#shhhhh it's definitely not november 10th shhhhh

[ginger-and-mint]

Spill Your Guts (or Don’t)

Finally -- my belated Halloween fic! This is set in some kind of Real World AU and revolves around a friendship that hasn’t gotten time to shine yet in any other context. ^^ Thanks to @tiny-tum for helping me with the title!

This fic is part of the “Slice of Life” universe on the @tinymyx blog!

CW: nausea, feelings of rejection and loneliness, references to internalized homophobia

-     -     -

The knock at the door was almost impossible to hear over the clamor of voices and music, but Malia’s trained hostess’s ears managed to catch it. She ducked around a speaker blaring Spotify’s “Halloween Party” playlist, dodged a pair of costumed classmates laughing their way to the drinks table, and flung open the streamer-bedecked door to her apartment.

“Hey, girl!” Kara went in for a hug before Malia could even open her mouth in greeting. “Sorry we’re late, Grayson’s class went overtime. Your costume looks amazing!”

“Thanks!” Malia struck a little pose, fluffing out the feather boa of her Ms. Peacock outfit. “You both look adorable too! Love the ears, Grayson.” She reached out to poke one of the pointed cat’s ears gracing her friend’s head. “Although, I’ve gotta say…” She squinted at Kara’s magenta tank top and star-shaped hair clips and at the long trenchcoat Grayson had on. “…I’m not sure who the two of you are supposed to be.”

“We dressed up like characters from our favorite webcomic,” Grayson explained, reaching up to straighten his headband.

“The one I’ve been telling you about,” Kara added. “Just let me know if you want the link!”

“Is Bram here yet?” Grayson peered over Malia’s shoulder, as though somehow their giant friend could be hiding behind her.

“He came early to help me set up.” Malia stepped back to let her friends in. “I think he might’ve gone out onto the balcony for some air. You know how he can get overwhelmed around crowds.”

“Poor kid. Can’t blame him.” Kara grinned as the noise of the party enveloped them. “What a turnout! Looks like half your major is here! And hey, is that Sara and Ina from trivia night? And….” Her expression caught a little. “Oh. You invited him?”

“You mean Elliott?” Malia followed Kara’s gaze to where a tall figure, noticeably uncostumed and still wearing his black overcoat despite the heat of the room, was lurking in a corner over by the snack table. “Well, yeah. I mean, he is on my debate team.”

“The rest of your debate team isn’t here,” Kara pointed out.

“He’s the only one of them I actually like. And it seemed appropriate, since we know Grayson likes him too.”

Grayson’s face had gone bright red. His gaze, which had locked onto the figure by the snack table, darted back to his friends. “Uh… I mean, I guess so.”

“Come on, Ives, don’t pretend we don’t know. You should go talk to him!” Malia gave her friend a nudge that was meant to be friendly, but only caused the poor thing to stiffen.

“Maybe later,” he squeaked. “I wanna—I wanna say hi to Bramley first. Come on, Kara, let’s go find Bramley.” He grabbed Kara’s hand and tugged her off into the crowd, headed pointedly away from the snack table.

Malia shook her head as watched them go. Poor silly Grayson. He still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that his friends knew he’d been meeting up with his irritable math tutor for—well, more than just remedial algebra help. Surely he’d come around, though. He couldn’t keep that part of his life closed away from his friendships forever.

But then again… maybe he could. As the party wore on, and seemed to Grayson find every excuse not to so much as look in Elliott’s direction, Malia began to fear more and more that she’d made a horrible mistake.

-     -     -

The cold air wasn’t helping as much as Elliott had hoped it would. He sucked in slow lungfuls of it, holding them for counts of three before letting them escape back into the chilly October night as clouds of steam. But his stomach kept churning, sending up little sugar-tinged burps that burned with acid at the back of his throat. Ugh.

Good thing Malia’s apartment had a balcony, and that she had turned off the outdoor light and closed the curtain over the sliding glass door to hide it from most of the partygoers, and that he was enough of a bastard that he didn’t care whether he was intruding on a private space. He had slipped out about ten minutes ago, ignoring the wicker loveseat in favor of going straight to the railing, one arm tucked gingerly over his gurgling stomach. For a few minutes there, he’d been genuinely afraid he was going to be sick, and he had no intention of letting that happen in the bathroom where someone might overhear him. Even if standing outside meant he had the tolerate the chilly air and the shouts of the middle school-aged boys running around in rubber masks down on the street.

He was trying his best not to hate the kids for being so obnoxiously loud. It had been pointed out to him that hating children for acting like children was one of the many uncharming habits that made him so difficult to be around. But it was hard. There was a lot of hatred in him at that moment. He hated the cold air, the screaming, the headache-inducing backbeat of the party raging on inside. Most of all, he hated the lump of sugary crap that was currently sickening his stomach, and his naive decision to show up to this stupid party in the first place.

He’d gotten the invitation over the Facebook account he almost never logged into, and at first he’d been convinced it had been sent to the wrong person. Malia was a fellow member of the university debate team (which Elliott only participated in to placate his mother.) She was the only person on that team he could stand talking to—the rest of them were pompous jerks with overinflated estimates of their own intelligence—and they had had a few conversations that had verged on pleasant. But Elliott was still shocked that she apparently considered him worth inviting to a Halloween party, of all fucking things.

