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Gavin did not see Alistair for almost a week after the tournament.
It wasn't as if he didn't want to; it was the fact that the entirety of Ilvernath was a damn media circus, and he couldn't step outside of his family home without being bombarded with people asking him questions and pointing fingers and shouting things at him when they didn't understand a single fucking thing he had been through.
He imagined Alistair was being treated the same way. He didn't even know where Alistair was staying, only knew that he was outside of his family's mansion and his trial was due to start soon.
It was weird, stepping out of a death tournament where he was almost certain he was supposed to die and now trying to live a life he never thought he would get. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to interact with his parents or Fergus or Callista or any of his friends at school.
And he certainly wasn't sure how he was supposed to interact with Alistair. They spent the entire last half of the tournament trying to kill each other while simultaneously flirting with each other and then Alistair had died and he’d kissed him and god everything was complicated. He wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to say, if things would even work out now that they weren’t at each other’s throats. Who the hell started a relationship like this?
Still, he wanted to try. He’d known deep down, even before the tournament began, that there was something special about Alistair, something he would never be able to get out of his head, and he thought even after everything they had been through, that still mattered. He still thought there was something amazing about Alistair Lowe that he wouldn’t find anywhere else.
He tried to keep up with Alistair by reading the newspapers or watching the evening news, but all he was really getting was information about the Lowe family he could have gone his entire life without knowing, so he diverted to spending time thinking about what to do with Alistair now that they weren’t actively trying to kill each other. Probably take him on a date; that was the simplest answer.
But what the hell kind of date was he supposed to take Alistair Lowe on?
He finally figured out that Alistair was staying at a small motel close to where the MacTavish curse shop used to be, so rundown and inelegant that no one would have guessed he’d be there. Or, that had probably been the idea. When Gavin arrived, there was a crowd of people lingering in the street, all of them clamoring to try to get a peek at the Lowe monster. When they spotted Gavin, however, their attention was momentarily redirected to him, and they were shoving microphones in his face and asking questions he didn’t exactly have answers to, like why he had done this or why he had done that. He had to resist the urge to tell them exactly what he thought of them and their prying questions as he forced his way into the building.
The front desk clerk was reluctant to tell him where Alistair was located, but eventually she told him he was on the second floor after she was certain no one was going to be murdered in her motel. The room was warded, she warned, which was just the smart thing to do with a bunch of vultures outside, and Gavin had made his way through Alistair’s traps before, so it wasn’t a big deal.
When he knocked on the door, he wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t a bunch of crashing and cursing from inside. He wondered if Alistair was throwing things, if things were going to be violent before they got better, but the door opened, and he realized Alistair hadn’t been throwing things after all. He was wrapped up in a giant, fluffy blanket, dark hair sticking out in all different directions and eyes barely open, muttering to himself.
Gavin smiled. He had seen Alistair at the lowest of lows, but he’d never seen him right when he woke up and looking so…comfy. It was quite possibly the best version of Alistair he’d seen so far.
“Did I wake you up?” he asked, which earned him a glare that probably could have killed him faster than any spell could if there was actually any hate behind it.
“Fuck off, I haven’t slept in three days,” Alistair responded, ushering him into the room. He sat at the end of the bed with a yawn and wrapped the blanket tighter around him so it looked like he was in a cocoon. Gavin desperately wanted to kiss him but forced himself to wait. “There are so many people outside. I can’t go anywhere, and I keep thinking about –” He stopped, sucking in a breath. His slate gray eyes met Gavin’s, and he frowned. “Where’ve you been?”
“Giving you some space,” Gavin replied, sitting down next to him. “Trying to figure out where to go from here.”
Alistair did not respond immediately. He looked miserable, his skin paler than normal, the bags under his eyes a dark, bruised sort of purple. Gavin wondered if he had showered since their first night back in town or if he had eaten anything today.
“And did you figure anything out?” Alistair finally asked.
“I think so,” Gavin replied. He placed his hand palm up on Alistair’s bundle of blankets, and slowly, hesitantly, Alistair let his hand slip out to let their fingers intertwine. “There’s a lot of stuff that can’t really be fixed immediately, but I would at least like to take a few baby steps. Like taking you out on a date.”
He felt Alistair’s fingers tighten around his, and he could almost feel the panic pulsing through him at the thought of it. He knew that things were new for Alistair, that this entire relationship was fragile and delicate and they were probably walking on tightropes just to get it to work. But he wanted it to work. He wanted to start a new chapter of his own life. He wanted to give Alistair a life that he deserved.
