there’s no way he remembered to grocery shop this week.” 

Gladys thinks it over. She’d intended to get a good practice in and a head start on her homework, but she hadn’t eaten since an early lunch, and was easily tempted by food. “Burritos?” 

“Whatever you want! But I know a burrito place downtown and mmm.” Fred kisses his fingertips exaggeratedly, bursting with enthusiasm. “It cannot be beat.” His ceaseless energy ebbs somewhat, his face suddenly dropping. “Unless you’re busy.” 

“Not a chance,” says Gladys, thinking hardware and burritos might be the most appealing thing she’s heard all day as she sets her guitar aside. “I’d love to.” 

“Can you lift a little higher?” Fred asks, grunting as he struggles backward up the steps and smashes his back into the closed front door of their duplex. “Just get it up the steps and we can set it down.” 

“Why am I on the bottom?” Gladys grunts, struggling to bear the weight of the enormous daisy-patterned chair they’re carrying up to the porch. After dinner and their trip to the hardware store they’d stopped at a thrift shop to look for furniture for Gladys’ room, and had somehow both fallen in love with the oversized vintage chair and matching footstool. Gladys had been delighted to learn Fred shared her interest in thrift store junk: they had a new lamp for her room and a series of gaudy art prints sitting in the truck as well. 

Breathing heavily, Fred fumbles with his front door key to unlock the door. “FP!” he yells into the hall, hoisting the seat up again. He moves with the practiced ease of someone accustomed to carrying large loads, but his face is still red from the effort. “Can you come help us out?” 

FP appears at the mouth of the hallway as they’re backing through the front door, holding a dishtowel limply in his hands. His mouth drops open at the sight of what they’re carrying, and his face immediately hardens into a suspicious look. 

“What is this?” 

“We need a new chair, FP.” Fred declares cheerfully. “Can you get the middle? My arms are breaking.” 

“No way. This is hideous. Fred, turn around and take this out.” 

Gladys narrows her eyes at FP over the long expanse of daisy-print upholstery, who tosses the towel over his shoulder in an uncharacteristically domestic move, and folds his arms. Fred is undeterred, still chirping pleasantly away. 

“This chair is awesome, FP. Back up or help out, you’re in the way.” 

“You need your head examined if you think this is coming in my home,” FP grumbles, but some of the pressure releases as he lifts Fred’s half of the seat. 

“Let’s take it to a house vote,” Fred speaks up. “Everyone who wants this chair to stay?” 

He raises one hand in the air. Despite feeling like her arm is going to fall off, Gladys does the same. FP looks from one to the other with an expression of murderous betrayal, clenching his jaw when he sees the joke in Fred’s expression. 

“It’s hideous,” he mutters, but begins to walk backwards into the living room with it. Gladys follows him awkwardly. 

“Put it in the middle of the room,” Fred directs. 

“I’m not putting it in the middle!” 

“We should push the sofa over and put it against the wall,” Gladys directs. FP’s eyes narrow, and she can tell he hadn’t taken kindly to the suggestion that they rearrange the furniture from the way he wanted it. 

“The wall? No. We should put it where the recliner is now.” Fred, free from the burden of having to hold up half the chair, is slowly and luxuriously surveying the space, a thoughtful hand on his chin. The chair is getting heavier and heavier in Gladys’ arms. “Once we have it out of the way-” 

“It’s not going to fit,” FP speaks up. What Gladys and Fred had thought was a chair-and-a-half was easily as big as a standard loveseat, even without the matching circular ottoman. “Where’s my recliner going to go if we put this down?” 

“That thing was broken anyway,” Fred replies tactfully. “Gladys and I can put it out by the curb.” 

“Are you kidding me?” FP steps defensively in front of the sagging recliner, to his rear. “We are not getting rid of my favourite chair so you can bring some hideous monstrosity in here. I bet it smells like cat piss. Some old lady probably died on this thing.” 

“Maybe she left a lot of money hidden in it,” Fred replies. “And your recliner doesn’t recline. It’s a hunk of junk. We got it by the side of the road in the first place, remember? It’s served it’s time with us, now it’s our responsibility to put it back into the universe for someone else who needs it.” 

“Cut the hippie crap! I’m not getting rid of it!” 

“I hate to interrupt, but we have to put it somewhere,” Gladys speaks up loudly. “And I’d like to put it down now.” 

FP grunts and lowers it to the ground with her, leaving it directly in the middle of the room. “It would fit if we moved the recliner out,” Fred points out. 

“It’s not going anywhere,” FP growls, shooting a distrustful look at Gladys, as though she had orchestrated this betrayal herself. Fred sighs. 

“Fine, we’ll shove it in a corner.” He dusts off his hands as though the matter is done and settled, and turns to speak to Gladys. “All right, let’s drop that box of dowels and things in your room, and then we can get the ottoman out of the truck. FP, do you want to join us for a drink? Gladys is going to show me this jazz bar.” 

“I thought I’d make dinner for us,” FP answers, an uncertain and vulnerable look crossing his features as he gestures into the kitchen, where Gladys can see a bunch of overflowing brown paper bags on the counter and floor. 

Fred frowns, looking genuinely apologetic. “Sorry, we already got food. How ‘bout tomorrow night?” 

“No, it’s fine.” FP’s voice is even, but a sullen downturn is overtaking the sides of his mouth. “Go without me. I have homework to do.” 

Gladys can tell he’s hoping Fred will say no, forget it, but the possibility seems to sail far over Fred’s head. “Okay. Don’t worry, we won’t get too wild,” Fred declares, lacing his arm with Gladys’ as he steers her cheerfully towards the front door. “I want to see this band Gladys is telling me about. We’ll probably just have one drink.” 

The last thing Gladys sees before the front door slams shut behind them is FP’s face slowly turning pink with displeasure, the gaudy daisy-patterned chair taking up the whole room behind him. 

Three drinks later, Gladys is watching in amazement as Fred nails a perfect bulls-eye with his sixth dart in a row. He turns to her with a radiant smile, dropping into an exaggerated bow that slops neon green whiskey sour onto the toes of his converse high-tops. 

“You’ve got a good eye,” Gladys comments, her eye roving over to the stage, where the band is beginning to set up. 

Fred flexes his negligible muscles. “High School All-state baseball team captain, at your service.” 

Gladys throws a dart, which cuts through the air and embeds itself in the dartboard just below Fred’s. “I grew up in bars,” she explains, grinning at Fred’s expression of shock. She swivels off the red-upholstered stool and downs her gin and tonic, setting the empty glass down on the bar. “Do you want another drink before the music starts?” 

“Nah, I’m good. I have to work tomorrow.” Fred watches her curiously as she settles the tab, picking up another drink. “What’s the big rush? We can see the stage from here.” 

“I want to grab one of the booths,” Gladys replies cooly, though her heart is thumping with uncharacteristic nerves. “You can see much better from over there.” 

Fred shrugs and follows her obediently to a table. The Crooked Pigeon was smaller and more laid-back than most of the other bars near campus, tucked invisibly into the downtown core and opening onto the mouth of a heavily graffitied alley. It tended to attract artsy and offbeat types, a welcome respite from the freshman-crowded sports bars downtown. 

“I’m glad you asked me out.” Fred plays with a coaster on the table as he watches a few students dressed in black fiddling with the equipment onstage. “I can’t remember the last time I went out on a weeknight. I usually feel like I have to go home and crash.” 

“You must be wiped, though.” Gladys remembers FP saying something about Fred working long hours. Construction sounded heavy, especially if he was supporting his family on it. She’d left before him that morning, but it was possible that he’d been out all day. 

“I will be once I stop. If I keep going it’s okay.” Fred raises a hand to cover a yawn and suddenly chokes on air, his eyes going wide and his eyebrows shooting up. “Don’t look now, but the girl who just came onstage is a total babe.” 

Gladys whips her head around so quickly that her neck aches. She feels a blush shoot down her face from her forehead to her chest, and turns hurriedly away from the redhead in the tight black dress. She gives Fred her best evil eye, but he doesn’t seem to notice. 

“I said don’t look!" Fred cranes his neck to look over Gladys’ shoulder, and she feels like strangling him. “Wow. She’s a knockout.” 

“Stop staring,” Gladys hisses at him from between gritted teeth.

“Do you think she’s single?” 

“Aren’t you gay?” 

“I'm bisexual,” Fred corrects her with a shy smile. “But not greedy. Just really weak for redheads.” 

“You have a boyfriend!” 

“I can look!” 

“She’s taken,” Gladys snaps. 

“By who?” Wait.” A slow grin spreads over Fred’s face. “Is this why we’re here?” 

Gladys blushes furiously and glances quickly behind her again. Mary, oblivious to their squabbling, is bending down to adjust an amplifier. “She’s in my feminist lit class,” Gladys confesses, seeing no way around it. “I have a huge crush on her.” 

“I knew it!” Fred crows, way too loudly for their close proximity to the stage. “I could tell by how you were blushing! That’s why you dragged me here, isn’t it?” 

Gladys throws a peanut at him from the bowl on the table. “Shut up! I didn’t drag you anywhere. If you didn’t want to come, you didn’t have to.” 

Fred’s is undeterred, smiling broadly across the table. “What’s her name?” 

“Mary,” Gladys replies hesitantly, turning her drink so that the ice cubes clink together. 

“Mary and Gladys. You two sound like a couple of stodgy old broads in my grandma’s retirement home.” 

“Oh, eat shit.” She’s slow on formulating a scathing rebuke about what a stupid name FP is, and that Fred is no better, something about the two of them sounding like a comedy act - but the Mary in question suddenly glances up from her crouched position, giving their table an unnecessary eyeful of her cleavage, and Gladys’ heart picks up. 

“She’s coming over here!” Fred yelps unnecessarily, widening his eyes at Gladys. “Don’t look.” 

Gladys kicks him under the table. “Don’t try to flirt with her.” 

“I won’t!” Fred is wounded. “I would never! I would never do such a thing-” 

“Hey!” Mary has a deep voice, but it’s as soft and musical as wind chimes. Her auburn hair is the exact colour of a sunset, framing her face with tousled curls. She smiles, displaying large front teeth and drawing attention to the few girlish freckles on her nose. Fred smiles back, a little too broadly for Gladys’ liking. “I thought that was you,” she says to Gladys, her hand briefly touching the back of the booth along Gladys’ shoulder. She turns to take in Fred as well. “Who’s this?” 

“Oh, this is my new roommate.” Gladys says, giving Fred a furtive evil eye. Fred smiles innocently and chews on a peanut, his eyes making a brief sweep of Mary’s performance attire. 

In class Mary dressed in off-beat, thrifty clothes that erred on the conservative side: patterned blazers and long, gauzy skirts, floral hats and old-woman brooches that made her look trendy and older than her age. Today, in a tight black dress with a small string of pearls around her throat, she looks older in a different way: glamorous and sexy in a low-effort manner. She radiated the possibility that she took no time on her appearance at all: that she could wear a potato sack and look stunning. 

“Fred Andrews,” Fred introduces himself, taking one of her hands and kissing it lightly. “It’s a pleasure.” 

To Gladys’ chagrin, Mary flushes, pleased. She nails Fred with a warning glare before Mary turns to her with a smile. 

“Well, I’m glad you got out of that other place you were living in.” In small talk between classes, Gladys had disclosed to her what it was like to live with Penny. “By the way, do you think you could bring those notes you borrowed to class next week? I need to start studying for our midterm.” 

“Of course,” answers Gladys cooly, pushing away the desire to blurt out an embarrassed apology. Gladys was usually notoriously smooth when it came to talking with women - but there was something so straightforward and innocent about Mary, something that managed to catch her off guard every time. The longer her crush went on, the worse it got. And then there was the slightly damning fact that she wasn’t even sure if Mary was gay. She offers a flirtatious, disarming smile, raising her eyebrows slightly. “Next class. Definitely.” 

Mary smiles and raps the back of the booth lightly with her knuckles as one of her bandmates calls to her from across the room. Gladys tries to guess at the exact shade of her lipstick - apricot? peach? 

“You borrowed her notes?” Fred asks as Mary waves at them and walks away, in what Gladys still considers far too loud of a voice. He laughs. “I don’t even go to college and I know that’s the oldest trick in the book.” 

“Watch it,” Gladys warns him. “I don’t want to hear anything else out of you. Let’s just listen to her set.” 

Feedback squeals from the microphone as Mary gives it an experimental tap, her guitarist strumming a few short chords. Fred leans forwards across the table, ignoring her. “Do you think we were destined to meet? I mean, we have the same taste in 1970’s easy chairs. The same taste in women, apparently. I gave up the guitar just in time for you to move in with yours. I think we’re soulmates.” 

“Oh?” Gladys glances up as Mary steps forward into the red spotlight. She sips her drink. “I thought your soulmate was at home pouting because he has to learn to live with a flowered footstool in his living room.” 

Fred laughs and shrugs. “Don’t change the subject. When are you going to ask her out?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Don’t know! You mean you haven’t already?” Fred shakes his head sadly. “I can tell you need my help.” 

“I do not need help from you,” Gladys scoffs. “Not with your taste in men.” 

“Do you even know if she’s gay?” 

“Well…” Gladys traces a finger through the condensation on her glass. “Fuck you.” 

Mary stands illuminated in the red spotlight, the dusty lights making a halo around her hair. With the rest of the lights low, the sticky grime of the local bar disappears into the darkness, making the place seem shadowy and atmospheric, rather than crowded. Fred turns to see better, and Gladys finds herself lost in Mary’s face, the way she looks expectantly out into the pre-show hush as though centering herself, her head held high. 

“Never know how much I love you, 

Never know how much I care,

When you put your arms around me I get a fever that’s hard to bear,” 

Fred’s eyebrows shoot up as Mary starts singing, and Gladys knows why. She has a rich, trained voice, one that stands in contrast with her petite appearance. He rests his chin on his hand and just listens, a comfortable tenderness on his face that no longer makes Gladys jealous. It feels rare and suddenly pleasant to have someone to appreciate music with her, and she feels a spike of almost sisterly protectiveness when he closes his eyes sleepily against his hand. 

Mary’s band plays five songs, and then she steps forward and thanks the audience, their set giving way to a loner with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. Fred’s eyes follow Mary as she steps down from the stage and begins to weave her way through people, exchanging smiles and congratulations with her bandmates. 

“She’s at the bar!” he yells suddenly, all calmness gone. “Go buy her a drink! Go, go, go, go!” 

He shoves Gladys out of the booth before she has any say in the matter. Whirling around to shoot him a meaningful glare, Gladys crosses the crowded room in a hurry, slipping through a crowd of older students to sidle up to where Mary is waiting. 

“You were amazing,” she says honestly when she reaches Mary’s elbow, smiling despite herself when Mary whips around to see who had spoken. 

Mary’s eyes are sparkling. “Thanks! It was really nice of you to come.” She raises a hand to the bartender, and Gladys reaches out to touch her arm. 

“What are you drinking?” 

Mary smiles teasingly. “Guess.” 

Gladys narrows her eyes as though thinking. “Vodka cran.” 

“Whiskey,” Mary corrects, raising her hand again. “Close.” 

Once again, Gladys touches her arm. “What kind? I want to get it.” 

“No, you don’t have to.” 

“I’d like to,” Gladys replies, hoping her voice isn’t as loaded with meaning as it sounds to her own ears. Mary blinks, and then smiles. She has a soft, demure way of smiling, a contrast to her confident voice and traffic-stopping black dress. Her short red hair, mussed from performing, curls softly around her face in perfect waves. 

“Anything, thanks. On the rocks.” Mary glances over at the table. “Your friend’s really cute.” 

Fuck. 

“He’s got a boyfriend,” Gladys replies brusquely, carefully analyzing Mary’s face for her reaction. Mary’s eyes widen, but her tone is more understanding than scandalized as she pronounces “oh.” 

“He’s a sweetheart, though,” Gladys acknowledges, feeling slightly guilty for throwing Fred under the bus. This conversation isn’t going the way she’d hoped for, and she racks her brain for something intelligent to say, finally landing on their shared class. The bartender delivers two glasses of whiskey with ice, and she hands one to Mary. “So what did you think of the reading from Monday?” 

“I thought it was a little dated, to be honest,” Mary answers easily, sipping from her glass. It was something else Gladys liked about her - she always had an opinion. “I understand we’re looking at literature rather than contemporary events, but it was a little disappointing to see we’re relying on old scholarship mostly done before third-wave feminism was even thought of, you know?” 

“Definitely,” Gladys agrees. “Granted, it was a pretty comprehensive study of the text. It helped me get context, at least. I don’t know if anything that detailed has been done since.” 

Mary pulls a face. “I know, but I feel like we end up asking the same basic questions - are there women in the text? Do they have agency? Why or why not? It’s not exactly going to be a groundbreaking discussion.” 

“What would you rather talk about?” Gladys asks. Up close, Mary smells like strawberries and hairspray. She steps a little closer, sliding her glass along the bar. 

“If it was up to me, we’d do a class on riot grrrl subculture and cultural resistance, and how you can compare the struggle to articulate and the unpacking of language with so much feminist literature. Even the stuff in the scholarly canon that was written way before riot grrrl was even thought of.” 

A spike of thrill runs through Gladys’ veins, and her face lights up. “Exactly! It’s such a miss that we’re acting like punk rock and literature don’t connect. I haven’t had a single class that talks about the riot grrrl movement, even though we’re supposed to look at things through a contemporary feminist lens. It’s happening now, and you can infuse it into so many areas of study.” 

“It’s relevant!” Mary replies enthusiastically. “Not just for drawing comparisons, but for how we actually look at and unpack texts. New modes of study that aren’t rooted in the patriarchy, you know?” 

A pair of blonde girls jostles them towards the corner of the bar, and Gladys pulls out a stool for Mary, who starts excitedly telling her about a group of girls in her dorm who made zines on Friday nights. Gladys returns with a story about the punk shows that got her into music back in her hometown, and soon they’re clamoring excitedly to talk over one another, Mary’s knee rooted into the soft skin of Gladys’ leg. 

“My mom’s a huge feminist,” Mary admits, when Gladys hesitates over a writer she hadn’t heard of. “She went radical in college and started feeding me feminist theory when I was in middle school.” 

“Mine too! She went here,” Gladys replies with a note of pride. “She used to organize sit-ins in the late sixties. She was this kickass butch lesbian with a motorcycle. She raised me with a bunch of other women.” 

Again the topic of sexuality has come up, and Gladys briefly holds her breath, but Mary doesn’t comment. She leans forward eagerly, a curl spilling across her eye. 

“My mom used to go to sit-ins here in the late sixties. That’s where she met my dad. Do you think they knew each other? That would be so cool.” 

“It’s a pretty small campus,” Gladys replies, shoving down the urge to tuck the wayward curl tenderly back behind Mary’s ear. She compromises by fixing Mary’s necklace for her: the clasp had swung around to the front. “I’ll bet they did.” 

“Thanks.” Mary adjusts her necklace. “How cool is that, then? Do you think we were destined to meet?” 

Gladys blinks in surprise at having the phrase leveled at her twice in one night. It sounds corny as all get out, but Mary’s eyes are glowing when Gladys suggests maybe. She asks some of Gladys’ favourite musicians and they begin an exciting round of naming various female vocalists and punk groups. Mary eagerly describes the Fleetwood Mac songs she wants to cover, and knows remarkably little about Joan Jett: Gladys tries to explain the value of various small punk bands that play on the fringes of the mainstream. 

“Your friend’s waving at you,” Mary speaks up suddenly, smiling over Gladys’ shoulder. Gladys, who had been pretending not to notice Fred’s overly enthusiastic thumbs-up, turns her back to his table. 

“Ignore him. He has a pathological need for attention.” 

“No, let’s go say hi.” Mary urges brightly, jumping off the stool. “We’ve left him stranded over there for ages. Does he know anything about punk rock?” 

“We’ll see,” Gladys begrudges, picking up her glass of whiskey. Fred seemed quotidian in his music tastes, but there was a spark of something reckless when he played that suggested he could still surprise her. “I think he’s a Springsteen boy.” 

Mary leads the way back over to Fred’s booth, dropping cheerfully into the cracked vinyl. Fred looks expectantly at Gladys, who’s too afraid of jinxing the night to indulge him with a subtle wink. 

“So, Fred,” Mary declares. “Human Touch and Lucky Town. Thoughts?” 

Fred’s eyes go bright and wide, and he starts jabbering away, something Gladys can’t follow about Springsteen’s latest albums. She’s getting thoroughly annoyed when she suddenly realizes how closely she and Mary are sitting on the vinyl seat, thigh pressed against thigh, and how Mary’s fingers are sitting - accidentally or otherwise - against the skin just above her knee. She glances at Mary out of the corner of her eye, but Mary seems to genuinely be listening to Fred’s excitable tirade, nodding as he argues for what he calls optimistic and authentic experimentation, talks about roadhouse-country influences and explains something lengthy about Springsteen’s first marriage. 

“Hey, Mary.” The keyboard player from her band pauses at their table. “We’re headed out now. You walking home with us?” 

“Oh, no,” Mary says, glancing at the clock over the bar and sounding truly dejected at the prospect of missing Fred’s monologue. “If that’s the time, I really have to head out. I have class early tomorrow, and I told myself I’d be in bed hours ago.” 

Fred’s face falls, and Gladys is sure hers drops as well. Mary rises from her seat undeterred, smiling at the pair of them, and thanks Gladys for her drink. 

“I’ll see you in class,” she says. “You’ll remember to bring my notes next week, right?” 

“You know what?” Fred interrupts quickly, “We live really close to here, don’t we, Gladys? Just a street or two away. We could run back and grab your notes and bring them over to your place in like, ten minutes flat. Then you wouldn’t have to go without them.” 

Mary opens her mouth to turn him down, but Fred talks over her. 

“We insist. Gladys will go get them right now.” He elbows Gladys heartily in the chest, and she kicks him under the table. 

Mary laughs. “Why not. I’m in Dickenson hall, room 44. I’m an RA.” She writes the number down on a napkin with an eyeliner pencil from her bag, a gesture Gladys finds almost painfully sexy. “I’ll be up for another half hour or so, but if I don’t answer, just slide them under the door.” 

At the door of the bar they say their goodbyes, and Fred waits until Mary and her bandmates have walked off into the dark before grabbing Gladys by the hand and yanking her down the pavement at a run. 

“What are you doing?” Gladys yells as Fred drags her along by the hand, kicking their way through puddles on the newly-rain-dampened streets. It had rained while they were in the bar, and shop signs and headlights glow in an otherworldly way on the dark, uneven pavement. A car roars down the road and sprays them both lightly with water. 

“I got you invited over to her dorm room! We are so good!” Fred punches the air and leaps into a puddle, sending a tidal wave surging over his shoes. “You two are going to fall in love tonight and you can thank me later.” 

“Are you crazy!” Gladys yells, laughing despite herself at Fred’s exuberance. 

“Yes! Hurry up!” 

They run giddy the rest of the way home, the night air against their faces. Gladys feels cheerful and buoyant in a way she hasn’t for a while. Fred tears into her bedroom on her heels and Gladys locates Mary’s handwritten notes on the first try: she’d never really read them, just studied her neatly looped handwriting with a special longing and then shoved them back into her textbook. 

“Go get her!” Fred cheers like an overenthusiastic track coach. “Hurry! Before she goes to bed!”  

“Idiot!” Gladys laughs, shoving him down onto her bed with the same sibling playfulness she had felt in the bar. “Don’t get your hopes up.” 

With Fred loudly cheering her on, she tucks the notes carefully into her bag and jogs out into the night-turned-morning, the night air cool on her face and the smell of rain in her lungs. 

Chapter Text

Sunday. 

A deluge of rain pounds the windshield of Mrs. Cooper’s car, the heavy gray sky beyond giving the water a dirty cast. Traffic on the highway that led towards Riverdale State had slowed to a crawl, and cars crowded the road like shiny, wet beetles as rain lashed incessantly against the ground. The air conditioning in the car is cranked too high: Hal had felt his feet go numb at least half an hour ago. He stares out into the rain from the passenger-side window with a face devoid of emotion. 

The radio is on very low: a jazz station Hal would never have chosen. The windshield wipers whisk together, the noise and the frantic tapping of the rain a welcome distraction from his mother’s incessant talking. He focuses on the sound of the wiper blades, tuning the rest of the world out as he watches the downpour. 

Behind his seat, the back of the blue minivan is piled so high with stuff that the rearview mirror is obscured. His mother, a fearless driver, is unconcerned: since the rain started she’s been more worried about the pro-choice stickers on the back of the VW beetle that had crept in front of them, and the owner of the beetle’s habit of sharply hitting the brakes. 

Prudence taps her manicured fingers on the steering wheel, out of annoyance with the beetle, or possibly Hal’s carefully maintained silence. Hal tunes briefly back into the sound of her voice, exuberant with overstated cheer: 

“You’re going to have such a wonderful time. Your father and I loved this school. There will be so much for you to do, we’ll have to find the newspaper office and get you set up with an interview, first thing. Remember how much you enjoyed working on the Blue and Gold? I know your heart was never in this TV station nonsense.”

Hal can’t summon the effort necessary to argue for the merits of his old job in Boston, and only closes his eyes. Prudence flicks her hand slightly, as though to wave away an argument. 

“Broadcast journalism is all well and good, but there’s a time and a place!” This last is delivered with an air of triumphant conclusion, as though winning an argument in a debate match. “And I know your heart was always with the written word. Your father was the same way. Oh, and he’ll be so happy if he hears you decide to pledge Delta Tau. That fraternity was his life, he simply adored it.” 

“Mm.” Hal manages an unimpressed grunt, put off by his mother’s blatant joy. At first he’d thought her cheeriness was overcorrecting, but he was beginning to suspect she really was this happy to be driving him to this new school, three hundred miles from his old one. After all, the journalism program at Riverdale State had been one of her first choices for him. The move would put her only son exactly where Prudence liked him: securely under her thumb and a comforting hour-and-a-half drive from home. 

“You did promise him you’d think about pledging, remember,” Prudence beams. “They’ll be so proud to have you. And just think, you’ll have a ready-made set of friends right away. I’ve always thought you needed more suitable male friends, honey. And think of all the girls you'll meet on campus -” 

Hal winces as though being stabbed. The remark is delivered casually, with his mother’s trademark offhanded precision, but it slices through him like an ice pick into a brain. Prudence frowns, severely unimpressed with his discomfort. 

“I don’t want any more of your moping about. Remember, your father and I were a rare case, a rare case. Nowadays it’s very rare that first love lasts until marriage. Why, University is a very suitable place to meet someone. Incredibly suitable. I want you to promise me -” 

Thud-thud. Hal tunes into the wiper blades again, staring at them with an intensity that suggests he’s trying to melt the glass. He’s not sure if the sound he hears is the rushing water outside, or his own blood beating in his temples. There’s an awful headache beginning to throb behind his right eye, and his mother’s aggravating voice is only making it worse. 

Hal had had a girl. Or, at least, until the ugliest breakup in the history of breakups had made it impossible to stay on the same campus with her. It seemed that nowhere in Boston was free from some memory of Alice Smith, and their lives there had been so entwined - all the same friends, twin reporting jobs at the campus TV station, to say nothing of their shared apartment and English classes, that it was impossible to go about his life without running into her. Every time he saw her, Hal felt every organ in his body being squeezed with catastrophic regret. But the few times he had asked her if they could try again, Alice had turned him down, flat and expressionless. 

It was over. 

It would be naive to say it had nothing to do with the baby. Everything after their senior year had pulsed with the undercurrent of their baby - it was the thick, dark beating heart of a tragedy that ran under everything they did. But still, Boston was supposed to be their starting over, a chance to make new lives together. A beginning. 

He could still remember the day they’d turned up for their first day of after-school work, Alice as sunny as the sky was gray now, her blonde hair loose and long as she pranced spunkily across the news station in the blue heels he’d bought her as a birthday gift. They’d both started as interns but climbed quickly into more involved roles: Hal proving himself as a writer and Alice becoming fascinated by onscreen reporting. The few stories they’d worked on together had been nothing short of dynamite, and seeing his girlfriend on the screen describing the details of their story flooded Hal with a feeling of pride and hope unlike any other. 

After they’d broken up, she’d been on TV all the time: speaking with burning blue eyes in the dorm common spaces, the snackroom lines, the deli on the corner where they liked to get pastrami sandwiches. Even when he’d taken a leave from the station, avoiding work and leaving his things growing dust on his desk, too afraid of running into her to retrieve them, she always found him somehow. He rewound old tapes of interviews in guilty midnight hours, got yelled at in the cafeteria when some minor glimpse of her face trapped him in front of the case of chocolate pudding. She’d moved into a friend’s apartment: he never saw her apart from their classes. But still, televised, she was everywhere. 

On a whim back in April, after a catastrophic fight that had made their tiff after homecoming look like friendly banter, Hal had sent in an application to the prestigious journalism program at Riverdale State. He’d done it just to feel as though he had some semblance of control over the situation, never expecting that his request to transfer would actually be accepted. RSU’s exclusive journalism program was very highly regarded, providing at least one Pulitzer winner and offering up at least two dozen more journalists to high-profile careers. When the acceptance came in, he’d spent the better part of two months hiding it under his pillow, allowing his parents and friends to believe he’d been rejected. 

It would have been foolish of him not to go, especially when living in their Boston apartment and wandering their shared campus had been unbearable. Still, depressed and reluctant, he’d let the deadline lapse. But by September the situation on campus was so dire that when they’d sent a follow-up offer after another student had dropped out, he’d written back yes. It was rare for the program to make such an exception - the universe was clearly trying to tell him something. It was time to at least make a gesture of moving on. 

His mother had been overjoyed when he’d told her the news. He’d held the phone in their empty kitchen, staring at the kitchenware he’d picked out with Alice at the dollar store, a year ago that felt like a lifetime. The apartment was rented in his parents' name - they’d co-signed the lease. He’d given Alice a day to collect her things and made himself scarce: the place was all but empty when he came home. He’d gone to Riverdale and moped in his childhood room for two weeks, tuning out his parents’ praises for his sensible decision , before his mother, in her typical, ebullient fashion had begun packing up his things for his new school. 

“Honestly, puppy,” continues Prudence now, resurrecting a childhood nickname that makes Hal squirm in his seat, “this will be a fresh start for you! You should be overjoyed. This is a broad new chance with - fresh, fresh new horizons.” She reaches for his hand and squeezes it reassuringly, a gesture that manages to be anything but. 

Hal stares at a blue and white sticker on the rear of the beetle. (keep your theology off my biology!) It was obvious, then - she thought the last year and a half of his life had been a bad mistake, something to be smoothed over and recovered from, something she was relieved to have over and done with. Something akin to sending your child to rehab - an unpleasant pitfall before the rest of their life could start. 

Prudence had never liked Alice, and on the day Hal had announced he was taking a scholarship to Boston to move in with her, Prudence’s lips had pursed so hard in a line that they’d momentarily disappeared into her face. It was a slap in both his parents' faces, taking off to be miles from home with a girl they so visibly disapproved of. But for this reason, it had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. He could remember how joyful he’d felt at this time last year, sure that the worst was behind them and that he was free. The air had tasted better on the drive up to Boston than any air he’d ever tasted in his life. 

A purple sticker below the blue one: against abortion? don’t have one. His mother turns on her blinker and merges into a faster-moving lane, abandoning the beetle in the rain.

There’s no I told you so in his mother’s tone, but a nurturing sense of empathy and concern that was somehow worse. Prudence had always insisted she knew what was best for her son, and disturbingly, she’d been proven right. The thought was so sour in his mouth that Hal feels nauseous as they take the exit towards campus. 

“I just wish you’d been able to have your own room. But signing up so late, we had to take what we could get.” Prudence taps her fingers unhappily. RSU had a policy that first year students stayed in the dormitories, and since Hal was entering a specialized program, he was essentially in his first year. His mother had been beset with frustration that Hal’s late entry meant there was no way for her to swing the housing lottery in his favour, but she quickly smiles again, smoothing over her distaste. “Well, if you pledge Delta Tau, I know they’ll set you up in that beautiful house. I remember when your father…” 

Hal tunes out her reminiscing, disinterested in his father’s fraternity glory days. He’s heard all of this a thousand times in his parents’ quest to warm him to the idea of transferring to State: enthusiastic stories about how delightfully wonderful his parents’ undergraduate years had been, dozens of reassurances about how much fun he would have at their alma mater. To hear them put it, the opportunities for him at this point forth were immeasurable. 

He knew they were both afraid of the listless depression they’d observed in him since his senior year, his father fleeing at the faintest sign of emotion in his youngest child and his mother doing her most to keep everything smoothed over. They fluttered around him in rhythms of avoidance and smothering like buzzing horseflies on a camping trip. This had the consequence of making Hal feel more solitary and withdrawn than ever. 

