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The moment you began looking forward to going to bed was the moment that you also began wondering whether you were going a little crazy. Or maybe the moment that you had gone crazy was when you had just accepted the entire situation without further questioning. Something strange had been happening to you ever since you had moved to Austin, Texas.
Every night for the past three weeks, you had been having short dreams that had one thing in common: Gavin. You had no idea where he had come from or why it was happening now, but every single night you would see him and you would dream of him. You had never seen him before in your life or met anyone that came close to looking like him, but he was there every night.
In the beginning, you had dismissed it as you just having a strange imagination. But now, three weeks later, there was no way that this could be a normal thing. Enough time had passed and you’d decided to finally take a step towards figuring out whether this was normal. So, naturally, you went to the internet.
You were surprised and relieved when you found that you were not the only one who was experiencing this. There seemed to be a large amount of people who had also gone through the same thing. You’d even managed to stumble upon an internet community specifically made up of people who were dealing with this strange event. Though there was a specific word that kept jumping out at you through the screen: soulmate. You kept seeing it repeated over and over again by everyone. It was beginning to scare you a little. There was no way this could be real, right? There was absolutely no way that you were actually communicating with your soulmate through your dreams. It just wasn’t possible.
As you shut your laptop and prepared to go to bed, you thought back to Gavin and all the things you had learned about him in these short weeks. He was originally from England, but had moved to Texas a few years ago for a job. He mentioned he had also worked in film in the past. You hadn’t asked for his last name but if he had worked on films, surely you’d be able to find him if he was real. You could just google him or something. Or maybe you could ask what company he worked for. You wished you’d thought of asking him specific personal questions before, but your dreams with him were always so short. They felt like they were only maybe a half hour or less in length. Sometimes they would get cut abruptly.
You laughed weakly at yourself as you fluffed your pillow up. You were actually falling for a guy that was literally from your dreams. You were almost fully detached from reality at this point.
"Hey," you said quietly as you sat down under the biggest tree in the entire park. Gavin appeared to have been waiting for you.
"Hello," he said cheerfully, reaching in to give you a warm hug.
"How was your day?" you asked when he let go of you.
"It was alright, although I’ve been really busy lately. Don’t ask for too much details ‘cause I can’t tell you, but I am gonna be in a movie," he informed you, clearly sounding very proud of himself.
"Seriously? That’s the coolest. What’s it gonna be called?" you asked, throwing out the first question of the many that you planned on asking Gavin tonight.
"Lazer Team."
"I like the title. Sounds sci-fi related."
"It is."
There was a small pause in the conversation, and you took this as your chance to begin what would confirm or debunk the entire theory of Gavin actually being a real.
"Hey, can I ask you a few questions?" you began, nervously beginning to play with the grass.
"Sure. But I wanna ask you some too," he answered, reaching over to hold your hand.
"Okay. Firstly, do you find this a bit strange? Like, the fact that we see each other every night in our dreams. I am just questioning whether this is real, or if this is just one sided and all in my head."
"I have thought about it. It’s really strange to dream of you every night. It’s been so consistent too. One time I had like three consecutive dreams where I was dating Courteney Cox, but it was just those three and I never dreamt of her again. But this has been going on for weeks now, and I am not sure what to think about it anymore. In all honesty, the scariest part is that I am falling for a girl that I am not sure is even real."
You sat quietly after he finished talking, realizing that he seemed to be having most of the same concerns as you were.
"You had a thing with Courteney Cox?" you asked as soon as that part of his answer sank in.
"It was like three dreams. And it was really weird," he laughed.
"Gotta watch out or else Courteney might steal my man," you joked.
"Am I your man?" Gavin asked, a gentle tone in his voice.
"It’s my turn to be asking the questions," you derailed him, laughing at his annoyed facial expression.
"Okay then. Next question."
"What’s your full name?"
"Gavin Free."
"What’s your job?"
"Hard to explain. I do so much stuff. I guess the best way to describe it would be to say that I play video games, film slow motion, and am now in a movie."
You thought over his answer. It seemed too…unbelievable. This guy played video games for a living, he apparently was a slow motion cameraman, and he was gonna star in a movie? You would believe one of the three to be his job, but all three? What sort of cool life was he living?
