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“Oh look,” said Selena, “it’s the Hardy boys.”
“For acolytes who just met, you guys are pretty tight,” Angus added suspiciously, and shit. Randall had known it was kind of risky to be hanging out with Hamish in public, but honestly a life where they couldn’t go to The Blade and Chalice was simply not a life worth living, in Randall’s opinion. Still, he had hoped they’d at least be able to go underground for a few weeks, give them time to convincingly become friends or think of a decent cover story, but noooooo. Two hours in and here were their magical babysitters again, still hovering.
“It does feel like we’ve known each other for a while,” Hamish was saying, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes.
“You can’t fight your feelings,” Randall improvised, nodding along, and Randall hoped he had a plan, because he knew he sure didn’t.
“You can,” Hamish corrected, signalling something to him, “but what’s the point,” and… huh. That was the plan? Were they really gonna do this?
Randall went with it and leaned in. “Kiss me,” he said hurriedly, just in case he’d read Hamish wrong, just to cover his bases so he wouldn’t take him off guard, but it was totally unnecessary. Hamish was going for it, his eyes already closed as he pulled Randall the rest of the way in and pressed their mouths together.
It was a surprisingly great kiss, considering. Hamish did kind of taste like beer and nachos, but Randall liked beer and nachos, so that wasn’t exactly a problem. And his hands were warm and gentle on Randall’s neck and he was using just the right amount of tongue, enough to keep it interesting but not so much it got slimy. Really, they should do this more often, Randall thought to himself, before discarding that thought for being, well, stupid.
Randall shut it down from there, ending the kiss before it could further destroy any more of his brain cells, nuzzling their noses together as they pulled away, hoping that would put them over the line of genuine sappy authenticity.
Hamish had his chin resting in his hands and the look in his eyes was manic; he looked simultaneously freaked out and on the verge of hysterical laughter.
“Let’s get out of here,” Randall said, because he didn’t think either of them could plausibly keep this charade up for more than another forty-five seconds.
“Mmm,” Hamish agreed, and then they were both shoving Selena and Angus aside to escape from the bar before either of them started laughing or screaming.
“Called it,” Randall heard Angus saying smugly as the door swung shut behind them, and he briefly wished he’d made his monitor go jogging with him at 6am more often.
“That… could have gone better,” Hamish finally said tersely, when they were more than halfway back to the house, and that’s when Randall started cackling.
So the problem was, now that they’d started kissing each other as an excuse to escape their Order babysitters, they couldn’t stop.
Gabrielle ran into them studying together in the library, and Hamish started such an aggressively ostentatious game of footsie that he ultimately ended up accidentally kicking Randall in the crotch. Nicole wandered by when they were practicing defensive maneuvers and Randall had to turn a werewolf running tackle into something resembling a sensual hug. Alyssa saw them hanging out on campus and Randall had Hamish shoved against the side of the chemistry building, kissing him frantically, before he remembered that Alyssa actually knew they had their memories back and he didn’t need to be doing this at all.
But this was the way it kept happening. They weren’t talking about it, of course. Every so often Hamish seemed like he was considering starting an honest conversation about the topic, but whenever Randall sensed any real emotional honesty on the horizon he challenged Hamish to a drinking game or asked Jack a question about his cheer routine or even, failing any other excuses, literally straight up running out of the room.
Randall just did not want to talk about it. Randall and I had to kiss each other, Hamish had said. Had to. Randall was worried that if he and Hamish sat down and made a real plan or had a serious discussion of any kind, he would immediately realize that they actually had to do nothing of the sort, that there were fifteen much simpler and more effective ways to solve this problem and then Randall would have to stop kissing Hamish.
And Randall did not particularly want to stop kissing Hamish. Becoming a werewolf had not been great for his love life, and becoming an amnesiac undercover werewolf magician had only complicated things further. He’d had a vague suspicion that given another few weeks of memory-erasing dust and he might have developed a serious crush on Angus, of all people. This thing he had with Hamish was deeply and incredibly stupid, sure, but at least it wasn’t Angus .