The air conditioning is getting colder. The rain thins out as his mother drives them towards campus, but what little daylight there is is being choked by a dark cloud directly above them, so that the atmosphere of the car feels dazed and unreal. Prudence mutters under her breath about the hard-to-read street signs as Hal stares listlessly at the campus map she’d opened over his lap. He has his room assignment scribbled in his mother’s spiky hand on the margin - Baldwin Hall, Room 413. An unlucky number. 

“Well, at least there’s no move-in day lines!” Prudence had been beside herself when Hal had initially refused her offer to drive up to Boston with him and settle them in, taking such severe offense that they had eventually let her come for last year’s move-in-day, four days after they’d actually moved. Once she’d left, he and Alice had rearranged everything she’d touched. “It shouldn’t take long to settle you in. And look, the rain is stopping.” 

Hal says nothing. His mother snatches the map off of his lap, consults it at the wheel, and turns the van down towards a winding road to the water. 

Hal’s dormitory is an impersonal, glass-covered building: one of the newer ones that stood out sharply from the ivy-and-vine grandeur of the rest of the campus. In tiring trips back and forth to the car, parked in a fire lane with its hazards on, they unload the cramped contents of the backseat into the elevator. Prudence manages to rope in two burly guys who had been standing around by the bulletin board, citing her arthritis - both of them give Hal shifty, unpleasant looks the whole while that suggests they’re not likely to be the suitable male friends his mother had hung so much hope on. Finally the car is unloaded, and Hal allows his mother to unroll his bedspread, vacuum the carpet, and hang his clothes in half of the closet. His roommate is nowhere to be found: despite the fact that classes have been in session for over a month, the matching twin bed and desk are empty. 

“Well, maybe you get a room to yourself after all,” his mother suggests, cheered by the prospect. She pats down a framed family photo that she had hung into place using adhesive velcro strips, directly over Hal’s new desk. “Let’s go find somewhere to eat, I need a tea.” 

In the sour-smelling student hall (“oh, this brings back so many memories, Hal, your father and I-”) they sit squashed at a table by the elevators, Prudence sipping black tea with skim milk in between words and Hal picking listlessly at a salad. For the rest of the morning, his mother flutters contentedly about the campus with him, decorating his room and insisting he pose for photos for his father outside the ivy-covered student union. 

He turns down her offer to drive him to a nearby IKEA, ignoring her abrupt concern about adequate under-bed storage. After she’s marched him into the registrar’s office to receive his student ID and penned him a first day to-do list on an agenda bought from the campus shop, Prudence finally begins to look hesitantly at her watch. 

“I suppose it’s about time to be getting back, but I can spend a little longer if you’d like.” A slice of sun from the window falls upon her face and his mother looks suddenly old, and worried. She smiles, erasing the shadow from all but her eyes, which stay sad. She pats his cheek. “We’re proud of you, Hal. So, so proud.” 

She’d handed him a cheque from his father - a gift, she’d said, he wanted you to have this - and Hal holds it more tightly than necessary, grounding himself to the room like an anchor. His mother smiles quickly and draws him into a tight hug, one of the rib-crackers that his older sister Gertrude always bolted and ducked from. Hal finds himself hugging back, his hands numb like they were still being brutalized by the A/C in the car. When Prudence finally releases him the all-business look is back in her eyes. 

“Well.” She straightens the few items unpacked on his desk instinctively and glances around the tidy room. “You’ll have to call us and tell us how your first day goes tomorrow. I’m very excited for you, Hal. This is a brand new opportunity for you, a new chapter.” 

Hal walks her down to the car. His throat gets tight when he sees the blue minivan disappearing through the tree-lined lane out to the highway, but he doesn’t cry. 

He’s been too numb to cry for a long time. 

Hal didn’t have many friends from high school who had stayed in town, but he knew FP was at State - he’d even been pictured on one of the endless brochures his mother had cultivated that summer, a hotshot new freshman when the picture was taken, and now a sophomore quarterback slated as one to watch. His turnaround from rough-edged high school burnout to campus hero had even managed to impress Prudence, who had said brightly earlier in the month that it was nice to see that Jones boy making something of himself. The horrified disdain that both Lewis and Prudence had had for FP’s family situation in high school didn’t seem to factor in. 

Hal and FP had never been particularly close, but the sudden loneliness that doused Hal like cold water made him long to see someone familiar. Fred, Prudence had informed him, was living somewhere near campus and sending money home to his mother, though he wasn’t enrolled in school. He was therefore impossible to find in either the campus telephone directory or the local phone book, but FP was easy - a bold name and number in the former under Department of Athletics. 

The phone rings itself out when he tries to call. Hal replaces the receiver and curls up on his bed, staring moodily at the wall until he gets bored of scowling.

It’s past dinner, already dark outside because of the storm. The dorm room smells all wrong - a sharp, classroom scent like school glue. There are many things he could be doing - eating, for one, double-checking his schedule, introducing himself to his professors, finding his classes for tomorrow. He hadn’t lied to his mother when he’d promised to make an effort - he did want this move to work out for him. He did want to be happy here, emerge from this program with job prospects. 

But he wanted Alice more. 

“I miss you,” he whispers, opening the drawer of his nightstand and prying up the false bottom - one of the few places he knew his mother wouldn’t look. The framed photo is tucked face-down, a portrait of Alice as he remembered her: her eyes glowing with some long-ago joke he’d forgotten about. Hal lifts the edge of the light silver frame and then slams it back down without looking. No. There was no point in torturing himself. Wallowing in his misery, sure. But he had to try. He couldn’t rip open the scab every time it was beginning to heal. 

A lump in his throat, already regretting it, he replaces the false bottom of the drawer. He didn’t need to look at the photo anyway, he’d seen it so many times: Alice in the blue shirt that matched her eyes, her curly hair windswept, her teeth bared in pleasure. She rarely smiled with her mouth open in photos, and he thought it was rare and beautiful when he got to see her teeth. 

Hal stands and walks to the window, staring out moodily towards the trees across the street. It’s dark enough that he can see his face reflected back at him, but he concentrates obstinately on looking past the glass, out into the gloom. It’s a decent view from the fourth floor: he can see the lake and the pier in the distance. 

“Oh, how disgusting.” 

Hal turns, startled by another voice. A young man of about his age is standing in the doorway, wearing what seems to be a long black cape. His dark hair is perfectly styled, shining with product, a look that gives him the appearance of a very polished vampire. 

The boy scrutinizes Hal’s half of the room thoughtfully for a moment before snapping his fingers. “Take this down, please.” 

“Excuse me?” Hal answers, jolted back into reality by the strange apparition. He blinks and rubs his eyes, but the stranger doesn’t vanish. 

“Yes, get rid of all of…… this,” The brunet answers, looking around Hal’s half of the room with disdain and fluttering his fingers at the decor. “I’m thinking white and black, a contemporary New York home style.” He sets one of the considerable suitcases by his feet on the bed and begins to unzip it. 

“Excuse me?” Hal repeats. 

“No, you’re right, it can stay up for tonight. I’ll deal with it later.” The brunet turns to face him, his face impassive. “I’ll need new towels, and then you can go. I’d like to be woken up at eight am sharp tomorrow. Here.” He reaches somewhere into the folds of his cape and emerges with a fifty-dollar bill, which he thrusts at Hal. “Enjoy your night off.” 

“I….” Hal is flabbergasted, staring at the money without making a move to take it. “I’m not the maid.” 

The brunet blinks incredulously at him before looking around, as though a staff of twenty might be lurking somewhere within their meager closet space. “Well, then, where is the maid?” 

A weariness settles into Hal’s soul as he realizes the other boy isn’t joking. “Well, if this is your room assignment, I’m your roommate.” 

“Oh, no, no, no.” The boy laughs airily and turns back to his suitcase. His teeth are very white and even, thankfully free of sharp points. “No. That was just a joke.” 

“A joke?” 

“Yes, my father was just joking about my having a roommate.” A smile of recognition finally creases his features, a genial warmth that catches Hal off guard. “So you can go now. I don’t know who put you up to this, Murray or Eleanor or somebody, but it was very funny.” 

“I’m not joking,” Hal answers. I wish I was. 

“No, no, no no,” The boy shakes his head, his expression becoming more disturbed with every pronouncement of denial. “There’s been a mistake. I don’t think this is my room.” The brunet rezips his suitcase and sets it back on the floor, abruptly grabbing both handles and dragging the huge luggage behind him out the door. It slams shut after him, and Hal can hear his footfalls if he strains, very muffled through the heavy wood. After a long pregnant pause, the door creaks open again and the same boy’s face peers in. 

“Room four-thirteen?” Hal reads helpfully, consulting his map. 

A thundercloud not unlike the ones outside passes over the stranger’s face. “It’s not possible,” he seethes, dragging both heavy suitcases back through the door and throwing one furiously on the bed. The boy covers his face with one hand and reaches with the other to shake Hal’s hand. “Lodge. Hiram Lodge. Please forgive me, I’m not used to…” 

“Harold Cooper,” says Hal, shaking his hand firmly. He’s dedicated himself to the strange farce unfolding in front of him, for better or for worse. At least it got his mind off Alice. Hiram peeks out from under his hand. 

“Are you perhaps related to the Yorkshire Coopers?” 

“Is this a joke?” Hal asks. He’d never seen anything like this boy outside of daytime television, and was wholly unsure what to make of him. 

Hiram looks ruffled. “That’s exactly what I was asking you.” 

For an awkward moment they survey each other, Hal noting strangely how soft and perfect his skin and lips were, as though he followed some kind of moisturizing routine that would make Prudence Cooper proud. Hiram was slightly shorter than average, though he held himself with an aristocracy that made him seem very tall. The polished, buckled leather boots he was wearing added to the effect. Hal does a quick inventory of his own outfit: faded tennis shoes, khaki pants, and a saggy sweatshirt. Hardly designer material. 

“So where are you from?” Hiram asks, throwing himself onto the bed alongside the suitcase. He grimaces as he lands. “Ugh! This bedding. Are you absolutely certain you haven’t seen a maid?” 

“No. And I’m from Riverdale.” Hal sits nervously on the edge of his own bed, his hands on either side of his legs. Hiram gives him a sour look, as though affronted by the name or Hal’s comportment, he wasn’t sure which. “I grew up in the suburbs, but I did my first year of school in Boston. Now I’m back here.” 

“Boston!” Hiram’s expression rearranges into one of interest. “Fascinating place. Loads of history. Let me guess. The Harvard admissions scandal. Your family dragged you back here until all the publicity dies down.” 

“No!” replies Hal, shocked. “I didn’t go to Harvard.” 

“MIT?” Hiram raises an eyebrow. “Well, if you have the brains for it.” 

It suddenly seems too tiring to explain that he’d gone to a smaller school. “How about you?” Hal asks, sensing that Hiram was more interested in himself anyway. He briefly wishes he was alone in the room again, pouting and listening to FP’s dial tone in his ear. “Are you from around here?” 

“Well, technically ,” Hiram replies slowly, drawing out the word with an exaggerated pursing of the lips that told Hal exactly what he thought of that, “my family founded Riverdale.” 

“What?” 

“Indeed.” Hiram’s blank expression wouldn’t have changed if he’d told Hal that his family had invented watching paint dry. “For whatever reason, my great-great-great-grandfather decided bankrolling a small mining town in the middle of nowhere would be a riveting enterprise. I’ve no idea why we still have a hand in it. All the Lodges with sense have been New Yorkers. As for me, I’ve lived all over: New York, London, Spain, Uruguay, Italy, Alaska, Connecticut, Paris for a couple months, Ukraine-” 

“Wow,” says Hal, cutting him off, because it seemed that Hiram could go listing place names into infinity. 

“Indeed.” Hiram runs a hand through his hair. “My Spanish is the best, but I can get away with a passable Ukrainian. Speak to the cab drivers, you know. My Norwegian is quite good too.” He sighs. “I’d still be bar hopping in Oslo if my father hadn’t found out he was paying for classes at Oxford that no one was attending.” 

Hal just stares at him in reply. Hiram looks around at the dorm: the white-washed walls, the single window, the neatly taped posters above Hal’s bed. “I’m sure he doesn’t know they’re keeping me in these apocalyptic conditions. Frankly, I think he’ll owe me an apology for this. His intention was to punish me, not to send me to some sort of prison camp.” 

“You’re so pretentious,” says Hal, and immediately turns crimson. It had been a thought, nothing more - he hadn’t meant to say it out loud, and had only realized he was speaking upon hearing his own voice in the room. But Hiram doesn’t seem offended in the slightest. 

“Thank you,” he replies genially, folding his arms below his head and leaning back against the wall. “Well, since I’m here, I might as well make the best of it. If indeed Father is serious about putting me through this drudgery, I took the precaution of looking into the fraternities on campus. It seems the only one remotely worth pledging is Delta Tau, though if you’ve heard of any-” 

“Delta Tau?” Hal asks, startled by the words. 

“Have you heard of them? Very traditional, very elite. They started as a secret society, you know, carrying over traditions started from the Bullingdon Club and the Ivy Club at Princeton.” A slight flicker of interest replaces the cool detachment in Hiram’s eyes, an enjoyment at the prospect of rushing that was completely alien to Hal. The information was more than Hal had known, though it niggles a faint memory from years ago, like something his father might have told him once that had gone in one ear and out the other. 

“My father would love you," Hal says honestly. "That was his fraternity." 

Hiram raises an eyebrow. “Lewis Cooper is your father?” 

“How did you know?” 

“Well, you’re not of the Yorkshire Coopers, are you? I did my research on Delta Tau. L.C. was a huge figure in the frat scene back in the day.” Before Hal can get over the shock of hearing his father referred to by his initials, Hiram rolls suddenly off the bed, landing on the soles of his polished boots. He beams and holds his hand out for another shake. “We’ll rush together. Assuming my father hasn’t liberated me from this tedious living arrangement, that is.” 

“Oh. Um, I haven’t decided-” 

“Then it’s settled,” Hiram answers, flashing a charismatic, appealing smile that must have fared him well while traveling. “Let’s get out of this place, it’s depressing me. I know a quaint little hotel not far from here, left over from great-great-great grandfather’s saloon days. We can get a nip to eat and pick up some older women.” 

Hal balks. “I’m good.” 

“Oh, we can forget the women if you’re a prude. Come on. I refuse to be drinking in a hotel bar alone in this terrible place.” 

“I actually have plans,” Hal lies, thinking disinterestedly of the half-hearted attempt he was going to make to reach FP again in a few hours. Hiram was a lot, and Hal wasn’t sure he was up to the kind of night on the town that his new roommate was used to. For a moment a flicker of disappointment crosses Hiram’s face, but it disappears so quickly that Hal assumes he’d imagined it. 

“Oh. Very well.” Hiram removes a fancy scarf from the nearest bag and winds it casually around his throat. “I’ll have to make my own excitement. I won’t be back until late, I don’t suppose they left you a key? Ah.” He snatches one of the gold keys that had been supplied to Hal by the admissions office, jingling it merrily from his finger. “Pleasure to meet you, Harold. Adiós. ” 

A swirl of cape precedes his leaving, the suitcases open and half-unpacked on the bed. Hal glances over at one of them, observing a muddle of silky clothing that looked exorbitantly expensive, even at this distance. Hal rolls over with a groan, already vowing that he wouldn’t tell his mother a single detail of this conversation. He’d say his new roommate was a very nice boy , and leave it at that. 

At nine-thirty he tries FP’s number again. This time someone picks up.

Chapter Text

The campus sports bar is packed with students, even on a Sunday night. Hal shows his driver's license and his brand new student ID at the door, squeezing around a rowdy group of cheering eighteen year olds that are evidently celebrating someone’s birthday. A football game blares from a wall of oversized screens, every other inch of wall space taken up by a jumble of various pennants and years upon years of memorabilia.

The sports bar he’d frequented in Boston had been more modern - sleek and impersonal, with officially sponsored team pennants and neon gleaming from below the bar like a spaceship. This has a crowded, familiar feel, the wood-paneled walls and dusty photo frames making it seem more like someone’s den. This, Hal knows, is the site of Lewis and Prudence’s third date - he’d heard the stories enough times that the significance registers almost automatically. He looks around, wondering if FP’s there yet. 

Hal couldn’t remember the last time they’d talked - it must have been graduation, though in all the fuss and the pictures and the depression that had shrouded his thoughts since that fateful homecoming, he couldn’t remember them exchanging so much as an awkward smile. Separated as they were by a good chunk of the alphabet, he could barely recall FP being handed a diploma - his thoughts had turned only briefly to him at the beginning when Fred had crossed the stage, his name ringing out lonely and clear without the accompanying graduated with honours or will be attending that had been announced for nearly everyone else. Hal had felt hugely guilty for noting the upcoming irony: that Fred, Riverdale’s beloved, had barely scraped a diploma, while FP was heading to college with a full ride. 

FP would know where Fred was, assuming they hadn’t had some catastrophic falling-out in the years since. This seemed an unpleasant but possible outcome: their friendship in high school had always seemed potentially too intense to last, though one was unthinkable without the other: the peanut-butter-and-jelly, toast-and-eggs companionship that became a normal fixture in the fabric of their teenage years. Hal hopes for his own sake that they’re still friends: talking to Fred would alleviate some of the guilt that he felt for leaving him for Boston without a backward glance. 

“Coop!”

The voice bellows from somewhere off to his right. Hal turns quickly, banging into the birthday crowd, who had been squeezing by him to get at a table. They flow around disdainfully on either side of him, as though he’s a log dropped in the middle of a stream. Finally his eyes settle on FP, stretched out in a corner booth with his arms draped out to each side. 

Hal approaches him, slightly unsure if he’s found the right person. The FP waiting for him in the booth, long legs sticking out under the table like it’s the most natural pose in the world, tripping hazard be damned, looks nothing like the delinquent eighteen year old Hal had left in Riverdale last year. In dark-wash jeans and an artfully faded gray t-shirt, his face open and smiling, he looked filled-out and handsome, a ruggedness about his unshaved cheeks that kept him from appearing too clean-cut. His bare arms are thick and toned with muscle, the broad shoulders and what Hal could see of his chest taking on the built look of a real football player. He had lost the gaunt, haunted look of his teenage years: the greasy hair and shifty eyes, regrettably dour disposition and rough-edged, chain smoking veneer. Replacing this is a handsome twenty-year old with a five-o-clock shadow, thriving and healthy. 

Forget comparing him to Fred - he was comparing FP to himself as he walked, wondering what other rude surprises were in store as he faced up to the catastrophic failure that had been his first year away from home. A dishonorable sourness overtakes him that he knows he’s inherited from his mother - he was the one with promise, he, Hal, was the perfect honour roll student and the newspaper editor, he was the one with a future. FP had been a bad boy, a slacker, headed for trouble. And yet now their roles were reversed. 

“Good to see you, man.” They do an awkward fist-bumping, hand-clasping maneuver that subs in for a male hug, Hal dropping into the seat below FP’s outstretched arm without taking his eyes off his friend’s face. A half-empty glass of cola sits on the table between them with a straw. 

The awkwardness is all on Hal’s part - FP seems relaxed and easy, taking everything in stride. This was FP at his best, somehow, FP as Fred had talked about him, glowing, on the day in ninth grade when he’d tried to unsuccessfully make all three of them friends: isn’t he great? Isn’t he cool? Isn’t he something else? 

“Wow,” says Hal awkwardly, conscious of the same newfound bluntness that had made him insult his new roommate to his face. “You look good.” 

FP smiles, almost bashful, and looks around for a waiter. “Do you want a beer? I should tell you - I, uh, I don’t drink anymore. Feel free, though, I don’t mind.” 

“No kidding.” This news strikes Hal as momentous - he can remember all too well the days FP came reeking of beer to class, the rumours he hid vodka in water bottles and would swig back mouthwash in a pinch, cold syrup, whatever he could get his hands on. Prudence had certainly believed them. “For how long?” 

“It’ll be a year next month.” Proudly, almost fondly, like a parent showing off baby photos, FP opens his wallet and hands him the chip: dark green, about the diameter of a poker chip, with raised lettering spelling out 11. 

Hal traces the number with the pad of his thumb. “Wow.” 

“It was Halloween last year. I got shitfaced and woke up two days later in the hospital.” FP scratches the back of his head - his hair is no longer lank and greasy, but neatly kept, loosening into soft-looking curls. “I decided I’d had enough of that for a lifetime.” 

There’s so much earnestness in his face that Hal feels overwhelmed. “That’s amazing,” he says, handing it back to FP, who slides it back into the folds of his wallet. “Good for you.” 

He makes up his mind there and then to order a soda as a sign of solidarity, but caves when the waitress comes around - it’s been a long day - and asks for a beer. FP doesn’t flinch, just politely asks for a refill on his coke. Hal notices that girls are turning to look at them all around the bar, and he’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with his grubby sweatshirt. 

“Football, huh?” he says, watching a giggling trio of girls ogle FP out of the corner of his eyes. “How’s that going?” 

“Pretty good.” FP relaxes into his spread-armed pose, and Hal’s relieved when they launch into a refreshingly brainless discussion of the college team’s season, his companion filling in details he hadn’t known about the other schools. FP’s startlingly easy to talk to: he makes him laugh with a handful of stories about locker rooms and rival teams, and soon Hal feels like they might be more compatible as adults than they had ever been as kids. Eventually, though, FP runs out of stories. He swivels the straw in his cola around to his mouth and takes a sip, scrutinizing Hal’s appearance. 

“So you’re back.” Hal had told him only the bare minimum over the phone: that he was newly enrolled at Riverdale State and didn’t know anyone in town. “Boston was that bad, huh?” 

Haltingly, Hal told him a brief version of the story: a year of classes, his job at the TV station, the breakup with Alice, his application for the journalism program that had come through at the nick of time. 

“So I just figured I’d give her some time to cool off, and this program is better for me anyway. It was my second choice and everything.” 

“Geez.” FP laughs. “I don’t blame you. If Alice was pissed at me, I wouldn’t stay in the same state as her either.” 

“The program’s really prestigious,” Hal hears himself saying, sounding for all the world like his mother when she was trying to smooth over something unpleasant. “It was really my best bet at getting back into newspaper reporting, which was something I wanted to do all along. The TV station wasn’t the right fit for me.” 

If this sounds like the blatant lie it is, FP is courteous enough not to mention it. “I’ve always been jealous of you,” he admits lightly. “Knowing what you wanted to do your whole life. I can only play football for so long.” He rubs his hands together, and Hal sits in awe of him: not only that FP was showing a degree of self-awareness but that he’d deferred to Hal as anything close to a success story. 

FP tells him about his classes, the grueling practice schedule, the unpleasant task of having to declare a major this year when he hadn’t made his mind up yet. He hears the full story behind what he’d only surmised from his mother’s gossip: after FP Senior had thrown his son out - “miserable old bastard,” FP says lightly, striking through years of abuse and saying no more about it - FP had won a football scholarship and moved from Fred’s house to the campus.

“What about Fred?” Hal finally asks. “My mom said he was living out here, but not going to school, is that right? She was really spotty with the details. I mean, I thought she’d know more considering she and Bunny are usually like-” He holds his crossed fingers up to indicate closeness. “Do you talk to him?” 

“Oh.” FP’s silent for a soft minute, looking Hal square in the face. Then he replies: “We’re living together.” 

A flush of unexpected pleasure glows in Hal’s chest, an oddly proprietary relief that one constant from his high school years hadn’t dissolved into instability. “That’s great. You two are still friends, then?” 

FP’s silent, playing with the largest of the plain silver rings he wears on his right hand. Then he clears his throat and looks Hal deeply in the eyes again. 

“Fred and I are together.” 

“Right,” says Hal automatically, nodding even though he hadn’t gained any more understanding than the first time around. “Right, you’re living together.” FP keeps staring at him, and understanding dawns on Hal in a rush. “Oh.” 

FP’s suddenly sitting back, uncrossing his long legs like he might have to bolt. 

“Hey, FP, that’s -” Hal swallows his surprise - a part of him wasn’t, really, but he knew he was blushing all the same. He tries to keep his face neutral and fails, clearing his dry throat. “I think that’s great. Thank you for telling me.” 

FP looks at him for a moment, as though analyzing his response. Then he relaxes nonchalantly back into the booth, arms splayed again. Hal glances towards the ring on FP’s right ring finger, an odd possibility occurring to him. 

“That ring isn’t…” 

“No, no. Football.” FP flexes his fingers, turns his hand to the light so Hal can see the lettering. “And these are just, they’re whatever. Class ring, and um, just a band.” He plays nervously with the metal on his fingers. “I’ve just been wearing them.” 

“Right, because you can’t -” Hal suddenly stops, aware of having put his foot in his mouth. “No, what I meant was - um -” In a burst of panic he changes the topic. “Uh...What’s Fred doing for work?” 

“Construction, still.” FP doesn’t look too offended at his clumsy switch, but Prudence’s voice bursts sharply in his ear: Harold, please. Some manners. Hal looks down at his hands and sees himself tearing the label on the beer into shreds. “Same company as before, just up here. He’s good at it. Manual labour for now, but he’s talking about taking a business course, maybe getting involved on the business end of things one day. It’s hard work, long days, you know.” 

“That’s great. How long?” 

“Twelve hours, seven to seven.” 

“Wow.” The self loathing rears up again, a reminder of his own slack, unmotivated lackadaisical existence. He knows he’s being purposefully hard on himself and doesn’t care. 

FP smiles oddly, as though reading his unhappiness, though his eyes slide over Hal’s face to land on the hockey game playing out on the screen behind the bar. “He’d love to see you. We could have you over for a late dinner sometime. Where do you live?” 

“I have a dorm room.” Hal’s shoulders slump, remembering that Hiram Lodge is likely going to come blundering into his room about five hours from now, likely with an older woman, possibly speaking Ukrainian. “Baldwin Hall.” 

“I stayed in a dorm my first year, too. It was nicer than all the others, the athlete’s one.” FP grins, something oddly mature in this admission. “They really make a fuss over you if you’re on a team. It kind of goes to your head.” 

“Really?” asks Hal, making a mental note to mention it to Alice - preferential treatment for student athletes, possible story about valuing athletics over academics - and then remembers that he’ll never have to mention story ideas to Alice ever again. He swallows and takes a sip of his beer. 

“Yeah, we have an apartment now, though.” A brief flicker of a frown passes over his face. “And a roommate.”

“Really? 

“It’d be nice if it was just the two of us, but money’s tight. And Fred’s happy. Most of the guys on the crew are older than him, so he likes being around other kids. This girl’s weird, though.” FP pulls a face. “Do you have one?” 

“A roommate?” Hal thinks of the two open suitcases abandoned on the second bed, Hiram’s lofty voice that implied he was used to bossing around servants. “Yeah, I just met him today. He wants me to rush a frat with him.” 

He waits, unsure of how he expects FP to react. He’s not sure what he wants: disdain, excitement? To talk him out of it? An impressed quirk of the eyebrow: Geez, Coop, didn’t think that was your scene. 

But FP’s face is unreadably straight as he considers this information. “I’ve heard it’s better to do it with a friend.” He sips his cola. “You can look out for each other.” 

“Are you in one?” Hal asks. 

“Sure,” FP answers, surprising him. “Just by name, though, they don’t make me go to meetings or anything. Zeta Gamma’s the athletics frat. I don’t go to parties anymore since I’ve been on the wagon.” 

“But they didn’t make you go through initiation..” 

“Sure they did.” FP grins, winking at him like they’re in on some joke. “That was before Halloween. Piece of cake.” 

He sucks down a mouthful of soda, the straw making an ugly noise against the bottom of the glass. Suddenly Hal feels bewilderingly lonely, as though he and FP were separated by a gulf as wide as the three hundred miles that had previously been between them. FP’s fidgeting with the silver ring, and whatever the significance of the jewelry, the gesture cuts straight to Hal’s heart. FP had someone. No, it couldn’t be easy, but … FP’s life here seemed steady and sure in a way his hadn’t been in a long time. The sobriety chip alone pointed to vast progress and self-improvement. There was no good way to put it: Hal was jealous of him. 

Do you know how hard he must have worked for that chip, the voice in Hal’s head chastises him. He deserves it. What have you done to be proud of? 

It’s getting heavy, being in his own head. He looks around the bar, trying to keep himself from letting any of this show on his face. A stranger waves at him, and he starts before realizing it’s FP the boy had been greeting. 

FP slaps the table suddenly, eyes on the guy who’d waved. “Let’s go play pool. Come on.” He herds Hal out of the booth, a sturdy arm over his shoulders, towards a scarred and battered pool table in the far corner. Hal barely has time to grab his beer. The people who had been crowding about abandon their game, deferring to FP with grins and bold greetings. They stand politely back from him as he takes a cue, tossing one to Hal and grinding a square of chalk hard onto the point. 

Through blurring eyes Hal takes him in in fragments: his disarming smile, neatened hair, the carefree motions of his hands. Hal drops his head, staring very hard at the unvacuumed emerald carpet, worn by generations of shoes. 

He does his best not to cry.

Chapter Text

Fred’s already up when FP wakes on Monday morning, dressed and standing in front of the mirror at the foot of their bed while he combs his damp hair. For some reason the sight of him ready to leave, lunchbag already packed and sitting on the dresser, drives a spike of annoyance into FP’s heart. He kicks the tangled sheets off his legs and props himself up on his elbows. 

“What, are you sneaking out without saying goodbye?” 

FP glances at the clock on his nightstand and then the drawn shades over the window, sun streaming in brightly around them despite that it’s still before seven. Fred raises his eyes to FP’s in the mirror, his face the picture of surprise at FP’s outburst. 

“What’s going on?” Fred sets the comb down and tugs at the collar of his flannel shirt, straightening it. “You’ve been a cranky baby ever since Gladys moved in.” 

“A what?” FP sits up and scoots down to the end of the bed. 

“You know what I mean. You’ve been pouting all the time, and…” Fred turns, a slow, relieved smile gathering over his face as he recognizes FP’s playful expression. “You heard me,” he taunts. “You’re a cranky-” 

Fred cuts himself off with a yelp of dismay as FP grabs him and pulls him over the footboard onto the bed. He plants a hand hard on FP’s chest, trying to wriggle out of his grip. 

“I’m a what?” FP threatens, throwing an arm around Fred’s neck and wrapping his legs around him to hold him still. 

“You know what you are!” FP has him pinned in a wrestling hold, and Fred squirms, trying to use his slight frame at an advantage to slip backward out of FP’s grip. He gets stuck halfway there. “You’re a big, cranky baby and you’re jealous.” 

“Say that again,” FP demands playfully, pretending to tighten his arm around Fred’s throat. Fred pushes him off again, and FP can’t help but note the strength in the movement. Fred’s been gaining muscle since he started working regularly, and FP’s transfixed by the definition of his arms, the power and control in his gestures. His heart picks up a little when Fred slaps his chest again. 

“Stop it!” Fred’s grinning, looking like he doesn’t mind at all. “I have to go to work.” 

“Don’t.” FP pulls Fred close to him by his forearm, presses his mouth to Fred’s ear. Fred’s bicep is warm and tense under his hand. “Stay home and play hooky with me. I’ll blow off all my classes.” 

“Don’t tempt me.” Fred kisses him lightly on the nose and wiggles out of FP’s chokehold. “I’m going. But when I get back-” 

“When you get back what?” FP asks when Fred lets it trail off, readjusting his collar again. Fred sticks his tongue out. 

“That’s up to you. Now stop being so grumpy.” 

“Aye, aye.” FP says and pretends to salute. There’s nothing as beautiful to him as Fred’s laugh - the sound of it makes his insecurity melt like sugar. 

Fred comes close to the bed, leaning in for another kiss. “You know how much I love you, right?” There’s a playful shine to his eyes, but his voice couldn’t be more genuine. 

“I guess.” FP kisses his cheek, the kind of kiss he used to watch Fred’s parents give one another before school. Fred cups his face and looks deep into FP’s eyes, FP staring at the gold sparkle in Fred’s chocolate-brown. 

“I’m sorry,” FP apologizes - it’s impossible not to with Fred so warm and gentle and inches from his face. He felt his face begin to burn. “I didn’t know I was making you uncomfortable. I guess I was feeling left out, but I didn’t know if you picked up on it, and-” 

“I love you,” Fred repeats seriously. 

FP’s heart stops and then starts beating even faster. That was something FP took for granted about his boyfriend: Fred knew his insecurities inside out, and he didn’t tease when it mattered. Most of the time, anyway. Maybe he had been sulking all week, but only because Fred and Gladys hadn’t seen fit to include him in their brand-new twosome. They’d been out at some improv show the whole night before, and had already been throwing jokes FP wasn’t in on back and forth since she’d moved in. 

“Oh, by the way, I told Gladys you’d help her put up some more shelves this morning.” 

“You did what?” FP grouches. 

“Love you, bye!” Fred leaps onto the bed and kisses him loudly on the cheek before scurrying off down the hallway. FP hears the door of the duplex swing shut below him, breaking the silence of the early hour. 