In most circumstances, he would’ve turned the invitation down without a second thought. But… Malia was also friends with Grayson Ives. The boy Elliott had met through his work as a math tutor (which he did because it would look good on grad school applications, his mother insisted.) The boy who, despite the mild antagonism of their first few sessions, had seen something in him, apparently.

The boy who had spent all evening very very obviously avoiding him. Grayson had stuck like glue to his friends: Kara, who Elliott knew disliked him; that giant boyfriend of Malia’s whose name Elliott could never remember because it was so strange, who was dressed like the world’s bulkiest version of Captain America; and then Malia herself. Every time his eyes had happened to roam in Elliott’s direction, they had gone shrinking away with an unmistakable tang of something that hurt worse than the silence itself.

Shame. The thought made Elliott’s stomach churn harder. He grimaced and hunched down over the balcony railing, tightening his arm over the foulness in his belly.

Stupid. He should’ve known that it’d be different here. Theirs was a relationship that played out in empty classrooms, not crowded apartments. Alone, away from the public eye, Elliott could be loved—or if not loved, tolerated out of appreciation for his body. Whatever. That wasn’t perfect, but it was fine. But clearly here, out in the view of Grayson’s real friends….

He should’ve known. But somehow, he hadn’t. Somehow, he’d convinced himself that maybe if he showed up to the damn party, maybe if he tried to act like part of Grayson’s ordinary world… maybe… maybe he’d be properly welcomed into it.

But that hadn’t happened. And so Elliott had parked himself by the snack table, even though he’d already stress-eaten a heap of miniature chocolate bars before leaving his own apartment, and he’d cracked open a hard cider and polished it off in five minutes, and then he’d washed it down with a tide of sweets. Honestly, he couldn’t even remember everything he’d eaten. There had been cupcakes frosted in violent shades of purple and orange. There’d been some kind of candy corn-flavored popcorn abomination, which Elliott had hated but eaten anyway. There had been gummy worms and chocolate eyeballs, ghost-shaped sugar cookies and pumpkin muffins, and of course tons of those little individually-wrapped chocolates that were pervasive on Halloween.

It was all a blur. He’d just refilled his stupid bat-patterned paper plate over and over until he’d felt abruptly sick—suddenly aware of his swollen stomach pressing heavily against the buttons of his coat, of the light-headedness of too much sugar in his bloodstream, of the nausea rising in the back of his throat. And then he’d ducked outside, and now here he was—trapped on this fucking freezing balcony, feeling too ill to leave the party and too miserable to go back inside….

He was jerked out of the haze of self-pity by the sound of screen door sliding in its track. The muffled din of the party grew abruptly louder, and a voice asked, “Bram? Are you out here?”

Elliott whipped around to see Malia standing in the doorway. Her eyebrows shot up at the sight of him. “Oh, sorry.”

It occurred to Elliott that he was the one who had intruded on a closed-off space of her home, and that he was the one who should be saying sorry. But he didn’t. He said nothing at all, and for a long moment, they just stared at each other.

Malia’s expression creased slightly. She reached for an unseen switch, and the outdoor light suddenly blinked on. Elliott felt himself shrink back a little, and then again when she stepped out onto the balcony and slid the door shut behind her.

“How’s it going?” she asked. “Everything okay?”

“Mmm.” He turned his back to her, hunching over the railing, as though maybe that would make her forget she’d seen him.

It didn’t, of course. She came to stand next to him, fluffing up the feather boa of her costume against the chill. “It’s kind of cold to be out here, isn’t it?”

“I just needed air.” He swallowed heavily as the sludge in his uneasy stomach swirled. “Don’t worry, I’m going to leave soon.”

“Are you? That’s a shame. I was hoping you’d get a chance to talk to Grayson. How are things going between the two of you?”

Elliott’s cheeks burned. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he spat. “Why don’t you ask him? He’s your friend!”

“Look, as much as I love the guy, we both know that Grayson is way too oblivious to have a useful answer to that question.”

Elliott opened his mouth, but before he could retort, a sickly gurgle pulsed through his stomach. Pressure squeezed up behind his ribs and into his throat, and he pressed one hand over his mouth, stifling what thankfully came out only as a deeply uncomfortable belch.

Fuck. He wanted to sink through the floor and die—especially when Malia dashed his hopes that maybe she hadn’t noticed by fixing him with a look of concern.

“Ah,” she said. “Is that why you came outside?”

“I—uh—I’m not—I didn’t—” Too mortified to respond coherently, Elliott stammered the beginnings of sentences that had no ends. Fuck, his brain wanted to say, I’m so fucking sorry, but the words wouldn’t reach his lips. He was prepared for a look of disgust, or a sour expression of disapproval, or at the very least, to be abruptly left to deal with his repulsive misery on his own.

But Malia continued in the same steady voice. “Too much alcohol or too much sugar?”

Elliott heard his own voice mumble, “…Sugar.”

