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“I don’t think eight is too many people,” Gorgug says, pulling Zelda closer against him by his grip on her waist.
They’re sprawled out on his couch, Gorgug’s feet dangling off the end and Zelda’s hair tickling his chin. He’d been helping her with Intro to Arcana homework, even though he’s just barely passing that class himself, and getting frustrated over complicated spell diagrams turned into kissing time which turned into talking about kissing time.
“I mean, but, like, how many people have you kissed?” Zelda seems embarrassed by her perfectly-reasonable-for-a-teenager-who-regularly-goes-to-parties number, and keeps trying to reassure herself that it’s fine by asking Gorgug for his.
“Well…” He’s deflected successfully a few times at this point, but if he does it anymore she’ll see right through it. They’ve been doing so well lately with healthy communication, he doesn’t want to lose all that for a number.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to tell her. And it’s not like she doesn’t hear about it every time it happens. It’s just… Okay, Gorgug and Zelda have Talked with a capital “t” about this before. She knows he’s poly and is cool with him seeing other people, and kissing someone doesn’t mean dating, doesn’t even have to mean attraction. But. Gorgug is a firm believer in—what Ragh calls—“kissing the homies,” and it’s just a little embarrassing to admit that there isn’t a single person in his immediate friend group who he hasn’t smooched at some point or another.
“I guess, like, all of The Bad Kids? And you and Ragh and your dad and like, a few other kids our age, but that’s… yeah. Maybe fifteen-ish? I’m not sure.”
“Oh.” Zelda says, quiet for a moment. A couple strands of her hair are getting dangerously close to Gorgug’s nose. He might sneeze. “Wait. All of The Bad Kids?”
Gorgug winces and then smiles a little bit, not really apologetic. “Yeah…”
(freshman year)
Someone is crying in the girls bathroom.
Normally, Gorgug would just chew on his lip and bury his hands in his hoodie and continue on, even though hearing someone cry at school makes his heart feel like it’s sinking into his stomach. It’s the girls bathroom. He hasn’t been in one of those since, like, fifth grade, before he came out. He can’t just walk in there.
But it’s afterschool and the hallways are dead silent apart from the echoing sounds of sobbing and his squeaking shoes. Gorgug’s only up here to find paper towels because the locker room is out—he has yet another detention today with Coach Daybreak for the whole backpack incident, and he’s trying to kill time as much as possible before it’s over and he can go with the other Bad Kids to that cemetery they were talking about. He’s not sure if there are any teachers besides Daybreak still at school, and all the other students left are out at the fields practicing for various sports teams, so he can’t just assume someone else is around to help the crying person out.
“Um,” Gorgug says, sort of loudly by the bathroom’s entrance. “Is everyone okay in there?”
The sobs turn to sniffles and a slightly broken, “Yeah,” is called out to him and oh. Shit. That’s Kristen.
“Kristen?” He asks, because he just wants to make sure. It might be okay to go in if it’s only Kristen, but if he just walks in expecting Kristen only to find some… senior or something then that would be bad. His social reputation is already hurting enough as it is.
“Ah, shit.” And then, “Yeah. It’s me, Gorgug. You can go away, I’m okay.”
“You don’t. Um. You don’t sound okay? Do you… Can I come in?”
More sniffling and then Kristen says, even quieter than before, “Fine.”
Gorgug steals himself and walks in. The inside looks just like the boys and non-gendered bathrooms right next door, with ugly orange tiles and stalls peeling with grey paint, except for the fact that there’s a very snotty-nosed, red-eyed girl sitting on the floor under the sinks, looking at him with a mixture of trepidation and embarrassment.
Gorgug awkwardly pulls off a piece of paper towel from one of the many rolls he’s juggling in his hands. “You want a tissue?”
A freckled hand reaches out for the paper towel and snatches it from him. Kristen looks away as she blows her nose, loud and sort of trumpet-like, before reaching out for another piece. Gorgug gives it to her and then, deciding that he shouldn’t just be standing awkwardly, sits down on the floor.
“Do you want to, um, talk about it?”