FP yawns and wraps himself back in the blankets, eyeing the clock radio. He didn’t have classes until the afternoon, and could afford to sleep in. He felt a flicker of guilt that he was doing so when Fred couldn’t say the same: Fred could scamper around all he liked in the mornings, but FP had seen the huge dark circles under his eyes that meant he was wearing himself to the bone. He’d been slipping into bed late all week, asleep before his head landed on FP’s arm. FP hadn’t even had time to tell him about Hal coming back to Riverdale. 

Maybe he could convince him to take a day off, FP hoped, still feeling residual guilt from their argument. They could go somewhere together, relax like they used to. His tired thoughts turn to images of Fred smiling at him from the prow of a canoe, Fred in the passenger seat of their beater car, screaming along to the radio like he did when they were growing up. 

The shelves , he thought fuzzily as he closed his eyes. Well, if Gladys was such a feminist she could figure it out herself. He was going to dream about spoiling his boyfriend and wake up whenever he wanted. 

Feeling lighter than he had in awhile, FP fell back asleep. 

Penelope’s heart was pounding as she walked across the brilliant green campus, heading for her dorm room. With the arrival of October the trees had just begun to change colour, framing the university buildings in leaves that were speckled with yellow and gold. Dickenson Hall, her dorm, was especially pretty, coated in a climbing ivy that made it look every bit as beautiful as the photos she had seen of fall in New Hampshire. Penelope clutched her purse in her hands and walked with a spring in her step, mentally reliving the events of the past hour. 

She could hear voices inside as she reached her door, which was firmly shut, and paused to listen. 

“You are so beautiful.” A man’s voice, deep and husky, and then a girl’s warm laughter. If Penelope hadn’t known better she would have thought someone had left her roommate’s TV set on to a soap opera. But no, her roommate’s life was actually better than any soap opera episode. 

She knocks lightly, and immediately second-guesses herself. There’s a pause and a squeaking of bedsprings before Sierra, Penelope’s roommate, flings the door wide open. 

“Penelope, hi!” It was still early in the morning, and Sierra was in fuzzy slippers and the adorably oversized football jersey that she wore to bed. Penelope blushed, feeling her cheeks burn with embarrassment at having knocked when Sierra had a boy over. 

“Is it okay that I-?” 

“Of course it is! Come in.” Sierra walks back to her bed, where a single red rose is lying on the duvet. “Tom just came by to walk me to class.” She switches her gaze to her boyfriend. “She knows about us, Tom, don’t worry about it.” 

Penelope turns her eyes to the third person in the room, who was awkwardly hovering by Sierra’s closet, well out of sight from the door. Tom Keller was fully dressed, in a tight t-shirt and jeans that showed off his well-defined chest muscles. He gave Penelope an awkward smile and wave. 

Tom had never been anything but nice to Penelope in the month she’d known him, but she still felt immediately shy. For one thing, Tom was their RA and a full three years older than her, and for another thing he was gorgeous. Not Penelope’s type, really - though she was still figuring out what that meant - but gorgeous all the same. 

Her mother would be scandalized if she knew Penelope was staying in a co-ed dorm, which made it all the more exhilarating. Bathrooms were separate and boys and girls had largely same-sex roommates, but Rose still would have died of embarrassment if she’d seen Penelope squeezing around rowdy young men to get to the shower. Their other RA was a red-haired girl named Mary who Penelope found both amazing and intimidating. She wanted badly for Mary to like her, but so far the only interaction they’d had was when she’d knocked at their room four nights ago and asked Sierra to turn down her stereo. 

Sierra had flopped on her bed and was touching up her toenail polish, seemingly oblivious to her boyfriend’s discomfort. “I’m almost done!” she promises, as though reading Penelope’s mind and Tom’s awkward shifting. “I just have to get dressed quickly. Penelope, which one?” 

She points to her dresser, where two outfits are laid out over the top drawer. Sierra sweeps her long braids over her shoulder and gives her roommate a dazzling smile. “Your outfits always look so good.” 

The offhand comment shoots a dizzying blur of happiness straight to Penelope’s chest. It had been Penelope’s decision to buy a whole new wardrobe to start her year at Riverdale State, frequenting stores that she would never have stepped foot in in her old life. She had never even been shopping on her own, and had relied on frighteningly confident saleswomen and a handful of drugstore fashion magazines to guide her instincts. Her closet held a mix of cotton, polyester, and corduroy, fabrics that her mother, Rose, would never have let touch her only daughter’s skin. But that was the point - to be as far from Rose’s conception of what Penelope should do and wear as possible. She was determined to start her new life with a clean slate, being her own person. 

Whoever that was. 

“I like this one,” she offers shyly, indicating Sierra’s velvety black miniskirt and an athletic-looking crop top that managed to look polished and classy when Sierra wore it. The other was cute too - a pair of black overalls over a neon-patterned blouse, but Penelope didn’t want Sierra to think she was immature. Sierra beamed, snatching up the clothes and bouncing into the bathroom. She left the door half-open, and Penelope conscientiously became very interested in the scenery out the window. 

Tom sat carefully at the end of Sierra’s bed, moving aside some cassette tapes to sit on the blanket folded at the bottom. Sierra wasn’t too messy - Penelope, who was neat and tidy herself, would have been miserable if she was - but she bounced from obligation to obligation so quickly that the room always invariably ended up strewn with her belongings. By contrast, Penelope’s side looked plain: she’d left it purposefully a little bare, still uncertain about how the new Penelope would decorate. The few things she’d brought from home sat tidily on her nightstand, and a single poster hung above her well-made bed: an illustration of a tarot card that she’d bought with Sierra at the student welcoming fair. 

Penelope wiggled her foot, wondering when she’d get to tell Sierra her news. Well, no time like the present. Maybe it was cool to act like Tom wasn’t even there. 

“You’ll never guess where I was,” she called through the bathroom door. Sierra’s voice floated back brightly. 

“Where?” 

Penelope straightened herself up importantly. “Well, I went to the coffee shop this morning, and I happened to run into Hermione Reyes. She was incredibly busy, of course, but I sat with her for awhile.” 

Sitting opposite Hermione - easily the prettiest and most confident girl Penelope had ever met - had been the most exciting part of her day. She could be named first chair in the school orchestra later that afternoon, and it would still have been the most exciting part of her day. Sierra’s voice floats through the open door. 

“Hermione, president of the Sigmas?” 

“Yes, and I got to tell her how excited I was to pledge, and she seemed like she might like me. She’s so pretty, Sierra, and I mentioned you, of course, and she said she was excited to see so many first-years pledging.” Penelope’s excitement causes her to tap her foot even faster, Tom on the bed opposite looking awkwardly in between them. 

Sierra appears in the bathroom doorway, leaning nonchalantly against the wall. “That’s so cool,” she enthuses, sounding both upbeat and cooler than it all. Despite Sierra’s similar ambition to pledge Sigma Alpha Phi - the two girls had bonded over it in their first week - her roommate never seemed as concerned as Penelope about the upcoming rush season. Probably because she was interesting, beautiful, confident, and had no worries about getting in. “I’m so glad we’re rushing together.” 

For the second time in that conversation, Penelope straightens up under the warm glow of her roommate’s interest. Sierra already knew that Penelope had been dreaming about joining the sorority since she had found out what it was. It seemed like the answer to her prayers - a ready-made group of female friends who would love her, support her, and teach her how to be her own person. Somehow she had pinned all her hopes and dreams on becoming a Sigma, and had been obsessively learning about Sigma Alpha Phi since she’d first stepped onto campus. 

As an added bonus, she and Sierra would be spending even more time together if they both got in. Penelope knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the other Sigma girls would take care of her the way she so desperately craved. And she would return the favor! Sure, she was only a lowly first-year now, but under the wing of the smartest and most wonderful girls on campus she could eventually become one of their most cherished members. 

She could even be president one day - something she thought she’d never hope for again after her disastrous high school attempt to run for student council. She was simply too weird to vote for at her old school - but here it was different. She’d even changed her last name to shrug off her old identity - since the day she’d moved in, she’d been introducing herself as Penelope Brooke. Penelope Brooke was fun, humble, mature, sophisticated without being too privileged, and best of all she fit right in at Riverdale State. She was eighteen, almost broke, and not tied down by anything. 

Sierra beams at Tom. “Ready to go?” She pushes him before her out the door - apart from Penelope, no one in the dorm was supposed to know they were dating. Sierra scoops up her bookbag and gives Penelope a jazzy wave over her shoulder. Penelope knew she was off to her political science class, and would probably go out to eat with Tom after. Maybe she’d be able to find them in the cafeteria and join them for lunch - or maybe, she thought with a thrill, she’d bump into Hermione or some more of the Sigma girls again. If she could endear herself to them now, it would be all the better when rush week started. 

The red rose lies abandoned on Sierra’s unmade bed. Penelope, who had a fondness for flowers and couldn’t stand to see it wilt, quickly picked it up and plopped it into an almost-full glass of water on her roommate’s nightstand. Someone - probably Tom - had trimmed all the thorns off the stem. She smiled at her own gesture: Sierra would be happy that the rose hadn’t died. 

Roses usually made her think of her old life, especially red ones. Those, and maple syrup - she avoided it every time she went to the cafeteria. But she was suddenly a little envious that Sierra’s boyfriend was bringing her roses. It seemed gently and unutterably romantic. 

Penelope’s heart suddenly pounds a little faster. What if Hermione thought she wasn’t Sigma material because she didn’t have a boyfriend? Most of the girls would have one, wouldn’t they? She wasn’t sure. She’d have to ask Sierra after class. Hopefully Sierra wasn’t sick of or suspicious from her questions - Penelope felt like she’d been grilling her since they met on how to live a normal eighteen-year-old life. 

She’d never done it before. 

She glances at the phone on her neat-as-a-pin desk and thinks suddenly about calling Clifford. She wrote him the occasional letter - they were still unsent, granted, waiting in her desk drawer for her to mail them with an unassuming postmark - but she hadn’t heard her brother’s voice in months. 

Brother. Her blood went cold at the slip-up. No, husband. Ex-husband. Dammit. 

Forget it. Penelope bounds to her feet, crossing to the bathroom mirror and quickly combing out her hair. She wished sometimes that she had the courage to do something different with it - it hung long and red down her back, pulled away from her face in a headband. She’d leafed through a hairstyle magazine a few nights ago, but hadn’t found anything that felt right. Sierra had changed her hairstyle at least a dozen times in the month they’d been at school, and she looked absolutely perfect every time. Maybe once she pledged Sigma, one of her new sorority sisters would give her a makeover. 

I am Penelope Brooke, she chants to herself as she fixes her hair, sealing her past life firmly behind her. Brooke, Brooke, Brooke. 

It was exhilarating - having nothing to think about beyond first-year classes and pledging a sorority. She threw herself a dazzling smile - a Sigma Alpha Phi smile. Everything would go right this year. It had to. It was already more than she’d ever dreamed. 

Crossing the room, she picked up her violin case and her sheet music. Her first music class wouldn’t start until nine-thirty, but she’d discovered the rehearsal hall stayed open all day for students to practice. The music building was easily one of Penelope’s favourite parts about the campus - with brand-new wood walls and plush, comforting rehearsal rooms, it was utterly beautiful. It was both modern enough to shake her out of her old life, and yet gave her the sense of being enveloped in safety and warmth. Everyone was politely quiet and charming, and when she slid her hand along the glossy wood panelling, vibrating with life, she finally knew that she was where she was meant to be. 

If she was going to meet a boyfriend, it would be perfect if it was there. She wished, not for the first time, that Sierra played an instrument. But while Penelope was planning to major in music, Sierra already had her major planned out: she’d explained to Penelope one night while they were crunching potato chips in front of Sierra’s mini-tv that she wanted to study criminal law. It was a perfectly ordinary evening for Sierra, but for Penelope, who had never had potato chips or a sleepover in all her life, that friday night had been extraordinarily thrilling. Sierra liked being her roommate - she’d said it herself. The thought made her unutterably happy. 

Smoothing down her plaid skirt (71% polyester) and her matching blazer (29% rayon), she did a pirouette in front of the mirror and skipped to the door with her violin case in hand. She loved the piece she was working on for class, Hermione Reyes knew her name, and soon she’d have a social life and a support system beyond her wildest dreams. 

Locking the door behind her and slipping the ribbon-tied key into her purse, Penelope glanced once more at the luggage tag she’d affixed to the handle of her violin case. 

Penelope Brooke was written in neat cursive, the letters shining through the clear plastic.

Chapter Text

FP jolts awake at half-past-eight to a sound like the house is coming down. He sits up in bed, pushing his messy hair out of his eyes, and squints in the light coming through the window. There it was again - a shuddering, grinding noise that made the base of the lamp rattle violently on their night table. Then a crash. 

Half-expecting an earthquake or fire, he stumbles downstairs in his boxer shorts. “What is going on here?” he yells, bypassing the kitchen to storm into Gladys’ room.

Gladys turns to look quizzically at him from where she’s standing on a kitchen chair, Fred’s cordless drill held in one hand. There’s a hole leaking plaster in the wall in front of her, and a crooked wooden shelf held up by two twisted metal brackets. 

“I’m putting up shelves,” she declares, flicking the bangs out of her eyes with one hand. FP storms over to investigate the damage. 

“Like hell you are. You wrecked this, look.” He points at the splintered brass brackets holding the shelf to the wall, where Gladys had driven the screws so deeply into the plate that they’d cracked. The metal was dented inward in an alarming state. He pulls on the lip of the wood. “This is going to-” 

“Be careful!” Gladys snaps. With one sharp tug FP had removed the entire shelf from the wall, sending plaster crumbling all over the floor and their feet. Gladys gapes at him. 

“Why did you pull it out!” 

“I shouldn’t be able to pull it out! Did you even try to put it in a stud?” 

“It was stable enough until you got your big mitts on it,” Gladys gripes, lining the drill up with the last bracket on the second shelf and firing the trigger. A truly horrible noise erupts as she grinds the screw into the plate, plaster crumbling down from behind the bracket as the metal bends. 

“Augh, stop!” FP covers his ears. “Some of us are trying to sleep!” 

“Oh, grow up.” Gladys steps down off the chair and plants her hands on her hips, cocking her head to examine the shelf. “I’d ask you if it’s straight, but I wouldn’t want to over-tax your neanderthal brain.” 

FP slaps the shelf, and it falls immediately to the bedroom floor, the ill-fated screws and metal plates jangling away into the corner of the room. Gladys’ mouth drops open, and the shock on her face is so funny that FP bursts into unexpected laughter. Suddenly he’s choking as Gladys swings the flat of her hand hard into his throat, pushing him several steps backward and effectively cutting off his windpipe. 

“Sorry,” she says flatly, removing her hand as FP wheezes for breath and tries not to gag. He doesn’t get the sense that she apologizes for much. “Force of habit.” 

“Fuck.” FP holds his throat, struggling to breathe. “Where did Fred find you, again? The mob?” 

Incredibly, Gladys just tilts her head back and laughs deep in her throat. She really was pretty when she laughed. Not that he was looking. But they could have done worse as far as Fred’s hopes of finding a cute roommate had gone. 

“Did you have to come down here naked?” she asks finally. FP glances down at himself. He’d grown hot in the middle of the morning and swapped his sweatpants for the first pair of boxer shorts his hand had touched in the drawer - a gift from Fred last Valentine’s Day with huge pink hearts all over them. 

“Well, I thought there was an earthquake, didn’t I?” FP gripes. “Give me that. Fred has a stud finder upstairs.” 

He swipes the cordless drill out of her hand and storms back to their bedroom. When he comes back down with Fred’s toolkit in hand, Gladys is sitting on her dresser with a mug of coffee. 

“You want?” She indicates a second mug on the small end table. FP takes it begrudgingly and gulps from it. It burns his tongue, but it’s as delicious as the pot she had made yesterday. 

“Watch and learn,” he says, sliding the stud finder along the wall. He roots in Fred’s toolbox for new brackets and nails, carefully mounting the hardware before setting the shelves on top. Gladys begrudgingly holds them as he fires the nails in.

“I lost this chapter of the lesbian handbook,” Gladys says wryly. FP’s surprised - he hadn’t thought she’d had a sense of humour. It also makes his shoulders prickle in a weird way that he’s never been able to shake, the same odd, out-of-depth feeling he gets when he’s talking with other gay people. He’s not used to it - doesn’t know if he’ll ever be. Gladys keeps chattering away, oblivious to his discomfort. “Cars are what I’m good at. Don’t go to the student garages if you want an oil change, they’ll rip you off. I got it handled.” 

“Do I look like someone who can’t change his own oil?” 

Gladys raises an eyebrow but shrugs complacently. FP glances awkwardly down at his boxer shorts again - he had considered changing when he’d got upstairs, but hadn’t wanted Gladys to think it was for her benefit. “My apologies to your masculinity.” 

She bends down and starts picking up the bent nails, piling them in her hand and ignoring him. The shelves stay put. FP hovers awkwardly, not sure where they’re leaving this conversation, until Gladys stands up, brushing her hair out of her face. 

“I’ll take it,” he says, opening his hands so she can dump the busted nails in. But Gladys doesn’t hand them over. 

“I didn’t grow up with much either,” she says measuredly. “My mom raised me alone on waitressing tips for the most part. I got here on my scholarship and from selling weed to a bunch of freshmen all throughout high school.” She shrugs and empties the handful of nails into his palm. “Just wanted to say I get it. But don’t think you’re the only person here struggling.” 

“Thanks for the tip,” says FP flatly, being purposefully exasperating. He can’t keep himself from being rude sometimes - it’s a defence mechanism as reliable as his drinking had been. But Gladys seems nonplussed, turning around and ignoring his reply. She starts piling books from her desk onto one of the shelves and stepping back to admire them as though he’s not in the room. After a while FP turns around and lets himself out, feeling grumpier than ever for a reason he can’t quite place. 

“The Sigma Alpha Phi rush party is a crucial social event,” Hermione Gomez says coldly. She flicks her long black hair over her shoulder, where it falls perfectly against her brand new sweater. For once, Hermione’s unaware of how her hair looks, focusing the most pointed glare she can muster on the athlete in the booth opposite her. “You can’t break up with me right now. You can’t.” 

Harry Clayton shifts awkwardly in his seat, and Hermione gives her cappuccino a furious stir, stabbing the thin silver spoon into the bottom of the mug hard enough to clatter. It was ice cold - she’d been sitting in this booth for almost an hour. First, some wimpy Pippi Longstocking first-year had shown up and slobbered all over her about the Sigma Alpha rush week, and then Harry had been almost twenty minutes late. Twenty minutes late meeting Hermione Lodge was inexcusable - even for the president of the athletic fraternity and up until this very moment, Hermione’s boyfriend. She tosses her spoon aside. 

“What the hell is the matter with you anyway? You couldn’t wait until the end of the month to do this? I am the president of the Sigmas! I can’t show up dateless for the rush party. Not to mention Halloween’s coming up.” 

“If all you want me for is arm candy for the Halloween party, I think that answers your question,” Harry says dryly. Hermione snorts in annoyance. 

“I knew it was a mistake to date another jock after I broke up with Evan. But I thought you of all people would understand shit like this.” She points cuttingly at him with a freshly french manicured finger. “The way you’re running the Zetas is a joke this year. You’re making everyone in the Greek family look bad.” 

“I’m done,” says Harry curtly, pulling out his wallet and throwing some money on the table. “I’m not trying to start a war between the Sigmas and the Zetas. It’s just not working out for me. I’m sorry.” 

“Not yet you’re not,” Hermione replies archly. She watches with pleasure as his eyes widen in brief fear before a sad smile overtakes his face. 

“See you, Hermione.” 

“Yeah, thanks for nothing. Keep your stupid money.” Hermione shoves it across the table at him and looks pointedly away out the window, boiling with rage. She glares furiously at a pack of students playing frisbee on the quad, barely noting the chiseled abs on the tall blond guy who was throwing. 

She glances back in time to see a dark-haired guy stepping through the door of the cafe, clad in a cashmere sweater despite the mild fall and a luxurious-looking cape with a turned-up collar. 

Their eyes met. The stranger raised his eyebrows slightly, and Hermione found herself subtly looking him over. There was someone with class. He fit in better in the upscale coffee shop than Harry and his grubby football jersey ever had. And more intriguingly, she’d never seen him before. Class and an air of mystery. 

Hermione watches him approach her booth, sipping casually from her stone-cold cappuccino.

“Is anyone sitting here?” the stranger asks, touching the booth opposite her. He’s wearing a pair of expensive-looking leather gloves, but his forearms are taut and muscular. Hermione tilts her head in a way she knows makes her hair fall irresistibly over one shoulder, and flashes the stranger a smile. 

“No one important,” she replies. 

The offices of the State Gazette - the college’s prestigious print newspaper - were in an unassuming brick building not far from where Hal had sat through his first Monday class earlier that day. Prudence had written an itemized first-day to-do list in the new agenda she’d bought for him, and “join staff of campus paper” had been the ambitious top item on the page. 

Knowing his mother would be calling the dorm room he shared with Hiram Lodge within the next few hours to hear how his first day had gone, Hal had dragged himself through the paces of finding out the name of the editor. He’d mechanically arranged a meeting and heads out after his final class without any real enthusiasm - his head was spinning so much after four advanced-level journalism classes that all he really wants is dinner and a nap, in that order. 

When he steps into the bullpen-style office, though, a wave of nostalgia crashes over him. The Riverdale Register was assembled in a much smaller office space, but the symphony of clacking typewriter keys, ringing phones, banging file cabinet drawers, and buzzing fluorescents took him immediately back to his father’s offices on Main Street. He could smell coffee and newsprint, two scents that never failed to make him nostalgic for home. There were other memories in there too - memories of himself and Alice hunched over the editor’s desk at the Blue and Gold office, going over the layout of the high school paper for the thousandth time. It hurts - but all the good feelings from his years of work on the school paper come back too, the familiar thrill of rushing to meet a deadline and working a memo pad full of notes into a story. He suddenly feels calm. 

The Gazette offices were unassuming but well-supplied: there were tidy rows of typewriters, computer terminals, fax machines and phones on every desk. Glancing at the computer screen of the closest hard-at-work writer rewards him with a glimpse of words being assembled into tidy columns, which brought up a now-unfamiliar urge to be doing the same. For the first time, Hal feels a hopeful sensation of having done the right thing for himself. He’d been swept along on a tide of ambition and change at the campus TV station in Boston, but if he was honest with himself, writing and assembling a story behind the scenes had never stopped being his passion. It was Alice who was taken with the cameras, with the pace and glamour - as much as you got on a student production anyway - of appearing on screen to read the news. Hal’s first love had been for the smell of printed paper - and now it came back and nestled in his chest with a feeling like home. 

Meeting the editor of the paper, a college senior with thick auburn hair and wire-rimmed glasses, brought him back to earth in a hurry. Jonah herds Hal brusquely into his private office and shuts the door behind him, sitting down pompously at his desk and casting a cursory glance at Hal’s portfolio before tossing his carefully typed resume aside. 

“We’re not really looking to take on any new staff at the moment. And I’m sorry to say we don’t usually hire freshmen-” 

Hal sits up a little on the uncomfortable chair he’d been provided. “I’m not exactly a freshman-” 

“Right, it says you transferred this year.” Jonah sounds about as interested as he’d be in hearing Hal had eaten oatmeal for breakfast. There’s a light flashing on the answering machine on his desk, and at least half of the editor’s attention seems to be taken up by the little red dot. “The school still considers you a freshman, though.” 

“I transferred from the journalism program-” 

“Right.” Jonah puts on a placid smile, clipping some papers together on his desk. “Maybe next year.” 

Stung, Hal feels blood rush to his face. “I was the editor of my high school paper, and I’ve been an intern at multiple different-” 

“This is a college paper, Hector.” 

“Hal-”

“Hal.” Jonah flicks a hand to indicate the office beyond the door. “Everyone here was the editor of their high school paper and has been an intern somewhere. It’s nothing personal. I just don’t need any more staff.” 

“I have a few of my stories-” Hal speaks up anxiously, certain that his work could speak for itself. But Jonah doesn’t move to pick up the portfolio he’d discarded. 

“Honestly, I don’t have time to read them. We’re in the middle of putting an issue together.” 

The way he explains this, as though Hal had no idea what went into putting together a paper, pushes Hal over the edge. 

“My father owns the Riverdale Register,” he snaps, unaware he was going to pull the nepotism card before it was out. “I grew up in newspaper offices. I think I could be an asset to the paper.” 

He sounds like a whiny piece of shit even to his own ears. Hal holds his breath for a second, thinking he’d be asked to leave immediately, but Jonah suddenly pauses in the act of straightening a glass paperweight on his desk. He cocks his head a little, his light blue eyes seemingly interested behind his thick frames. 

“Your father is Lewis Cooper?”

Hal holds his breath, afraid of what’s coming next. But suddenly Jonah grins. 

“I’m in his old frat. Your dad was a legend around here in his day. Are you rushing?” 

“N-” Hal starts to reply in the negative, and then pauses, remembering Hiram’s enthusiasm. “N-Yes?” 

“Of course you are.” Jonah suddenly looks over Hal with interest. “We do need someone to cover a food poisoning item for page ten. If you’re interested.” 

“Food poisoning?” Hal repeats slowly. 

“Yeah, the cafeteria hot dogs were off.” 

Hal and Alice’s latest story at the TV station in Boston had involved a string of arson cases, and had required extensive fact-checking and interviews at the police station. Now this was going to be his next job. Warm hot dogs. But Jonah was suddenly speaking to him in a tone that was much more friendly. 

“I promised it would make the paper. Don’t bother with an angle on it, just give me the basics. If you do an okay job with it, I guess I need someone on the society column.” 

The society column. Puff pieces about country clubs and greek frats. Hal was about to shove back his chair and leave with the rest of his dignity when he thought again about the comforting smell of newsprint and the tidy rows of fax machines. How Alice used to sit on his desk when they were chatting about a deadline, her long hair falling over the paper when she bent her head to read. 

Jonah was smiling at him. He shot Hal a wink that caught him entirely off guard and leaned back in his chair, extending a hand across the desk. “With a chance to move up and onto different assignments of course. What do you say?” 

Swallowing the unpleasant taste of nepotism, Hal reaches out and shakes his hand.

Chapter Text

Fred’s still at work when Gladys arrives home from her last class of the day, FP brushing past her on his way out the door, clad in blue and gold practice clothes and muttering something about football in lieu of a hello. Alone in the duplex, Gladys kicks off her boots and installs herself comfortably in the living room, unwrapping and devouring the huge meatball sub she’d picked up from the campus deli in anticipation of an evening alone. Though she was beginning to click with at least one of her housemates, it feels amazing to have the place to herself. 

With tomato-sauce stained fingers she turns the pages of sheet music that are messily scattered about and pencils in a few notes, humming to herself under her breath. If her music theory teacher could have seen her he would have assumed she was diligently working on the homework he’d assigned - but she wasn’t. In truth, she was working on a new song for the band she hadn’t quite assembled yet - a song inspired by one person. A redhead with brown eyes you could get lost in. 

Yeah, she had it bad. But at least no one was around to witness it. 

She’s retrieved her guitar and is strumming a few chords when the shrill peal of the hallway telephone interrupts her thoughts. Gladys sighs after the third ring and shifts her guitar off her lap, stepping over the floral footstool they still hadn’t quite found a place for to answer the phone. 

“Hello?” She’d given Mary the duplex’s number, and was hoping it might be her on the other end. But the voice on the line is male. 

“Hello, I’m calling for Forsythe Jones, please.” 

“For who?” 

“Forsythe Pendelton Jones. This is the Riverdale Memorial Hospital.” 

Pendelton. Right. Gladys files that one away for later, even has enough time to ungenerously hope she’s about to hear the results of some embarrassing medical tests. “He’s not in.” 

“Are you able to get in touch with him?” Gladys freezes in the act of working a bit of sandwich out of her back tooth at his next words. “He’s listed as the emergency contact for a Mr. Fred Andrews.” 

“Shit.” The cuss slips out before she can censor herself. “What happened?” She’s suddenly gripping the phone tighter, an oddly maternal instinct she hadn’t known she possessed all but engaged. “He’s there? Is he all right?” 

“Yes, fine. He was involved in a minor workplace accident. But it’s not advisable that he drive, so we’re reaching out to see if his emergency contact can come get him.” 

“Okay, hang on.” Gladys starts walking back toward the living room, stretching the cord of the hallway phone to its limit. Her boots are lying beside the flowered ottoman where she’d left them. “I’ll get - uh - Forsythe. We’ll be there in a few.” 

She drops the phone when the nurse hangs up, letting it land on the shag carpeting and diving for her shoes. 

“Oh, he’s going to lose his shit,” Gladys predicts to the empty hallway as she laces them messily. She had a bad feeling she’s going to bear the brunt of her high-strung housemate’s guilt and grief when she drops this bomb. At the same time, she’s equally worried about whatever the vague and ominous workplace accident had been. “Fucking hell.” 

Practice is in full swing when she reaches the field behind the performing arts centre, the lights already on despite it still being early afternoon. The metal bleachers are packed with random spectators - students, other athletes, and more than one gawking group of starry-eyed girls. Gladys jogs up to the sidelines and waves her arms to attract FP’s attention - he’s not hard to pick out of the crowd, and it looks like most of the spectators are fixated on him. As she’s standing there she watches him break into a smooth fifty-yard sprint and pick the spiralling football clean out of the air, catching it as gently as a baby. The stands erupt with praise as he sends it arching back across the sky, slowing down as the blast of a whistle calls all the blue-and-yellow-shirted players back together. 

“FP!” Gladys yells, getting his attention at last. He turns to look at her without animosity for once - Gladys feels oddly struck by what a difference it makes seeing him in his element, rather than lumbering around grumpily in heart-patterned boxers. He looks calm and polished and almost charmingly handsome in his uniform, his floppy dark hair falling in his eyes. He gives her a quizzical look, and then glances back at the huddle. 

“IT’S FRED!” Gladys yells, which gets his attention. Ignoring the whistle blast, he jogs up to her. 

“What?” 

“Fred’s hurt,” Gladys says. The football coach is yelling something behind them. “The hospital just called for you. I don’t think it’s serious, but something happened at work.” 

Fear flares across FP’s expression, the panic she’d imagined so well when she’d hung up the phone. He turns visibly paler, and his dark eyes fix on her face with deep, luminous intensity. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know. They just asked you to come pick him up.” 

He darts up to the coach, says a quick word to him, and then is racing back to Gladys so quickly he almost crashes into her. Before either of them can display any animosity, his hot fingers suddenly curl tightly and needily around her wrist. She’s not sure he notices, but she’s struck momentarily speechless by the gesture. 

“Fred took the truck to work.” His voice is hoarse with fear. 

“It’s ok.” Gladys puts a hand up to calm him down. “Listen, they said it wasn’t serious. We’ll find a - Hey!”  

FP sprints up to another player, exchanges some words with them, and then comes running back to her with a set of car keys in his hand. “Come on,” he says, and they set off for the parking lot, Gladys matching his stride. FP doesn’t look back, and no one yells at him to ask where he’s going. They let themselves into a blue sedan crowded with fast food wrappers and someone else’s books, and FP steers them out of the parking lot and in the direction of the hospital. 

The fifteen-minute drive passes in tense silence, FP drumming his fingers in a frantic tempo on the steering wheel that reminds Gladys that he’d once been a musician. They don’t have to wander far when they get to the hospital - Fred is sitting facing the door in the Emergency waiting room, with two other guys in concrete-splattered jeans and reflective vests. 

Fred looks different in his work clothes, Gladys notes, less like the admissions-brochure hippie kid who had crossed his legs on her bed holding her guitar. He looks older and more ordinary, blending seamlessly into the mundane surroundings, even with blood coating the front of his shirt. His face brightens below a white bandage when they come rushing in. FP goes straight to him, cupping Fred’s face to examine the bandage on his head. 

“What happened?” he asks, his voice gentle in a way Gladys hadn’t heard before. 

“It was stupid,” Fred says, embarassedly moving FP’s hand off his cheek. “I walked into a beam.” 

“Beam walked into him,” one of the other guys offers with a smile. He’s older, with salt-and-pepper hair and thick forearms. Fred nods, and sends the older man a look of gratitude and humility. 

“No concussion. Just a lot of blood.” For a moment before he smiles he looks absolutely exhausted, and Gladys sees FP take in the pronounced lines under his eyes, his face bleached pale and listless in the glare of the fluorescents overhead. Then his trademark grin breaks over his cheeks, and the tiredness in his face smooths out from the brightness of it. “They gave me stitches. I’m going to go home for a few hours or the rest of the day.” 

“The rest of the day,” FP says, soft but firm. Fred opens his mouth as if to argue, and then closes it again. “Jake, Mike, this is FP,” he says instead. 

“The football player,” the bigger one says loudly, extending a hand across his friend’s chest, as though he recognizes FP immediately. “Good to finally meet you.” 

