Chapter Text
It starts when Adaine drops her lunch onto the table with such gusto and satisfaction that Riz knows, even before she beams at them all, that she’s about to drop a bomb on them. “Do you remember when you told me to let you know when I finally figured out if I was into guys or girls or both?” she tells Kristen, still standing.
Kristen had been sprawled out like she was preparing herself for the fattest nap of all time on the cafeteria-style bench table, but now she perks up, all signs of fatigue gone in an instant as a manic grin alights on her face. “Oh, fuck yes. I won’t even be too upset if you secretly hooked up with someone over break and we’re just now hearing about it, if we get an answer.”
Adaine rolls her eyes. “Yes, because traveling to Fallinel with my sister on Oracle business is, indeed, the environment that played host to my sexual awakening, and this is how I’m choosing to divulge all the juicy details that I haven’t so much as hinted at until now.”
Kristen’s still beaming, undeterred by the sarcasm. “I mean, I masturbated with corn. I’m hardly gonna judge for an unorthodox sexual awakening.” She guffaws at her own joke, and then props up her chin in her hands. “So what’s the verdict, girlie?”
The grimace that’d taken over Adaine’s face at the reminder of the r/corn discussion morphs back into a smile, then it broadens even further. “Neither,” she says, so happily, and now Riz is the one perking up. It’s been a little under two and a half years since he’d clumsily come out as asexual to them all in senior year, and while Adaine has been his unofficial buddy in the ‘not having the time or energy to care about hooking up’ crew, it’s been just that: unofficial. Until now.
“Is that a second Bad Kid in the ace camp?” Gorgug is the first one to actually get the words out. Fig had let out a little noise of triumph, likely from some personal suspicion just confirmed, and Kristen had groaned, likely from disappointment that she wouldn’t be having Adaine as a sapphic partner-in-crime wingwoman after all, Fabian had just smiled and shrugged, and Riz had been too focused on whatever words were going to come out of her mouth next to think about adding his own.
She finally sits down, swinging her legs across the bench and under the table. “Probably, even if there’s enough scientific curiosity I’m… kinda willing to give it a go before making a final decision on that?” she says, still delighted but now her tone drops, almost like she’s gleefully divulging some kind of secret now. “But I think– no, I know. I’m definitely aromantic.”
All around them, their friends erupt in various noises of support, but all Riz can hear is a ringing in his ears. “You are?” he croaks.
It’s been a long time since he’s seen Adaine sullen and withdrawn: it’s something he’s so, so happy for, that most days she now looks healthy and happy and thoroughly pleased with the life she has. Still, he doesn’t think he’s seen her quite as happy and pleased with herself as she does now, not in a long while. “Yep,” she says, fully delighted. “I think– for a long time, I just thought it was something I didn’t need to worry about yet? There were always more important things.” She shrugs. “I figured it’d come, sooner or later, and I wasn’t going to worry about it until it did.”
Riz swallows hard. He gets that. God, he gets that, but–
“And then, I don’t know.” With a flourish, she unwraps her sandwich and bites into it, still looking so pleased with herself as she takes the moment to chew it. “It’s still not coming. And I’m at the point where I don’t think it’s ever going to come.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Fig asks. She doesn’t sound upset, more curious than anything else.
Adaine laughs around her mouthful of food, then swallows. “You know? I really, really am.” She aims her grin Kristen’s way and shakes her head. She looks so happy, and so sure, and Riz… might be going out of his mind a little. “I thought maybe it just would take the right person, but the more time goes on, the more I’m sure there is no right person, and that that’s so much better that way. I don’t mind cuddling with you guys, or with Aelwyn or whoever, but the thought of doing that romantically? With someone who’d want to stare in my eyes or run their hands over my body or whatever?” Now, for the first time, the smile disappears, changing into a frown as she scrunches her face up at the thought. “Doesn’t appeal to me.”
“Your loss,” Kristen says through a mouthful of her own. “Cuddling’s great, especially when it comes with feeling someone up.”