"Seriously?" you asked him, still finding a hard time believing him. "You sound like you have the coolest life ever."
"I might have the coolest life ever, and I certainly don’t take it for granted, but I do wish I had you to complete it," he said, making you look down in a blush.
"I wish I could just meet you already. But I’m not even sure if you’re real. When I wake up, I am going straight to the Internet to look you up. If you are real, and this isn’t just my brain coming up with shit, you have no idea how happy I will be."
"Can I ask the questions now?" he insisted.
"Alright, I’m done interrogating you."
"Yes, finally. I have loads of ques— oh no. Why now?!" Gavin looked around, immediately annoyed.
You knew why. Your surroundings were beginning to fade, and you knew the time left with him tonight was ending now.
"Guess you’re saving these questions for tomorrow," you told Gavin as you pulled him in for a tight hug.
"I’ll miss you," he said, and the both of you held each other until you opened your eyes back into reality and a new morning.
You were so eager to find out whether he was real that you could barely control your fingers to type out his name in the search bar. Your pinky hovered over the enter key until you finally pressed it while holding your breath. You stared at the screen as the links appeared. Wikipedia, Twitter, IMDb, Rooster Teeth, and YouTube. Rooster Teeth? You didn’t know what that was until you read the small bio on the side of the screen from Wikipedia. He was an English filmmaker, best known for his work in Rooster Teeth, Achievement Hunter, and The Slow Mo Guys.
Suddenly, it felt like you didn’t have enough time in the world to find out everything about Gavin. You wanted to click every single link with his name on it and read everything about him. You must have spent a good hour reading his Wikipedia page, reading the Wikipedia page on Rooster Teeth and The Slow Mo Guys, scrolling through his Twitter feed, and going through his posts on the Rooster Teeth website.
As you headed over to YouTube, you realized that your Saturday morning would be primarily spent watching Gavin in videos. You couldn’t believe it. He was real. He was completely real, and your heart would beat fast every time you would hear his voice in the Let’s Plays you clicked on. He wasn’t just a made up person from your dreams.
All attempts to think logically about the fact that you had found your soulmate through your dreams were gone now. Did it matter at this point? The fact that he was real did prove that you weren’t crazy, at least not completely crazy.
All the videos you saw him in helped to get to know him better. The time you got to spend with him while you were asleep was not enough for you. You were having fun actually getting to see his face for more than fifteen minutes and to see him interact with his friends, (and it was also pretty funny to watch him play video games). But it wasn’t enough. You wanted to see him in front of you, breathing the same air as you. You wanted to be able to reach out and touch him in real life. You wanted to sit down with him and talk for hours, without having your conversations cut short.
You tried finding a way to contact him, but with how popular he was you were unsure whether he would ever see whatever email or tweet you could send him. You’d just have to personally ask him tonight.
“Alright, this is gonna go just fine. Just ask him if he wants to meet up, or maybe if he wants to start talking in real life. No big deal,” you told yourself while you nervously washed your face before bed.
This couldn’t go wrong, right? Gavin had said he liked you, and he seemed to be returning feelings for you. You could definitely arrange a meeting with him. The two of you lived in the same city, easy enough.
Your stomach began to feel uneasy and nervous. What would meeting him be like? What if he turned out to be completely different than what you knew every night? No, it’d be fine. You were just worrying for no reason.
You put your hair up into a top bun while you walked towards your bed, wondering how quickly you would fall asleep. You’d purposely waited until you were extra sleepy so that your nerves wouldn’t cause you to have difficulty falling asleep. You would be with Gavin soon.
“Did you pick this place out?” you asked Gavin as you watched the waves of water flow near your feet.
“Yea, just thought it looked cool. I always seem to be in the dream before you arrive,” he smiled.
“Maybe you fall asleep first or something.”
You looked around at the scene you were in. It appeared to almost be nighttime, the sky stuck in that perfect moment where you could see the sunset while some stars were beginning to show. There was a wide river in front of you, and across from it were the silhouettes and lights of a city, the lights reflecting on the flowing water.
“It’s my turn for questions,” Gavin reminded you.
“I know, but first I gotta tell you something,” you interrupted.
“What is it?”
You went straight to the point, telling Gavin your Twitter handle and your email address. There was a huge sense of relief in doing so, now you could communicate after you’d both woken up.