Kristen shakes her head, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. There’s a beat and he opens his mouth to speak, he’s not sure what about, but catches himself when she starts talking. “I’m just… I’m starting to realize. I think I… I’m going to lose everything, aren’t I?”
Gorgug scoots a little closer on the floor.
“Like. I can’t have it all, right?” She laughs, wetly, resolutely not looking at him, “I can’t have this doubt and these, um, these feelings, and keep my parents and my brothers and my life. I… Daybreak said I’m going to Hell.”
“Well. Um. I’ve already been to Hell. It’s not that bad.” It really, really is that bad and his deception sucks actual ass so she sees right through the lie.
“I don’t know how I’m… how I’m supposed to choose. Like, do I stay safe and live a lie and hate myself for it? Or do I leave behind every single thing I’ve ever known? How am I supposed to pick?” She’s crying again, in earnest now.
Gorgug scoots himself a little closer and puts his hands on her upper arms, rubbing hopefully calming circles into the scratchy sleeves of her tie dye shirt. “It isn’t really… it isn’t really your choice. That’s up to everyone who says you can’t have both. They’re the ones really picking.”
“Yeah, but I have to be the one to leave.”
She says “leave” with a sob that echoes in the empty school, bouncing off the walls in an endless feedback loop of pain and this feeling is too big, too much. No kid should ever have to know what this kind of choice feels like. He doesn’t really think before he does it, just leans forward and kisses Kristen directly on the mouth. It tastes a little like snot and tears and ah, shit, this is his first kiss. Kristen stiffens for a second before sinking down even smaller and kissing tentatively back, and they stay like that for a while, lips touching and not really moving and tears still rolling down Kristen’s cheeks and Gorgug’s hands on her arms.
When they pull away, she sobs, quieter this time, and dejectedly says, to the empty walls of the bathroom, “I’m a fucking lesbian.”
Gorgug moves his hands from her shoulders to her back and pulls her into a hug. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay, Kristen. I’m right here.”
“Please don’t tell anyone about this.”
“I won’t, I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
Daybreak gives him shit for taking so long to get the paper towels and makes Gorgug run fifteen laps before he lets him go, but it’s fine. More time to daydream about punching him in the face. He can’t believe he thought that guy was his dad.
A few days later, Kristen kisses all of them in the hallway at school and Gorgug makes a big deal about it being his first, just so that none of them will suspect he’s kissed her once before. And a while after that, when they’re sitting in a crowded jail cell, Kristen reaches over and squeezes his hand and says, “Thank you,” and all he can do is squeeze her hand back and remember the cold feeling of tiles on his legs and the harsh taste of salt in his mouth.
(sophomore year)
The first thing that clues him in is the silence.
Fig has taken to touring like a phoenix takes to flight. She throws everything she has into her performances and her songwriting, and what she doesn’t have she throws in, too. Away from Sandra Lynn’s watchful eye, their tour bus fills with eardrum bursting music at all times—even when they’re trying to sleep—and Fig does nearly every type of drug under the sun.
“I’ll try anything once,” she’d said, before taking enough pixie sugar to send her into a four day long trip that Gorgug had to guide her out of with a hand on her back and a cool glass of water in hand at all times. Even then, though, the noise level hadn’t dropped, their bus vibrating with recorded bass and drums.
When Gorgug climbs back on after a brief stop at a rest area, juggling a few armfuls of snacks, the bus is quiet. Barely breathing. Their driver and manager are still in the gas station, but Fig had never gotten off, and it’s weird for the music to turn off even when the bus is empty.
“Hey, Fig?” Gorgug asks, slipping the sodas onto their functional dinner table by the door.
Crickets.
Less than that.
“Fig?” Gorgug calls, louder this time, because they haven’t had an issue with it before but it’s not like Gorgug hasn’t considered the fact that an O.D. isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
He starts to rifle through the sections of the bus, pushing back curtains blocking off their equipment and practice areas and Fig’s bunk, until, finally, he throws back the curtain of his own space and finds a red-skinned tiefling girl curled up on his pillow, staring blankly at the wall.