Riz is pretty sure he and Adaine both have the same look of mild distaste on their face.
Adaine ignores her, though, and doesn’t say anything more to that. “And like, the thought of having someone to try to shape my life around? To make big decisions with? To share my space with?” She makes another face. “It’s… I don’t know. Maybe it’s growing up not really having any say in things that were just mine, but I don’t like the thought. I don’t want all the strings that come with a relationship. I like the idea of my life just being mine. I don’t want to be anyone’s number one, you know?”
And that’s the thing that’s making Riz’s brain melt out of his head right now, because no. No, he doesn’t know.
“I– maybe it’s selfish of me, but I– it’s freeing,” she continues, and for the first time she looks almost hesitant, like she isn’t sure how the rest of them will take that. “I like the idea that I can give pieces of myself to whomever in whatever form that may be, and no one expects me to put them first, and I’m not expected to put them first. I can just. Have my friends, and not have to convince myself that I should want more or that that’s somehow lonely when I’ve never been less lonely than when I’m with my friends.”
There’s quiet only for a moment, and then Fig’s the first one to break it, beaming broadly over at Adaine. “Fuck yeah,” she crows. “Relationship anarchy, baby. I mean, don’t get me wrong, not full anarchy for me because I love being in a relationship, but like. If I didn’t have Ayda. And for you, totally.” She sticks out a fist for Adaine to bump it, and Adaine does, dissolving into laughter that Riz is sure he isn’t imagining the edge of relief to.
“I like that,” Gorgug adds, a smile of his own on his face. “I mean, I’m not aromantic, but I like the idea of like, friendship being enough, you know?”
Kristen all but lunges at Adaine to pull her in a hug, and Riz, who’s sitting between them, only narrowly escapes. “I love you,” she tells Adaine, solemn, and it draws fond laughter from the other half of the table, watching the whole thing play out. “Even if there’s a tiny part of me that’s devastated that I can’t play wingwoman for you.”
“Kristen,” Adaine says, just as solemnly, lips only barely twitching. “I love you, too. Even if I were alloromantic, I would never, ever allow that.”
Fabian finally pipes up, adding with an affected drawl that’s not doing much to hide how audibly touched he is, “Well. Obviously our friendship is more than enough to be fulfilling – who else could possibly compete with the Bad Kids?” He allows a second for Adaine to, predictably, roll her eyes, and then he grins over at her, too, the charm fading into something more genuine. “Thank you for telling us.”
He’s probably imagining it, but suddenly, Riz feels like all eyes are on him. “Fuck yeah,” he manages, and hopes it sounds weak only to his ears. “Aspec buddies, yeah?” He raises his hand for a high-five, which Adaine gives with a grin and another roll of her eyes.
It’s fine. It’s good. It’s.
It’s just.
Asexual had been– well. Not easy, but easy enough to settle on. The suspicions that he’d had, the weird preoccupations and anxieties that had slowly faded into realization that it wasn’t that he was a late bloomer – or if he was, it was a very late bloomer – but it was looking like he wasn’t going to be blooming at all, had been one thing. Even on his own it didn’t do much for him: it was messy and tedious and almost boring, getting off when the biological urge was enough to go from a low-level annoyance to something he felt he needed to deal with. The idea of trying to navigate it with someone else held so little appeal: it just sounded like a recipe for disaster, trying to worry about pleasing someone else and not being self-conscious about what he was doing or looking like while he was doing it and trying to enjoy something he really didn’t care all that much about. Once he’d made it to eighteen and had still yet to see someone and think wow, they’re hot, the way that most of his friends had at multiple times, once he’d been all too aware that the idea of hooking up felt like a nuisance more than a goal, once he’d accepted how relieved he was to know he wasn’t going to spot someone across the room and subsequently lose his mind to lust the way most of his friends had at one point or another, once he’d realized that he was actually, genuinely fine with that kind of attraction never happening to him, asexual hadn’t been a difficult word, even if it’d been more difficult to vocalize to everyone around him.
