Work Text:
laying everybody low with a love song that he made
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Sid travels to Andy’s graduation with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. The former because the thought of being around academic types makes his skin itch; the latter because he’s seeing Andy, which he hasn’t done since spring break and he misses him more than he cared to admit, more than he thought he could miss anyone. It’s like there’s a gaping wound in his gut and he can’t seal it up. Sid never thought in all his years of being a hard-ass that he would become a slave to emotion but there was something about this devastating guy with freckles and the sweetest eyes to ever grace a human being that made him lose all sense of reality.
Sid’s flight was delayed and he got there just at the start of the ceremony. He snuck into the end of one of the last rows, wearing a shirt without writing on it and jeans without rips just for Andy’s sake. It was still a black tee but it was more than he’d do for anyone else.
Are you here? comes a text after the graduating class is seated. The three words make his heart pound and its ridiculous little things like this affect him so much. He still wasn’t used to someone actually caring if he was if he was around or not. Not in a personal way, at any rate.
Just got here. Shouldn’t you be busy, I dunno, graduating?
The reply comes mere seconds later. Please. This thing is gonna take forever. Everyone in my row already has their phones out.
Wave of the future, Sid types back, grinning to himself.
You’re hilarious. My mom has a seat saved for you… she’s got a great view. Second row to the right.
Sid blinks and his fingers skid over the buttons as he types back: Oh, okay. Going.
He quickly darts up the rows, blinking against the sunlight and wishing he owned a pair of sunglasses.
He spots Andy’s mom and sister as they both wave to him. People in the row grumble at his entrance and Sid has to bite his lip so as not to curse them out.
“Hi Sid!” Molly says, a bit too loudly.
“Hi.”
“Good to see you,” Andy’s mom says and gives him a half hug. “You could have come down with us,” she whispers, the speeches already underway.
“That’s alright, it was fine.” It wasn’t. Sid hated flying more than anything. If Andy had decided to stay in Florida he would have had to say no to his sweet mouth and even sweeter eyes because he probably would have suffered from anxiety attacks on the regular.
“You’re going back with Andy then?” She asks, and already knows the answer by the sound of her voice.
They were all going to dinner tonight and then he and Andy would drive back the next day while his mom and Molly spent a few days at Universal.
“Yeah, tomorrow.” Some old man was speaking now, about the importance of an education and the values learned and Sid could barely stomach that crap. If it worked for Andy fine, but he had no interest of ever finishing school.
“Andy says you’re getting pretty serious,” she whispers. Sid’s throat automatically feels dry and his stomach turns violently.
“Yeah, I guess,” he chokes out in a low voice, still unsure how to handle the whole ‘interested parent’ thing.
He guesses – as if they didn’t decide just two nights ago that Andy would be moving in with him. He figures that was her way of saying she knew. Andy must have told her; he tells her everything and it’s not like she wouldn’t be finding out soon enough.
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They’d been regaining their breath after some pretty spectacular phone sex. Andy started talking about moving back home, lamenting how weird it would feel when Sid blurted, “You should just move in.” The same thing he’d been thinking about the previous week and month and month before that, everything boiling down to that one date on the calendar when Andy would be free from school.
There was dead silence on Andy’s end for long seconds before he said, “Seriously?”
Sid felt his muscles twitch. “I mean, it’s small and shit but no smaller than your dorm, right?”
He could practically see Andy’s slow, calculating nod through the phone. “But.. I’m not gonna.. I mean, I can’t just have you paying rent for me. The internship is still unpaid for a while.”
Sid closed his eyes, already regretting bringing it up. “Just forget it.”
He heard a sharp inhale. “No, I. I mean I just wouldn’t want to be a freeloader.”
Sid rolled his eyes. “You can pay me in sexual favors if it makes you feel any better.
Andy exhaled on a laugh. “You really want me there?”
Sid felt his chest unlock. “Yes, Davis, I really want you there.” Andy’s last name had become a term of endearment in its own right; maybe it always was. Aside from the few ‘baby’s’ he reserved for between the sheets, he didn’t generally use them. Yet when they’d be out somewhere together and he needed to get Andy’s attention from across the room, it was always ‘Davis’ that he said, and he knew his voice went soft around the edges, like ‘babe’ or ‘hon’. He was pretty sure Andy picked up on it.
“I guess.. I guess it’s not really jumping into anything. We’ve been together nearly a year and a half.” He sounded like he was planning the justification speech to his mom.
Sid snorted. “We’ve seen each other, what? 8 months out of that?” Suddenly, he felt panic overcome him. Andy didn’t know what Sid was like on a daily basis for any sustained period of time. Moreover, they had no idea how they would function when they had more than 3 months at a time together. He’ll probably get sick of Sid sooner rather than later.
“Doesn’t matter,” Andy had continued. “We talk all the time.”
“I’ll drive you crazy,” Sid said in a rush. He wanted a cigarette. “This was stupid, alright? Just forget it, seriously.”
The frown on the other end of the line was audible. “Sid,” he said quietly. “You’ve got to know how I feel about you..” His voice was incredulous yet sure and confident.
Sid felt like he was a puppet and someone had just snapped his strings. “Maybe I need you to say it,” he practically gasped, air leaving his lungs in a rush as he gripped the phone tighter.
He listened as Andy sucked in a breath. “I wasn’t going to do this over the phone but..” he paused and Sid held his breath. “I love you.”
Sid felt the blood rush to his brain, completely undone by words he never expected to hear directed at him, not from his family and certainly not from a guy who could have anyone he wanted. Andy’s voice curved around the syllables like they were the most precious words in his vocabulary.
“I love you too,” Sid replied when the oxygen flowed back into his body. He felt less paralyzed by the words, now that Andy had gone first.
“I wish I could kiss you,” Andy said and Sid knew he was smiling, felt his own begin to form.
“A few days,” he responded with feeling, wanting Andy everywhere and now.
“So we’re doing this, then,” Andy said before they hung up.
“We’re doing this.”
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Now, sitting next to Andy’s mom, recalling that night, Sid isn’t sure how he’s going to keep from giving Andy the most inappropriate graduation kiss there was. He hated that the first time seeing him after that particular declaration was going to be in front of hundreds of celebrating undergrads, not to mention Andy’s own family, but Sid would somehow restrain himself.
“You make him happy,” Andy’s mom whispers a few minutes later.
“I love him,” Sid says, gazing at the tent of students, trying with futility to find Andy’s floppy hair beneath the uniform caps, find those eyes he could get lost in forever. He says it and doesn’t trip over the words; they feel as natural as the air he’s breathing.
He casts a look at her, notices she’s wiping discreetly at her eye. “I’m glad,” she says, turning into the sun to smile at him. Sid doesn’t know why – he’s not good enough for Andy, never will be, yet this woman seems to forget the kid with the skull shirt and the angry parents and just sees someone who makes her son happy.
Andy won’t know that by the time they see each other again Sid will have said the words not once but twice. He won’t know that Sid has already cleared out half of his dresser and closet to make room for Andy, ready for him to occupy the empty spaces of his apartment like the recesses of his heart.
[end]