“Well, hey. No hangover in the morning.” She shot him a sideways smile, as though she found the predicament of a grown fucking adult having eaten himself sick of Halloween candy immensely relatable. “Why don’t you come inside? You can lie down in my spare room.”

“No,” Elliott snapped, and then he caught himself. Ugh. Manners were so fucking hard. “…Thanks. But I’m fine out here.”

“Well, sit down at least! I’ll duck inside and bring you some Pepto. Hopefully that’ll settle your tummy enough that you can get home to your own bed.”

Elliott felt his cheeks burning, but the grumbling in his belly prevented him from protesting. If she wanted to bring him drugs, then fine. It was true that the sooner he felt better, the sooner he could get out of here and go home. Obligingly, he turned away from the railing and sank onto the wicker loveseat, swallowing hard as the movement jostled his upset stomach.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Malia said. “I’m just going to figure out where my boyfriend is, and then I’ll get you the medicine. Sit tight.” And with that, she vanished back into the apartment.

It was more like five minutes before she returned. Elliott cleared his throat at the sound of the sliding door. “Did you find Captain America?”

Malia chuckled as she sank down onto the loveseat next to him. “Yes. He’s fallen asleep on my bed. Poor Bramley. He doesn’t really like parties.”

Relatable, Elliott thought to himself. Bramley. He was going to have to remember that name.

“Here’s the Pepto.” Malia passed him a little cup of pink liquid, which he downed immediately. “And take this too. It might help.” She held out a mug, which was steaming furiously in the cold air. “It’s peppermint tea. My mom tells me it’s good for digestion.”

Elliott took the mug. Its warmth felt good against his fingers—he hadn’t realized how chilly his hands were until this precise moment. The tingle of blood rushing back into his extremities felt almost as good as the sensation of the hot, sharp liquid on his tongue and in his throat. The first sip hit his stomach like a warm blanket, pressing down against its rebellious contents and urging them to settle. He sighed and stifled a soft burp against the back of one hand.

“I was happy to see you here tonight,” said Malia. “You should come hang out with us more.”

Elliott was silent. How was he supposed to explain that it was awkward to hang out with the friends of a casual lover who didn’t seem to think he was worth so much as saying hello to outside their little trysts?

Malia seemed to read his mind. “I mean it. Don’t worry about Grayson. It’s not your fault he’s acting that way. I don’t know if you know this about him, but he grew up out in the sticks. You know, the kind of place where people claim to be just fine with ‘the gays’ as long as they don’t have to see them, talk about them, or otherwise acknowledge their existence.” Her tone went from sardonic to sadly sympathetic. “Grayson seems to have internalized that a little. He’s still got it in his head that seeing guys is this shameful thing he has to do without letting anybody know he does it.”

Elliott absorbed this information silently. He hadn’t known that. He’d known almost nothing about Grayson’s background.

“We’re working on him,” Malia added. “I’m positive it’ll get through his poor skull eventually. Until then, you should hang out with us more. Maybe that’ll help him feel more normal about the whole thing. What do you usually do on Friday evenings?”

“Um.” Nothing, really, ever—but Elliott knew that would sound pathetic. “I’m often available. What happens on Friday evenings?”

“Grayson, Bram, Kara, and I go to a trivia night at one of the campus cafes. You oughta come sometime.” She caught the look on Elliott’s face and laughed. “No, really! We could use you! I’m the only one who ever knows anything that isn’t pop culture. And it’d be nice to see you outside of the debate team, because I think I’ll quit next semester.”

“Wish I could quit,” Elliott said. “I hate that debate team.”

“So do I!” Malia let out a little huff, crossing her arms as she leaned back in the loveseat. “They’re all a bunch of self-important idiots, aren’t they?”

Thus began a fifteen-minute conversation in which the two of them aired their various grievances against their teammates. And as they talked—to his immense surprise—Elliott found himself feeling better and better. The antacid seemed to be doing its job, and the peppermint tea felt warm and soothing in his belly—and most shocking of all—the more he talked, the less the sting of rejection he’d been carrying all night ached under his breastbone.

When the conversation had died down, Elliott leaned back in his seat and sighed. Things were… better now. His stomach felt so much better, it was almost unbelievable. He was warm from the tea. And he could feel Malia’s shoulder lightly touching the side of his arm. It was such a slight touch she probably hadn’t noticed. But he did.

He cleared his throat. “So… you think that…. Grayson actually likes me?”

“Oh yes.” Malia chuckled heartily. “He talks about you all the time. In this hilariously nonchalant way that fools absolutely no one. He never calls you by name, only ‘my math tutor.’ My math tutor did this, my math tutor said that…. That boy is completely taken with you.”

A few moments passed in silence, aside from the muffled music from the party inside.

“I have a proposal for you,” said Elliott. “I come to this trivia night. I help your team win. In exchange, you make it so that Grayson Ives will fucking talk to me.”

Malia laughed. “Deal,” she said. “But I get to keep the voucher for free food you get for being part of the winning team.”

“Hmm. You drive a hard bargain. But I suppose I accept.”

“Let’s shake on it,” she said, and they did, her small fingers grasping his tea-warmed ones and squeezing tight.