“Also, I want to meet up with you, but we’ll save that conversation for some other time,” you continued.
“I’d be so happy to meet you, you have no idea,” he said.
“Soon.”
“Very soon,” he smiled, moving in to kiss you softly.
The kiss lasted longer than you’d planned until Gavin pulled away abruptly.
“Don’t distract me, I got questions to ask,” he said, trying to put on a serious face.
“Alright, go right ahead.”
“Okay. Did you actually google me?”
You laughed, of course he would be interested in that.
“Yes, I did. And I am now a firm believer that you do actually the world’s most exciting combination of jobs.”
“Did you watch any videos?”
“You are a terrible Worms player,” you laughed.
“Oh come on! You could’ve aimed for a video where I actually looked like I was good at video games,” he smiled, clearly unable to defend his skills.
“You are pretty good at the slow motion thing,” you complimented.
“You can’t just insult me and then compliment me immediately afterwards,” he joked.
“If it makes you feel any better, you failing at a game makes for very funny entertainment.”
“Thanks, I try. But I have an important question, and I want you to be honest,” Gavin said, shifting in to a more serious mood.
“I’ll be honest,” you promised.
“What do you feel about me?”
You paused for a few seconds, trying to gather your thoughts and feelings in an attempt to form a coherent answer to his question.
“The first couple days where we met up in our dreams were a bit strange for me. I remember waking up after our first meeting and I thought about you for that entire day. It was odd to me. I thought I was being weird for thinking so much about this random guy that had popped up in one of my dreams. And then I saw you again, and again, and again. I started thinking I was going a bit crazy because I’ve never had any dreams where I was consistently seeing the same person over and over again. Especially because I’d never seen or met you before in my life. However, there was a bigger issue in my head.”
You paused to look at Gavin, trying to read his expression for any clue about how he was feeling about what you were saying. He only stared at you, looking eager for you to continue.
“I tried to find a reason for why this was happening. I went online and looked through a bunch of different pages where people had experienced the same thing. There was one particular thing that kept popping up and”—you paused to take a deep breath—”I kept seeing a lot of talk about soulmates.”
“Soulmates,” Gavin murmured, almost in a questioning tone.
“Yes, soulmates. Now the reason this was important to me was because the whole soulmate thing could easily explain how I felt about you.”
“You believe that we are…soulmates,” Gavin stated, and you couldn’t tell whether this conversation was currently being positive or negative.
“I love you,” you finally told him, sounding confident in your feelings.
You made direct eye contact with him and you didn’t dare look away. You had just told him that you loved him, and you were gonna make sure that he knew it and that he knew it was true.
“Soulmates,” Gavin breathed out.
“Yes. Soulmates.”
Gavin lifted his hand and slowly lifted it to cup your cheek, his face morphing into an endearing expression.
“You are my soulmate,” he said, this time sounding less nervous about it. He sounded sure about it.
“I hope I’m everything you ever wanted and expected,” you said, reaching up to hold his hand against your cheek.
“You are everything to me. And I love you too,” he said, looking you straight in the eyes.
You woke up and the first thing you did was reach up to touch your cheek, holding on to the feeling of Gavin for as long as you could.
Time was moving slowly as you waited to receive any contact from Gavin. You fumbled around nervously as you added milk to your bowl of cereal and took it to the living room. There was nothing interesting on TV, so you went to get your laptop.
You checked every single place where he could possibly contact you, but there was nothing there yet. So you went back to searching for something interesting on TV.
Fifteen minutes later, you heard a notification sound go off from your phone.
You probably moved faster than any human in all of history.
You huffed in annoyance as you saw that it was just a twitter notification from one of your favorite celebrities. Definitely not what you wanted to see at the moment. You went back to your laptop.
It was really hard to focus when all your mind was doing was trying to calm down and attempt to be patient. It was really hard to be patient when all you wanted to do was see your actual soulmate.
You headed off to YouTube, deciding that now was a good time to finish watching a video you’d started the previous night. It was called Game Night, or something like that. All you knew was that it had Gavin and a guy named Burnie in it, and that so far it had been very entertaining, as it was a lot of Gavin talking about his life and things he’d experienced up to this point. It was a perfect video for learning a bunch of things about him that you’d never asked him before.