Fred smiles deeper at this, and a flash of the old playfulness is back in his face. “I talk about you,” he says, his tone teasing but proud. FP looks like he’s been overwhelmed with information. He looks from the two construction workers to Fred to the reception desk and back, and then finally, not without panic, at Gladys. She walks over and sits next to the group. 

“This is my other housemate, Gladys,” Fred introduces her. He does it naturally, though his voice is abnormally faint. “They’ll get me home. Jake and Mike were waiting with me,” he explains. 

The bigger guy rises, followed by his friend. “Well, we’ll head out now. Take all the time you need. Make sure you file those forms, but it can wait for tomorrow.” 

Fred nods, and they file out, leaving dusty boot prints on the hospital floor. Gladys sits down next to him as they leave. FP is gnawing his lower lip in worry, pacing back and forth. 

“Can I?” Fred asks, stretching out both arms towards their shoulders. They walk him out to the borrowed car as a triad, and FP silently stoops down so that Gladys’ smaller stature can keep up. Fred tries to make chatty small-talk on the drive back, but the unhappy line between FP’s eyebrows never quite unfurrows. Gladys feels awkwardly caught in the middle, an interloper in their private drama. When they pull up to the sidewalk in front of the house, she stays close at Fred’s side as FP leads him carefully up the porch steps. 

“Stop here a sec,” he says when they’re back in the duplex, crossing the living room towards the stairs. Gladys helps lower him down into their flower-patterned chair, where he sags back into the upholstery, his face very pale. FP hovers indecently close, like a worried mother. 

“Are you okay? Should I call the hospital back?” 

“Just light-headed.” Fred stretches out his shaking arms and looks at his palms with interest. “Nothing’s wrong, I just need a sec.” 

“Do you want to stay here? We don’t have to go upstairs. Do you need a blanket? Water? Anything?” 

Fred smiles again, raising a hand slightly to reach out towards his boyfriend. FP, in turn, is leaning so closely over him that he’s about to fall over into the chair. There’s something very tender in Fred’s face, something playful and electric in the air between them despite FP’s genuine near-panic, and Gladys realizes with some awkwardness that she’s a third wheel. There’s a fondness passing between them that suggests they’d be all over each other by now if she wasn’t standing here, and even though the thought of even attempting a cuddle with Forsythe Jones and his greasy hair (or even skinny Fred, who was all knees and elbows) turned her off, she wasn’t one to hang around cockblocking an obviously emotionally-keyed up couple. She ought to make an excuse to leave. 

“We’ll cancel dinner with Hal,” FP was saying. 

“No,” Fred protests. “I want to see him.” He fixes his eyes on Gladys. “You’re coming, right Glads?” 

“Am I invited?” 

“Of course,” Fred announces firmly, and FP, who had clearly opened his mouth to answer in the negative, shuts it with an incredulous look. “We’re roommates. We’re not going to kick you out for dinner ‘cause we have company over.” 

“We’re not?” FP asks, and Fred socks him wearily in the arm with a still-shaking hand. 

“I’ll be there. But you’re probably okay from here, right?” Gladys asks, wanting to give them their privacy. “I have some reading to do at the library. I mean, I’ve seen you carry him upstairs before.” 

FP glares at her as though her rudeness is beyond anything he’s ever experienced in his life. I’m doing this for you, idiot, Gladys thinks, but keeps her face politely blank. Fred seems to understand and blinks tiredly at her, a weak grin tugging the corners of his cheeks up. Gladys wonders if he ever gets tired of smiling - she thinks she’s seen him smile doggedly through every bad day or hard conversation they’ve ever had, like his resting state of being was to emanate a hopeful charm. 

“I’m okay, Gladys. Sorry if I made you miss class.” 

“You didn’t. But if you did, I’d be thanking you.” Gladys squeezes his shoulder as she heads back to the front door, pretending for their benefit that she’s in a hurry. “Hang in there.” 

Sure enough, when she steals a glance back into the living room while getting her jacket, they’re both in the chair, their limbs wound together and their foreheads glued. Living with a couple, Gladys thought, fixing her hair briefly in the hall mirror as she exhaled the stress of the last hour. Sheesh. 

Well, it was better than Penny’s townie guys. Somewhat. 

Hal stands in front of the full-length mirror in his dorm room, dubiously buttoning and unbuttoning a royal blue cardigan over his button-up shirt. He feels overdressed for what is undoubtedly a casual get-together with high school friends, but he’d previously been in a t-shirt and sweatpants slump all week - muddling through classes and coming alive only in the evenings, when he typed away at articles for the Gazette and stared at the payphone on the library wall, trying to talk himself out of calling his ex-girlfriend. Besides, overdressing is the norm in their room - Hiram’s been inexplicably wearing his cape indoors since they met.

The campus radio station is on, playing a Hootie and the Blowfish song that makes him grit his teeth. He frowns at his reflection, turning to the side to scrutinize the effect of the unbuttoned cardigan, trying not to think of Alice and whether she’d pick up the phone if he called. 

What did one bring to a dinner party, even an informal one? His gut instinct told him a six pack of beer - but FP’s newfound sobriety meant it would be a dick move. Flowers felt feminine and useless, an embarrassing gesture out of his parents’ time, and he had no idea what they were eating for dinner or where to find a dessert or side dish this late. “What should I do?” he asks his roommate. “My friends are having a dinner party, and I don’t know what to bring.” 

“Do you want some coke?” Hiram offers. He’s lying on his back on the bed, his black cape spread out under him while he listlessly turns pages in a glossy business magazine, his textbooks in a forgotten heap at his feet. 

“I don’t think they like it,” Hal replies, before deciding he’d actually love a Coke himself. “Do you have diet?” 

“All cocaine is diet, Harold.” 

There was a long silence where they looked at each other, and then Hal turned back to the mirror, leaving the comment unacknowledged. He pulled the cardigan off, irreparably stretching one sleeve, and threw it on the bed. It had been Alice’s favourite colour on him. 

“I wouldn’t stress about it,” Hiram said breezily, his voice condescending. “I doubt your blue-collar friends are expecting anything sophisticated.” 

Despite never having met them, Hiram had been throwing out digs at Fred and FP since learning where Hal was going on Friday night. Hal had almost had the feeling that he was bitter about not being invited. When he’d asked what Hiram had planned for the night, however, he’d been treated to an itinerary of parties so extensive that F. Scott Fitzgerald would have balked. So maybe Hal was imagining things. Hiram had asked, somewhat nonchalantly, if he should come to the dinner when the topic had first come up, but Hal had awkwardly admitted he wasn’t sure if the invitation extended to other guests, and Hiram had backed off. 

Hiram snaps a magazine closed and rolls off the bed, stepping into his shoes. “I’m out,” he says curtly, offering nothing else in the way of goodbyes. “Don’t wait up for me.” 

Then he’s gone, the cape with him. Hal fastens his watch and ties his shoes, turning off the radio and locking the dorm room behind him. 

It’s windy when he emerges from the oatmeal-coloured halls of his dorm to the vibrant just-turning autumn colours of campus. He takes the path down by the water, following it in a loop towards one of the neighbourhoods near the school, turning his collar up against the chill. 

The address FP had given him leads to a little duplex in the student ghetto with a well-worn porch and a brick facade that’s seen better days. Through the front bay window, he can see a sheet has been tacked up in lieu of a curtain, and a recycling bin on the front porch is heaped with pizza boxes and soda cans among an assortment of other mismatched junk - a single bike wheel, a coil of christmas lights, and a folded, cobwebby camping chair. The bushes at the bottom of the porch are creeping up the railing in tendrils that should give the whole thing a haunted feeling, but instead manage to be oddly charming. The house number Hal’s looking at has been tagged on the brick in blue spray paint. 

He raps on the door with his knuckles. Though it feels like a quiet tap, the house abruptly comes alive at his knock - he hears the sound of raised voices, shuffling feet, and more than one person announcing his arrival. Then the door flings open and someone pounces on him - Hal finds himself reeling backwards, locked in an enormous hug, his arms firmly wrapped around the warm body that had launched itself on top of him. 

“HAL!” Fred yells in his ear, squeezing the life out of him, unapologetic in exuberant, unrestrained happiness. Hal finds himself grinning cheesily, even as a pang of guilt hits out of nowhere, a reminder of everything Fred had been through while Hal had been off at school. 

Fred releases him and steps back, and Hal’s slapped in the face by how prematurely adult he looks - tall and lean and suntanned, with a muscular chest and the beginnings of wrinkles around his eyes. Gone are the raggedy band T-shirts of his youth - he’s dressed in clean, faded jeans and a flannel shirt, a white bandage on his forehead with just a smidge of blood on it. He looks tired, but warm and whole and different in a way Hal hadn’t yet noticed about himself in the years since graduation. Hal can’t take his eyes off him. 

“What happened?” Hal cries, pointing out the head injury. Everything seems to have been set right by Fred’s appearance - he’d forgotten in his absence how Fred could make you feel genuinely at ease just by beaming at you. Fred laughs and shrugs it off, though Hal gets an alarming glimpse of a hospital bracelet on one wrist when his hand floats towards his head. 

“Bumped my head at work. Come in, come in.” 

FP appears behind him, filling the doorway, a spatula in one hand. He smiles at Hal and greets him with that same one-armed, back-thumping hug, which manages to be less awkward this time. Fred pulls him into the narrow entryway - really just a tiny stretch of floor housing a coat rack and an enormous mountain of shoes. There are ten times as many coats and bags on the rack than there are places to hang them. 

“Just throw your stuff anywhere,” Fred tells him, and Hal steps obediently out of his shoes. He can’t stop staring at his old friend, the difference between the person in front of him and his memories. Maybe it’s less pronounced than FP’s transformation, but something about the poignancy of his memories of Fred makes him stare even longer. Fred had been his best friend in the world once. 

“How is work?” Hal demands, some of his sadness lifting as he follows them through a narrow hall. “How’s that going?” The house has a simple layout: living room and stairs to the left and kitchen to the right, the latter smelling enticingly of spaghetti sauce and the former housing a garishly patterned chair and ottoman. Hal jolts a little when he meets the third person in the space - an intimidating and gorgeous brunette in an oversized flannel and leather motorbike boots. She looks him up and down judgmentally before rising from the couch and shaking his hand in a firm grip. 

“It’s good! It’s good! This is Gladys, our roommate,” Fred introduces them chattily, zooming through the room. “We’re almost done getting dinner ready. We’re making spaghetti. I’m on a construction crew. It’s good. Long hours, but I like to be outside.” 

“He works too hard,” FP says, taking up residence behind the floral-patterned chair. He leans against the doorframe, arms folded. 

“Go make my spaghetti,” Fred orders playfully in reply, slapping FP loudly on the rear as he squeezes past him to get at the chair. There’s the briefest of uncertain pauses where all three of them realize the significance of that gesture - Hal remembering their relationship status in a flash, Fred freezing in the realization Hal might be unaware, FP looking ready to fight or flee if the wind changed - and then Fred renders the point moot by dragging FP towards him by the collar of his shirt and kissing him on the lips in front of everyone. 

FP goes straight into the kitchen when Fred releases him, face pink. Hal tries valiantly to act as though nothing had happened that he hadn’t expected, feeling Gladys’ heavily made-up eyes on him as an extra layer of embarrassment. 

“I think it’s cool you’re together,” he feels obliged to repeat, emboldened when it comes out sounding less stupid than he’d anticipated. “Me and Alice are done,” he adds, feeling an awkward confidence for the first time. “It’s nice to see some of us made it with the people we really loved.” 

Of course Fred gasps obligingly like a bomb had been dropped, though Hal felt if Fred and Alice were still in touch she’d probably already told him. They’d always been sibling-close in a way Hal couldn’t breach. “I’m sorry, Hal,” he says sincerely, his eyes wide and sad. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Hal says awkwardly. Fred jumps up again. 

“Do you want a soda? We don’t drink at home, but I have - well, I have water and juice, and one can of Sprite, so I hope you want that. I was gonna get snacks and stuff after work, but-” He prods at his injured head, offering a bright grin. “I did this instead. But dinner’s going to be amazing. We went all out and bought garlic bread. And Gladys is a great cook.” 

“I’m the one cooking here,” FP grouches, having reappeared in the doorway. His ears are still slightly pink, but he seems to have regained his cocksure attitude. He hands Hal a can of soda and Fred a glass of water with a practiced gesture. 

“I’ll finish up,” Gladys offers, rising from the couch in a way that suggests she’s not altogether sorry to be missing Hal’s company. “It’s not my guest.” 

Fred jerks his head when FP hesitates, and FP steps into the room and sinks obligingly on the couch. Hal suddenly does feel a little like a kid at his parents’ dinner party - Fred and FP have an unexpected domesticity with one another that feels both strangely grown-up and strangely familiar. But then again, the two of them had always been so lost in their own little world that any third party invariably felt like an odd man out. Hal wondered how Gladys felt living in the middle of it. 

“Okay, tell me everything,” Fred interrogates him. “Your mom told my mom you got into some journalism school only ten kids a year get accepted in or something.” 

“She exaggerated,” Hal says, feeling a twinge of genuine embarrassment when he thought about the classes he’d barely listened to all week. “It’s prestigious, but it’s not elite or anything. I was on the waitlist first, and someone else lost a spot.” 

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Fred argues, draping his legs over the floral ottoman. “That’s really cool. You were always a really good writer, Hal, seriously. Do you like your classes?” 

Hal searches his memories of the week for something to say that won’t sound unbearably pitiful, or imply he’d spent more of his week wallowing in self-pity than planning for his future. To his surprise, both Fred and FP keep up easily with his stilted storytelling, seeming to recognize the classes, professors, and buildings he references despite Fred not attending the school and Hal still reeling from associating FP with studying. FP’s actually asking thoughtful questions that imply he’s seen the inside of a library not just once but many times since enrollment. 

“Dinner’s ready.” Gladys is back, spatula in hand. 

“We all take turns cooking,” Fred explains as they file into the kitchen, where a battered table has been laid with mismatched plates, and a Jack Daniels bottle with flowers in it. He gestures as proudly as if he’d unveiled palatial place settings. “We got the table from the curb, cool, huh?” 

Hal does think it’s cool - it has nothing of the public-school awkwardness of the dining halls or the expensive pretension of their old suburban homes. Fred and FP’s kitchen feels homey and inviting, a little crooked, but sincere, and despite the house’s unkempt appearance from the outside, he truly admires it. They squeeze into their chairs and pass around a simple dinner - spaghetti and meat sauce, garlic bread and caesar salad, and all four of them eat with messy relish while talking. Hal is the only one worrying about manners - FP’s stuffing his face, and Gladys keeps licking tomato sauce off her hand and wrist with relish. 

Fred’s full of energy despite the bandage on his head, assaulting Hal with promises that he’ll soon show him all the best restaurants near campus. Hal’s treated to a couple of long hilarious stories about Fred’s job and Gladys and Fred’s recent night out, and Fred even coaxes Gladys into promising to play the guitar for them later. None of them seem particularly fazed by Hal’s intention to join a frat, though he’s treated to a loaded eyebrow raise from Gladys when the topic comes up. Fred just pipes up enthusiastically that FP’s a member in name of Zeta Gamma - he’s clearly beyond proud of his best friend, and keeps prodding him into acknowledging the hard work he puts into classes and football. 

Finally, FP proudly recounts the score of a recent football game, and adds with even more shy pride, that he’d had the highest mark in his section on a recent test. When Fred slips out of the kitchen to use the bathroom, Hal finds himself listening to an in-depth explanation of FP’s life as a student athlete, which for some reason makes him glad he hadn’t mentioned his new job writing for the Gazette - the whole thing feels fake and embarrassing in the face of their tireless hard work. He’s still torn between surprise, admiration, and a weird, nasty jealousy when he hears about FP’s new life, and the easiness with which Hal had slipped back into his mother’s expectations for him still made him embarrassed. 

“They pay for your parking spot, too?” he asks incredulously now, raising a crusty slice of garlic bread to his lips. “Man, this is going to be a sweet four years for you.” 

To his surprise FP’s face goes somber as he twirls his fork in his spaghetti. 

“I might drop out. Or go part-time, I don’t know. Get a job.” 

“Excuse me?” 

Hal turns around to see Fred in the doorway, a refill of FP’s soda in one hand, clearly having overheard this last. By the look on his face, it’s evident this is a bombshell. Gladys is listening intently, a forkful of salad halfway to her mouth. Hal catches himself halfway through an awkward reply, and inhales on a mouthful of bread crust. Silence falls over the table, broken only by Hal’s awkward coughs. 

“What did you say?” Fred asks. 

“Nothing,” FP says calmly, though Hal detects a waver in his voice. He doesn’t look Fred in the eye. 

“Why would you do that?” Fred’s voice is very small, and tightly controlled. Though everyone at the table is staring at him, he’s only looking at FP, who’s picking his nails, avoiding Fred’s gaze. 

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.” 

“Bullshit you have.” Fred’s sunny, devil-may-care attitude has been zapped out of existence by this news. His eyes are swimming with worry and hurt. “You decided this today because I got hurt, didn’t you? I can’t believe you’d ever-” 

FP clears his throat, interrupting him. “Look, school’s not that important, when you really think about it-” 

“Right, it’s only the one thing you’ve wanted and been working towards your entire life. Why wouldn’t you throw that away?” Tears have sprung into Fred’s eyes, and he slams the glass of soda hard onto the table, slopping liquid over the sides and rattling the cutlery. “Excuse me.” 

Before Hal can quite register what’s happening, Fred storms out of the kitchen. FP sits very still, looking at the puddle of soda as though fascinated by it, and then he gets up and mumbles an apology, following Fred through the doorway and out into the living room, leaving Hal and Gladys awkwardly facing one another over the table. 

“Okay, explain.” Fred whirls around when they reach the front hall, sparks flying from his brown eyes. FP notices with regret - not for the first time - how explosively, enticingly beautiful Fred looks when he’s shoved over the precipice into properly pissed off. “Explain why the hell I just heard you say you’re dropping out.” 

FP sucks in a deep breath, searching the dark corners of his brain for the less-than-eloquent speech he’d begun to prepare when this very topic had first crossed his mind. There’s not a lot of reasoning there - it’s mostly a torrent of emotions built up over the past year, which unexpectedly explode out of his mouth like a dropped bomb when he opens it. 

“You work so hard, Fred. And all I do is play a stupid game!” 

“It’s not just a game!” Fred stares at him, wide-eyed, his jaw open in shock. “You study. You learn.” 

“Not hard enough!” FP can feel all his pent-up insecurities spilling out, the mess of them all over the floor of this space, their home, everything they’d built for the last year. He’s powerless to stop it now that he’s started. “I could be pulling A’s if I worked a little harder, but I don’t. And I have to declare my major this year, and I have no idea what to choose, and maybe that’s for a reason. Maybe college isn’t for me. Not long term.” 

“So what is for you?” Fred’s voice drips with sarcasm, but it’s wobbly too. “Have you figured that out?” 

“I’m dropping out. I’m going to find a job, and I’m going to take care of you the way I should have ages ago.” 

Fred draws himself up, anger making him taller. “I’m not an invalid, FP! I’m not dying! I bumped my fucking head today!-” 

“I know you’re not-” A sick feeling floods FP’s stomach and throat when he remembers Artie. “Dying. I know. But you’re tired all the time, and it’s taking a toll on your health. Don’t lie and say it’s not.” 

“How dare you!” Fred yells, unconcerned with the two people they’d left behind at the dinner table. “I make my own choices, and you don’t get to say I need someone to take care of me. It’s none of your business if I’m tired or not!” 

“We’re partners! Of course it’s my business! But it’s for me too!” FP puts his hands out in supplication. “It’s not just about that. I don’t know what the hell major to choose, and maybe that’s for a reason, okay? I’m not cut out for this. I thought it was what I wanted, but it just makes me feel like a piece of shit.” 

He draws in a deep breath, his hand coming up to tug at his hair, an insecure tell from adolescence. 

“I like playing football, but I don’t love it. I’m mediocre at everything else. And all I do is get us more and more in debt when the only thing I really want, the only thing I really care about is spending my life with you. And I’m just making you suffer. You always get the short end of the stick now and it’s not fair.” 

“You keep saying it’s not fair to me, but who decided that? You! That’s not fair, FP. You’re not being fair at all. To me or yourself.” Fred pokes him fiercely in the chest, his eyes still watery. “This is all bullshit, anyway. You’re just scared.” 

“I’m not!” 

“You are! You’re scared!” Fred closed the distance between him, jabbing FP in the chest. “You’re scared of school, and you’re scared of success, and you’re scared of being happy for once in your life! 

“Because maybe I don’t deserve it, okay?” 

“YES, YOU DO!” Fred screams it so loud that a winter coat precariously balanced on an already-overfilled hook falls to the floor. FP steps back, momentarily silenced by shock. Fred stares at the ground and then up into FP’s eyes, the chocolate brown of them swimming with unreadable hurt. His voice is low and painful when he speaks again. 

“Let’s get one thing straight. If you drop out of this school, you will find a new boyfriend.” 

FP can feel his throat closing up, blood flooding into his face. “What, because you’d be ashamed to be with a college dropout? Is that it? You’re ashamed that I’m stupid?” 

Fred laughs, hoarse and pained. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “You are so far out of reality right now! You’re so uncomfortable with the fact that you’re lucky and privileged to be here that you just want to throw it all away! Don’t pretend you’re not! I can read you like a book!” 

“It’s not that simple!” 

Fred grabs his face, pulling their foreheads close together. His thumbs stroke FP’s cheeks, betraying the tenderness behind the forceful movement. “Listen to yourself. You want to leave school. But that’s not what that person I fell in love with in high school wanted. You were fifteen and you had nothing and you wanted more. You dreamed about college. And now you have it and all you can think of is getting rid of it because you can’t get it through your head that you deserve this. You worked hard for this. Everything you have you deserve.” He releases FP and steps back, eyes blazing with ferocity, swallows hard. “Okay?” 

“What makes me deserve it more than you? Because I can throw a ball? It’s not right-” 

“Dropping out won’t make it right! Yeah, I’m tired. And yeah, I didn’t get to go to college, and that’s shitty. But you dropping out won’t make it better. You can’t help that this college saw something special in you.” Fred’s voice shakes with emotion. “You are something special. And now you have all these chances you never had before and it’s up to you what you do with them, okay? But you’re not going to throw them away. I won’t let you. That’s the only thing in the world you could do to actually convince me that you’re stupid.” 

FP reaches out for his wrist. “Fred-” 

“I’m not done!” Fred rips his hand away, breathing hard as he faces FP down, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. “That’s the only way you could convince me you’re stupid. But I know you’re not. So I know you’ll make the right choice. And right now that’s staying in school. There, I said my piece. Let’s hear it.”

“Fred-” 

“What!” FP pulls him hard into his arms and kisses him, hot and strong and angry. Fred responds passionately, backing FP up against the rack of coats. More slip to the floor. He pulls out of the kiss and pushes FP’s head back, thumbs on either side of his pulse point. “Tell me you’re staying in school.” 

“I don’t know-” 

“Tell me right now.” Fred’s voice is commanding but there’s a plea in it, those chocolate eyes FP could never say no to waging war on his boyfriend’s determination. 

FP’s hands move around to the back of Fred’s hips, cradling his thighs. Something that had been coiled very tightly in his chest for so long is loosening, a flickering candle-flame of something that’s almost hope, almost peace, alight in its place. He’s overwhelmed with love and sorrow and a strange budding elation. The thought that he could be deserving of this, could have all this, could maybe relax if he could just coax a promise out of Fred to work a little less hard - 

“I’ll re-think it.” 

Fred kisses him, a hand slipping around to grip forcefully at the back of his neck as he joins their foreheads again. His knee is wedged between FP’s legs. “You mean it?” 

“Yes.” FP pulls Fred’s flannel shirt off his shoulders, lowering his face to kiss the slip of tanned skin visible between Fred’s neck and collarbone. He gnaws on the bone, leaving a pink mark. “God, you’re sexy when you’re mad.” 

“Shut up.” Fred catches his mouth in another kiss, hands sliding up FP’s thighs and gripping tight enough to hurt. “I’m still mad at you.” 

FP kisses his neck, burying his reply in the soft skin of Fred’s throat. “Well so am I.” 

“But I love you too.” 

This time the kiss is so long and ferocious that neither comes up for air for several seconds. Fred’s hands find fistfuls of FP’s hair, tugging hard, and they dislodge the mountain of shoes as FP pulls Fred up against him by the rear, almost into his lap. 

“I love you,” he says honestly, shocked as he always is by his own courage when those three words pass his lips so easily. He’s breathing hard in between kisses, but manages to get the next part out: “I’m sorry.” 

“I love you too.” Fred’s hair is ruffled, his face flushed, lips already swollen as he goes back for another kiss. “You’re such an idiot.” 

FP’s halfway to taking Fred’s T-shirt off when he remembers their company. It doesn’t matter. They both turn at a noise from behind them and see Hal standing in the mouth of the hall, seemingly unsure whether to awkwardly laugh it off or give in to embarrassment. He averts his eyes, raising a hasty hand to his brow as though to politely block his view of their tryst. 

“Sorry, I just - don’t worry about it. Dinner was great.” 

“Hal, don’t go!” FP’s still holding his hips tight, and Fred swats his hands off. “We’re sorry. This guy just makes me-” 

“It’s cool, I have to study anyway,” Hal apologizes awkwardly, tripping over shoes as he heads for the door with his hand still up. “Honestly, don’t worry about it.” 

Wound together up against the wall, they watch him leave politely, even waving goodbye. Fred turns back to FP, his anger momentarily forgotten in his dismay, but FP sees a speck of humour shining in his eyes too. He lowers his face to Fred’s for another kiss as Gladys, unperturbed by the debacle, skulks lazily back to the kitchen and helps herself to seconds.

Chapter Text

Gladys wakes up abruptly to the sound of breaking glass. She sits up in her small room, fingers moving smoothly to the nightstand to check for two things - the clock, which reads 1:45, and a small folding utility knife. Reassured by the presence of the knife, she whisks it into her hand and sits still, waiting for the noise to reoccur. 

Back at her old place, she and Penny always kept a baseball bat by the back door. She now has a roommate who actually plays - or used to play - baseball, but Fred’s stuff is probably upstairs, if he has any, and of no use to her. The knife in her hand is less of an apparent threat to a burglar - she’d only used the baseball bat once before, and to scare off one of Penny’s old boyfriends - but he’d taken one look at it and disappeared. Her knife is small, and if the burglar is cocky enough he might try to take it from her. Gladys isn’t afraid of being overpowered, but she’d rather not make a mess. 

A thump rings out from the kitchen her room shares a wall with, and the sound of cupboards and drawers being opened and rifled through. Gladys gets up from her bed, crossing the room on silent feet. She gives the door of her room a careful push, and it eases open. Taking a deep breath, she steps out into the hallway and quickly turns the corner into the kitchen doorway, slamming on the kitchen light with her palm as she does so, her knife held aloft. 

The kitchen is a mess in the stark light, drawers and cupboards hanging open with a bunch of glass shards in the middle of the floor. Across the room from her is FP, naked once more except for a pair of boxer shorts, his eyes huge in surprise. He’d jumped when she came into the room, backing up against the cupboards with one hand grasping for the edge of the countertop and the other holding a jar of pickles aloft, as though saving it from a flood.

“What-” he says in shock, and they both stare at each other for a long beat before Gladys slowly lowers her knife. She looks back at the glass shards on the floor, which reveal themselves to be the remnants of a drinking glass. Pink liquid has splotched and sprayed across the cheap linoleum, and a few haphazardly applied paper towels are soaking up the mess. With a sigh, she closes the knife and drops it in her shirt pocket. 

“I thought you were a burglar.” 

FP looks petulant and grumpy, still holding tight to his pickle jar. “So you pulled a knife on me?” He’s keeping his voice lowered to a whisper, presumably as not to wake Fred, above them. “Paranoid much?” 

“I heard glass break, and then you were slamming around the cupboards. My room’s right there, you know.” 

FP’s lips press into a half-pout, half-scowl. “I’m allowed to have a midnight snack in my own house,” he grouches, nevermind that he’s renting, and this student ghetto dwelling has probably seen ten thousand occupants before him. “I was looking for the dustpan.” 

Gladys opens the cupboard beside the lightswitch, to reveal a dustpan and broom shoved in among a pile of filthy-looking tea towels and some grilling equipment. It’s the only cupboard door that FP hadn’t thrown open. “It’s right here.” The I just moved in and even I know that is unspoken. 

“Okay, okay,” FP complains, like a teenage boy being criticized by his mother. He steps forward, careful of the glass, and pulls it out of the cupboard with his free hand, delivering a very flat apology. “Sorry I woke you up.” 

“It’s fine,” says Gladys, noticing a jar of peanut butter on the counter and remembering she’d already bought her own. Honestly, she could go for a midnight snack too. And she really loathes herself for it, but she does feel kind of oddly maternal towards him all of a sudden - FP standing there in his boxers with his hair a mess, looking stupid and dishevelled and nothing like the hero he was supposed to be on the football field. She nods at the floor. “You needed your… pink juice.” 

“It's fruit punch,” FP corrects her irritatedly, though he fails to make it sound any more dignified. His face flushes and he looks annoyed. “I drink it because I went sober and it’s healthier than soda. So there.” He looks like he hadn’t planned to say ‘so there’ before he said it, and was suddenly mad she’d got him to pick up the vocal cadence of a twelve-year-old. 

Gladys can already picture Fred wheedling FP into drinking less Coke after he’d used it to ease the transition from alcohol, and finds it pretty cute. FP radiated toxic masculinity from a distance, but if you start unspooling him you hit a soft centre pretty quick. Everything he did was because he was helplessly in love with his tiny boyfriend, and Gladys couldn’t help but soften towards him the more she uncovered it. “Got it,” she says, deciding to pick her battles. “Don’t mind me. I’m going to have some peanut butter and pickles too.” 

FP’s sweeping up the shattered remains of the glass, and he straightens up and dumps the glass shards in the trash can. “Here,” he grunts, shoving his peanut butter jar at her. Gladys must look surprised, because he looks suddenly embarrassed about sharing. “If you like crunchy.” 

“I do, but I bought my own.” Gladys replies. “Pickles too. Don’t worry, I’m not going to mooch.” 

FP shrugs. “Up to you. But it’s for the house.” 

It’s an oddly nice gesture, a tentative truce. Gladys quietly gets a plate out of the cupboard from the stack of mismatched dishes and globs some peanut butter onto it, pulling three big sandwich pickles out of the jar and piling them on her plate. She sits on the counter and watches FP mop the spilled juice up and close all the cupboards. Seemingly forgetting she’s there, he crunches a pickle absent-mindedly as he opens the fridge and starts rummaging for mayonnaise and cold cuts, piling jars and sandwich fixings on the counter next to the stove. When a creak from the floor overhead sounds out, they both go very still and quiet, glancing towards the stairs. But the old house settles, and no footsteps echo overhead. 

“I guess you two made up?” Gladys asks ironically, lowering her voice and gesturing to the ceiling with her pickle. 

“Kind of. Sorry about that,” FP adds, with what Gladys admits is the right note of sincerity for someone who had interrupted his own dinner party to have a loud fight and equally loud make-up sex in the next room with his boyfriend. “You must hate living with us, huh?” 

“Believe it or not, it’s still better than my last place.” Gladys leans back until she can feel the hard support of the cupboard against her spine. “He’s right, you know.”  Kindness spills out of her before she can stop it, easier in the breathing room of the dark kitchen. “You’d be stupid to drop out.” 

FP shrugs, a lift of his big shoulders. “I just feel guilty,” he answers, surprising them both with his honesty. “And I’ve tried to stop feeling guilty, but I can’t, so don’t tell me I should stop.” He stares down at the floor where he’d broken the glass, kicks at it lazily with his toe. “He works too fuckin’ hard. I know I sound like a mother hen or something, but it’s true. And he’s right, he doesn’t get a choice. He’s had a shitty time, and he doesn’t deserve it. And I don’t deserve any of this, and I have it all.” He scrubs his hands through his hair. “It’s not right.” 

“What makes you think you don’t deserve it?” 

FP looks at her for a second, eyes unreadable. Then he looks away, opens the fridge again and scans its crowded depths, one hand balanced on the grimy door. Yellow light spills across his feet. 

“I was never able to do this before I moved out,” FP says, possibly to himself. He stares longingly into the refrigerator glow, the light carving a silhouette around his body. “Eat in the middle of the night. My old man was a mean old bastard, he’d fucking kill me if he heard me opening the fridge door. Not that there was ever anything to eat. He never got groceries, and he never gave me lunch money.” He takes a fierce bite of the pickle in his hand. “I dunno what he ate, that fuckin’ bastard lived at the bottom of a bottle all day. Probably ate at the bar. And made my mom cook for him before she- before she died.” 

His voice slips there - not quite a quaver, not a tearful break, but his tone is suddenly hoarse with effort, like it took immeasurable strength to put those words together. Gladys watches him, aware she’s listening to something that could be rescinded quickly. FP looks at her over his shoulder. “You have a dad?” 