But what everyone had told him, both on the Internet and the people in his life, was that that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a relationship. He’d find someone, some day, who was more than fine with not ever having sex, or he’d find someone who he’d feel enough romantic or aesthetic or other kinds of attraction for that the idea of sex would be more palatable, even if what he enjoyed about it or what about it appealed to him wouldn’t be quite the same as it would for his potential partner. Asexual didn’t automatically mean aromantic. He could still fall in love with someone, and they, him: it just might be a little harder, with how much the two ideas were so wrapped up in one another in their culture.
But he’s twenty now, and it’s still not happening. He still hasn’t had a real crush, still hasn’t quietly pined for anyone, hasn’t met someone that makes his heart race and his palms sweaty and his whole being want. Kristen falls in love with someone new what feels like every other month at this point. Gorgug’s had four serious relationships. Fabian dated Mazey for almost two years, and he’s been on at least a dozen dates that Riz knows of since they broke things off. Fig and Ayda are still going strong, almost four years on. And now Adaine has decided she doesn’t ever want it. And slowly, quietly, there’s been a suspicion building, one that kind of scares him. Not really craving sex is one thing. But where he’d been okay with that, with sexual attraction not really happening for him, he doesn’t know if he’s as okay with it when it comes to romantic attraction.
He hasn’t dared voice the word aromantic aloud, but he’s been turning it over in his head, over and over, hoping it’ll feel less scary and more comfortable and not knowing yet how he feels about it. Hearing Adaine say it so plainly, so happily, so confidently, has felt like a smack in the face, for all that he knows it shouldn’t. Worse, still, is the way she describes it, how happy she is with it, how wholeheartedly she already is embracing the idea that she won’t ever feel it or want it or have it.
Because. It’s. The thing is, he thinks he does want it, at least in theory even if he’s not as sure about the reality. The actually being in love part maybe least of all the parts, which is weird and hard to put into words even in his own head let alone to anyone else. It’s just… it’s complicated, because when he tries to envision it, it’s still… it’s difficult to imagine, because he’s starting to realize he doesn’t have a fucking clue what it would look like or feel like on him, but it’s. The suspicion he’s had, the dread he feels, it’s now more complicated and far worse, because it doesn’t feel a thing like what she’s saying. He likes the idea of having some of that with someone who loves him. It’s hard to picture in any real way, sure, especially because he doesn’t even have a clue what that hypothetical person he’d love would even look like (Except, probably a guy? Maybe?), but it sounds nice, in some wistful, maybe-one-day way. It certainly doesn’t sound like something he’d scrunch his face up at like she had, even if it’s strange and even a little intimidating to envision, because he still doesn’t even know how to be vulnerable and intimate without it feeling like a battle, because he still doesn’t know what vulnerability and intimacy is supposed to look and feel like as a romantic thing, and especially what it's supposed to look and feel like as a romantic thing that’s not a sexual thing when so much of the depiction of romance is all tied up with sex.
And yeah, maybe it terrifies him, the thought of finding someone he wants to be that vulnerable and intimate with, but he’s… pretty sure it’s in the good kind of scary way, like being at the top of a roller coaster, or the moments just before a fight, when adrenaline narrows down everything to a single, clear point. He’s… almost sure.
Maybe he should be relieved, hearing how clear things look for Adaine, because if that’s what it’s like, realizing you’re aromantic, maybe that means he’s not that after all.
He’s not. If anything, he just feels lonelier and more broken, because if he’s not aromantic after all, it’s– maybe it’s just him. Maybe there’s something wrong with him, after all, that none of it is happening for him. All he has is this stupid, abstract, formless want, and nowhere to put it or aim it towards, and maybe that’s all he’ll ever have. Maybe he’s just doomed to never find anyone he wants to figure out what form it could take.
“We’re really the smart ones,” Adaine says to him, grinning, eyes sparkling, voice low like they’re sharing in some secret. “No acting like morons the second hormones come into play.”