“Have you taken anything?” He asks immediately, sliding into the small space and grabbing her face, inspecting her eyes.
“No.” It’s so, so quiet and so unlike his Fig that his heart stutters.
“What’s wrong?”
Fig doesn’t answer, looking at him but not really seeing. He can tell her eyes are glazed over, her head tilting forward like she’s about to nod off.
“Are you sure you haven’t taken anything? Please, Fig, I’m…” He breaks off, voice cracking. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
“No one will ever love me,” Fig says, to the silence around them. She isn’t crying but that’s worse, almost, any emotion would be better than this.
Fig is usually so full of life, so full of energy, that Gorgug struggles to keep up. This is the complete opposite of that. A total… void has opened up in her, yawning and wide and pulling her down. Gorgug is left scrambling to grab her before she slips too far.
“That’s not true, Fig. I love you.”
She’s still blank, staring off. “You don’t.” Her breath smells vaguely like their dinner last night and he wonders when she last brushed her teeth.
“I do.”
“You can’t.” She shakes her head, a little bit, like her ear is itchy or something. “You can’t love me because you don’t know me.”
“Fig, how… how can you say that?” Gorgug’s hands go to her face again, smoothing over her skin this time instead of directing, across her cheekbones and the smudges of weeks old eyeliner around her eyes.
She looks at him, really looks at him, for the first time, and there’s a flash of hurt and exhaustion and defeat in her eyes before she’s shuttering even more than before. “See, I’m just hurting you. You shouldn’t want to know me. All I ever do is hurt people.”
“No, no you don’t, Fig. You… I…” His fingers cup her jaw and his thumbs rub over the apples of her cheeks and then he’s leaning in and kissing her.
It’s truly comfortable, this kiss, unlike any but Zelda’s have been. No matter what Fig says, no matter what her fears are, Gorgug knows her. He loves her. Kissing her is natural, if not romantic. She tastes a bit bad, like he’d expected, like sleep and noodles and booze, but she’s his Fig, his bassist, and her slipping hygiene isn’t the reason he’s kissing her.
She gasps, maybe, and then her hands are in his hair, threading through the strands. Not pulling or pushing him away, just feeling, just existing with him. He has to bend over too far and she has to lean up too much because they’re both sitting on the same surface but it’s good and right and Gorgug doesn’t always know what to say, doesn’t always know how to make his friends feel better, but he can do this.
When they pull apart, Fig doesn’t go far, resting her forehead against his and breathing onto his open mouth. The silence is different now, comfortable. Gorgug’s hands have moved to her waist and they fist in the stained sleep shirt there, keeping her anchored with him.
“I love you,” he says, because he isn’t sure what else he could do after that.
Fig just kisses him again.
They kiss more during their tour. A lot more. And, with Ayda’s approval, they don’t stop once Fig is getting her romantic kisses. She lays one on him a few times on stage, which is a bit of a P.R. nightmare, but it’s fine because it’s Fig. His Fig. If he can stop her from feeling adrift like that again, he will, whether that means cuddles or a shoulder to cry on or a kiss. He would do anything.
(sophomore year)
Gorgug is looking out the front of the windshield— his windshield, now, it’s his van—and he feels both huge and small at the same time. So young and so old and everything in between. The sounds of his sleeping friends and the buzzing blue 4:13 a.m. on his dashboard make him feel infinite, make him feel inconsequential.
There’s been some additional rustling in the back of the van for a while now, and he’s resolutely not looking back for fear that it’s Kristen and Tracker breaking their promise, but the rustling grows more and more concerning the longer it continues. What if those demons came back? What if it’s the mannequin boy they’d had to fight in Riz’s office? Baron, right? Gorgug stares out the window for a moment more, worries piling up, before he sucks in a breath and steals himself for either a fight or embarrassment and turns around.
Thanks to his darkvision, he doesn’t have to squint for very long to see what’s happening. A small, long-tailed shape is shuffling around the pockets of the Moon Haven, trying to be quiet but not stealthing like he would if he’d made his perception check to notice Gorgug is awake.
Gorgug blinks. Well, that’s probably the best outcome, all things considered.