“No.” 

“You’re fucking lucky,” FP snorts. He takes a jar of mustard out and thumps it on the counter, still scanning the fridge pensively. He traces the edge of the door with his thumb. “I didn’t even know people really ate breakfast until I grew up. I thought it was just, you know, something you see on TV. Never got dinner, either. Fred used to bring me lunch every day at school. Every single day for years and years. Because he knew it was the only thing I’d have to eat all day. Saved my life, I think. Not just the food.” There’s a note of raw honesty in his voice that tells Gladys he’s not exaggerating. “Everything.” 

“You two go back to high school,” Gladys notes, impressed and ever so subtly jealous. The man in front of her is enjoying a life of pure love the likes of which she can barely imagine. 

“Elementary.” His eyes are shiny in the dim light, fond. He closes the fridge door, clears his throat. “Long fuckin’ time.” 

He unpacks his pile of sandwich fixings, laying packages of meat and cheese out on the small counter and unwinding a plastic bag of bread. Gladys smears the peanut butter around her plate and crunches her pickle. 

“When I got here, you had the meal plans, right?” FP smears mustard on a slice of Wonderbread, wipes the knife rhythmically clean before dipping it in the mayonnaise. “At the dining halls. All the football players get one. And I couldn’t stop eating. You walk in, and there’s just -” He gestures as though indicating it spread out before him. Gladys can picture it from her own first year - omelet station, stir fry station, salad bar, desserts under glass. “So much food. And no one stops you. It’s just as much as you want, all the time, every day. No one can take it away from you.” 

“I would bring it back to my dorm, but it just piled up, because I’d go back the next day and there’d be more. Always more.” There’s still genuine awe in his voice. “And I really couldn’t stop eating. I mean I couldn’t stop. Every day I was eating enough for fifty people. I was thinking, great, this is it, I’ll blimp up, gain fucking three hundred pounds and they’ll throw me off the team. Throw me out of school. That’s how it’ll end. But I couldn’t even use that to stop myself. I tried to slow down, but not for long. I was just so fucking hungry, and it was all there.” 

He closes the huge sandwich, focused on cutting it diagonally down the middle. 

“I made myself sick a lot, but not as much as you’d think. Because I was still hungry. No matter how much I ate. But then my body would try to fucking kill me for it. Wasn’t used to it, I guess. I was drinking then, too, on top of everything, which was a bad combination. And I stopped getting sick after awhile, but I didn’t stop being hungry for months. I think almost all of first year. I just ate and ate and ate and waited to have a heart attack or something, but it never happened. Never got fat, either. But I gained weight. A lot. All of this.” He touches his chest self-consciously. “I didn’t look like this in high school. My arms were okay. But not this. And I’m different. Really different. Even the way I’m talking to you now, telling you this - I never would have done that before.” 

He looks down at the floor, embarrassed. “I know I act like a dick, or like I’m hard to get along with or something, but trust me, I used to be worse.” 

Gladys blinks, mulling over the outpouring of information. FP spins the bread bag closed, avoiding her eyes. 

“If you were really starving, it makes sense that you weren’t your best self,” Gladys points out, compassionate but tough. A part of her resists playing therapist to her football player housemate at nearly two in the morning, but something else in her really wants him to know. “You probably don’t need to beat yourself up about it.” 

She can tell no one’s ever suggested that to him before, and it makes her feel good when he mulls it over. He looks at her for a moment, and she can see him thinking hard. Then he holds out his sandwich, the kitchen shadowy around him. 

“You want half?” 

“What’s in it?” Gladys asks. The meaning behind the gesture isn’t lost on her. 

“Ham, turkey, cheddar, swiss, lettuce, mustard, mayo, bacon, salami, pickles,” FP lists, scrutinizing his own half in the dark. “You allergic to something?” 

“No. Thanks.” She takes the sandwich half carefully to avoid dropping any of the fillings. FP takes a huge bite, and they chew in companionable silence, Gladys mulling over the backstory he’d gifted her. 

“You ever cut someone with that?” he asks finally, changing the topic as though he hadn’t just laid himself bare. 

“Hm?” Gladys swallows a tough bite of turkey. 

“Your knife,” FP says, nodding to her shirt. 

“A few people.” 

“Doesn’t surprise me.” He actually smiles at her, a half-smirk that leaves smile lines at the corner of his mouth. “You ever fought a cop?” 

“Yeah,” she says, and he laughs. “ What? ” 

“Just could tell.” 

“Oh, and you have?” Gladys’ scornful raised eyebrow makes it clear she’s expected nothing more from him than clumsy run-ins with the law typical of small-town jock assholes, smoothed over by parents or coaches. But FP just shrugs rather than defending himself, honest rather than boastful or proud. 

“I grew up poor and mean. Broke my nose once headbutting some pigs in the face.” 

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Gladys says, and FP looks amused. 

“Maybe you will.” 

They finish their sandwiches, making small talk about restaurants nearby and run-ins they’ve had with the law. FP’s politely impressed by Gladys’ roster of arrests and protests - his skirmishes are all largely more stupid, and he admits freely to running at least as much as he stands to fight. Still, Gladys had never expected to have something in common with him - least of all this. 

“I’ll let you get to bed,” FP grunts finally, shoving his mess of sandwich fixings back in the fridge and closing the door. Gladys licks her fingers clean and slides them in her shirt pocket for her knife, fiddling with the blade for something to do with her hands. She calls out quietly to him before he reaches the door. 

“You can major in something easy, you know. Something stupid. A lot of people do, and they figure their shit out later. It’s not the end of the world.” 

“Yeah?” He appears to mull it over, one hand planted on the kitchen door frame in the way that’ll leave fingerprints. She thinks she sees relief and something like hope in his expression before he shrugs. “I’ll figure it out. Night.” 

“Night,” Gladys replies, listening to him climb the duplex’s creaky stairs. Once the bedroom door at the top of the stairs has swung closed, she pushes herself off the counter and heads back to her own bed, tossing her pocket knife on the nightstand.

Chapter Text

“Absolutely not.” Hiram frowns at Hal. “We’re going to a fraternity party, not the county fair.” 

“This says county fair to you?” Hal asks, looking down at his chinos and diamond-patterned sweater vest as he crosses his arms instinctively over his chest. His roommate is sprawled out on Hal’s bed among dozens of discarded pieces from Hal’s closet, nonchalantly flipping through a magazine. He’d been motionless for the past forty-five minutes while he put Hal through the paces of modelling every outfit combination imaginable, inevitably crucifying them all as unwearable to the Sigma-Delta rush mixer. 

Hiram indicates his own side of the room with a jut of his chin. “My dresser, second drawer from the top. Something in white or cream.” 

With a sigh, Hal crosses the room and opens the drawer to what looks like nothing but white or cream folded Oxford shirts. “I don’t even know if I want to go to this-” 

Hiram ignores him. “I’m thinking a subtle pattern, actually. Stripes or checks. Show me a couple.”

Hal withdraws the least expensive-looking shirt he can find - a white Brooks Brothers shirt with thin blue checks - and barely has time to unbutton a cuff before Hiram cuts him off. 

“No. Vertical stripes.” 

Hal withdraws a new shirt, and Hiram nods his approval. 

“Now put the pants on again.” 

“I don’t understand how these fit both of us,” Hal says, stepping back into a pair of Hiram’s light brown khakis that he’d been forced to discard several outfit changes ago. “Did you have a chubby phase?” 

“God, no.” It’s the most emphatic he’s ever heard Hiram be. He flips a page. “I bought those for you.” 

“What?” Hal’s mouth drops open. “Why?”

“I knew you’d have to borrow pants eventually.” Hiram waves his hand. “Don’t worry about it.” 

Hal checks the waistband. “How do you know my size?” 

“I measure you in your sleep.” Hiram breaks his serious expression with a hearty eye roll. “ Kidding, Harold. I guessed. Now, stop doing that.” Hal had been folding the discarded Brooks Brothers shirt, trying and failing to get it back in a perfect square. “The maid will get it.” 

Hal still hadn’t gathered the heart to tell his roommate there was no maid service in the dorm, and that whatever Hiram had mistaken for housekeeping was just Hal’s half-hearted attempts to keep the room in shape. Cleaning was comforting because it was familiar, and it took his mind off other things: namely his ex-girlfriend, his humiliating newspaper job, and the fact that FP Jones was currently a straight-A student in a healthy, loving, committed relationship while Hal was going to a fraternity mixer with a bunch of boys who knew his father as LC. 

He wasn’t jealous of FP. God knew he deserved a break. But it didn’t help the self-hatred any. 

Forget about it, he urges himself mentally. Just live in the moment. Forget about the past. God knows Alice isn’t sparing a thought to you. 

“Now try the blue vest,” Hiram urges, cutting across Hal’s thoughts. “It’ll bring out your eyes.” 

Hal opens Hiram’s side of the closet (admittedly three-quarters of the closet was Hiram’s side, to say nothing of the dresser he’d appropriated for himself and the enormous trunk at the foot of Hiram’s bed that his roommate kept insisting he’d unpack eventually ) and finds a blue fleece vest with an expensive label on the breast and the tags still dangling from the collar. Hal blanches at the price. “You bought this on sale, right?” he asks. 

Hiram, taking a sip of his coffee, abruptly has to catch himself from doing a spit-take all over the mess of clothes on the bed. He laughs appreciatively. “See, there’s your sense of humour,” he says, chuckling and wiping his chin. “Bring that to the Delta house and you’re set.” 

Resigned, Hal pulls the tags and shrugs the vest on. Hal’s father had been over the moon to hear his son was pledging his old frat - in fact, it was the most enthusiasm Hal had ever seen his father dredge up for something Hal was doing voluntarily. Lewis had regaled Hal with stories about male bonding with his Delta Tau brothers - most of which seemed disturbingly athletic - hunting and camping, an intramural lacrosse team, a white-water rafting expedition, a drinking Olympics he had had to whisper about because Hal’s mother was in the same room. These reminisces had gone on for so long that Hal had eventually pretended to have a late-night newspaper meeting just to get off the phone. 

Every time he tried to dodge the subject of the mixer, though, Hiram brought up how Hal had done nothing but mope about their room in sweatpants every Friday and Saturday night since they’d started rooming together, and even Hal had to admit that was getting old. Going out would be good for him - he just wasn’t sure joining Delta Tau would be. It was beginning to sound increasingly like he was inevitably going to be left in the wilderness somewhere for wearing the wrong stripe pattern. 

“It probably doesn’t matter what shoes I wear, right?” Hal asks, examining his most expensive pair - a brown leather pair of Oxfords that his mother had bought him for his high school graduation.

“Harold, the mark of any fraternity man is his footwear,” Hiram heaves a sigh. He’s been dressed for the party for hours in a similar outfit: dark slacks with a sleek blazer and an Oxford shirt, his glossy dark shoes ending in points. “But they’ll do for now. I think Delta Tau puts more emphasis on legacy.” 

“How do you know all this?” Hal asks, sinking down into a seat on Hiram’s bed. For someone who had allegedly been globetrotting all summer, Hiram talked as though his family had been pledging this specific frat for generations. 

“I told you, I’ve been researching Delta Tau since I got here. I figure if I’m going to be stuck in this shithole, I should at least mingle with the elite.” Hiram sets his magazine aside and gives Hal a once-over, beaming at his handiwork. He scoots closer to him on the bed and fixes Hal’s collar. “Look at you! I am good.” 

How and why Hiram had decided Hal was part of the elite was beyond the scope of Hal’s understanding. He wasn’t sure why his roommate stayed so committed to befriending him - Hiram certainly didn’t need Hal’s help getting into the fraternity, as Hiram knew more about Delta Tau than Hal did. Hiram also had a packed social calendar, constantly pressing engagements, and a host of old friends he spoke about constantly - Barry from New York; Jules from Rhode Island; Niles from Norway. Yet he made a point of spending time with Hal in the evenings, bullying him out for cappuccinos and offering constantly to lend Hal his car, insisting with a worrying frequency that they needed to hit the gym together and appearing abruptly at Hal’s library carrel whenever he was working to moan about his own workload - though Hal had barely ever seen him crack the cover of a textbook. 

They had only one class together - Introduction to Philosophy, his one non-Journalism-related elective, which Hiram had switched into two weeks in after declaring one of his business professor’s wardrobes too offensive to look at every week. Actually, Hal wasn’t sure Hiram had officially transferred at all, because his name still wasn’t on the attendance. He just appeared in the seat beside Hal, consistently late, always bearing two coffees, occasionally lazily raising his hand to impress the teacher with an insightful answer when she assumed he hadn’t been paying attention. Every time he’d turn and smirk at Hal, ignoring everyone else in the room, and Hal would smile hesitantly back. 

“I took Advanced Philosophy at Oxford,” Hiram said once with an exaggerated yawn as they were crossing the quad to the coffeeshop. “My whole friend group was terribly interested in Aristotle for some reason.” 

“So don’t you find this class boring?” Hal had asked, and Hiram had looked startled. 

“Of course not.” He’d smiled in the strange, restrained way Hal was getting used to - enigmatic but sincere. “You’re there.” 

Hal combs his hair awkwardly with his fingers now, trying to make it lie flat instead of up in pseudo-spikes.  “Is it true there’s hazing and stuff?” He asks, voicing his biggest concern. “Really hard stuff? And people die?” 

“God, Harold, what is this, an after-school special?” Hiram laughs it off, but Hal’s relief lasts about four seconds. “Of course not. Well, there’s hazing of course. But no one will die. No one’s died at Deta Tau since 1954 when Justin Wright fell out the window.” 

“Right,” Hal deadpans, trying not to imagine Alice’s expression if she knew how he was about to spend his Friday night. Hiram stands in front of him and claps a hand on each of Hal’s arms, breaking Hal’s focus on his reflection. 

“Now remember, introduce yourself as Harold Cooper. Firm handshake. If they ask if you want a drink, beer or scotch.” He smiles, leaning in, and Hal catches the unmistakable scent of his aftershave. “And be yourself.” 

Hermione strides into the Delta Tau house, fluffing her freshly-blow-dried hair as she casts an appraising eye around the foyer. The frat house had beautiful bones - it was the oldest structure on campus, boasting a sleek mahogany staircase, grand fireplaces, and stunning teak floors - but years of testosterone had embedded all of these features with something distinctly gross. Her sorority sisters had contributed a few decorations - classy string lights and a hand-lettered banner - but you couldn’t erase years of filth and boy debris. Someone had already left a half-eaten sandwich and a six-pack of beer on the stairs, and whoever had dragged the kegs in had done so right over the ornate rug, leaving a long, sticky trail to the front door. 

Stepping over it, she folds her arms and surveys the house. Delta Tau boys might never be slated to win a prize for decorating, but even Hermione could admit that ragers were their area of expertise. After three years in Sigma Alpha Phi, she’d learned to overlook how they got it done for how much people inevitably appreciated the end result. At least the string lights were up and the dance floor was clear. Two Sigma girls were in charge of snacks, so there’d be more than beer and junky bags of chips. As president of the sorority, she could already pat herself on the back for a job well done. 

Hermione could have easily nabbed a date for this party, even despite the awkward situation with Harry Clayton, but had decided on going solo. The mixer was business after all - she and the Sigmas would be debriefing on potential new pledges over brunch tomorrow. The last thing she needed was some guy hanging over her all night, pretending he owned her. No, she was going to spend the night dancing with whoever she liked, and if that mystery guy with the cape from the coffeeshop showed up, so much the better. 

“Hermione!” calls a familiar high voice from behind her. Hermione grits her teeth and forces herself not to roll her eyes. This was the worst part of being sorority president - all the incoming pledges had been following her around all month, brown-nosing as if their lives depended on it. (Admittedly they did - their social lives, anyway. But it was a pain in Hermione’s ass.) This particular girl, though, was about to take the championship trophy for ass-kissing. 

The freshman comes charging up to her, too-high heels echoing erratically on the teak. Her red hair is plaited back into an elegant braid, but her knee-length plaid skirt is paired with a truly hideous cotton-polyester turtleneck situation. Her face is flushed as pink as her hair, happiness radiating from every inch of her face as she reaches Hermione’s side. She’s gripping a coffee cup in each hand as if her life depends on it. 

“Hi,” Penelope chirps, hugging the coffees to her chest. “Wow, it is such a coincidence that I ran into you. I was at the coffee shop, and I was ordering an extra for a friend, but she couldn’t meet me, and it’s still warm. This is how you like it, right? With extra low-fat foam?” 

Hermione takes the coffee coldly with her thumb and forefinger, as though handling a rotten banana peel. Liar, she thinks. There was no way this drip had friends. 

This was the problem Hermione would have to figure out - the Sierra Samuels and Penelope Brooke problem. Sierra Samuels was unquestionably Sigma material - all her sisters agreed on it. She was classy, poised, worldly, and fashionable, while still being down-to-earth and fun. But roommates were typically considered a packaged set, and Penelope’s situation was dire. A few Sigmas were sympathetic towards her, but Hermione couldn’t get over the neediness that seeped out of her every pore. The thought of sharing a house with the redhead made her shudder. 

And something about Penelope made her suspicious. Nothing concrete - just a feeling. Sometimes when she talked about herself, the stories didn’t quite add up. And at the last Sigma event, she had seemed suspiciously knowledgeable about luxury brands for someone who wore a polyester blend. But more pressingly, she looks like someone Hermione would have bullied in high school. And that was not Sigma material in the slightest. 

“I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help with the party,” Penelope says hopefully, biting her lip and fixing Hermione with huge brown eyes. She’d taken off her usual glasses, and it made them look even larger. “It’d be my honour to help.” 

“No, it’s just about set. Why don’t you go home and get dressed?” Hermione nudges politely, taking a sip from her coffee. 

“Are you sure?” Penelope starts walking alongside her as Hermione tries to walk away. “I could pick up some food. Or I could help decorate. I could bring fresh flowers, roses or-” 

“I think we’re fine,” Hermione answers cooly, slicing her off, but Penelope doesn’t take the hint. 

“I know it’ll be a great party,” The redhead gushes, heels clicking as she hurries to keep up. “I mean, I can just tell you do such a fantastic job as president. I would have voted for you if I were in the sorority.” She brightens. “Maybe someday I’ll have the chance. I don’t know if I mentioned how excited my roommate and I are to rush-” 

“That’s so nice, Penelope” Hermione interrupts, flashing a pained and insincere smile. She tries to be gracious - it really wasn’t Penelope’s fault she garnered such admiration. “Listen, I’ve really got to dash. I’ll talk to you at the party.” 

“I could give you a ride!” Penelope speaks up, but Hermione, already walking away as quickly as possible, pretends not to hear. 

“There you are!” Sierra cries as soon as Penelope opens the door of their shared dorm room. “I’m having a fashion emergency!” She throws a sweater at Penelope’s head, flopping down spread-eagled on her comforter. “I bought this yellow dress to wear tonight, and I’m totally second-guessing it.” 

Penelope takes a step back to take in her roommate’s attire. Even flopped on her back on the bed, Sierra looked like a model in the bright yellow dress that hugged her curves in all the right places. There was no way in hell Penelope could ever wear the same thing without looking like a banana. 

“Don’t change a thing,” she ordered. “You look perfect.” 

“I do?” Sierra breaks into a relieved smile and hops back up to her feet. She smooths the dress down over her thighs. “You don’t think it’s too nightclubby? I know it’s a frat party, but I don’t want to stand out because I’m dressed like a-” 

“Harlot?” Penelope asks politely. Sierra laughs and then looks momentarily horrified. 

“Do I?” 

“Absolutely not,” Penelope insists. “I’d tell you.” 

“Thanks, Pen.” Sierra flashes a smile as bright as her dress and scurries to her dresser to start sifting through accessories. “I’m so glad you’re my roommate. My friend from back home got the most awful roommate. You should hear her stories about her-” 

Her voice trails off as she focuses on attaching an earring, and Penelope has to clench her hands into fists to keep from jumping with joy. Nothing but a formal invitation to join the Sigmas could have made Penelope happier than those words. Sierra was the coolest person she had ever met. 

“How great is this?” Penelope asks, searching her closet for the dress she’d picked out weeks ago. “Our first sorority party. Soon we’ll be sisters.” A shiver of happiness passes through her, and she squeezes her dress to her chest. “I’ve never had a sister before.” 

“I wish you’d take mine,” Sierra sighs, curling her eyelashes. “I have two of them, and trust me. It’s the worst. Everyone wants sisters until they’re waiting in line for the bathroom to shower before school. How about you, brothers?” 

Penelope focuses on brushing her hair out in the mirror, mulling over the question. How did Clifford and Claudius fit into the new life she was making for herself away from Thornhill? Answer: they didn’t. 

“No,” she says, averting her gaze. “Only child.” 

Fortunately, Sierra swaps the topic almost immediately. “If they don’t pledge us after all this effort, I’m going to scream.” 

Penelope smiles. “I was just talking to Hermione Reyes, and she says it’s almost guaranteed.” 

“You’re so lucky that you’re friends with her,” Sierra sighs, and Penelope quickly tears her eyes away from Sierra’s reflection. Admittedly she may have slightly stretched the truth about how well she knew Hermione. Penelope would never lie to her roommate, but she constantly worried that if Sierra realized she didn’t need her that she’d stop being her friend. And Sierra was the best and only friend Penelope had - for now. Once she was in Sigma, that would be her one-way ticket to having real friends, sisters, the kind she had always wanted. It would make this whole terrifying journey worth it. 

“You’re a shoo-in,” she insisted, detracting from her life by heaping praise onto her friend. “You’re worldly, cultivated, beautiful-” 

“And my head is going to be ten times its size if you keep that up,” Sierra laughs, fluffing her hair in front of the mirror. “I’d love to ask Hermione more about running the Sigmas. I’d really be interested in getting involved as a chair next year. Maybe even run for president when it’s my time.” 

“You would make a great president,” Penelope breathes. At once she sees her entire future at Sigma Alpha Phi stretching out ahead of her - four years of sisterhood and fundraisers and loyalty and bliss. 

“You could be my vice president,” Sierra declares, and Penelope’s heart hammers harder. The law student dumps her makeup bag out on the bed and stamps her foot in annoyance. “Shoot, I lost my favourite lipstick last week. 

“Do you want one of mine?” Penelope asks immediately, hurrying to grab her makeup bag off the bed. 

Sierra laughs. “We’re not exactly the same colouring. But let me see.” She rifles through Penelope’s makeup bag and shrieks. “Oh my God, is this Christian Dior?” 

Penelope blushes. She’d replaced her Thornhill clothes with more down-to-earth staples when she’d moved out, but hadn’t seen the point in tossing all her makeup, assuming no one would be eagle-eyed enough to place her as the former rich kid she had disavowed. “It was a birthday gift,” she says, trying for casual. But she can’t help blurting out: “You can have it if you want. I never use it.” 

Sierra’s agog. “I’m not taking your Christian Dior lipstick! But I’ll wear it to the party tonight.” She flashes a cheeky smile at her roommate and suddenly kisses Penelope heartily on the cheek. “Thanks, Penelope!” 

Penelope, stunned to rare silence, sits down on her bed and tries not to blush even more. 

“Here, before I forget.” Sierra extracts a bottle of cheap lime-flavoured vodka from behind her dresser, where it had been poorly hidden in one of her high leather boots. She grins at Penelope’s surprised expression. “Don’t tell the RA,” she teases, though Tom, Sierra’s boyfriend and the RA for their floor, is unlikely to meet either of them with disciplinary action. She extracts two clear plastic shot glasses from inside her purse and pours them each a shot, one of which she hands to Penelope. “To Sigma Alpha Phi,” she says seriously. 

“To Sigma,” says Penelope, and crashes their glasses together. Her heart is hammering so hard that it hurts. 

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe you’re taking me here,” Gladys deadpans as they walk up the manicured lawn of the Delta Tau fraternity house, wedged between two towering oak trees with the wide front door already flung open, music emanating from inside. It’s early, but the party seems already well underway. “I like you a lot, Mary, but this-” 

“You like me?” Mary asks with a smile. Gladys’ eyes flick over to the redheaded girl, uncharacteristically caught off guard. She swears her cheeks start to burn. 

“I just meant-” 

“I’m kidding.” Mary squeezes her hand playfully, and her warm palm pulls away far too quickly. She links their arms instead, dressed jauntily for the party in a black blazer over a green dress with a pink hat. “My best friend is throwing this fraternity-sorority shindig. I promised her I’d drop off some music and see her decorations, and then we can get out of here. Believe me-” She cocks an eyebrow. “I don’t want to be here any more than you do.” 

Gladys grumbles a bit more, just for show, but allows herself to be steered up the tall front steps and into the foyer. Admittedly, it’s a gorgeous house - but she shudders to think how much vomit has been spilled on these gleaming polished floors since the structure was erected. Fortunately, Mary spies her friend almost immediately - a preppy, shiny-haired brunette standing below the glass chandelier with her arms crossed, surveying the party raging around her like she’s the lady of the manor. 

“Mary!” the sorority girl squeals when she spots the two of them, and for a moment the look of superiority vanishes as she rushes over to Mary, dodging bodies, and hugs her like an excited high schooler. “What do you think?” The brunette pivots, showcasing the streamers and the glittery banner hung over the entryway; the blaring stereo in the attached den and the solo-cup clutching crowd. “I know, I know, but it’s a fraternity house. This was the best I could do. Oh, the pledges this year are adorable,” she adds with a wicked grin, raising her voice to be heard over the music. “I have them running all over the place for me. Do you have those tapes?” Her eyes finally land on Gladys and do a full sweep from her combat boots to her bangs. “Who’s this?” 

“Gladys,” Mary introduces her, rummaging in her shoulder bag for some cassettes. “We just met the other day at the Pigeon. Gladys, this is my best high school friend, Hermione.” 

“Right. Hi.” Hermione turns back to Mary, hands planting on her hips. “You would not believe how much work this party is turning out to be. Harry was supposed to help, but after we broke up-” 

“You broke up?” Mary looks agog. 

“He was boring me,” Hermione admits. She waves her manicured hand, seemingly unbothered by the situation. “I’ll explain later. We’re here to party! I’ll get you a drink!” 

“We actually can’t stay-” Mary starts to explain, but before she can get any further, Hermione whirls around and barks at a dark-skinned freshman wearing a frilly pink apron and a white headpiece over her tight party dress. 

“Pledge! Go get me two cups of punch right now! And they’d better be cold!” 

The girl takes off at a run. With a smile of satisfaction, Hermione turns back to Mary and Gladys. “See what I mean? They’re so good this year.” 

“That is awful!” Mary chastises her, her eyebrows bunching together into a frown. “You’re making them dress as maids? I can’t believe that-” 

“Mary!” Hermione’s smug look is suddenly replaced by a wide-eyed, wholesome innocence. “It’s just a little hazing. I had to do so much worse than this when I joined. And who is it hurting? It’s just a little scrap of cloth they have to wear. I didn’t even make them wear the whole outfit! Tell me, where can you find any gentler, more good-natured hazing than that? You know I love my girls. Zeta already had their frosh running laps and puking on the lawn-” 

“That just better be all you’re making them do,” Mary admonishes sternly, finally handing over the tapes. Hermione relaxed, waving the cassettes in the air with relief. 

“Thank God! We need some female vocalists. You would not believe the trash these boys consider music. You’re a lifesaver, Mary, thank you.” She kissed her abruptly on the cheek, hard and familiar, and Gladys felt herself bristle slightly with jealousy. 

“What’s on there?” she questions Mary interestedly. Before Mary can answer, though, the girl in the apron suddenly runs back up to the group, remarkably spilling none of the punch in a pair of thigh-high boots with tiny heels. She hands both cups to Hermione, who distributes them to Mary and Gladys. 

“Thank you,” Hermione says, with what sounds like genuine warmth, though it might just be because Mary’s standing there. She puts an arm around the girl’s shoulders and turns her to face Mary and Gladys. “This is one of my favourite pledges. Sierra Samuels. You’ll have to look out for her, Mary. She wants to be a lawyer too.” 

“Really?” Mary asks, beaming kindly at the girl. Sierra smiles, but before she can speak, Hermione cuts her off. 

“Where’s your little friend?” she asks Sierra. “I’m thirsty too.” 

Sierra points. “She’s over-” 

“Pledge!” Hermione yells at a pale, red-haired freshman who runs eagerly up to them at the sound of her voice. “Go get me one more cup of punch. Cold. Please,” she politely adds, flashing a Cheshire smile for Mary’s benefit. The redhead’s face lights up, and she leaves at a sprint, almost tripping on the strings of her apron. 

“What kind of law?” Mary asks Sierra. 

“I want to study criminal law,” she declares confidently. “I’m already taking the first year criminal justice course, and I’m doing political science and Feminist studies-” 

“So what are you doing here?” Gladys asks dryly. 

“Sigma Alpha Phi girls are not all brainless airheads,” Hermione retorts flippantly, cutting off Sierra’s reply. “You wouldn’t understand, but sororities are philanthropic, feminist, and educational. They prepare you for the real world. And Sigma Alpha girls are usually top of their class.” 

“Does that explain the D you got on that Accounting test?” Mary teases her. Hermione gasps and folds her arms. 

“Mary!” 

The redheaded pledge suddenly runs back to the group, a pink cup of punch clutched in her hand and shielded by the other so that none slips out. Hermione takes a sip and grimaces. “You call this cold?” she snaps but softens her voice when Mary looks sternly at her. “Thank you, Penelope,” she says with sickening sweetness. Penelope’s face lights up at the small compliment. 

“Careful,” Gladys notes. “One of them’s liable to poison you.” 

Penelope, now chewing her lip, shoots her a sideways look that allows Gladys to see the pure terror in her eyes. Gladys honestly has to feel for the kid. Hermione doesn’t bother to introduce her, just turns back to the group, still talking about Sierra as though Penelope weren’t there. 

“Anyway, Sierra’s juggling many commitments, and she still has time for dating,” she says, as though this were an exceptional triumph. “She’s even dating an upperclassman. That’s what I call Sigma Alpha material.” Her face suddenly glows like she’s a little kid gossiping about boys at a sleepover. Straight girls were truly a different species. “He’s your other dorm RA, Mary. Tom Keller?” 

“Tom!” Mary’s jaw drops. “Oh, I’m going to kill him. She’s a first-year! I ought to-” 

“Mary, I told you that in confidence!” Hermione complains, though she’d mentioned nothing of the sort. “He and Sierra are serious. He’s so good to her. And even you have to admit he’s a catch.” 

“He’s so handsome,” Sierra gushes, beaming at Mary and Gladys in turn, seemingly ignoring their lack of enthusiasm. “And so smart. Head and shoulders above the boys from back home.” 

Mary sighs, shoulders sagging. Gladys chugs her punch, resigned to watching this conversation unfold from the outside. It’s shockingly delicious, despite the alarming shade of purple. Hermione throws a sisterly arm around Sierra’s shoulders, beaming at Mary. “Like I said, she’s a perfect match for Sigma.” She goes on and on for a bit, exalting Tom Keller and the various benefits of Sigma Alpha Phi before Penelope, ignored behind her friend, suddenly speaks up loudly. 

“I’m dating an upperclassman too,” she declares. 

Everyone looks at her. There’s even a pause in the music as the song changes, and Penelope’s face goes bright red. But she doesn’t back down. Flipping her red hair over her shoulders, she lifts her chin proudly and puts on a bright smile. 

“I have been since Frosh week. But I had to keep it a secret because he’s so popular on campus. He didn’t want anyone to know yet. He didn’t want his friends to tease him. He’s sensitive. And he has a few ex-girlfriends that he said would rip me to shreds, and he didn’t want to put me in danger.” 

Hermione raises a manicured eyebrow. But Sierra seems to buy it, hook, line, and sinker. 

“Who!” she gasps. “Are you serious? Penelope! We’re roommates and you didn’t tell me?” 

“I couldn’t,” Penelope says. “He was very insistent.” 

“What a creep,” Mary says lightly, though she doesn’t seem convinced. 

“No, he’s a gentleman,” Penelope protests, her eyes widening. She actually looks like she might shed a tear over this mystery guy. “Really, I’ve never been treated so well.” 

“Penelope, you don’t have to make things up just to impress anyone,” Hermione says in a sweet, sisterly voice that drips with secret malice. 

Penelope pauses, and then her spine stiffens. “I’m not. I can prove it. I’m Sigma Alpha material too.” 

“Not another RA, I hope,” Mary says, irritated. “God, this happens every year. Vulnerable girls show up, and some idiot guy who can’t make it with girls his own age-” 

“He’s very sincere,” Penelope argues. Then, sensing Hermione’s interest waning, she plays an ace. “He’s a football player,” she adds quickly. “From Zeta Gamma.”  

“A football player?” Hermione looks torn, interest leaking into her demanding voice. “Well, who is it? You have to tell me.” 

Penelope scuffs her expensive-looking shoes on the floor. “I don’t want to say.” 