“I’ve never been on a date,” Alistair told him, though it didn’t need to be said; if Isobel was his first kiss, that was really all Gavin needed to know about his dating history.
“I know,” he said, “which is why I want to make sure I’m doing it right.”
Alistair’s mouth quirked into a tiny smile. “I wouldn’t know if it wasn’t.”
Gavin liked when Alistair smiled. It was such a rare, beautiful thing, and it was even better knowing he was capable of putting it there. He leaned forward, fully intending on pressing a kiss to the corner of Alistair’s mouth, then stopped himself when he felt Alistair’s hand shaking in his own. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Alistair nodded a little, though it looked like he was holding his breath. His entire body was tense.
“Can I kiss you?”
Alistair let out the breath he’d been holding as his eyes met Gavin’s, and he nodded again. “Sorry,” he mumbled as Gavin’s lips met his, and Gavin couldn’t help but laugh at him.
“What are you apologizing for?”
Alistair laughed too, threading his fingers through Gavin’s hair and pulling him closer. “I don’t know. Being bad at this?”
Gavin kissed him harder, fiercer, and realized then that he didn’t think he ever wanted to kiss anyone else again. Foolish teenage love, his mom would say; she always said that. You’ll get over it eventually.
“It’s okay to be bad at things if you’ve never done them before,” Gavin told him, “but you’re not bad at anything.” He traced his thumb over Alistair’s cheek and then pressed a kiss there. “Get dressed. I got my parents to leave the house for the night, so it’s all ours.”
There was the panic again. Alistair had been in a literal death tournament, killed multiple people, lost his brother, and died himself, and somehow this was scaring him more than any of that. “What are we going to do?” he asked.
Gavin shrugged. “I don’t know. I was thinking of ordering a pizza and watching a movie, if that’s okay. So we don’t have to go out and get bombarded by people.”
Alistair grabbed his face and kissed him, hard. “You’re amazing. You’re the only person I don’t hate right now.”
Funny, he would have said the exact opposite two weeks ago.
“I’m just going to shower really quick. I haven’t in…four days.”
“Yeah, definitely do that.”
Alistair flipped him off as he walked into the shitty bathroom with a door that wouldn’t even close all the way, and Gavin smiled after him.
As the water turned on, Gavin lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. And then he was struck with the realization of what was happening.
He was going on a date. With Alistair Lowe.
He could practically hear all of his ancestors cursing him.
“I just got cheese. I couldn’t remember if you ate meat or not.”
“That’s fine.” Alistair was in the kitchen, running his finger over a half-empty bottle of whiskey that Gavin’s dad had left out.
“You can have some. I don’t care.”
“Are you sure?”
Gavin nodded, handing him a glass. He could at least monitor Alistair while he was drinking. And besides, it would leave less for his parents to drink, so maybe he wouldn’t have to put up with much more of their fighting before he moved out. He poured himself a soda, then took Alistair’s hand and led him upstairs to his room, where he had the movie set up on Fergus’s laptop. Since his parents had deemed it appropriate to sell his own.
“I can’t believe they sold all your stuff,” Alistair said, looking around at the almost empty room. Gavin had managed to get a blanket and some pillows from the storage closet, and he’d bought a few pairs of pants and t-shirts, but other than that the room was empty. He sat on the floor and gestured for Alistair to sit next to him as he loaded up the movie.
“Can’t say that I blame them,” Gavin said, though he did, he absolutely did. “They didn’t think I was coming home.”
“Still.”
Gavin sighed. He didn’t like to think about it. Every time he accidentally walked past his parents in the mornings right before they left for work, they always turned away from him really quickly, too afraid to meet his eyes. They barely even welcomed him home.
“No sad stuff, okay? No talking about the tournament, no talking about our families. We’re on a date. You’re supposed to be happy.” He turned off the lights and grabbed the pizza next to the laptop.
Alistair sipped at his whiskey and sat down next to him as he hit play on the movie. He wasn’t even sure what they were watching, something he had found in the family room that sounded vaguely familiar but he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen. He’d never attended movie nights, after all.
“Is this okay?” he asked, because Alistair was most certainly not okay, and he didn’t want to contribute to all the other bullshit he had to deal with. He glanced over at him and noticed there was a rather wide gap between them, made all the more noticeable by the fact that Alistair had burrowed himself underneath a bunch of blankets and somehow set up a barrier between them.