Riz hopes his laugh doesn’t feel as weak to her as it does to him. “Yeah,” he says, nausea and dread swirling into the worst kind of fucking stomachache as he attempts a shaky smile her way. “So much better this way.”
Every other Friday night is Boys Night, a tradition started by Fabian after a truly excessive amount of pouting freshman year, when he and Gorgug had nearly two months where they only ever saw each other in passing when they were both in the off-campus apartment they share, and when Riz had been all but a ghost, too wrapped up in his classes and the plethora of campus activities to get involved in to make time enough to go hang out with them and give them his full attention with any semblance of a schedule. Every Friday had been too often, especially when both Fabian and Gorgug were dating people – Riz could only tolerate being stood up last-minute because a date had taken priority so many times before putting his foot down – but every other week had been a more than acceptable sacrifice. It’s not always all three of them, with how many things they all have going on, but more often than not it’s at least Riz hanging out at their place with one of the two of them.
Tonight it’s just him and Fabian. Gorgug’s out with a group of friends he’d made at one of his clubs, and Riz almost wishes he’d begged off, too. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy boys night: he does, and it’s usually one of the things he looks forward to most. But he’s spent the several hours since Adaine’s coming out feeling off, spiraling, feeling sorry for himself, and he knows he’s not going to be great company. It’s a toss-up as to whether Fabian will notice, and if he does, what he’ll do with it: the odds are just as good that he’ll make it his mission to get Riz to let loose and have fun as it is that he’ll take it personally and sulk about it. The former might be helpful. If it’s the latter, Riz is pretty sure this boys night will have to be cut short, because he really, honestly can’t deal with Fabian’s dramatics tonight.
If Fabian notices, he doesn’t say anything about it, but they do break the alcohol out early, and he wastes no time turning the racing game he turns on into a drinking game, declaring that any time either of them falls off the track or comes in last they need to do a shot. It’d be a huge handicap to himself far more than Riz, because while Riz isn’t great at this game Fabian’s terrible at it, if not for the fact that he’s a filthy cheater and starts shoving his shoulder into Riz’s to distract him and trying to grab the controller away any opportunity he can, and the shots start quickly and pretty much don’t stop. It takes no time at all for them to be trashed. Riz’s stomach hurts from laughing by the time they toss the controllers to the side, and he’s more sideways on the couch than upright, and for the first time all day, he’s not all up in his head.
At least, until Fabian reaches out and pokes him in the side. “Hey. What’s going on?” The words are only barely slurred.
It could be an innocent enough question, but the fact that it’s said this quietly like he’s trying not to scare Riz off, that he waited until now when Riz got drunk and relaxed, makes him think otherwise. “What? Nothing’s going on.”
Fabian snorts. “The Ball. You’ve been weird all day.”
Fabian wouldn’t be his first choice to talk about this with. They’re best friends, and Riz loves him so dearly, but he’s not… he doesn’t think Fabian would be the person to understand it. Well. Part of the problem is that Riz is pretty sure none of his friends will understand it, but at least maybe, like, Gorgug would try to empathize and break it down with Riz, bit by bit. Or Adaine could maybe walk him through the thought process she’d had, so he could figure out where he’s going wrong. …But both of those options sound humiliating, honestly, and Riz is just drunk and loose and can’t stop thinking about how happy and confident Adaine looked, and it just slides out of his mouth without his permission. “Adaine’s aromantic.”
“Uh. Yeah. Is that… a problem?”
“No,” he whines. “Except… maybe?”
“Riz.” He knows it’s serious if Fabian’s breaking out the government name. He does it more and more every year, no matter how much delight he seems to get in confusing new acquaintances by refusing to call Riz anything other than The Ball, but his real name comes out far more often in moments of stress than anything else. “Are you… you’re not in love with Adaine, are you?”
It’s so hilariously in the wrong direction that Riz just gapes at him for a second, then starts laughing so hard he starts hiccuping. “No. God, can you imagine?”