“Riz?” He hisses, and the shape freezes. “Everything alright?”
Riz’s head snaps to him. There’s a split second before the shadows correct where Riz looks bone white and dead, and Gorgug reflexively reaches for his axe, but then his vision shifts and it’s just Riz, hunched over and even smaller than usual.
“Did I wake you?” He whisper-shouts, tail flicking. “Go back to sleep, Gorgug, I’m fine.”
“I’ve been awake. Come over here? So we won’t bother everyone else,” Gorgug sticks his arm out towards him between the seats.
Riz hesitates for a moment before nodding, still all shrunk up and tiny, taking Gorgug’s outstretched hand and allowing himself to be pulled into the front seat with him.
“Oh, hey.” In the light of the dashboard and the stars, Gorgug can see tear tracks shimmering on Riz’s cheeks. “What’s, uh, what’s up?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Riz says, a little shaken. He still hasn’t let go of Gorgug’s hand.
“Is it… is it the Baron thing?” They’d just gotten him back two nights ago, practically no time at all. Those kinds of things… those kinds of things stick with you. If it’s anything like dying, Gorgug would know.
Riz shivers at the name, and Gorgug can see goosebumps pop up on his forearms where he’s rolled his sleeves up. Gorgug rubs his hands over the skin there to warm him up.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
They sit there in the night for a little bit, and Gorgug zones off in the way one does at four in the morning, thinking about his parents and Zelda and all the suffering and joy ahead of them. He’s snapped back to reality when Riz makes a little hiccuping noise as he starts crying again. It isn’t a choice, to pull him closer. It just simply is. Gorgug lifts Riz up easily, pulling him over the center console so he’s curled up on his lap, safe and warm in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” Riz chokes, a little, as fresh tears drip down his cheeks.
“You don’t have to apologize. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Gorgug squishes him closer as Riz continues to cry, forming a wet patch at the shoulder of his shirt. “I’m really, I’m sorry,” Riz blubbers. “I’m just… I’m so scared.”
“I know, I know, Riz.” And he’s crying a little bit too, now. Just a few tears at the corners of his eyes. Gorgug’s always wanted to be the person who protects people, who helps them when they can’t help themselves. But he’s scared too, he’s scared and he feels alone and he already wants to go back home.
“I didn’t get to say bye to my mom. What if I die, Gorgug?”
“I won’t let you,” Gorgug says easily. And it’s as much for Riz as it is for the fifteen year old boy who’d gone to his first day of high school and almost didn’t return home. “You’re… I’ve got you, Riz. Me and the others, we’ll protect you. We won’t let you go missing again. We’ve got you and we’re not letting go. I’m not letting go.”
This, just like everything in this washed out pre-dawn time, isn’t really a conscious decision. One second, Gorgug is holding Riz against his chest, and the next he’s leaning down to kiss him. Riz’s lips are chapped against his own, so much rougher than any he’s felt before. Riz is still all liquid-y in his arms, like a cat, and the kiss is nothing more than a few seconds of gentle touches and shut eyes, but this has worked before. Gorgug has pulled people from the brink of destruction with a kiss before. And he believes that it’ll work now. (Spring Break.)
When he pulls back and opens his eyes, Riz is blinking at him slowly, ears tipped to the sides and tail undulating in the air.
“So, um, yeah.” Gorgug finishes saying, rubbing his hands across Riz’s shoulders.
There’s a long moment of silence, and part of Gorgug is worried he’s messed everything up again, but another part knows that this is his friend who is hurting and who appreciates everything Gorgug does for him and everyone else Gorgug cares about.
“Thanks, Gorgug,” Riz says. Gorgug can feel the words reverberate in his chest.
“For what?”
“For being you.”
And he’s heard similar backhanded compliments enough times to know when it’s sincere. Gorgug doesn’t need amazing insight to understand Riz. He could manage that on a nat one.
Riz sucks in another breath and smudges the tears from his face, still wrapped up securely in Gorgug’s arms. “I missed you, when you were gone on tour.”