What Randall really wanted to do was get Lilith to yell at him until he didn’t feel so stupid and confused anymore, but she had an American Lit seminar so he got wasted with Jack instead.
He’d had… better plans.
“So you know how Hamish and I keep making out to distract the Order people whenever they catch us around town?”
“Wait, you guys what?”
“Yeah, as a decoy to hide that we have our memories back. Anyway, it’s kind of backfiring on me because I think I have actual legit feelings for Hamish now. Isn’t that fucked up?”
Jack looked very tired all of a sudden, and he took a very long drink from his beer. “I don’t know, Randall,” he said, “this is the actual definition of a problem you’ve created out of nowhere. I have Gabrielle stalking me and Alyssa ghosting me and Vera trying to murder me—”
“To be fair, we all have Vera trying to murder us—”
“And you literally just did this to yourself. Like, so you have a crush on Hamish. So what? Just talk to him about it.”
Randall laughed so hard that a large quantity of beer came out of his nose. “Good one, Jack,” he crowed, “imagine. Imagine being honest about your feelings!”
“I’m being serious.”
"It's just that he's so tall, you know?" Randall slurred, slumping back onto the couch. "And handsome as hell."
"Are you quoting Taylor Swift? How many of those beer boots have you had?"
Randall sighed. "He's so bad but he does it so well."
“I’m cutting you off.”
Ultimately, what got them wasn’t Jack’s advice or Hamish coming to his senses and making a real strategy or Alyssa calling them out for entirely unnecessary sexy subterfuge. What got them was the fear demon.
"This is so stupid," Hamish said, with feeling. "Why am I only pretending I want to date you when I do actually also want to date you?"
"Haha, yeah," said Randall. "Hey, wanna throw go knives at me and see if you can knock an apple off my head like that one dude?"
“William Tell,” Hamish said reflexively, “and, uh, duh. ”
“Sick,” Randall said with relish. “And then after that maybe we can make out some more, because I really love kissing you.”
“Oh dude, no way,” Hamish said enthusiastically, “me too!”
After their fear came back they were admittedly mostly focused on getting Lilith back, but not even someone as emotionally obtuse as Randall could forget that he and Hamish had more or less confessed their respective passions to each other. Sure, Hamish had been wearing a chef’s coat when he’d said it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Losing their fear had also meant losing their inhibitions, and Randall had a sneaking suspicion that they’d been cursed into a moment of real emotional honesty and openness, which was just embarrassing. But he also had a sneaking suspicion that if they didn’t talk about it soon they’d lose their chance forever, and now that they were no longer pretending not to be werewolves, he’d lost his excuse to feel Hamish up in public. So Randall went to go have a real conversation about (ugh) his feelings.
“Hey, so about what I said when we were… you know…” Randall began.
“I can forget about what you said if you can forget about what I said,” Hamish said immediately, and for the very first time Randall realized that Hamish might actually be just as stupid as he was.
“Right,” Randall said slowly, “well, what I actually was going to say was that I stand by my feelings and all that, but if you wanna pretend it didn’t happen I can roll with that too.”
Hamish visibly relaxed, exhaling in relief. “Oh, thank God,” he said, “no, no, let’s not forget it, I really do like you a stupid amount, can we just—”
Randall repeated his running tackle/sensual hug, since it had worked relatively well before, and Hamish enthusiastically stuck his tongue in Randall’s mouth.
“Can you please not do this in the living room,” Jack said plaintively. “I’m trying to do my ethics homework!”
“Deal with it,” Randall said breathlessly, but Hamish was picking him up and dragging him up the stairs to his old room, which—well. Randall wasn’t mad about that, either.
“You were right, before,” Randall said, later.
“About what?” Hamish said, running his hand lightly down Randall’s back.
“‘You can fight your feelings, but why would you?’”
“I said that? Really? Well, I guess stopped clocks, and all that.”
“I’ll stop your clock,” Randall said, chortling, and Hamish rolled his eyes.
“I’m going to take you up on that, actually,” he said, and Randall grinned.
“I know,” he said, “I know.”