“It’s fine,” Alistair replied. He was still drinking, Gavin realized, and had not touched any food. He couldn’t guarantee Alistair had been eating when he was on his own in the motel.
“Pizza?” He slid the box toward him, but Alistair shook his head.
“Maybe in a few minutes.”
“Hey.” Gavin rolled over to face him, not bothering to focus on the movie at all. He doubted anything that was happening was as interesting as being with Alistair. “Remember how I said dates are supposed to be happy?” He reached to push some of Alistair’s hair out of his face, and Alistair flinched. Actually flinched, like he had expected Gavin to hit him or something.
He didn’t even know what to say, so he just drew his hand back and put distance between them again.
“Sorry,” Alistair said. “Sorry, I –”
“Do you think I’m going to hurt you?”
He took too long to answer. “No.”
Gavin blew out a breath, hoping he didn’t sound angry because he wasn’t, but he couldn’t possibly understand after everything they’d been through how there was still a question of how he felt –
“I know you aren’t,” Alistair said. “I’m sorry.”
“I should be the one saying sorry. I…didn’t know.”
Alistair stared sadly into his glass and swirled the dark liquid around. Gavin watched him, thinking for possibly the millionth time that Alistair Lowe was the prettiest person he had ever seen, and he didn’t want this to end, didn’t want everything to fall apart just because they were too broken to put themselves back together. He needed someone, he needed Alistair, and here he was ruining everything already, before he’d even had a chance to –
“Nothing sad, right?” Alistair offered him a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “So tell me something fun. What did you used to do in your spare time before – before?”
Gavin rolled to face him again, studying him carefully. The light from the laptop was shining on him, illuminating half of his face and making him look even paler. Like when there was a curse placed on him slowly spreading across his body with every wrongdoing…
Shit.
Apparently neither of them were okay enough for this.
“Did they ever hit you?” he asked, and Alistair flinched again. God, he wasn’t even sure why he asked that, it was none of his business, it wasn’t something that needed to be talked about, not unless Alistair wanted to talk about it, but he couldn’t take it back now. It was out in the open, and Alistair was staring at him like he was trying to kill him again. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t –”
“Yes.” Alistair finished off his whiskey and slammed the glass onto the floor. “Only a few times. Not my mom, just my grandmother. My mom was meaner to Hendry than she was to me.” His gaze danced over Gavin’s face before he asked, “Did your parents?”
“No. Mostly they just hit each other. They pretended I didn’t exist.”
“Fuck.” Alistair blinked, and Gavin saw tears shimmering in his stormy eyes. He sucked in a shaky breath, wanting to reach out to him, but Alistair got there first, his hand closing over Gavin’s and squeezing tightly as he shifted closer. “I’m sorry that we didn’t meet sooner.”
“I don’t think it would have mattered.” I think it would have been worse if we met sooner. He didn’t say it out loud, but he was sure Alistair was thinking the same thing.
“I was locked up anyway. I couldn’t go anywhere.”
Gavin brushed his thumb over the back of Alistair’s hand, remembering how cold and pale it used to be. He looked slightly better, but there was something hollow and unfeeling behind his eyes. He had lost everything. Even if Gavin resented his parents, at least he had someone to come home to.
“Is this what dates are supposed to be?” Alistair asked with a grin. “Trauma dumping the entire time?” He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his cardigan, and just like that, he looked like a new person. All the pain was gone, replaced with an innocent sort of curiosity that Gavin had never seen there before. He wasn’t sure he was the one that needed to be showing Alistair the outside world. There were so many things he had never seen, so many things he didn’t know. It wasn’t fair.
“No,” Gavin replied, returning his smile. “But if you need to trauma dump, that’s okay.”
“We should watch the movie.”
“Yeah…” Alistair had turned back to the screen with a mildly bored expression on his face, but Gavin still watched him. He probably had no business being as worried as he was, but things were changing, and this was all brand new, and –
Alistair shifted closer to him, curling his body against Gavin’s and resting his head on his shoulder. They were still holding hands. Gavin could feel his dark hair brushing against his skin, could smell the cheap motel shampoo he’d used just hours before.
“Is this okay?” Alistair asked, more nervous than Gavin had ever heard him.
“Yeah. Perfect.”
They were silent for a long time, keeping their attention on the small screen in front of them even as Alistair snuggled in closer to him and made every single part of his body where they touched feel like it was on fire. He ran his hand through Alistair’s hair and held him close, barely paying attention to the movie, just listening to the sound of his breathing and reminding himself that they were both still breathing despite everything.