“I missed you too.” It’s easy to say it, even if the air feels heavy around them, even if the sounds of their sleeping friends are louder now without Riz crying.
Riz leans in and kisses Gorgug’s cheek, lips rasping over skin that’s just starting to prickle with stubble. He needs to drink more water, if his lips are that chapped. Gorgug should get him a water bottle. “We should go to bed.”
“You wanna stay up here with me?”
“There isn’t much room.”
Gorgug pulls Riz a little tighter against his chest, reclining back into as much of a horizontal position as the seat will allow. “I’ll always make room for you.”
He kisses him again, sweetly, just because he wants to. It’s still a little wet from the crying, but Riz puts his hand on Gorgug’s jaw and his claws scratch gently over his skin and it feels amazingly soft, to hold someone like this.
In a twisted and evil forest, Gorgug takes a rock out of his pocket and mumbles four words. “It’s Gorgug, keep going.” In a twisted and evil forest, Gorgug fractures the world for his friends. In a twisted and evil forest, Gorgug tries to fulfill his promises. I’ll protect you. I won’t let you be taken from me. I’m not letting go of you. In a twisted and evil forest, Gorgug gifts his friends hope.
(sophomore year)
Gorgug hasn’t seen Adaine in four days.
Usually, with all of her oracle-ing and her schoolwork, they don’t hang out a lot. Ayda says it’s bad for all three of the world’s greatest wizards to be in the same room, in the case of a fireball or something, and he’s been spending a lot of time with her, working on a gift for Fig that’s a mixture of song and spell. He misses Adaine, sure, but he knows they’ve both been busy and he doesn’t really fault her for steering clear of their group meeting times, which Aelwyn and Fabian have kind of commandeered into makeout central.
All that being said, when he finds her, he isn’t actively looking for her. He’s in the library, trying to find a book Riz has been pestering him to read. The GSA have a sort of unofficial book club where they read trashy romance novels but gay this time, and Riz’s picks always get shot down for being either too depressing or too hard to understand. Gorgug finally took pity and decided he could handle both the official unofficial book and Riz’s pick, much to Riz’s excitement.
He’s walking through the shelves, a bit mindlessly, not really paying attention to if the letters and numbers match up to the sticky note he’s carrying with the book’s information on it. Gorgug rounds the corner of a shelf, humming a song Fig’s been workshopping with him, only to come face to face with a shaking, blonde-haired elf that he belatedly recognizes as Adaine.
“Oh. Hi, Adaine,” Gorgug says, lifting his hand to awkwardly wave at her.
Her hair’s pulled up into a severe bun that must be giving her a headache, and she’s breathing so hard he can hear it huffing through her mouth in measured counts. “Gorgug,” she says, but it’s weird and all wrong.
“Are you okay?” He asks, hands raising to grab her arms but halting a breath away. Touch isn’t always welcome when she gets like this, and he doesn’t want to push her into the panic any further than she’s already slipped.
A few breaths and then, “No.”
“Do you, um… Can I… Do you want to sit down?”
Adaine shakes her head, a strand of hair falling from behind her ear into her eyes, and that just seems to set her off even more. Gorgug’s hands are still in the air around her shoulders, and he can practically feel the anxiousness leaking off of her skin. Since Adaine has leveled up, recently, she’s had a sort of aura around her that makes Gorgug feel both a little bit dizzy and a lot in awe. He isn’t sure if it’s an elven oracle thing, or a purely Adaine thing, but it’s really cool, when she isn’t having a panic attack.
“I’m just,” more breaths, “stuck in my homework. That’s all.”
Gorgug’s hands hover. “What can I do for you right now?”
Adaine seems to consider this, blinking furiously, before she lurches forward and wraps her arms around his middle, rocking him dangerously far backwards before he steadies himself. He wraps his arms around her back now, taking this as a sign that touch is okay, and presses his face into the hair at the top of her head.
“It’s alright, Adaine. It’ll be alright. I can help you once you’ve calmed down, it’s okay.” He holds her and whispers to her in this sunny corner of the library until she stops shaking, until her breathing is still measured but less forced, until she’s just crying a little bit into his shirt instead of holding everything painfully inside.