Fabian doesn’t seem quite as amused. “Well how else was I supposed to take that!” he protests, getting more flustered the longer Riz’s drunken giggles last. “And it’s not like you guys aren’t close! I don’t know what you get up to when you’re like. Studying!”
It just sets Riz off again. “I mean. Studying, mostly,” he manages through the laughter. He gets a pillow thrown at his face for that, and he nearly falls off the couch avoiding it, his reflexes way too slowed by liquor to do it gracefully. Between that and the laughter, he’s feeling even woozier than he had a few seconds ago. Definitely no more alcohol. He sits up. Holy shit, no more alcohol.
Fabian gives a dramatic sigh and sprawls out, arm unapologetically encroaching on Riz’s space. “Then why has that got you all in a tizzy?”
Right. Suddenly, it’s not so funny, no matter how entertaining it is to hear the word ‘tizzy’ come out of Fabian’s mouth like that, fuzzy and almost one syllable too many. Riz looks down at the pillow he’d been assaulted with and starts picking at the loose thread he can see, mostly so he doesn’t have to look at Fabian’s face when he shrugs and goes, “I. For a while, I’ve been thinking. I dunno. Maybe I’m aromantic, too, and not just asexual.”
“Shouldn’t you be glad, then, that Adaine is, too?” It’s not fair that Fabian’s words are as steady as they are, even if Riz can tell by the way he sounds out the vowels that he’s far from sober. “So you’re not alone?”
Riz blinks back the sudden, sharp sting in his eyes. Not alone. Hah. It’s something he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to, how he can be the least lonely he’s ever been, being around his friends, his party, and still be struck, all at once, with this deep and encompassing loneliness at the most inconvenient of moments. All of them ending up in Bastion City (well, minus Fig, but she’s here so often there’s really not much of a difference) had been an unexpected gift, even if they don’t all go to the same schools, but for all the preparing he’d done and all the acceptance he’d worked on in letting them go only to not really have to do it, yet, it hasn’t done a thing for the quieter, more selfish loneliness. He loves that their lives are changing and that all of them are still included in these new lives. He loves that he’s found things can change and he can find new things to love about them. But he doesn’t know how to navigate it, the slowly-building feeling that for all the ways their friendships and lives are developing and maturing and growing, Riz isn’t blossoming in all the same ways as the rest of them.
He shrugs again. “Maybe. But it’s– ’s not like that, for me. All the things she was saying.” He blinks up at the ceiling with a distant almost-gratitude towards his state of tipsiness for making it waver, giving him something to concentrate on to distract him from the drowning feeling he’s had all day.
“What do you mean?”
God, but he must sound so stupid, explaining it to Fabian, who’s never really struggled with being in his head about this kind of thing. If anything, it seems like he’s always had the opposite problem: he’s leapt, ran forward towards people and things, and then fumbled when it turned out things were slightly different once he got them than what he’d planned. Riz gets that, in some aspects, maybe, but not in this. In this, he’s only ever been stuck in his head, obsessing and filling until it’s bursting out the seams, leaking out from him in nightmares and terrifying demonic mannequin goblin boys and mental breakdowns. “It just. I dunno. Having a relationship like that. Or all the stuff that comes with it, anyway. Sounds nice. Weird maybe? Definla– defin– yeah. Weird. But good weird? Maybe? At least in theory?”
Hard to imagine weird, mostly: any time he even tries to, it’s so abstract, like he’s imagining some other person having it. He can’t picture it, his own, scarred, spindly fingers intertwining with someone’s and giving him warm fuzzy feelings. He can hypothesize, like, what it might feel like in a removed kind of way to maybe kiss someone in theory but he can’t form any clear picture of what that’d actually feel like or look like, or if he’d like it. He likes the concept of cuddling with someone and having them run their fingers through his hair or vice versa and there being no expectation to do anything but just breathe and soak it in, but trying to actually put himself in that position feels strange. (And like, he’d probably be so bad at it? Just lying there and doing nothing? Wouldn’t that get boring? He loves his party so much but sometimes just sitting with them on a couch and chatting gets boring, and their conversations are rarely quiet, affectionate, banal things like couples seem to have when they cuddle. …But then, he’s never tried it? What if that’s just like one of those things that’s in movies and books that isn’t at all like that in real life? This is his thing, he doesn’t know.)