“That guy kinda looks like Reid.”
Gavin snapped his attention to the screen to see what Alistair was referring to. Some guy with dark hair and piercings that was supposed to be a vampire, but everything about the movie was cheap. So yeah, kind of like Reid.
“Do you think Reid’s a vampire?” he asked.
Alistair snorted and rolled his eyes. “The only thing Reid and vampires have in common is that they both suck.” Gavin chuckled, though he didn’t think Alistair was looking for much of a reaction. He was about to crack a joke himself, but Alistair beat him to it by pressing his lips to Gavin’s jawline and mouthing softly at his skin, making all power of speech completely disappear. He would have been startled if he could even think, but all that mattered was that Alistair’s mouth was on him and his heart was stuttering a very unhealthy beat and he really thought this was Alistair’s way of killing him.
“Maybe you should be worried about me being a vampire,” Alistair said, and suddenly he was kissing down Gavin’s neck and his teeth were clamping down on the soft skin above his collarbone and yeah, this was definitely how Alistair planned on killing him all along.
“Al,” he said, half wanting him to stop and half wanting him to keep going, “I think we’ve established that you’re not as scary as you think you are.” No, he wasn’t scary; he was downright terrifying. Hell, he hadn’t even had to do anything except exist, and Gavin was falling into deep, unbridled obsession that probably could have gotten them both killed if he hadn’t figured his feelings out when he did.
He felt Alistair exhale a laugh against his skin, and he closed his eyes against the warmth and wrapped his arm around Alistair’s waist, drawing him so close he was practically sitting in his lap. Probably a bad idea.
Then Alistair let out a sort of resigned sigh, and he rolled away and sank into the blankets again. “Gav?”
“Y-yeah?” He was still shaken, but Alistair sounded sad again, so his very real teenage hormones needed to wait.
“Do you think things are going to change?”
That was a loaded question with what Gavin thought was a fairly obvious answer. “I hope so,” he said. “God, I really hope so.”
“I mean between us.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t quite sure how to answer that, especially since he was still trying to get his breathing under control, but Alistair sounds so hopeless, and he wasn’t sure what to do with that. “Um…I think it’ll be hard, for a little while. But I want to fight to make it work.”
“Me too.” He rolled back toward Gavin, his face pressed into the pillow, and he looked so cute that Gavin couldn’t stop himself from kissing him. “It’s just…everything is going to change, and we’re bound to change with it. I’m going on trial soon. How the hell do we know that I’m not going to get sentenced for life? Would you even still want this if that happened?”
“Yeah, of course. Of course I would.” Alistair was panicking again. He tried not to let anyone see it when it happened, but his eyes were vacant, and his breathing was shallow, and Gavin didn’t really have a lot of experience with dealing with panic attacks, but he thought he knew how to handle Alistair. “Al, I don’t think you understand. I spent months obsessing over you. I had information about every single champion we were fighting against, and I still spent all my time on you. And I don’t think it had anything to do with your family or the fact that you were so difficult to figure out, even though I fooled myself into thinking that. I…I think I wanted you from the moment I saw you.”
Alistair sucked in a breath, his hands curling tightly into the blankets. He was trembling. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I know you probably had other plans –”
“It’s okay.” He took one of Alistair’s hands, carefully prying his fingers off the blanket and intertwining them with his own. Slowly, he raised them to his lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “Things are going to change, and we’re going to change, but we don’t need to think about that right now, okay? Because right now, I want you, and you want me, and that’s all that matters.”
Alistair wiped at his eyes again where tears were forming but hadn’t slipped out yet. “This is probably the worst first date ever, right?”
Gavin shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
Alistair shoved him and rolled his eyes, then settled back into his side with a heavy sigh. Gavin wrapped his arm around him again, his hand drawing soothing circles over his back as they watched quite possibly the worst movie ever made.
“Tell me about your worst first date,” Alistair said.
Gavin settled into the pillows and pressed a kiss to the top of Alistair’s head. This was trauma he could deal with. “It was this girl named Isabella…”
He recounted the entire story, not leaving out a single detail, and by the end of it Alistair was laughing, like actually laughing and he thought it might be the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. He wasn’t sure if he would ever hear Alistair laugh like that.
So yeah, the trial was coming up and they had to figure out how to be with each other in a setting when they weren’t trying to slit each others’ throats, but it would be okay.
It had to be. He wasn’t sure he could handle any more heartbreak.