“Thank you,” she says, quietly, into his chest, and he pushes her back a little so he can see her face.
Gorgug reaches up and picks the tie out of her hair, letting it fall around her chin and pushing it back behind her long, pointed ears. “Anytime. I meant what I said about helping you, if you want. I don’t know how good I’ll be at it but I’ll try.”
Adaine smiles, a little wobbly, at him. “Thanks, Gorgug. Not right now, I’m still… I don’t know if I can handle that yet.”
Gorgug nods, smiling at her in a way he hopes is reassuring. And, just like always, he doesn’t really think before he leans down and presses a quick kiss to her lips.
Adaine’s smiling for real when he pulls back, her eyes a little bit wet. “You’re too sweet.”
“I’m not,” he protests, but Adaine is leaning up again and kissing him softly.
Her lips are warm, and that faint feeling he gets around her that he can’t describe other than pale blue intensifies. Gorgug’s hands are still in her hair, holding her head gently and comfortingly, and her’s are on his back. She pulls away with a final kiss to the corner of his mouth and a pat to his shoulder, squeezing his side before taking a step back and pointing to the sticky note he’d managed to shove halfheartedly into his hoodie pocket.
“You want help finding that book first?”
“Oh, uh. Sure. Yeah. That would be great.”
Adaine rubs her fingers under her eyes, smearing the tears away, and breathes in deeply one last time, composing herself. “You’re in the wrong section, this is the cookbooks.”
“Oh.”
She reaches out and grabs his hand, pulling him back the way he’d already come. “Right this way.”
Gorgug squeezes her hand as she guides him through the shelves, and she squeezes back. “I’m glad you’re okay, Adaine.”
A falter in her steps. “I am too.”
Gorgug squeezes her hand again. They’re going to be okay.
(summer before junior year)
“Oh, uh. Hey, Fabian.”
Fabian is standing on Gorgug’s stoop, wearing his letterman jacket even though the cicadas are humming outside and it’s hot enough on the pavement to fry an egg. He looks… disheveled, his hair unstyled and the corners of his mouth dragging down.
Gorgug shoves his tinkerer’s tools into his pocket and steps aside. “Wanna come in?”
“Thanks,” Fabian says and walks into the Tree, already toeing off his shoes and walking towards Gorgug’s room.
Gorgug swings the door shut behind him and silently thanks gnomish air conditioning for its practically magical properties, before following a few steps behind Fabian. The walk to his room is silent, and Gorgug notes the way Fabian’s shoulders are pushed too far back, his head held too high. Gorgug’s heart is already beating a little too quickly in his chest and his palms are sweaty from more than the heat. He hates it when his friends are upset, hates it even more because it means he’s failed, a little bit. It means he didn’t stop the hurt from hitting them. And he knows that’s stupid because he can’t save them from everything. He’s only a teenager and so are his friends and they’re going to get hit and knocked down and forced to get back up again. But it still sucks. He still wishes he could save them from that hurt.
He especially hates it when Fabian gets upset like this. When the mask comes up and the affluent bloodrush star steps in, these are the times that wind up hitting the hardest. They’re a slow buildup of emotion, cracks in the mask that spear out into total destruction. Gorgug doesn’t know if he can stomach watching Fabian fall that far again. Gorgug doesn’t know how to not throw himself down to cushion the blow.
Fabian flops face first onto his bed, grumbling something into Gorgug’s tangled up blanket.
“What was that?” Gorgug asks, nudging his door shut. His parents respect his privacy and they like Fabian, but he knows they’ll be too overbearing if any crying gets overheard.
“I said,” Fabian lifts his head up a little from the bed, “I just broke up with Aelwyn. Or, Aelwyn broke up with me.”
“I’m, um, I’m sorry.”
“She was so hot,” Fabian groans, throwing his head back down.
“I think she’ll probably stay hot.”
Fabian just groans louder.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Gorgug sits tentatively beside him, putting a hand on his back. “You guys just weren’t working out.”