“You will say, or you’ll be in big trouble,” Hermione threatens. “Now hurry up unless you want to kiss Sigma Alpha goodbye.” 

Penelope looks up, caught. Then she straightens her shoulders, a lovelorn expression coming over her pale face. 

“I didn’t want it to get around, but it’s FP Jones.” She looks down at her feet. “From the football team.” 

“FP Jones!?” Hermione demands. “The quarterback?” 

Gladys laughs out loud in surprise. “You’re not dating FP Jones.” 

“Yes, I am,” Penelope snaps, so quickly and confidently that even Gladys is taken aback. Gladys considers the possibility that her roommate has some freshman girl on the side and realizes it’s impossible. He’s head over heels for Fred. And she honestly hasn’t seen FP look at a single woman in all the time she’s known him. 

“No, you’re not.” 

“Yes, I am.” 

“No, you’re not,” Gladys counters. 

“Well, how would you know?” Penelope snaps, a look of anger and disgust passing over her face. 

“I’m his roommate,” Gladys answers coldly. 

Penelope’s face goes white, and too late Gladys regrets her opposition. She’s probably ruined this kid’s life in ten seconds. But it’s too late. 

“You made that up?” Hermione asks, a smile on her lips and her voice dripping ice-cold satisfaction. 

Penelope’s face goes through a complete transformation. At first, it’s perfectly blank. Horror and guilt seep in, and for a moment her eyes fill with heartbroken tears. Then her cheeks swell pink, and anger suddenly fills her face, her eyes going flint-sharp and bright as gemstones. Suddenly Penelope rips the frilly headband off her head and throws it on the floor. 

“I CAN’T STAND YOU!” she screams suddenly, even drowning out the music. She stomps on the headband with one of her expensive heels, untying her apron as her face goes bright red. Everyone in the vicinity looks over at them. “YOU PLAY WITH PEOPLE AND YOU MAKE THEM FEEL LIKE GARBAGE! I TRY AND TRY AND TRY TO PLEASE YOU AND IT CAN’T BE DONE! I THOUGHT I WANTED TO JOIN THIS SORORITY MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD, I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING FOR ME, BUT NOW I’D RATHER KILL MYSELF! YOU ALL MAKE ME SICK!” 

“Well, you’re the one-” Hermione retorts, swelling with indignity, but Penelope throws the apron at her and sprints for the stairs, narrowly missing a guy carrying a cafeteria tray of Jell-O shots. Mary makes a startled noise. Sierra stares after her with a hand over her mouth. Hermione fumes. 

“I can’t believe this. I have never seen someone so crass, so uncouth, so- so-” She can’t even think of another word, just pounds her fists against her thighs and makes a noise of disgust. Sierra looks like she wants to drop through the floor. 

Gladys shrugs, turning back to the group. “I like her,” she comments as she finishes the rest of her punch. She meets Hermione’s livid expression. “She’s got spunk. So are you going to rush her or what?” 

The top floor bathroom of the fraternity house is as poorly kept as the rest of the once-beautiful manor house: it has a high, moulded ceiling and elaborate pipes connecting a throne-like toilet and clawfoot bathtub, but all of it is dingy with age and neglect. Having been seated in here for the past thirty minutes, hiding out from the mass of fraternity brothers swapping sailing and hunting stories with his roommate downstairs, Hal’s had ample time to inspect the decor. 

He’s savouring the last few sips of his beer, knowing he won’t be able to go back downstairs for more without passing the den and being accosted by the Delta brothers who have all heard his father’s name for the past several years and expect him to be something he isn’t. 

It’s probably for the best. Hal had only gotten through the first hour of mingling by downing every drink that came into his eyeline like water, keeping a constant stream of liquid down his throat so he wouldn’t actually have to speak. Hiram, of course, had fit in within seconds of waltzing through the fraternity house doors. When Hal had finally excused himself half an hour ago to use the bathroom, his roommate had been regaling a thoroughly won-over crowd about his skiing exploits in Switzerland. 

He’s perched on the radiator by the window when the door to the bathroom suddenly flies open. It smashes like a gunshot into the opposite wall and leaves a mark embedded in the mahogany panelling. Hal jumps a mile as a red-faced, furious girl with bright ginger hair and a short black dress sprints into the room and stops dead when their eyes meet. Hal’s frozen with his mouth open like an idiot. The girl’s face goes even brighter red, her hair standing up every which way, and a look of complete fury suddenly takes over her face. 

“GET OUT OF HERE!!” she screams at him, pointing furiously at the open door. Hal’s so flabbergasted that she’s acting like she’d been the one stormed in on that he doesn’t think to comply. Big, angry tears start in the redhead’s eyes, swelling at the corners of her pale eyelashes. She actually hops up and down a little like a really furious ballet dancer. “GET OUT OF HERE, I SAID!!” 

Terrified, Hal complies. He gets up with the empty beer bottle clenched in his hand and starts hurrying for the door, when suddenly the girl throws herself down on the tiled floor against the bathtub and starts sobbing at the top of her lungs. Hal stops in the doorway, torn. Nothing in his upbringing is allowing him to walk out of here with a girl in this much distress, but he’s overwhelmed and in a strange frat house and has no idea what he’s supposed to do. 

“Are you okay?” he asks instead, and he’s still drunk enough that the words come out slurred and stupid to his ears. He wavers in the doorway, caught between this odd scene and the formulaic mess of the rest of the frat party. 

“Of course I’m not okay,” the girl yells at him. She takes off one of her high-heeled shoes and flings it at the opposite wall, dissolving into crying again. “Everything is awful. I’m such a fucking idiot. I’ve been acting like a fucking stupid pathetic spineless wimp since frosh week. I just wanted some friends, was that too much to ask? I hate it. I hate myself. All I do is fuck things up!” 

Hal’s been torturing himself with those same words since he and Alice split, and it resonates a little too much. He leans awkwardly against the doorframe, more for stability than anything. The redhead’s still ranting, flinging her other shoe at the wall. 

“These girls are so fucking shallow and stupid. I can’t believe I wanted them to like me! I was desperate for them to like me! God, I’m such a loser! I have to drop out of this stupid school tomorrow!” 

“You’re lucky, then,” Hal offers unsteadily, to interrupt her self-deprecation. She squints angrily at him, mascara all over her face. 

“Who are you?” she snaps at him. 

“Hal,” says Hal simply, partly because he has an aversion to dropping his father’s well-known name by now, and partly because his brain is moving a few paces behind this conversation. 

“Delta Tau?” she sniffs, wiping her nose. 

“No,” he says, still leaning against the doorframe. “I’m not anything.” 

She snorts. “Join the club.” She sniffles and wipes both cheeks with the back of her hands. Then she looks up at him again, her eyes big and hurt in her pale face. And then, absurdly, she cracks a smile. 

“I’m Penelope,” she says. 

FP sits at the dining room table, the single yellow bulb in the lamb above burning down on his stack of papers and folders. There’s water running in the sink as Fred washes his lunch dishes in the next room. It’s getting late, but he won’t let himself go to bed. He just stares and stares at the words until they blur, a knot of guilt and stress tightening deeper and deeper in his ribcage. 

“Fuck!” he yells finally and slams his closed fist down on the table, hard enough that the impact rattles every item on the small table. Tears explode behind his eyes, and FP blinks them furiously away, anger making his cheeks burn pink. Fred appears in the doorway that leads to the kitchen immediately, a dishcloth in hand and a very serious look on his face. 

“What was that?” he asks sharply, and though there’s some familiar lightness in his tone, it’s couched under a stern layer of reprimand. Regret pours over FP immediately, and he desperately wants to backtrack the act of striking the table. But it’s done. 

They’d established a specific no-punching-walls rule immediately after moving in together, after the first time FP had lost his temper - not at Fred, thankfully, but he’d been there to see the whole thing - and put a fist-shaped dent in the living room drywall. Fred had fastidiously patched it up and repainted it despite FP’s many promises to do it himself. But that had been the last time. Fred wants FP to use his words when he was upset, and FP lives in fear of ever making this household anything like the one he’d grown up in. He’d sworn to himself he’d never show anger in the way his father had, even if the punches were directed at plaster rather than flesh. He’d made a silent promise he would never move to intimidate, never even mimic causing harm. 

FP would rather die than lay a hand on Fred, especially now that he’d gained enough muscle to outweigh him significantly, but they’d had fights that had become physical when they were kids, and he lives in terror and shame with the knowledge that he’s capable of hitting the man he loves. Now, seeing Fred’s disappointed expression aimed at him, his emotions already wrought and exhausted, the tears come back to his eyes immediately. He feels like shit. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes instantly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I just-” His eyes fall back to the course catalogue laid out open in front of him again, and the sight of it reminds him how dangerously close he is to crying. He breathes furiously through his nose, trying to stave off a panic attack and keep the tears from running down his cheeks. “I can’t do this.” 

“What can’t you do?” Fred’s tone is forgiving now, all concern and kindness and calm, measured reassurance. He wrings the dishtowel out in his hands and pulls out a chair, flipping the towel over his shoulder as he sits down at FP’s side. FP’s voice comes out in a wobbly rush as he avoids Fred’s eyes and swipes at his nose furiously to hide the fact that it’s running. 

“They want me to choose a major, and I’ve been putting it off because I don’t know what to choose, and now I realize that I’m not good at anything and I don’t like anything and we spent all this money and I came all this way and I don’t even know what to get a degree in, and you work all day so I can go to school and I don’t even know how to choose a job that will make us money in the future, or if I can ever get a job with any of this shit, and all my life I thought if I could go to school and do this then I could be something good but it’s never going to happen because I’m so fucking stupid-” 

“FP,” Fred says sharply. FP clenches his teeth to keep from sobbing and buries his face deeply in his hands, the last word drawing out into a moan. Fred shakes his arm, not unkindly, but firmly. “FP, look at me.” 

FP looks up, powerless to resist Fred’s voice. His boyfriend cups his cheeks firmly and holds FP’s face steady between his hands, looking him directly in the eyes with love and kindness shining in his brown irises. His thumbs brush reassuringly against the five-o-clock shadow on FP’s cheeks, and his voice is warm as honey. 

“You’re freaking out over which major to choose in college.” 

“I know,” FP moans, shame crashing back over him. “I don’t even know why I’m here, Fred, it was such a stupid idea, I don’t know why I ever thought-” 

“No, FP,” Fred repeats. He says it again, calmly and slowly, each word laden with emotion. His hands are warm and soft on FP’s cheeks, despite the calluses forming from his work. “Listen to yourself,” he says lovingly. “You are freaking out. Over which major to choose. In college.” 

FP stares at him, breathing heavily, and finally he understands. 

Fred’s reminding him that he’s in college. The biggest thing he ever dreamed about when he was in high school. The dream he lost so much sleep and anger and effort to, the slimmest, most childish, hopeless, pie-in-the-sky fantasy of a better future that tormented him every day of his adolescence. He never thought he’d have to make this decision. The problems he’s facing now are problems he never even dreamed that he’d have when he was sixteen and fighting just to stay alive. 

For a moment he feels a breath of fresh air enter his lungs - and then reality pierces his heart again, and he feels it sink all over again. It physically hurts. 

“Yeah,” he tries to say calmly. “Yeah.” But then his voice cracks again. “But that’s just it, Fred,” he whimpers, feeling fresh tears fill his eyes. “I wanted this so badly. I’m supposed to be doing something important with my life. I’m supposed to get a diploma and start a job and be a better person. But that was stupid. It should be you in college, not me.” The guilt suddenly makes him want to throw up. “Now you’re working to put me through this thing I told you that I wanted , I needed, and you’re doing all the work and I’m supposed to be getting some great degree so I can have a job for us later but I don’t know what to choose! I shouldn’t have thought I could do this. I should have just gone to a fucking trade school or I should have dropped out and let you go to school, or I should have just figured out that just because I got in on some fucking fluke that it doesn’t mean I’ll ever be-” 

He can’t hold it in anymore; Gladys is out somewhere and there’s no one else home. FP starts sobbing. Big, ugly, shitty crying that he tries to bury back in his hands like a little boy. He hears Fred’s soft intake of breath, and then Fred’s chair scrapes the floor as he pulls it up closer to where FP’s dissolving. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” he hears Fred say gently, his arms folding around him into a tight embrace. He holds FP against his body as a lover, his voice soothing. “Okay, shh. It’s okay. It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to fix it, okay? We’re going to figure it out. It’s okay, it’s okay. Everything’s okay. We’ll figure it out, you and me.” 

FP’s shoulders sag, his head pressed into Fred’s chest so hard it’s starting to hurt. Fred’s fingers play lovingly with his hair. The words have the intended effect, soothing him enough that he manages to stop crying, but sadness still freezes the air in his lungs. He lifts his head slowly, wiping at his tears, shame now the loudest of the emotions clamouring for hold over his brain. Old instinct wants him to switch to anger, but he won’t let himself do that to his boyfriend. 

“Take a deep breath,” Fred orders calmly, and FP does, sucking in air between throat contractions. “One more,” Fred says, pushing the books strewn across the kitchen table away. “And don’t think about any of this stuff. Just take one more deep breath, and then we will figure out the rest together.” 

FP sucks in another lungful of air, and this one clears his head enough to quiet his heart rate down. He slowly shakes his head, forcing calm into his voice. A glance at the kitchen clock reveals it’s almost ten-thirty. “You don’t have to do this, Fred. You’ve had a long day at work. I-” 

Fred smiles tightly and shakes his head too. “FP, I am doing this. Happily. Because I’m your partner, and we’re a team. A new note of sternness comes into his voice. “I want you to stop worrying about me right now. Let’s get something straight, you being in college has nothing to do with me not being in college. If you drop out tomorrow, I still won’t be in college. I will still go to work every day. And I’m happy with that. That was decided by completely different circumstances, and that is not your fault. Ever. Are we clear?” 

FP bows his head and nods, playing with a thread coming loose from his jeans. 

“Okay,” says Fred gently, playing with one of the curls that lie next to FP’s eyebrows. He strokes the lock of hair and tucks it back behind his boyfriend’s ear. Then he sits back in his chair, his hands on his denim-clad thighs, and FP’s struck by how adult he looks. Like when he wasn’t looking, Fred had slipped from age nineteen to age thirty. It’s reassuring, but there’s a weariness there too, and all of it underscores what he’d said. Fred had chosen to be his partner. Time and time again throughout all of their growing up. 

Maybe FP needs to stop pushing back against that. 

“Okay,” Fred says softly. “Now, when do you have to choose?” 

FP scrubs his wet face. “The last deadline is November.” 

Fred smiles cautiously. “FP, that’s lots of time.” He reaches out and squeezes FP’s trembling hand, his smile making him boyish and young again. “You have a lot of time. I’m here to help. You don’t have to get overwhelmed.” 

FP shakes his head, tears flooding his vision again. He wants to be drawn in by Fred’s comforting calmness, but the adamant voice in his head is too strong. He’s going to fuck this up. He knows it. 

“If you choose a major and find out you don’t like it, you could change it, couldn’t you?” Fred asks calmly. “I’ve talked to a bunch of people who’ve done that.” 

FP’s shoulders sag in dismay. He’s already thought that one through. “But I’ll have to spend more time in school. It will cost more money. I’ve already cost us so much.”

Fred scoffs, but it’s kind. “You don’t cost us anything. That’s not how I think of it. And FP, whose scholarships are paying for your tuition? Not mine. Geez, I help pay for your books, a little extra here and there, that’s nothing. So what, you change your mind and have to do an extra year or two? I’d love to pay for that.” 

“But I’m not smart,” FP says in a tiny voice. Fred falls silent, his face troubled. Then he smiles. 

“Can I tell you something my dad used to tell me?” Fred asks. His voice is fond and deliberate, and FP has no other choice but to nod. Whatever their differences when Artie was alive, Fred’s love for his dad is so visible whenever he talks about him. FP would never turn that offer down. 

Fred smiles and looks away for a moment, eyes floating to the corner of the room as though he’d see Artie there. Then he looks back at FP. 

“My dad was the first person in his family to go to college. Just like you.” His voice is so warm with pride for FP that FP’s heart skips a beat. “He loved it. So much. He talked about it a lot. And he put pressure on Oscar and me to get the grades, of course. But one time he told me when Oscar was almost ready to go that college isn’t about marks. Not grades, or classes, or anything like that. 

“He said college is for learning to be who you are. To him, the most important part of college was learning you didn’t do in books. And then he told me I’d better still study hard. But he was so honest when he talked about it. So happy. It was like I was seeing the real him. You know, who he was before he was my dad.” Fred smiles, and it’s warm and sad at the same time. “If my dad was here, I don’t think he’d care at all that you don’t know what to major in.” 

FP stares at him. His face is hot and flushed from crying. 

“Do you like college, FP?” Fred asks, rubbing the back of FP’s hand with his thumb. “Genuinely, do you like it? I’m never going to let you give up just because you’re scared, or you think you don’t deserve to be here. Because that’s bullshit. But if you’re not happy, really not happy, you know I would never push you to stay.” 

FP shrugs. “Sometimes, I do,” he answers in the same small voice. He thinks slowly and deliberately as he answers. “I like playing football. I like listening in classes, you know, even if I’m not good at the assignments. I like being here. I like living with you. I like the things your dad talked about, the people and everything. I’m happy here. I don’t really want to drop out.” 

Fred mulls this over, nodding slowly. FP looks down at his shaking hands. 

“But when I was a kid, I thought this would change everything, and it didn’t.” 

“FP, how were you supposed to know what college was like?” Fred asks gently. “All you knew was you wanted a better life. You went for it, and you got here. That’s what you should be proud of. The rest of this is extra. If you drop out, if you fail out, if you major in the wrong thing - you still did it. And everything will be okay.” 

FP knows his worry is written all over his face when he meets Fred’s eyes. He sucks on his hoodie string to try and distract himself. Fred’s eyes go stern as he reaches out and cups FP’s face again. 

“I want you to listen to what I’m saying very carefully, because I am so serious.” He looks deep into FP’s eyes. “If you choose the wrong major and you change it fifteen times, if you try your hardest and still fail out of every class, if you drop out because you decide a trade school was a better fit, if you graduate in two years and can’t find any job in your field, or if you get the job of your goddamn dreams, I will never be any more or less proud of you than I am right now. I am so, so, proud of you. You are amazing. You have done amazing. Whatever you decide on, we are going to be just fine. I promise.” 

He holds one pinky up, their promise gesture since they were little kids. FP hooks his around Fred’s and squeezes tight. As if he’d been waiting for that exactly, his whole body suddenly relaxes at once. His shoulders fall from around his ears. His lungs fill with air again. And he believes him. With all his heart. He’s been so stressed about this for so long that in the absence of that acute stress he feels like he could sleep for days. 

And he realizes how much Fred puts up with. It must hurt him whenever FP decides what Fred can and can’t handle, when he won’t let him make sacrifices for him. Whenever he ignores the promises Fred makes him with so much self-deprecation. 

Fred carefully picks up the heavily dog-eared course catalogue from the kitchen table and opens it to the first page - one FP’s revisited at least ten thousand times since August. 

“Let me look through these. We’re not going to decide tonight. But we’re going to narrow it down, and then you’ll feel like we’ve made some real progress, and by November, we’ll definitely have something to tell everyone. Okay?” 

FP wipes both his cheeks, a smile stretching his lips despite how tired and fragile he feels. “I love you,” he says impulsively, wiping tears off his cheeks. Fred’s smile glows like a sunbeam. 

“I love you too, beautiful,” he says, wrapping his hands around FP’s larger ones. “I love you no matter what.”

Chapter Text

Well, this year isn’t going how Hiram planned at all. 

Ever since the party last week, his roommate’s been glued at the hip to some redheaded freshman he met in the frat bathroom. It was absurd. Hal came here fresh off a heartbreak from some chick in Boston, moped around Hiram’s dorm refusing all his invitations to socialize, and then suddenly fell hard into hanging out with some random underclassman he met at the frat party Hiram had got him invited to. It was like a slap in the face. 

The second slap in the face was that Hal and this girl had decided they weren’t rushing Sigma and Delta after all. In fact, they were on some anti-sorority, anti-fraternity kick, talking some big game about how the institutions were dated and elitist. Hiram looked like an idiot to the Delta Tau boys for talking Hal up as a surefire pledge bet. And Hal was a legacy! Old LC was probably rolling in his grave, and he wasn’t even dead yet. 

Luckily, this whole thing was salvageable. Whatever this girl Penelope said about being over the sorority, Hiram knew that if the offer was extended, she wouldn’t be able to say no. He could read her like a book, and she was desperate to join for some reason. Sigma Alpha had that effect on people. Girls said they wouldn’t want to join in a million years, but it was just to cushion the blow of the sorority not asking for them. Everyone wanted to be elite. Everyone. 

And once Penelope was part of Sigma, which necessitated rubbing shoulders with the Delta boys constantly, was Hal going to let some plebian frat guy escort her to every event? No. He was going to join Delta, in order to spend as much time with her as possible. So he and Hiram would rush together, as Hiram had already decided. And if Hiram really played his cards right, that sorority president with the dark hair and the hot body would be so pissed about Sigma opening up to the girl she’d rejected, that she’d go straight to the frats looking for answers. Hiram would let her rant and then ask for her number. 

All this brings him to the ramshackle student house on Cherry Street, striding up the creaky wooden porch steps to knock on the unfinished wood door at half past ten on a Sunday morning, looking for the university’s biggest-shot scholarship athlete, Zeta Gamma member in name only, and the hero of the unfortunate cover story Hal’s new girlfriend had concocted to impress the sorority members: 

FP Jones. 

When FP opens the door, Hiram gives him an interested once-over. He’s not sure what all the fuss was about, honestly. He’s got the messy-haired, can’t-be-bothered-to-shave look that some girls go crazy for, and he’s got a football player’s physique, but that’s about all. Hiram’s muscles are bigger, anyway. But he looks receptive enough, and he definitely looks broke - there’s a huge hole in his cotton-polyester T-shirt - and that’s the important part. Hiram flashes him his signature pearly white smile. 

“Jones?” He puts out a hand in greeting, slicking back his dark hair with the other one to make sure it’s all in place. “I’m Hiram Lodge. Delta Tau.” He doesn’t mention that he hasn’t rushed yet. Why would he? He’s as good as in once all this falls into place. “Can I come in?” 

FP shakes his hand awkwardly. Firm grip, callused fingers. “Hey?” It comes out a question, unlike Hiram’s question, which had been more of a statement. Hiram rarely asked to be invited anywhere. He just assumed he already was. “Sorry, what’s going on?” FP asks, picking at his teeth with the hand Hiram just dropped. “Do I know you?” 

“In a way,” Hiram says breezily. “You’re Zeta Gamma, right?” 

“Oh, yeah.” FP pushes the door wider. He’s in worn-out jeans and barely-hanging-on black converse, silver rings on his fingers his only attempt at accessorizing. His admittedly sort-of-handsome face wrinkles into a frown. “Is this frat business? I have to pay dues or something?” 

There’s just enough concern in his eyes at the thought of spending money that Hiram knows he’s got him. “In a way,” he repeats, smiling again. “Why don’t I explain inside?” 

As soon as FP steps back from the doorway, Hiram walks into the tiny home as if he owns it. “Cute,” says Hiram once he’s in the house, looking around at the alarming decor. Everything about it screams four-digit income. Which works in his favour in this particular instance. But he still grimaces internally when he gets to the living room and the only options are an ancient couch that belongs by the curb, a suspiciously stained recliner and an outdated daisy-patterned chair. 

He opts for the daisies - it looks the cleanest - and kicks his feet up on the matching footstool. FP stands in the doorway looking at him like he can’t figure out how Hiram got into his house so fast. Finally, he sinks down on the edge of the couch and sits balanced there like he’s the guest. 

“What’s going on?” he asks. Hiram’s looking around the room, interestedly checking out the textbooks open on the coffee table. There’s a sheet of paper covered in awful handwriting crammed in the spine. This football jock was actually doing homework. That was something. He looks back up at FP and gives him a reassuring smile, spreading his arms out over the back of the chair. At least his cape is protecting his clothes from the furniture. 

“Delta Tau has a bit of a problem, and you’re the only one who can help,” he describes. “Well, actually, it’s my roommate’s problem. But being a good roommate, I’m here to plead his case.” Hiram leaves out all the ways that he would benefit from this situation. Altruism was the play. And if that failed? Bribery. 

“I don’t understand,” FP says. Hiram lifts his chin. 

“That’s why I’ll explain it to you.” 

He lays out the whole sordid story. How the poor freshman his roommate’s dating had been so desperate to get into Sigma Alpha that she’d name-dropped FP Jones as her pretend boyfriend during a Delta-Sigma rush party. How she’d been publicly humiliated and withdrawn her pledge intentions. But how her heart was still set on joining, and she was a good kid, just a little misguided, and if FP were to confirm the lie she’d told - say by doing the very simple task of escorting her to next weekend’s frat party and claiming they’d once been secretly in a relationship - the Sigma Alpha girls would be left with egg on their faces. Penelope would be in. Happy endings all around. And really, could you blame her? Being the big-shot athlete FP was? Surely he had girls doing stuff like this all the time. 

FP actually seems to enjoy the story. He looks flattered and amused at all the right parts, and confused during all the rest. But, just as Hiram had predicted, he balks at the end. 

“Look, I’d love to help, especially for Hal, but-” 

Hiram smiles, spreading his arms wide over the back of the hideous chair. “Hey, you’re a busy man, I get it. Probably have stuff like this happen to you all the time. But for the record, I think it’s an affront. Putting our school’s best athlete up in a dump like this.” 

FP’s spine stiffens. Oops. Hiram didn’t mean to insult him. How was he to know he liked his flower-patterned chair and paint-peeling living room so much? 

“Well, not a dump,” he smooths over. “It just could use some alterations, is all I mean. But I’m sure money’s tight, right? That’s why I don’t want to waste your time for nothing. I’m sure you can think of a good use for a thousand dollars if you do me and Hal this little favour.” 

FP pauses. A light goes on in his eyes. The look on his face softens from tolerant amusement to genuine warmth. “A thousand dollars?” 

“Is that enough?” Hiram asks, brows knitting in fake concern. “It’s a huge favour. Not that you’d have to do much work. But it means a lot to the frat.” 

“And this girl?” FP asks, chewing a hangnail. Probably so he doesn’t look as greedy as the dollar signs in his eyes suggest. 

“Absolutely.” Hiram lays it on thick. “It would really help her. Give her a break, you know? It would mean the world.” 

FP grimaces, even though the dollar signs are still there. “It’s just - I’m in a relationship.” 

Hiram waves it away. “That’s no problem. Hell, tell her about it. No secrets here; just lies. All I’m asking is for you to take this girl Penelope to the event. Drop her off, kiss her goodbye, answer any questions the way I tell you. Then you and your girl are a thousand dollars richer. We pretend you and Penelope broke up if we have to. Who cares?” 

“Well, I don’t know,” FP says, but Hiram knows he’s got him. He’s squirming like a fish on a hook. The poor guy must be strapped. Hiram wasn’t really lying - he was shocked that an athlete of FP’s stature was living in this den of squalor. Although, as Hal keeps reminding him, what’s squalor to Hiram is just normal to other people. Horrifying. “I’m not really sure-” 

“Fifteen hundred?” Hiram asks. FP’s cheeks go white. “I know I’m asking a lot. Talk it over with your girl. Call me.” 

He produces from inside the folds of his cape a textured eggshell business card with glossy black lettering, and hands it to FP. 

“The whole thing will take forty minutes, tops. Easy money. Not to mention you’ll be a hero.” He tries to make his voice as earnest as possible. Hometown boys like this loved to be heroes. “To her and the whole frat. And maybe your girl too, if you get her a nice Christmas gift with the money.” 

FP’s jaw opens. Apparently, Hiram had read his mind. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead at the thought of fifteen hundred dollars. Heartbreaking. Some people had so little. 

“Thank you,” Hiram says warmly. “From one frat to another.” 

“I’d have to talk to...” FP begins, and Hiram waves his hand again. 

“Talk it over. Take your time. Call me when you decide.” 

He stands up and smooths his cape back into place. FP follows him to the front foyer and opens the door. Hiram spares him barely a backwards glance as he steps out, raising his hand in a wave. 

“See you,” he says confidently. Then he marches back down the steps, anticipating a phone call that very night. 

“Fifteen hundred dollars?” Fred asks suspiciously. 

“That’s what he said.” FP’s voice is shivery with excitement. “Fred, this is crazy. It’s easy money. Do you know what we could do with fifteen hundred-?” 

“He was wearing a cape?” Fred asks, his voice failing to match FP’s level of enthusiasm. 

FP waves it aside. “Forget the cape. He’s Hal’s roommate. We can call Hal and make sure he’s for real. But I have a feeling. You know how rich kids are. They’ll spend money on anything stupid. This is probably peanuts to him.” 

Fred starts stirring the pasta sauce again. “A cape like a magician, or like a vampire?” 

“I’ve never seen a magician. Babe.” FP pulls on Fred’s belt until he turns to face him, damp spoon in hand. “If I go through with this, we will make fifteen hundred dollars in probably ten minutes. This is the easiest job of my life.” He climbs his hands up Fred’s denim-clad thighs and squeezes. “Why don’t you want me to do it?” 

“Who said I didn’t want you to?” Fred asks slowly. He tastes the pasta sauce on the spoon. 

“Fred.” 

Fred sighs, and smiles at last. He playfully dabs some pasta sauce onto the tip of FP’s nose. 

“My dad always said, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” 

FP usually has all the attention in the world for Fred’s Artie-isms, but he has to groan inwardly at his boyfriend’s calm refusal of the answer to their money problems. “I think it is true, though,” he offers, wiping his nose clean with his elbow. “He has the money. You should have seen the car he parked out front.” 

“He probably does,” Fred replies tolerantly. He flashes a smile at FP. “And I don’t blame this poor freshman at all. I would have had a big crush on you too.” 

FP beams. “You know it won’t mean anything to me. I’m doing it for us. I know we both wish I could be out to everyone, but if you’re worried about this girl-” 

Fred’s mouth opens in surprise, laughter in his eyes. “Who said I’m worried about that? You think I’m jealous of some freshman?” 

“A little?” FP teases. Fred rolls his eyes. 

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea, is all. It sounds too good to be true. And we don’t need anyone’s money.” A bit of pride stiffens his words. “I make enough for both of us, and you have your job at the library. We work hard to get by. If this guy Hiram had never offered, we’d still be fine. I know money’s been tight lately, but we have a budget. I don’t want you to ever worry. Okay, baby?” 

He strokes FP’s shoulders. FP sees fifteen hundred easy dollars slipping away from him and quickly reaches up to grab Fred’s hands, threading their fingers. 

“I’m not worried. But don’t you want us to have something extra?” 

A touch of hurt comes into Fred’s eyes. “Do you need something extra?” 

“Fred, no. I have more than enough.” FP kisses his thigh. “I just want to spoil you.” 

Fred kisses him on the head. “You already do.”

He turns back to the stove like it’s decided. But FP wasn’t going to let fifteen hundred dollars go down without a fight. 

“What about this poor girl?” FP tries a new tactic, folding his arms over the front of his jersey. “You don’t want to help her out? Usually, you’ll bend over backwards to help somebody in need.” 

“You’re going to pull her deeper into a web of lies! Trust me, FP. It’s probably best.” 

FP sighs. “Fred, this money-” 

“It’s up to you,” Fred interrupts, surprising FP. He turns back from the stove. “This is your business, FP. You don’t need my permission. You’ll do what you think is right.” 

FP blinks, trying to translate that. “So - 

“You can do it if you want to. It’s your call. It’s not my business.” 

“You won’t mind?” 

“No, I won’t mind.” Fred keeps stirring the pasta sauce, his voice calm and honest. “I spoke my piece. I see your reasoning. I just don’t think it’s a good idea. But I’m not going to stop you.”  

FP mulls this over, surprised by Fred’s sudden acquiescence. Then he grins. “You are jealous.” 

Fred puts his hands on his hips. “I am not jealous. Why would I be jealous?” 

“Fred, I know you. I believe that you don’t like the idea, but you have to admit you’re a little jealous.” 

Fred finally gives in. A tiny smile creeps up on his lips. “Fine, I’m a tiny bit jealous. But you can still do it if you want to. It’s up to you. I know I have nothing to worry about.” 

FP stands up and kisses him fiercely. “Damn right, you don’t.” 

But he knows very well when Fred’s saying one thing and thinks another. And he knows just as well that it’s useless to try to convince himself to go against what his boyfriend really wants. He can’t do it. Even for both of them. 

FP groans. “Fifteen hundred dollars, Fred.” 

“You have my permission.” 

FP sighs, pressing their foreheads together. “You really don’t want me to do this?” 

“I said you could.” But there’s a small happiness lighting in Fred’s face when FP looks up. His eyes are warm with pride. FP knows it matters to him that he’s obliging his real feelings. 