You felt a strange sense of pride while watching the video, and you weren’t exactly sure how to describe it. You found yourself smiling. Gavin was such a lucky person. He was definitely talented enough to get to where he was today, but he was also incredibly lucky. And you thanked whatever lucky stars you had that somehow you and he had ended up in the same place on Earth, because you weren’t sure you would have ever found him otherwise.
You heard your email notification go off.
You hurriedly unlocked your phone to click on the email, freezing as you saw it was a phone number from an address that was definitely Gavin. Your finger hovered over the number, and you knew you were a tap away from actually contacting Gavin for the first time in a setting that wasn’t a dream.
You didn’t notice that you were holding your breath as you held the phone up to your ear and heard the rings from the other side. This was actually happening.
“H-Hello?” you heard him say, and you smiled slightly at how nervous he sounded.
“Hi?” you squeaked out.
You heard a quiet sigh.
“Gavin?” you asked.
“Oh my god, you’re real,” he said, and you laughed nervously.
“Yes, and you’re real too.”
“This is absolutely mental. I almost can’t believe this.”
“Yea. I’m gonna be honest here and just admit that my heart is racing like crazy,” you told him.
“Me too,” he laughed.
“I am so happy that we’re actually talking, you have no idea.”
“Alright. I’m just gonna throw this out there, because ever since you suggested it I haven’t wanted anything more. I want to see you.” he burst out.
You were left speechless for a second. You hadn’t wanted to advance things super quickly in case it made him uncomfortable but it seemed like he had no problem with it at all.
“I’d love that. Let’s meet up.” you agreed.
Two hours later from the initial phone call, you were a nervous mess. You’d probably meticulously tried to fix everything up in the living room twenty times. You kept your place clean but for some reason you wanted to occupy your time doing something to help with the nerves. When you heard a car door shut outside, you almost jumped up a foot in the air. Then you heard a light knock on the door.
You speed-walked over to the door, fixing your hair before you opened it.
There he was.
You both stared at each other for a couple seconds, and you couldn’t have possibly stopped the giant smile that spread across your face.
“Can I hug you?” Gavin asked sheepishly.
“Of course,” you replied, still smiling.
He immediately rushed to wrap his arms around you. As soon as your bodies pressed together, it felt like you were home. You took in the warmth of his body. He was tall, and your head rested on his chest, the perfect height for you to be able to hear his heart beat. It was currently beating quite fast.
You stood there hugging him for what seemed like an entire minute, and even when you pulled away from him you didn’t want to let go, so you held his hand. He didn’t want to let go either, and as you closed the front door and went to sit on the couch, you took notice that he didn’t let go of your hand at all.
“I hope my staring isn’t creeping you out,” he laughed, and you saw a slight blush appear on his face. “It’s just that you’re even more beautiful in person than I could have imagined.”
You looked down, a blush also appearing on your face.
“Thanks,” you smiled,”I think you’re also very handsome.”
“Really. Not even the least bit scared by my bad hair and monster of a nose?” he joked.
“Not at all.”
He laughed with you and then stared down at your intertwined hands.
“You really are beautiful. I mean it. You’re the most beautiful and loveliest person in the entire planet. I’m the luckiest lad. And I am in love with you.”
“I am in love with you too, Gavin,” you replied.
You suddenly knew that this was gonna be the moment where you and Gavin would share your first kiss together. And your heart began beating quickly at the thought of it.
He knew it too, or maybe he could tell by the way that your eyes slowly dropped down to look at his lips. He bit his lip slightly before leaning in to you, letting go of your hand to place his on your cheek.
Your lips touched his, and you felt everything fall into place. You felt happiness in your heart as you felt his warm breath against your lips. You felt at home.
Your heartbeat returned to normal, nerves long gone. After all, what did you have to be nervous about? Gavin was yours and you were his and you knew it would always be this way.
His lips moved with yours as the kiss grew deeper, his hands dropping down to wrap around your waist. You had lost track of how much time had gone by, and you didn’t care. The only important thing at the moment was your entire focus being on Gavin, and how great it felt to feel his soft lips wrapping around yours.
When you both pulled away you stared into his eyes, noticing that you’d kissed for long enough that both of your lips were flushed pink.
“Promise you’ll always be mine?” he asked softly.
“Only if you promise to always be mine too.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.”