“I wanted us to work out, though… I always work out. I’m Fabian Seacaster. I do, like, one hundred push ups a day.”
Gorgug rubs his back a little bit more, “I know, dude.”
It’s quiet for a little bit, Fabian’s face steadfastly pressed down. “This was my… this was my chance, you know? I know I’m dancing now and whatever but I, uh, I still want to make my papa proud. And this was how I could do that.”
“Your dad’s proud of you, Fabian. He’ll be proud of you no matter what.”
Fabian groans again, grumbling more unintelligible words. Gorgug catches a few snippets of, “But I… hot, bro… upset.”
Gorgug nods, “Yeah, I know.”
“And I won’t even be getting anymore kisses in. This sucks.”
“I’m sure you could get kisses in from almost anyone, Fabian.”
There’s just more grumbling.
Gorgug moves his hand from Fabian’s back to his shoulder, pushing him back so Fabian has to move to face him. “Dude, I really cannot hear you.”
“It’s what I deserve.”
And he sounds so… actually sad that it makes Gorgug’s heart sink a little further in his chest. How can he stop this from getting any worse? What can he do? Well, he knows what he could do, but it’s probably not a good idea. Then again, it has managed to work out all the other times he’s tried it.
“What if I kissed you?” He asks. He hasn’t asked before, when he’s done this with his friends. It’s not the best habit, and he feels bad retrospectively, but he just hadn’t known how to get the words out. Now, it’s almost too easy to say.
“What?”
“I don’t… Um. We don’t have to, it’s fine.”
“Are you serious?”
Gorgug’s getting a little self conscious now, “I mean… yeah.”
An unreadable expression crosses Fabian’s face, and then Gorgug’s reflexes are struggling to keep up as Fabian action surges, rising from the bed and looming over Gorgug and kissing him roughly and harshly on the mouth. It’s a bit like fighting, kissing Fabian. He knows what he wants and he pushes to get it, crowding Gorgug back against the wall and tugging on his jaw to get him at the right angle.
Gorgug scrambles to catch up, hands flitting from Fabian’s back to his shoulders to briefly rest around his neck. His thumbs press into Fabian’s collarbone and Fabian licks into Gorgug’s mouth, which. Okay. He hasn’t done that with his friends before.
Then again, he never tried kissing as a preventative measure before, either. He’s starting to think it works.
They kiss—make out—for a while, long enough that Digby interrupts them with a message of dinner called through the door. Fabian’s lips are a little bruised, from how much he’s been attacking Gorgug’s tusks, and his hair is a complete mess and Gorgug feels a warm ball of pride grow in his chest.
“This probably isn’t the healthiest way to deal with a breakup,” Gorgug says, thoughtfully. “Sorry about that.”
Fabian smacks his lips. “I think I’ll get broken up with more often if, uh… If it means I can kiss the, um, the homies.” He laughs, put upon and mostly false, at the end of that.
Gorgug blushes despite himself.
“Don’t tell Ragh, he’ll feel left out.”
Gorgug blushes more.
“Or do tell Ragh and we can do this again.”
“You know, I’m proud of you, Fabian.”
Fabian’s smile slips a little. “That’s… okay.”
“You should be proud of yourself.”
Scoffing, “I am.”
Gorgug reaches over and grabs the back of Fabian’s neck, tugging him close. “You should be.”
“Okay, dude. Lay off a little.”
Gorgug just smiles a little, with one side of his mouth, and kisses Fabian one last time. It’s sweet like Gorgug, instead of fiery like Fabian, and he can tell Fabian’s a little misty-eyed when he pulls away.
“Er. Thanks.” Fabian says. Gorgug feels the words on his lips.
“No problem, dude. Any time.”
He means it. They’ve grown so much, all of his friends, and he’s so incredibly proud of them. Fabian didn’t hug him for over a year and half and now he’s comfortable enough with affection to… to make out with him for a few hours. Gorgug is proud and he’s warm and he’s finally succeeded in stopping his friend’s hurt, turning that hurt into something comfortable and sweet before it has a chance to get ugly.
Gorgug rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. Well, apparently his kissing strategy works.