“Fred…” FP nips his earlobe. “And what if I showed you you had nothing to be jealous of?

“How?” Fred asks. FP growls playfully into his neck and bites his shoulder. 

They forget to turn the stove off when they start kissing. Gladys has to rush in and salvage their dinner with a fire extinguisher. 

“Are you okay?” Fred asks him later, rolling over in bed and poking FP’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to be so down on this. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I just know you can provide for me without taking some rich kid’s money. But I really meant it. You can do it if you want to.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” FP says, kissing his forehead. “Go to sleep.” 

“But you really can do it. I don’t mind. I know money’s different for you. If you want to talk about it-” 

FP smiles, looking into Fred’s eyes. He can read him like a book. He mentally kicks himself as he kisses fifteen hundred easy dollars goodbye and kisses his boyfriend on the lips at the same time. 

“It’s not worth it,” he says, kissing Fred again. “It’s too good to be true.” 

Fred smiles, big and loving with all his teeth, and yeah, FP would pay fifteen hundred for that smile. Fred’s feelings are more valuable than money. It’s a lot, but don’t get him wrong. 

He has everything he needs right here. 

“I can’t,” FP says, grimacing at the words. He sits opposite Hiram in the student lounge after a long day of classes, the building currently populated by late-night caffeine addicts and term paper scribblers. 

Hiram looks like no one’s ever said no to him before in his life. He blinks at him like FP had said the moon was made of green cheese. “What? Why can’t you?” 

“I mean, I won’t. Sorry.” 

“You won’t?” 

“My-” He hesitates on giving up Fred’s name. He’s half-out on campus, fully out to the people who matter, but it’s still a case-by-case choice. FP values flying under the radar. But it still feels like a tiny betrayal every time he lies, even though Fred swears up and down - truthfully this time - that he doesn’t mind what FP tells people. “My girl doesn’t like it,” he finally decides, his heart hurting a little even as he does so. 

“You’re insane.” 

“Yeah, I probably am.” 

“Two thousand,” Hiram corrects. FP shakes his head, even as he winces. 

“I can’t.” 

“What, then? What do you want?” Hiram doesn’t look desperate; he more so looks pissed anyone could ever say no to him. “What do you need? Drugs? Steroids? You want coke? You’re in debt?”

“No. Well, yeah, but-” 

“You need a job? Business connections? A hitman?”

FP shakes his head. 

“Test answers?” Hiram calls out, as FP tries to leave. “Concert tickets?” 

FP has the door open when that last one makes him turn in the doorway. 

“What concert?” 

Hiram folds his arms, a smug look on his face. “You tell me.” 

FP’s home fifteen minutes later. “I didn’t do it,” he whispers to Fred when he crawls into bed. Fred turns around in his cocoon of blankets and burrows immediately into FP’s chest, nuzzling him happily. 

It’s a warm enough welcome to make him feel momentarily guilty for lying. But just a bit. 

Five days later, on the way back from another meeting with Hiram, he pushes open the front door to the smell of frying chicken - his favourite dinner. 

“I saw Hiram today,” he tells Fred as he sets the table. “He wanted me to reconsider.” 

“Yeah?” Fred asks, opening the oven to peek at the cornbread. It’s Bunny Andrews’ family recipe, and he always complains he can never get it right, but it’s FP’s favourite thing that he makes. 

“Yeah.” FP sits on one of their kitchen chairs, legs spread. “I told him no, of course.” 

Fred smiles, turning around and bending down to kiss FP gently and affectionately on the cheek. 

“We’re going to do just fine without fifteen hundred dollars,” he tells FP. “Maybe it’s dumb of me, but I just had a bad feeling. And I’m proud, I guess. You know?” 

“Yeah. And jealous.” 

“Shut up.” Fred flicks his nose. “I’m not that jealous.” 

FP waits until Fred has his back to him again, flipping the chicken on the stove. 

“It’s a shame, because he upped it to two thousand.” 

“That’s crazy,” Fred says in a disapproving voice. FP will never tell him, but sometimes he sounds more and more like his dad as he gets older. “Who has that kind of money?” 

“And he offered me concert tickets,” FP adds. Fred turns his head a little. “Which we could have bought with two thousand dollars, mind you.” 

“What concert?” Fred asks, distracted again by the stove. He doesn’t seem too disturbed. Yet. 

FP runs his hand along a seam in the table. “It was tough because I knew you would have wanted them. I mean, he showed me those tickets, and I thought, Fred would do anything for seats like this. And I know what you told me, but I could tell you really didn’t want me to go through with it. So I didn’t.” 

“Mm,” Fred says non-commitally, but there’s more interest in his voice now. “What concert?” 

FP lifts his shoulders in an innocent shrug. “Maybe they were Bruce Springsteen tickets.” 

Fred turns around. 

“No one has Bruce Springsteen tickets. It’s been sold out for months.” 

“Rich kids,” FP says, keeping his voice casual. “I guess he had his ways.” 

“FP, are you teasing me?” Fred asks in a dangerous voice. Despite the play-anger, there’s something deep and earnest that’s turned on in his eyes. They look as big as swimming pools. 

FP shrugs again, giving nothing away. “Maybe. Anyway, I thought, Fred’s jealous about this. I can’t give in. He wouldn’t want me kissing someone else for a little piece of paper that says front row.” 

“FP, for front-row tickets, you could marry that girl,” Fred says, his voice going back to flippant and nonchalant. He turns back to the stove. “But no one has front-row tickets. Now I know you’re lying.” 

“Wow,” FP says, amused but feigning annoyance. “Really, Fred? That’s all I mean to you? That’s an even trade?” 

“FP, stop,” Fred pleads, turning around and switching tactics as his voice draws out into almost a whine. “Did he really have them? He had Bruce tickets? And you said no? Stop teasing me. Did he really have them?” His voice comes out like he’s asking FP if he’d run over his pet dog. His swimming pool eyes are big and shiny. FP says nothing, and it works him up even more. “FP, stop, you’re being mean. You said no? He offered, and you said-?” 

“You didn’t want me to,” FP protests, putting his palms up innocently. “You didn’t want two thousand dollars. Are you telling me I should have said yes?” he asks, feigning innocent surprise. “After everything you said about things that sound too good to be true?” 

“Are you serious? You’re serious?” Fred’s starting to squirm around like he has to go to the bathroom. He whines like a little kid. “FP, tell me if you’re serious or not. This is mean, Effie, stop teasing me.” 

FP lets him bounce up and down on the balls of his feet for a bit before he admits it. “I’m serious,” FP says honestly. “He had the tickets. Front row. I saw them.” 

Fred’s eyes are as big as moons. His lower lip sneaks out the bottom of his mouth into a pout. “Really?” he asks softly, his face and voice brimming with heartache. All the playfulness leaves him. His shoulders sink and his chin trembles. “Front row? And you said no - because of me?” 

FP tries to hold down a laugh, but he can’t stand the hangdog look on his face anymore. “C’mere,” he growls, and pulls Fred onto his lap by the hips. Fred lands hot and hard on his thighs, his bony butt digging into FP’s muscles. His hands fly to FP’s shoulders, his huge eyes laser-focused on his face. FP tries to keep his expression blank. 

“Effie-” Fred whines, teasing again. “Did you make that up, because-” 

FP reaches into his inner jacket pocket and takes out two pieces of paper. The moment Fred sees them, his pupils dilate like a cat. His jaw drops and hangs open like he doesn’t remember how to close it. 

“So you’ll forgive me?” FP asks, but Fred’s ignoring the question, already pulling the tickets out of his fingers, holding them lightly and looking at them like they’re made of platinum. Once his eyes focus on the paper he’s squirming on FP’s lap, almost bouncing up and down as he breaks into hysterical, giddy laughter. Then, before FP’s ready, he’s throwing his arms around FP’s neck and kissing him furiously on the mouth, so hard that their teeth smash together and he bites a groove into FP’s index finger when his hand flies up to push his face away. 

“Ow, ow, Fred, you’re biting me,” FP laughs, but Fred’s kissing him all over now, slobbering all over his neck and nose and face. He leaps off his lap, jumping up and down in front of the stove like he’s five and can’t contain his excited energy. 

“So, you’re okay with this?” FP verifies, but Fred’s already leaping back into his lap, squeezing FP in a python-like hug and smiling and kissing him at the same time. 

“I can’t believe it!” Fred wails in reprimand, grinning wildly, hysterical laughter making him hiccup in between kisses. He punches him, playfully, but he’s so excited that there’s a lot of force behind it. “You drive me crazy! You had me going! Effie!” But he doesn’t say anymore. When FP tilts his head up to meet his face, Fred starts open-mouthed kissing him like it’s an Olympic sport.

They remember to turn the stove off this time. But barely.

Chapter Text

FP’s known two different versions of Fred: Fred before Artie’s death, and Fred after. It’s not his fault - grief will do that to you, kill the person you were and leave you to pull together someone else out of the wreckage. Especially losing a parent. God knows FP was never the same after his mama passed when he was eight. 

So he understands why Fred emerged from that loss as an older version of himself, a little quieter, a little more somber, more prudent and rational of a person than the dauntless adolescent he’d been at sixteen. He was very similar to his old self, he could still be bouncy and chirpy, he still smiled and laughed, so it’s not that he was no longer happy. But there used to be that specific, unspoiled, happy-go-lucky optimism and joie de vivre that had characterized him as a naive teenager that FP doesn’t see anymore. 

That is, until now. 

In the weeks leading up to the concert, FP gets the closest glimpse he’s had in years of the version of Fred that he used to hang out with in elementary and high school. His boyfriend comes bouncing in the door after work and zooms out again in the morning with the kind of energy usually reserved for nine year olds on Halloween. His whole demeanour is brighter, not just sometimes, but constantly , like a switch has been thrown and can’t be turned off. In this renewed exuberance he has almost ceaseless energy, despite the long hours he works, keeping FP company until almost midnight most nights, laughing and talking and proofreading his homework, playfully jumping on his back and play-wrestling him and showering him with kisses even more than he did already. 

Fred’s never seemed unhappy, but it had recently been in the back of FP’s mind that while his life here was a ceaseless source of new and often frighteningly unfamiliar changes, that Fred’s had become very much a routine of long work hours and their home. Maybe not a rut, not after only two years, but maybe it had been awhile since something to look forward to had been dropped into Fred’s lap, something just for him. Especially since Artie got sick, and Fred put away childish things - most of which, like his guitar and his drawing, he had yet to pick back up. It occurs to him to be jealous, even hurt, that it took another man - a rockstar - to bring this happiness out of him (Bruce and FP have been fighting a long, one-sided fight for Fred’s affection since grade school), but he can’t find the feeling. He’s too happy. Seeing this excitement from Fred after years of being so close to Fred’s grief is like heaven. 

Having the maturity to realize this makes FP realize something else - he’s never felt so secure in their relationship in his life. Nor in himself. Sometimes he catches himself in healthy patterns of thinking that are leaps and bounds from how his mind used to work, and it keeps having the bewildering effect of reminding him that the past two years really have gone by, and that he really has lived them, and that everything in his life is different now. It scares him sometimes, like so much good shouldn’t be allowed to exist for him. But Fred - Fred deserves the world. And if FP benefits from that by proxy, then okay. 

Oh, and the sex. The sex has been amazing lately. And far be it for him to complain about that. 

FP holds up his end. One Friday he takes the truck down to the first-year dorms to pick up Hal’s new girl, a little wisp of a thing with flaming red hair and freckles. She gets into the truck and slams the door, sitting primly on the edge of the bench seat with her hand on the windowsill like she might have to jump out. They make awkward small talk for the two block drive until Penelope says, apologetically: 

“I don’t know how he talked you into this, but thank you.” 

“Sure,” says FP, easy and relaxed from a week of amazing sex. “Anything to get you in.” 

Apparently, this was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes flash like fire, and a hot blush colours her cheeks. “I don’t want to get in,” she says suddenly in a dark voice. “I want revenge.” 

There’s some tea party or something in the sorority house, but a bunch of frat guys are there too, milling around on the lawn in their jackets; Delta blue and Zeta purple. It’s busy; the door keeps opening as people go in and out, girls and guys hanging out all over the porch and the lawn, and a half dozen cars doing exactly what he’s doing now. When the truck rolls to a stop, Penelope gathers her skirt into her lap and moves to hop out, but FP stops her with a hand on her arm. He gets out and walks the circuit of the truck, opening the door for her. Who said he couldn’t be a gentleman? He’d worn his football jacket for the occasion, and the felt and leather gleams in the sun. She gives him what might be a genuine smile as she steps down onto the lawn. 

FP glances at the house to make sure there are eyes on them. He doesn’t need to worry; every face is turned his way, and more have appeared at the windows. Hiram, leaning against one of the porch columns in his cape, lifts his chin in an imperceptible salute. FP walks Penelope halfway across the lawn, holding her hand like a gentleman, and then when his foot hits the path that leads to the door, the two of them give a very convincing performance of the world’s shortest play. 

“I’ll see you later, babe,” he says, and kisses her on the cheek. “You want me to pick you up?” 

“Yes, please,” she says, and throws her arms around his neck. “Bye, baby.” 

They kiss on the mouth in front of a dozen shocked sorority girls. Her lip gloss tastes like wax and strawberries. When it’s done, she skips up the steps towards the french doors of the sitting room, floaty skirt flying behind her. Hiram winks at him. FP takes his time on the walk back to the truck in case anyone wants to interrogate him over the validity of his relationship, but he’s not too concerned about his new double life as Penelope’s second boyfriend. None of the Zeta guys currently in attendance are his football teammates - the only one he recognizes is a big guy with dark hair who’s on the college baseball team. It says MANTLE on his sleeve, and his first name is Mickey or Marty or something. They’d gone to a lot of parties together back in his first year. 

“Hey, Jones!” the guy yells at him. True to form, he’s got a beer open on the lawn at ten AM. Not that FP’s judging anyone - once you’ve woken up in your own vomit a certain number of times you’re precluded from judging anyone for drinking any amount of alcohol ever again. Marty gestures aggressively with the beer can. “Dude, where have you been? You never party with us anymore.”

“Busy,” FP says with a casual shrug, walking back around to the truck. Marty scoffs and glances suggestively at Penelope’s retreating back as though to say he doesn’t approve of what FP’s been busy with. 

“You’re missing out on your prime party years, bro.” 

“My prime party years were from eight to eighteen,” FP replies calmly, opening the driver’s door. He looks back at Marty and feels an oddly genuine smile touch his face as he steps back into the cab and revs the engine. “I like the quiet.” 

He drives back, leaving Marty in bewildered silence, and realizes when he’s turning onto Cherry Street that he’s still smiling. And not just because that was the easiest money he ever made. 

He’s proud of himself. And that’s not something FP ever thought he’d get used to. 

The concert’s on a Sunday. Fred starts smiling Saturday night and doesn’t stop. He even smiles in his sleep. Come Sunday morning, Fred’s actually speechless with excitement. 

All week, FP had been listening to nonstop chatter about the songs Fred wanted to hear, what he was going to wear, how lucky they were to be front row, close enough that Bruce could sweat on them. Periodically, he’d launch himself onto FP’s back like a spider monkey and shriek in his ear: “Are we really going, Effie? We’re really going?” To which FP would assure him that yes, yes they were. He’d already called the stadium twice to confirm that yes, they’d sold two tickets to a Hiram Lodge, and yes, the numbers matched the ones in his hand. But Sunday, Fred comes running down the stairs and shovels a bowl of cereal in his mouth with excited little-kid energy, bouncing up and down and vibrating with happiness, unable to get a single word out. He just sits there, flushed and glowing, almost trembling with emotion, eyes big and bright like a kid on Christmas. 

FP’s not a Bruce guy. He doesn’t hate him or anything, but he’s never felt Fred’s apparently fervent need to sit motionless in front of the record player for hours with his eyes shut, Tunnel of Love clasped to his chest and the sleeves shorn off all his shirts. FP likes his music loud, ugly, or sad - Springsteen is a little apple-pie-American for someone whose most well-exercised tapes are full of lyrics about heroin addiction and suicide. (Not that he’d ever say that in front of Fred. Not unless he wanted to be treated to a forty-minute sermon on the real meaning behind Springsteen’s apparently patriotic 1980s radio hits.) 

But right now he might as well be going to see his favourite artist of all time. Because Fred’s joy is his joy, and right now FP’s so happy his chest is going to burst. Maybe that will change once he’s waited outside in line for hours to get into the arena and spent hours more in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way home - but most likely it won’t. Because there’s no one who deserves that purple-hued piece of cardstock that says FLOOR SECTION 2 ROW A SEAT 1 like the boy he’s in love with. And if he has to sit in FLOOR SECTION 2 ROW A SEAT 2 for four hours watching some rockstar shake his blue-jeaned ass in his boyfriend’s face, that’s what he’s going to do. 

And hell, live music is live music. It’s not like FP can afford to go to arena-sized concerts every other week. This is going to be one of a handful in his whole life. So he’s excited. But Fred? Fred is euphoric. And when they finally pull up to the Meadowlands arena, draped with a big banner reading WELCOME HOME BRUCE, Fred is approaching nirvana. FP has to hold him by the belt loops as he parks so Fred doesn’t jump out the door while the truck is still rolling. 

Getting to their seats takes forever. They’re elbow to elbow with three-quarters of New Jersey, sweaty bodies pressing in on all sides of them as they wade through a sea of people to reach the stage. FP makes a mental note to guard Fred from other people encroaching on his space during the show, even though Fred, blissed out, looks like he doesn’t even notice the crush. When they reach row A, with nothing but a few feet of floor between them and the rim of the stage, Fred starts shaking like an oversized chihuahua. His sweaty hand grasps frantically at FP’s wrist before their fingers find each other and grip tight. FP looks at his boyfriend to see him still grinning from ear to ear. It makes the muscles in his face hurt just to look at him. 

“You ready?” FP asks, and Fred looks up at him with a smile that’s somehow even bigger. He still can’t even talk from how happy he is. Big glossy tears start welling up in his boyfriend’s eyes, and FP gets the not-unfamiliar urge to grab his face and kiss him for all he’s worth, twenty-thousand people around them be damned. When Fred starts jumping up and down in silent, premature excitement - the stage is still empty and there’s over an hour until showtime - he finds himself holding hands with a version of Fred he hasn’t seen in a long, long time. 

“We’re so close,” Fred finally gasps out when he finds his voice. He’s glowing, giddy and drunk with joy. He lets go of FP’s hand to wrap his arms around himself, still bouncing on the balls of his feet like a little kid. One of the security guards with their backs to the stage gives him a blank, tired look. “We’re so close, Effie, I’m going to explode!” 

“Is it your first time?” asks the woman standing next to Fred, and that’s all Fred needs to latch onto her and her husband. He starts talking a mile a minute, telling these strangers his life story like he and FP have known them for years. Of course he’s been making friends ever since they’d parked - by the time they were inside he’d traded warm-hearted pleasantries with at least sixty random people. Now, by the time the show’s due to start, Fred’s on a first-name basis with everybody in their row, and has amassed several phone numbers and an invitation to a wedding. He still hasn’t stopped smiling. He’s laughing loudly and talking so fast that he’s speaking over himself, and every time his eyes land on the empty stage his whole face lights up like a roman candle. FP thinks he could watch him like this forever. 

That’s when the lights go out. 

The scream starts in the center of the crowd and rises like a tidal wave. When the lights come back on, Bruce struts out in front of the band with painted-on jeans and a skin-tight T-shirt under a leather vest, guitar slung around his neck, signature curly brown hair tousled just so. He walks right up to the mic so that his black leather boots are feet from their faces, and FP puts a hand on Fred’s sweaty back in case he faints. It is unreal seeing him in person - a little skinny guy in heeled boots who nevertheless holds the entire crowd of twenty-thousand strong people in thrall. 

“HELLO, NEW JERSEY!” Bruce Springsteen yells at them, and they all scream back, even FP. What the fuck else do you say to that? And no, he’s never felt one single ounce of love or pride for his hometown - not without seeing it through Fred’s eyes, that is - but fuck it, he’s a Jersey boy too, isn’t he? He’s not going to be rude. 

FP’s seen videos of these performances before, on VHS and MTV, but he still didn’t know what he was in for. It’s almost four straight hours of music, and by the encores, okay, maybe FP’s a convert. There’s live music, and then there’s live music , and this is the latter. For a skinny little guy - or maybe because he’s a skinny little guy - Bruce doesn’t stop. He’s ripping into song after song like they’re going somewhere, talking to the crowd like they’re old friends, sweating through his clothes and rolling on the floor, throwing his guitar across the stage and diving into the audience during Leap of Faith. They’ve all flooded as close to the stage as they can get, and they’re so close that you really can feel the occasional drop of sweat land on your arm. 

Fred’s right out in front, singing every single word at the top of his lungs. FP stands directly behind Fred with his arms around him, making sure no one gets in front of him or pushes him around. FP hadn’t known how many words he knew himself, even though he’s heard probably every single song by proxy for the past six years. The room throbs with the kind of energy that feels like it’s going to catch fire. 

At one point, Bruce walks up to the rim of the stage and starts reaching down to touch hands with the crowd. He’s mostly reaching for pretty girls, and FP watches him as he works his way closer, privately willing to grab his arm and rip it into the correct position if he passes Fred by. 

But he worries for nothing. Fred’s reaching up like he’s reaching for heaven - he’d already spent the whole concert reaching out towards the stage, leaning further and further forward like he was being pulled by a magnet - and Bruce looks him dead in the face as he bends down and grips Fred’s arm all the way down to the elbow. Fred grips him back, eyes locked on his face, looking like the roof to the stadium could fall in right now and he wouldn’t notice or let go. But when Bruce moves on it’s FP Fred grabs next, nails digging into his bicep right down to the bone. And when he screams, “He touched me, FP, he touched me!”, voice full of little-kid joy, FP can’t be jealous or mad at the guy. He just can’t. 

Right before My Hometown, Bruce steps up to the microphone to talk. 

“I read something recently that said ‘nothing you do for a child is wasted’, and when I wrote this song, y’know, I was thinking back, how my dad used to take me out in the front seat of the car to pretend to drive…and it’s true, y’know, sometimes the small things that you do for your kids, they stay in their mind forever and ever, like a beautiful work of art. And I still remember the little things my daddy did for me, my mom did for me - And I got two kids of my own now - beautiful little girl and a beautiful little boy - so tonight, before we go any further, I wanna do this for my children and your children.” 

FP looks at Fred, and he’s crying. Not the kind of crying where you want comfort, but the kind of real, bottomless crying that comes from way down deep in your soul, the kind of crying that seems to belong more than anything to parents who have lost children and children who have lost parents. He’s breathing steadily but there’s tears running down his face, all the grief for his own father that he keeps so close to his heart, and FP reaches for his hand and gives it one single squeeze, just to say I’m here. Fred latches on and squeezes back. And they grip each others hands all through the rest of the song, Fred’s cheeks still lifted in a sad kind of smile, his lips still moving with the words, still looking like he’d rather be nowhere else in the universe than this moment. 

The tears keep flowing all through the song, but then he’s smiling and laughing and dancing again, especially because there are no more slow songs - not until Thunder Road eight songs into the encore. Bruce lays into the harmonica, and Fred lets out a scream that could shatter glass. Even FP recognizes it from the first note. 

“The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways,

Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays-”

It’s not just Bruce. Every single person in the stadium is singing at the same time, and the effect is enormous, terrifying, otherworldly. The couple next to them has their lighters out, two of twenty-thousand pinpricks of gold bathing the stadium in what could be sun or starlight. And FP looks at the side of Fred’s face, luminous and already glowy-damp with fresh tears - happy ones - and a thought that had maybe always been there races across his mind, announcing itself loudly for the first time: If I had a ring, I’d ask him to marry me. 

His next thought is how much Fred would like that, being proposed to at this concert, and suddenly he wants to do it so badly that it hurts that his pocket is empty. He fixes his gaze on Bruce with intensity and in the midst of the crowd, thinks furiously, as though trying to hypnotize him: you are going to tour again in three years and you are going to come back here and you have to do it because I have a ring to buy and a question to ask. 

It’s the most foolhardy thought he’s ever had in his life, and yet it’s not romantic impulse, it’s sure ness. Like everything in their history up until this point just clicked into place. This complete and dramatic shift in his attitude toward his own marriage should be mind-blowing, but it settles instead into his heart as something remarkably mundane. He searches for that fear and self-doubt that had made this idea impossible until now and comes up empty-handed. He wants to marry his boyfriend. And really, he always has. He’s always known. 

Three years is an arbitrary timeline, sketched out along the timeline he’s supposed to graduate. Fred’s parents had been married immediately after Artie’s graduation, and FP has no problem living his life by Artie and Bunny’s example - it had worked very well for them until it hadn’t. But suddenly it feels an eternity away. Suddenly he wants this man to be his husband right now, and he wants it the way he wants to breathe air. 

“And it’s oh, come take my hand,

We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land,

Oh-oh Thunder Road, Oh Thunder Road, Oh Thunder Road-”

Fred’s in heaven. Fred’s achieving levels of happiness previously unknown to human beings. FP just stares at him in the lighter-lit darkness, Fred singing along at the top of his voice, turning this revelation over and over in his mind while he admires Fred’s happiness, the most beautiful sight he knows. 

FP never ever thought he’d want to be married. He was too afraid of becoming what his father was to his mother. And that was enough. But there are other fears too: he’s too afraid of committing to a person for a lifetime. Too afraid of saddling another person with all his flaws, too certain that there was nothing in him worth loving. But he searches for that feeling right now, and it’s not there. Fred stares at Bruce, and FP stares at Fred, and he thinks again in wonder: If I had a ring, I would ask you to marry me. 

“There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away,

They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets-” 

Fred grabs his hand again for the last verse. FP looks down at him, and Fred tears his eyes away from the stage to look deep into FP’s, the dark brown irises swimming with love and happiness. And it occurs to FP that Fred wants him here. He wants FP to be the person he listens to this song with, shares this moment with. He has this hopeful, beautiful, lovesick look on his face like the boy FP fixed a VW van with three years and a lifetime ago. And somehow there’s a lump in FP’s throat when Fred squeezes his hand and they and twenty-thousand other people sing: 

“It’s a town full of losers and we’re pulling out of here to win.” 

Born to Run is up next, then Jersey Girl, then Working On the Highway, and by the time that’s over, the hair is stuck to their heads with sweat like they’ve been swimming. When the lights finally go out, and after Bruce leaves them with an ear-splitting “THANK YOU NEW JERSEY, THANK YOU!,” Fred essentially floats back to the truck. If his feet touch the ground even once, it’s not apparent in the look on his face. 

They’re carried back to the parking lot in a tide of people, holding hands to stay together, and the ear-to-ear smile still never leaves Fred’s cheeks. Once they’ve located the truck in a sea of other cars, ears ringing and the soft chill of autumn air cooling the sweat on their skin, he jumps into the passenger seat with all the energy of a golden retriever promised a ride to the park. And as FP’s fitting the key in the ignition, wondering how the hell he’s going to get out of this parking lot and back on the turnpike with twenty thousand people and their own vehicles crossing in front of his truck, Fred dives directly into his lap and kisses him with the kind of kiss that could melt snow off windshields, the door on his side of the truck cab still hanging open. 

FP returns the kiss, but pushes him gently back when he feels Fred’s fingers diving for the zipper on his pants. “Easy, big guy,” FP teases, trying to push Fred back onto his side of the cab. “Give me a second.” 

But Fred won’t be pushed. He climbs right back into FP’s lap, straddling him and throwing his arms around his neck like he used to when they were horny teenagers in their van. His hot tongue dives back into FP’s mouth, his skin glistening hot and still damp with concert sweat. He’s grinning into FP’s mouth, teeth catching on his lip, his growing erection rubbing against FP’s stomach and thighs through his blue jeans. He grabs a fistful of FP’s hair and yanks FP’s head into a position he likes better, forcing FP to moan involuntarily into his mouth. 

“Fred, everyone can see us,” FP pants in warning, his voice already hoarse and wavering. Only the steady flow of people past their windshield he can see over Fred’s shoulder keeps him tied to reality - the parking lot is so full and bright from the halogens that they might as well be doing this in the middle of the mall. 

“No one’s looking,” Fred growls into his lips, grinding down into his lap, and FP whimpers from how bad he wants to give in. But even though now is probably the best time of the evening to be attacked by passing homophobes, he still doesn’t want Fred’s night to end that way. And even if both of them have a bit of an exhibitionist streak, they probably don’t want twenty-thousand witnesses to their impromptu car sex. 

“Fred, Fred, easy- ” he says, finally pushing him off and losing a chunk of skin off his lip for his trouble. Fred lets it happen this time, but gives him a defiant look above the coy smile that hasn’t budged from his face. FP pants for a minute, trying to get his breath back, and then tips his chin at the open passenger side door. “Close the door.” 

Fred slams it. He scoots right back up to FP’s side and reaches into his lap, undoing his zipper and sliding his hand into FP’s boxers. “I wanna kiss you,” he pleads, pouting though the smile is still in his eyes. “Don’t make me just do this by hand, Effie, I wanna kiss you so bad.” His voice is deep and raspy from scream-singing all night, and it doesn’t help the throb in FP’s groin. 

“Fred, just wait until we’re on the road,” FP argues, though the shiver in his own voice isn’t very convincing. Fred’s reply is to pull his hand back and lick his palm long and slow. Just when he’s reaching back into FP’s jeans, FP sees a break in the otherwise gridlocked parking lot. He shoves the truck into drive and squeals out of their spot, jarring Fred’s hand loose.

Fred gives him a theatrical look of incredulity, but the grin never slides off his face, his eyes bright and shiny in the parking lot lights. Now they’re stuck in a line of cars trying to get out of the exit, and Fred’s hand slides playfully back to his thigh, rubbing his inner thigh teasingly but ignoring the zipper he’d pulled down. An involuntary shiver runs through FP, and he pushes his knees together, a burn already announcing itself in his stomach. 

“Fred..” 

“I’m not doing anything,” Fred says innocently, and draws his hand back. They creep slowly along the rim of the parking lot at three miles an hour, and Fred puts both hands under his thighs as though promising to be good. He gives FP a toothy grin, almost bouncing on his seat, his pupils big and his hair a sweaty mess. He’s so electrifyingly beautiful that FP almost takes both hands off the wheel and gives in, letting their truck go right into the bumper of the Jeep in front of them. Almost. But if there’s one thing FP prioritizes above all else when he’s driving, it’s getting Fred home safe. And runner up is not coming in his jeans and having to sit in it for the whole drive back. 

“Wasn’t it amazing?” Fred asks, the grin still threatening to split his cheeks. “That was the most amazing thing I ever did in my whole life!” He grabs Lucky Town out of the car cupholder and shoves it in the cassette player, actually bouncing up and down now. FP groans inwardly as Fred cranks the volume dial - he’d heard this cassette all the way through forty times in the last few days. “I can’t believe it, Effie, I can’t believe we did that. I can’t believe we were front row! Did you see when he touched me?” 

“Are your ears ringing?” FP asks, his voice still tight with arousal, digging at his left ear. “I don’t think I’m ever going to hear again.” 

“Don’t be jealous!” Fred chastises, and turns his sunbeam smile directly on FP, his eyes glittering with hysterical happiness. “You know how much I love you right?” 

“Yeah, I know,” FP admits, grinning back at him. There was a time in his life where he smiled so seldom that they used to feel weird on his cheeks. They don’t anymore. 

“I LOVE YOU!” Fred almost screams, making FP jump. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I LOVE YOU!” FP has to laugh when he starts bouncing up and down again, the seatbelt tightening to hold him in place. “He really played Thunder Road. I didn’t know if he’d play it!” 

He chatters about every detail of the concert all the way back along the dark turnpike, talking ninety miles an hour until he finally slows down and goes quiet just outside of Hackensack. 

“You wanna give me that handjob now?” FP asks once they’re out of traffic, turning to look at his boyfriend. But Fred’s fast asleep against the window, eyes angelically shut, the passing lights from streetlamps moving silently one by one over his face. FP smiles and turns the music down, finally changing it from the cassette back to the radio. Fred doesn’t wake up to chastise him, so he turns the dial until he finds a rock station playing Nirvana. 

Now he’s alone on the highway, the jewel-like lights of the city and the other cars’ taillights glowing through the dark and the hum of the truck rumbling below his thighs. Usually Fred’s the driver - it’s been that way since they were kids. So usually it’s Fred in this position, responsible for the long thankless job of staying awake when everyone’s tired, of tirelessly making sure they all get home in one piece. He’s never complained, and FP knows he loves driving, so he rarely bullies him to switch. But he’s glad he drove tonight. 

FP’s never loved driving like Fred does, but there’s something he’s always found calming about driving at night. And there’s something really special about being the one taking Fred home. About doing things for his boyfriend. He even welcomes the tiredness and the ringing in his ears. He’s sweaty and kind of horny and exhausted and even though the traffic’s better now the turnpike is still crammed with cars - but FP couldn’t be happier. Because he’s doing this for Fred. And Fred sleeps against the window, breathing lightly (FP’s favourite sound) and trusting him completely, so innocent and hopeful and small. And FP gets to keep him safe. And that’s a privilege. 

It’s a long, quiet, drive home, only the radio for company, and when they finally pull back into their driveway it’s almost two AM. FP turns the truck off and hops out, crossing in front of it to open Fred’s door. He’s planning to scoop him up and carry him to bed, but to his disappointment Fred wakes up, yawning, and slips out of the cab himself.  

“I was going to carry you,” FP protests. 

“How were you going to open the door?” Fred teases sleepily, smiling again and leaning against FP. “I appreciate it, loverboy. But I can walk.” 

He’s still smiling as they climb the silent stairs of their duplex and clumsily undress for bed by the light of their bedside lamp. Fred declares he’s too tired to shower, which is music to FP’s ears. Once they’re both changed and in bed, Fred grabs FP’s neck and pulls him down into a deep, passionate kiss. He’s a gorgeous sight - radiantly flushed and still sweaty-haired, his cheeks puffy from sleep, his chocolate brown eyes glistening with what might be more happy tears as he smiles into FP’s mouth. He’s so happy that it’s like looking into the sun. 

“Come here,” Fred sighs against FP’s lips, and starts unbuttoning FP’s pajama pants. 

“Baby, as much as it kills me to say this, you have to be up in a few hours,” FP argues reluctantly, glancing at the bedside alarm clock.  He gently moves Fred’s hands, although he can’t help but whine softly when Fred’s face moves away from him. He leans in and sucks gently on Fred’s earlobe before whispering, painful as it is: “We can do this tomorrow.” 

Fred laughs and suddenly grabs him tightly by the forearms and rolls them both over so he’s on top. He sits up so his ass is rooted directly over FPs crotch, beaming down at him from his perch with the most gentle, beautiful smile FP’s ever seen in his life. 

“Baby,” Fred says, grinning with all his teeth as he pushes his hair out of his face with one hand. “I’m going to fuck your brains out tonight. And there is not one damn thing you can do about it.” 

Chapter Text

FP had set his alarm for six with Fred in solidarity, so he fully expects to wake up with as close to a hangover as he gets these days - throbbing head, blurry vision, exhaustion gluing his eyes shut. So it confuses him when he opens his eyes to a face of full sunlight, feeling more rested than he can remember in recent history. He’s curled up in bed in the fetal position, arms wrapped around a pillow in place of his boyfriend, every muscle in his body pleasantly relaxed and his head clear and pain-free. He squints blearily at the bright sun coming in through the curtains in sleepy confusion before he rolls over. Fred’s side of the bed is empty, and the clock on the nighttable reads 12:00. 

The fucker had turned his alarm off. FP yawns and gets up slowly, stumbling over their discarded clothes from last night on his way to the bathroom, a deep ache already making itself known from the waist down as a reminder of what they’d done in the early hours of the morning. Fred had left him a note taped to the middle of the bathroom mirror, and FP pulls it down to read it in the bright light of the bathroom: 

You looked so cute I couldn’t wake you. I love love love love love you darling. (Each L was looped as though in cursive, which was Fred’s signature only when he was feeling particularly heartfelt. All the lovestruck notes he’d shoved through the slats of FP’s locker over the years had looked the same way.) Have a good day, I will see you tonight. Freddie. 

He’d doodled a heart and a sunshine across the bottom of the page. FP stares at it for a minute with his cheeks aching before he realizes he’s still frozen in place, smiling down at the paper like an idiot. He folds it for safekeeping and glances at himself in the mirror. His hair is sex-tangled, his neck and chest covered in hickeys, and he’d slept so hard that there are pillow lines on his face. FP rarely looks at himself and feels attractive, but after sex with Fred is one of those times. He feels beautiful right now. 

Gladys is at the kitchen table when he walks downstairs, still gazing fondly at the note in his hand, re-reading it until it’s memorized. “Show was good?” she asks. She has a coffee from the school cafe sitting next to her with a book and a microwave burrito. 

“It was good,” FP says, yawning as he limps across the kitchen to get at the coffeemaker. His ears feel clogged, but are no longer ringing. “He played-” 

“Oh, trust me, I heard,” Gladys interrupts, sipping from her own coffee. “I got the rundown on the whole setlist at six-thirty this morning. I don’t know how people can get up at that time. If I hadn’t had an early class-” 

FP walks back around the table after setting the coffeepot to brew and sinks down in the seat at the other end. “I want to marry him,” he says suddenly, cutting Gladys off mid-sentence. She stops talking immediately, slowly setting her coffee down. 

FP can feel his face turning red, but there’s no impulse to backtrack the words. He’d wondered last night if his feelings had only been spur-of-the-moment, that God forbid he’d been swept up in some Bruce Springsteen concert magic and carried away by emotion. But no, he’d woken up with that same confidence firmly in place, that same idea almost obsessively fixed to his mind. He wanted to marry his best friend. He wanted his best friend to be his husband. It was as obvious and self-evident as the weather outside. It was something like the first time he’d admitted to himself that he was bisexual - not why or what now but of course. It was something that had truthfully been there all along. He just hadn’t been ready to admit it to himself until now. 

Sharing it with Gladys was astounding too - usually his impulse was to turn his feelings over and over in his own mind and body, privately guarding them until they turned bad inside him and started to hurt. Rinse and repeat. But this one he’s so confident in that the thought of being secretive never crosses his mind. It just comes out of his mouth before he’d known he was going to say it. 

“You do?” Gladys asks, raising a skeptical eyebrow. FP doesn’t take it personally. He gets the feeling Gladys isn’t the marrying type either. 

“I do,” he says softly. “I really do.” He feels suddenly terrified, overwhelmed, though the sureness never wavers. FP pushes the mug of coffee aside and buries his face in his hands. “I’ve never wanted to get married. I never thought I would even be in a relationship. Not after my mom and dad. But now I really do. I want to propose to him.” He looks up at her, fingers running through the unruly hair he’d just brushed. “Do you think I’m crazy?” 

“I think anyone who gets married at nineteen is crazy,” says Gladys flatly, sipping from her coffee again. She shrugs when FP’s face falls, stress tightening his jaw. “That doesn’t mean it’s never worked. I just think it’s stupid. People do stupid things all the time. I’m positive you two do.” 

FP hides his face in his hands again. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. I can’t be ready for this. It’s not - it’s not even legal .” Sadness starts to sink slowly down from his shoulders into the pit of his stomach, mixing uncomfortably with the coffee until he feels sick. He’d never forgotten that they couldn’t legally marry, but it had slipped out of the forefront of his mind in his excitement. 

“Because I’m sure that’s always stopped you before, right?” Gladys replies. She gets up, carrying her plate to the sink, leaving FP staring hopefully after her. 

“I’m scared to hurt him,” he blurts out as Gladys is separating the lid and sleeve of her coffee cup into the recycling bin. She turns around with what looks like irritation, and FP privately expects to be hit with a lecture on Gladys not being his personal therapist. He’d hang on her every word regardless. Sometimes in her bluntness she’s the most useful sounding board he has. But she doesn’t lecture him, and she doesn’t let him down either. 

“I think when you torture yourself like this it hurts him,” Gladys answers bluntly. “I think you’d hurt him if you didn’t ask.” 

She leaves FP sitting with that. And, in typical fashion, she ends up being right. 

FP had expected the three hours of sleep to catch up with his boyfriend at some point during the day, but when Fred comes home from work at six PM, he essentially flies in the door on a tidal wave of energy. There are bags under his eyes, but he doesn’t stop smiling as he rushes into FP’s arms for a hug, cement splattered on his boots and jeans, his feet still barely touching the ground. 

They head to bed almost immediately after finishing the dinner FP had cooked, and after making out lazily for ten minutes, Fred’s head finally hits the pillow and he all but collapses into sleep, rolling over and passing out cold. FP watches the back of his head for a few minutes before he whispers his name. 

“Fred?” FP asks in the quiet room, not really expecting an answer. He almost just wants to practice saying it. But Fred hears him. 

“Mm?” he mumbles, rolling back over to look at FP. God, he’s too fucking cute when he’s sleepy. 

FP takes a deep breath, but the words come out easily. “Do you ever think about getting married? Us getting married,” he clarifies, as though Fred would misinterpret who he was talking about. 

“Yes,” Fred replies simply, surprising FP. “Why?” His eyes go wide and he rolls the rest of the way over. “Are you-” 

“I’m not proposing!” FP clarifies quickly, raising a palm. “This isn’t proposing.” His heart is thumping hard in his chest, his palms sweating, but it’s not with fear. It’s excitement. “I just wanted to know. You know, if you wanted that ever. Maybe.” 

Fred smiles quietly, snuggling his cheek against the pillow. “I’ve wanted to marry you since we were ten.” His face is full of fondness, his tired eyes soft. “Do you think about getting married?” 

“Yeah, I think I want to,” FP whispers, the words a small revelation as they leave his mouth. 

Fred’s eyes go big again, unable to hide his surprise at the matter-of-fact way FP had said it. “Really? You do?” Excitement flushes his face, not unlike the way he’d looked when FP handed him those Springsteen tickets. The sleepiness lifts from his features and he looks suddenly bright and alert. 

“I know I do,” FP clarifies. He plays nervously with his fingernails as he talks, heart pounding. “I know we can’t really get married, but Gladys was telling me about her mom having a commitment ceremony, or whatever. It’s the same thing. And we would know.” He glances up at Fred. “I know I’ve always said marriage is all bullshit, but-” 

“You’d be my husband,” Fred whispers, smiling in the dark. 

“I want to be your husband,” FP says in a shaky voice. “It took me a long time to realize.” 

Fred reaches out in the bed and squeezes his fingers. “I want that too,” he says warmly, but FP sees hesitation cross his boyfriend’s face for a second. Not reluctance - thank God - but suddenly he’s second-guessing his own thoughts. 

“Do you think we’re too young? FP asks, before Fred has to say it. They’re whispering like they used to at sleepovers when they were kids, and theres something Christmas-morning cozy in the feeling. Like they’re not opposing one another, but like it’s the two of them figuring things out as a team, in the face of the whole big awful world. 

“I don’t know. I know you’re my person.” Fred’s eyes are beautiful and shiny in the dark. “But I guess I want to be a little older when I do this. Be more sure of who I am; before I do this big thing I’ve always wanted. But that’s my head talking. You know what’s in my heart.” Fred picks up FP’s palm and presses their fingers together. “I’d have married you years ago if I listened to my heart. But it’s not just for me, either. I want you to have the chance to do all that too. And you have your school-” 

“I can still study if I’m married to you,” FP whispers. He’s falling in love with the word. What the fuck happened to his heart? He’s becoming Fred. Soon he’ll be drawing hearts in a notebook and pulling petals off daisies. 

“I want you to focus on that.” Fred presses each of his fingerprints against FP’s before he laces their fingers and grips tightly. “It’s important.” 

“It was important when I was a kid. I wanted to be a better person. I wanted to get out of that place. I wanted to be worthy of you.” FP instinctively massages the side of Fred’s hand with his thumb. “That’s why I wanted to go to college.” 

“I want you to finish it. And then we’ll go on and get married and have even more life together. The rest of our lives.” Fred smiles at the words, and not for the first time, FP admires the lines that scrunch up around his eyes. “We don’t need to rush into anything.” 

“You’re probably right,” FP whispers, but he can’t mask the disappointment that bleeds into his voice. “That’s the responsible thing to do, right?” 

“We’d be more settled in a few years, and we could have a nice ceremony,” Fred says reasonably, though FP sees the same disappointment reflected in Fred’s eyes. Something about the way his boyfriend’s voice gets when he’s being responsibly adult always reminds FP of Artie, and he finally snorts. 

“You’re your father’s son sometimes, you know that?” 

When Artie was alive, and they were young teenagers, Fred would have raised hell over that comment. But these days it makes him so proud to hear it. The corners of his mouth lift fondly and his eyes start to shine a little brighter. 

“And you’ve never been,” he says sleepily, snuggling closer and squeezing FP in a rib-cracking hug. “Never once in your whole life.” 

FP closes his eyes and kisses him on the head. “It’s just hard to wait,” he whispers into Fred’s hair. 

Fred grins against his throat, and then slowly sits up in bed, releasing FP from his grip and scooting himself back until he’s sitting against the headboard. He pulls a small silver chain from around his neck so it falls outside his T-shirt, a single silver ring threaded through the chain. Fred can’t wear rings at his work, but this one stays around his neck inside his clothes almost all the time, pressed against his heart. 

“Where’s your ring?” he asks, all business again. 

“I took it off,” FP says, wide-eyed. He wears several rings on an everday basis, but he knows the one Fred’s referring to. 

“Go get it.” 

FP gets up and rummages around their messy dresser for his rings. He finds the one Fred had bought for him and climbs back in the bed, eyes wide, unsure what’s happening. Fred takes it lightly out of his hand, replacing it in FP’s hand with his own, which he slides free of its chain. Then he takes FP’s other hand and holds it, pressing FP’s hand against his chest so FP can feel his heart. 

“FP,” he says softly. “I promise you that you are the person I’m going to marry. And I promise that, married or not, I will love you for the rest of my life. And when you ask me for real, I’m going to accept.” 

He slides the ring gently on his finger, and FP feels his jaw start to tremble. He leans forward and turns his face away from Fred to hide the tears, but he knows Fred hasn’t missed the telltale catch in his breath. And there’s no hiding these. It’s like someone turned on a faucet. 

“Effie,” Fred says, sweet and loving with just a little bit of teasing in it. He tugs the hand he’s still holding. “Are you crying?” 

FP wipes his face with his knuckles and looks back at Fred, knowing he’s letting him see his most vulnerable self. “I just love you so much,” he says, in a voice that’s hoarse from holding back tears. He looks away again and puts his palm out blindly. “Give me your damn hand.” 

Fred does, laughing. FP turns and looks him in the eyes, his throat closing but his heart feeling three sizes bigger and soft as clay. 

“Fred Andrews,” he says softly, “I promise, one day I’m going to be the husband you deserve.” 

“Stop,” Fred interrupts, saying it gently, but with fire in his eyes. “I don’t want to hear about what I deserve. I chose you a long time ago. I just want you to love me.” 

“Fine,” FP says, brushing a tear quickly off his face. He smiles, and Fred returns it immediately, like their feelings are connected. FP slides the ring he’d once bought Fred on his finger, as gently as if it and Fred’s hand are porcelain. “Fred, I promise I will love you for the rest of my life. And when I marry you, I’m just going to keep loving you more.” 

His voice breaks, his hand shaking where it’s holding Fred’s, but it’s enough. Fred reaches out and cups his face, leaning in to kiss him long and slow and tender. FP reaches up and holds Fred’s hands against his neck. The ring on his finger, though he wears it almost every day, feels like it carries a physical weight. He presses Fred’s forehead against his, and closes his eyes, and just lets himself feel everything. And he feels very clearly the part of himself that so reliably always asked, who would ever love you? How could you ever be worth loving? And for the first time in his whole life, FP feels that voice go quiet. 

Several kisses later they’re snuggled up tightly in bed, and FP feels so warm and loved and safe that he could float away right there. Still, he wants to ask Fred one more thing. 

“Freddie?” he whispers, nudging his boyfriend, who’s almost asleep again. 

“Mmhm?”

“If I’d asked you yesterday, at the concert, would you have said yes?” 

Fred looks up, grinning with all his teeth, suddenly alert again. “Yes. Of course. But now that we talked, I’m glad you didn’t.” 

“I should have,” FP declares, slapping Fred’s shoulder playfully, and Fred rolls his eyes, though he keeps looking up at FP through his eyelashes after. 

“Just ‘cause we’re not married, doesn’t mean we can’t practice for the honeymoon,” he whispers, dragging a slow finger down FP’s chest, over his scar. FP can feel his heart beating faster, but he shakes his head. 

“Another time. You’re really tired.” He lowers his voice playfully. “And someone left me covered in bruises last night.” 

Now it’s Fred’s turn to huff, but he turns it back into a sleepy smile. “So you won’t forget who you belong to,” he answers intensely, dark eyes blazing, and God, FP’s ready to say his vows right there. He gets half-hard on the spot. And in typical fashion, Fred turns his expression back to sweet-faced innocence like he hadn’t said anything dirty at all. “Tomorrow?” he asks, smiling angelically up at FP with his head on his chest. 

“Tomorrow,” FP sighs, and they seal it with a slow, deep kiss. 

Chapter Text

Fred’s up to his waist in the dust bunnies under his and FP’s bed, digging for last year’s Halloween costume, when his hand lands on something moist. Grimacing a little, he wriggles backward out from under the bed and pulls out the culprit: a mouldy ham-and-cheese sandwich, still wrapped in soggy cellophane from a lunch god-knows-how-long past.

“Gross, FP,” he complains, pulling it out and firing it into the nearby trash can. It’s not totally out of the ordinary - God knows FP’s locker in high school was only cleaned about once a century. Fred had seen his share of mouldy lunches and rancid gym socks come out of that thing, not to mention FP’s never-emptied football duffle bag, and he himself wasn’t much better. They tried to be a little neater now that they were essentially adults, but theirs was still very much a college student’s dwelling. God knew this house had probably seen worse than an old sandwich, even if Fred shuddered at the thought he’d been sleeping above it without noticing.

But then he finds the rest. And his heart starts to sink as he pulls out Tupperware containers he’d thought were long missing, crammed with leftovers on the verge of going rancid. When Fred pulls stacks of clothes out of the closet on a hunch and digs through old jerseys he comes upon the snacks: already-bitten granola bars, open bags of chips, long-softened apples, food hoarded piecemeal from the fridge downstairs and the kitchen cupboards and God knows where else.

He sits back on his heels and contemplates the food, deep in thought.

Hoarding food is something FP started to do in his first year. His tuition allowed free access to the campus dining halls, which operated on essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet system. You filled your tray, but then you could go back for more as many times as you wanted. FP didn’t stop going back. On multiple occasions when he’d been visiting, Fred had actually watched him eat until he puked. Then he brought as much as he could carry home and filled the drawers of the dresser and desk in his dorm room, hoarding as though preparing a nation for an impending apocalypse.

It broke Fred’s heart, because he knew firsthand where it came from. Fred came from a household where his mother made multiple weekly grocery runs, where there were always after-school snacks, always food in the fridge. Dinner was on the stove when you got home, and breakfast was the first thing you did when you got up. FP had never had that experience. Food was a luxury for him, not a priority. So his natural reaction when faced with plenty for the first time in his life was to react like it was going to be taken away.

He did this secretly, ashamedly, yet compulsively, for the first three semesters of university. No amount of intervention from Fred had been able to stop it. Fred was reassured when it gradually slowed, petering off the summer they were living together, as though the wound causing it was starting to heal.

They’d talked about it a few times, most productively when they’d first rented this house, and Fred had sat FP down, embarrassed as he was about it, and promised him he would always have food in the fridge. For a long while, he hadn’t thought about his boyfriend’s old habit at all. But now this, which could only mean FP was feeling badly about something. Bad enough to slip back into old coping methods.

Fred knew he had to tread casually when bringing it up. FP’s temper wasn’t on the hairpin trigger it used to be, but he still made a habit of shutting down or deflecting when confronted with hard truths. So when FP gets home from practice and classes, Fred evades the topic as they make dinner and sit down to eat. Only when they’re laying, sleepover-style, on the bed, leafing through the course catalogue as they do almost every night, does Fred bring it up.

“I found some food you were keeping under our bed,” he says lightly, turning the pages in the SCIENCES section.

FP tenses a little. He gets up from his position on his belly and shifts until his back against the headboard, instinctively making himself smaller. “What do you mean?”

Fred rolls over and sits up with him. “The food you’ve been hiding up here.”

FP’s chin lowers to his chest, his eyes moving anywhere but Fred’s face. But Fred won’t have that. He catches FP’s chin with two fingers and lifts his head back up.

“I’m not mad. Can we talk about it?”

FP eyes him warily, like he’s waiting to be yelled at, and if that doesn’t break Fred’s heart into a million pieces. They had their fights, sure, they did yell at each other. But every time FP gets this scared-dog look on his face he regrets it. FP grew up in a house where anger reigned. He’s still transitioning to living somewhere with love instead.

“Sorry,” FP says immediately, his eyes flickering back to his lap.

“It’s okay,” Fred says calmly. “I just want to know how I can help. And, I guess, why.”

“I guess… I don’t know. Money’s been tight lately.” FP laces his hands so tightly in his lap that the backs go white. “I’ve been stressed about other stuff. I don’t know.”

Fred pats the bed until FP shifts closer to him. He slides an arm around his waist and talks low and gently, the way his father used to speak to himself or Oscar when they were frightened.

“We are never, ever, going to run out of food okay? That’s just not going to happen. I’m always going to keep food in the house. Money’s never been that tight, and it never will be. Promise.”

Fred runs his hand through his boyfriend’s hair and guides FP’s head down to his shoulder. He can feel anxious shame radiating off his best friend.

“I don’t mind if you want to keep food up here. But let’s put it all in the same place, okay? So we know what we have. How about here?”

He waits until FP lifts his head from his shoulder before he gets up and pulls open the nightstand drawer, taking out handfuls of their household detritus - old ticket stubs, receipts, flashlights and screwdrivers, badges from various campus events, all kinds of memories and tokens. Fred dumps it on the bed where he’d been sitting.

“I’ll find a different place for all this, and this can be for food. Maybe non-perishables.” Fred gives him a small smile. “I’ll buy you some snacks next time I grocery shop. Some of your sandwiches were getting gross.”

“You’re not angry?” FP repeats, a note of genuine shock in his voice. He looks blankly at Fred and then at the items on the bed as though completely bewildered by this response.

“I’m not angry.” Fred runs his hand through FP’s hair again, scratching at the back of his scalp. FP leans against him again, surrendering. He sighs quietly, shoulders sinking.

“Why are you so nice to me?” he asks quietly into Fred’s shirt.

“You’re being nice to me too,” Fred says with a small smile. “You didn’t get defensive.”

FP plays with his nails. “It’s embarrassing, I guess.”

“No, it’s not,” Fred says firmly. “I’ve never been embarrassed of you, and I’m not going to start now.”

He starts sorting through the junk, every so often handing FP a photostrip or polaroid picture of the two of them that he comes across. FP smiles down at the old photos - some recent, some from as far back as high school.

Finally, Fred gives up and dumps it all into an empty shoebox from the closet, which had once held his current favourite pair of sneakers. FP cracks a small smile at the gesture. Fred’s been a packrat from earliest childhood; even moving him out to college had necessitated an obscene amount of boxes. His idea of spring cleaning was consistently taking all the junk out of his room, looking at it, and putting it back in.

“For a second, I thought you might actually get rid of something.” FP teases.

“Don’t worry.” Fred packs the lid on the box and looks up at FP with a dazzling smile. “You know me better than that.”

FP glances at the empty nightstand drawer, and Fred follows his gaze before putting out a hand out to pull FP up off the bed.

“Come on. The convenience store down the street is open all night. Let’s go get snacks.”

The next day, anticipating an empty house, Gladys has Mary over to study. But Fred comes home from work at lunch and makes a ton of noise in the room directly ahead - hammering, sawing, and generally making a ruckus. Gladys has to throw in one of her Joan Jett tapes and crank the music as loud as it will go to drown him out.

Since it’s not conducive to studying, she and Mary end up lying on her bed, play-wrestling and kissing. Which is the position Fred finds them in when he simultaneously knocks on her door and throws it open about thirty minutes later.

“Fred!” Gladys complains. She sits up as Mary looks quickly around at the doorway.

“Sorry!” He backs up, hands clasped in silent apology. But it doesn’t detract him from coming back to the doorway and lounging against the doorframe like he owns the place, staring in at her guest.

“Hey Mary, did Gladys invite you for dinner? FP’s making chilli and his chilli is so. good.” Fred punctuates each word by clapping his hands together, taking up all of the doorframe. “He won’t tell me the secret ingredient. Please, please, say you’ll stay for dinner. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Gladys didn’t grow up with siblings, but she has a sudden and overwhelming vision of what having a younger brother is like. Before she can throw a pillow at Fred to get him out of the room, Mary interrupts her.

“I would love to stay for dinner.” She grins at Gladys’ side-eye and Fred’s exuberant fist-pump, combing her hair back into place. “Thanks for asking me.”

“All right!” Fred enthuses. “Six-thirty. We’re making garlic bread.”

“You didn’t have to say yes,” Gladys says once he’s sailed out of the room, his feet thumping back down to the door as he prepares to head back to the job site. “We can go somewhere for dinner.”

Mary surprises her by laughing. “Are you kidding? I wanted to. I think your roommates are great.”

Sure enough, when they all sit down at six-thirty, it’s clear Mary and Fred have taken to each other. They chatter like close friends all throughout the meal. Gladys keeps sneaking glances at FP to see if he’s jealous, but he and Mary end up in a thoughtful, considerate conversation about possible majors for him, and FP seems to be respectfully soaking in her every word.

By the time they’ve all gone back for seconds, Gladys has to admit that she couldn’t have found anyone who was more of a hit with her roommates. Mary had a knack for making everyone feel listened to. And since one of her feet keeps rubbing Gladys’ shin throughout the meal, she can’t really complain. In fact, the four of them - seemingly an odd quartet to anyone else’s eyes - get along like a house on fire.

“I’ve seen you play,” Mary says to FP when the conversation turns briefly to football. “You’re very good.” She shrugs at Gladys’ surprised expression. “I’m not a big sports player or anything, but I go to a lot of the games. My friend is one of the cheerleaders.”

FP lowers his head almost demurely at the compliment, shoving his fork into his potatoes. “I never thought I was good enough for first-string Varsity, to be honest. I figured I’d be on reserves this year. But here I am, so-”

He shrugs and takes a self-deprecating bite of food. Fred nudges him hard with an elbow.

“Thank you,” FP says suddenly to Mary, though he shares a tiny smile with Fred. “But if you two could see Fred play baseball, you wouldn’t be talking about me.”

“What position do you play?” Mary asks, interested.

“I used to play,” Fred corrects her, but FP answers for him:

“Fred could play anything.”

Fred grins and shakes his head. “I was a catcher. In high school.”

“Best one we ever had,” FP adds seriously. “He’s the best player in this town. Fred’s got an arm like a bullet. He can catch anything. We won State three times with him. Three times.” FP repeats, stressing the words with pride and amazement as though their importance hasn’t set in.“State!”

Mary looks suitably impressed, but when Fred doesn’t pick up the invitation to brag, FP leans forward in his chair, gesturing with his fork as he launches into a story.

“He’s not telling you everything. Senior year, we were playing our qualifying game for the regionals. We only had two pitchers, and they were both out of the picture for some reason. One guy was in the hospital for appendicitis, and the other one had pitched every game since. Wore out his arm, and the coach wouldn’t put him in no matter how important it was. We’re about to put our keystone bagger on the mound, because he’s the only other guy who can even think about pitching. We all figure this is the year we’re not going all the way. A bunch of the guys who were really good had graduated, and with no pitcher we think we’re doomed.”

FP glances over at Fred, who’s hiding a smile, listening modestly as though he doesn’t know how the story ends. FP leans back in his chair, gesturing with his hands.

“Then Fred puts his hand up. Says, ‘I can pitch, Coach.’ Coach figures he’s probably as good as the other guy, and the game’s already in trouble. We were up against Greendale, and they were tough. They were slated to win that year, it was just bad timing that our last qualifier was against them. It would have been hard to beat them on our best day. Coach says, ‘sure, Andrews, you can pitch,’ thinking he’s going to pull him out after an inning.

“So Fred goes out there against our toughest rival, he’s our catcher, mind you, our relief catcher comes in behind the plate, this poor guy who hadn’t caught a day since Freshman year since Fred’s been on our team - and you know what he does? Our last chance to make the regionals, the toughest team in the league, never pitched a game for us in his life - you know what he does?” FP points at Fred, who’s looking bashfully at his potatoes, though not without a small smile on his lips. FP leans across the table for emphasis. “Pitches a no hitter. A no hitter. By the top of the ninth, even the other team is on their feet cheering for him. This guy’s a different breed. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“He tells me later he’s been practising pitching in his backyard, just for fun. We made regionals, and then we won regionals, and Fred switched off pitching and catching the whole time. That’s not all. Most pitchers, they can’t hit worth a damn. Tell them what your batting average was, senior year, Fred.”

Fred looks down at his plate, his ears pink. “It’s not really-”

“If you don’t tell them, I will,” FP threatens.

“High school averages are calculated differently,” Fred starts to mumble. “It’s not like it’s standardised-”

“Fred. Tell them what you batted senior year.”

“I batted .500,” Fred admits, looking up at Mary and Gladys with a small streak of pride in his voice. Gladys side-eyes this, not sure how much to believe. But Mary is suitably impressed, her jaw slightly open.

“How are you not on the school team?” she asks, but FP interrupts.

“Forget the school team. He could have signed a contract and gone pro the day we graduated.” FP looks long at Fred then, as though nervously gauging his reaction. But Fred looks up at him and smiles, warm and radiant, and FP doubles down. “He had offers like you wouldn’t believe.” FP’s face lights up as he launches into another story. “This other game, we were down by four-”

“You two haven’t heard about his big win,” Fred cuts in, laying a hand on top of FP’s on the table. He looks over at him, face glowing with warmth. “FP scored the winning touchdown against our biggest rival in senior year.”

FP shrugs modestly, raising his hands in defence. “Hey, I had my moment, but I’m just a hack. I play hard, and I like it, but Fred- He’s the real thing.”

They look at each other with so much affection that Gladys feels obliged to interrupt.

“Well, I played softball, and I got a foul because I bit a girl’s earlobe off,”

Fred’s jaw drops and FP’s eyebrows go up and Mary’s hands fly to her mouth. “No!” Mary and Fred scream, and the rest of the meal devolves into laughter and the comparison of various sports fouls.

“They’re cute,” Mary says when she and Gladys are saying their goodbyes. “I hope someone likes me that much one day.”

“Maybe they already do,” Gladys suggests with a shrug. It’s close quarters on the porch and she can smell Mary’s perfume, the heat from her body warming her skin when Mary’s hand drifts along her arm. Her eyeliner is smudged a little, smoky at the corners. Gladys leans in when Mary grips her hand so that she can smell her shampoo better. “I didn’t scare you off, did I?”

“No,” says Mary, and leans up gently to nibble Gladys’ earlobe before she kisses her goodnight, full on the mouth. “I think it’s sexy.”

“I didn’t embarrass you, did I?” FP asks at the same time, pulling his shirt off over his head in their bedroom. “I like to talk about you.”

“No,” says Fred fondly, a small smile rising on his cheeks. He’s in his boxers, flossing his teeth as he watches FP undress. “It was nice.”

He nods at the nightstand next to FP’s side of the bed.

“Open that.”

With a curious look at him, FP does. The drawer is neatly divided and full of dried fruit, snack cakes, protein bars, and crackers, as organised and well-stocked as any convenience store. It smells readily of fresh sawdust, and FP slowly realises Fred had built an insert perfectly sized to the drawer, divided by thin pieces of wood into different compartments to hold different types of food. One compartment is empty, waiting to be filled. The wood is fresh, but the corners are lovingly sanded smooth. The whole thing lifts out as a tray when FP experimentally tugs on the wood, and his throat knots a little when he absorbs how much care had gone into it.

“I worked on that when I came home for lunch,” Fred describes. He strokes FP’s hair from behind, scratching his scalp. “I know you don’t like going to bed hungry. I thought you deserved the nicest bedroom pantry anyone’s ever had. And if I ever see a little fridge at the thrift store, it’s coming home with me too.”

FP looks at him with wet eyes for a second before abruptly scooping Fred up and dumping him on the quilt on top of their bed. Fred laughs as FP starts kissing his neck, locking his legs automatically around FP’s calves.

“You-” FP says, but his voice catches suddenly and he just stares down at Fred’s face as he struggles to find the words. His voice comes out choked and awed. “You treat me like-”

“I love you,” Fred says sternly, his hands cradling FP’s cheeks.

“Thank you,” FP whispers. He gently traces the line that separates Fred’s pecs with a finger, running it along the place that’s marked with a scar on his own chest. He smiles and suddenly puts his whole body weight down on Fred, pushing him into the bed as he hooks his arms around his neck.

“I hope you meant what you said, because I am hungry right now-” he growls playfully, tugging Fred’s boxers halfway down his hips and pressing his mouth down to gnaw at Fred’s neck- “and you look like a treat.”

Fred laughs and lets FP wrestle him into the mattress, but stops him suddenly with a hand to his chest. “Wait!” he yelps, and FP obediently drops his hands from his boyfriend’s skin.

“What?”

Fred grins apologetically, but takes the opportunity to roll them over so that he’s on top. “I forgot to ask you,” he laughs, seating himself on FP’s lap like he belongs there. “What do you think we should be for Halloween?”