He thinks he likes the idea of having someone to fall back on, someone who can fall back on him, someone to build a life with together, and he’s pretty sure it’s not just the fear of being alone saying that. It’s slowly starting to click, the idea that, yeah, maybe the Bad Kids are never going to be like they were at fifteen when there was nothing and no one more important than each other and solving mysteries together and partying together and being together all the time. But there’s something he likes about it, too, the idea that he gets to watch and be a part of his friends growing up into the real, fully-actualized adults they’re one day going to be, and that they feel the same about him. If it was just fear, wouldn’t the idea of finding that and feeling that and wanting that be more of, like, something he was clinging to desperately and trying to rush his way into finding and not something he just quietly, curiously contemplates?
…Is this normal? Are normal people able to, like, easily imagine someone they could picture themselves liking and slot that imaginary person in and have it feel real? Or does everyone feel this kind of separation from it, like it’s just some blurry abstract thing, a general sense and not something concrete? He’s been starting to think that no, maybe it’s not, and maybe there’s a reason for that, but Adaine had had a different kind of clarity today. “But maybe I’m not aro if I think they kinda sound nice, ’cause Adaine doesn’t. That’s… that makes sense, right? Not feeling it and not wanting it. Or feeling it and wanting it. They go together.”
Fabian’s thigh stretches out and knocks his knee into Riz’s. “Maybe you’re just a late bloomer.”
It… probably says something, that the initial, knee-jerk reaction to that something kind of wistful and sad. The moment he tries to follow that thought to the inevitable conclusion, though, the panic and the unsurety start rising again. Or maybe that’s the alcohol. Either way, he’s just starting to feel like he might throw up. “My dad was,” he chokes out. “Said he didn’t start experiencing attraction ’til junior year of college.”
“See!” Fabian sounds far too pleased. “You’re right on track, The Ball.”
And there it is again, the loneliness, the feeling that, for how well his friends know and love him, there’s still parts of him that they don’t get, and that maybe they never will. “Maybe.” He doesn’t plan on saying it, but he opens his mouth to laugh it off and make some excuse to get back to video games or something else that doesn’t make him feel so raw and exposed, but to his horror, what comes out is, “Or I’m just broken.”
Fabian’s been sprawled out next to him for most of this, and it’s made it easier, that neither of them are sitting up and treating this like some Big Conversation, that Riz hasn’t had to look anyone in the eye for it. But now he sits upright and reaches out to jostle Riz’s shoulder, more sloppily and roughly than usual for how tipsy he must be, too. “Hey. No. No one talks about my best friend like that.”
It’s been a long time since Fabian stopped denying they were best friends, but it still brings a warm glow to Riz every time he says it unprompted like that, and he laughs. Thank god it’s only barely unsteady, affection tempering the hysteria. “I mean. ’s kinda fucked, though, isn’t it? Maybe wanting the stuff that comes with a relationship but still not ever falling for anyone for it to be worth trying it out to even figure out if I do want it not hypothetically or if I’ve just bought into the same bullshit I told myself I hadn’t?” He’s rambling so badly, he knows, but even if there’s a part of him that knows he’ll regret it, he’ll be horrified in the morning, he’s beyond caring at this point. He’s even so beyond caring that he’s rambling like this to Fabian, who absolutely would not have been sober Riz’s choice. (Sober Riz’s choice would’ve been to talk about this with no one, he knows, but still.)
He just doesn’t know what he even wants. On the one hand, it’d be something of a relief if it turns out that nope, he actually is aromantic, and it’s just their dumb romance-obsessed culture that slowly got to him and has him thinking that even if he feels weird and unsure about the idea of going all sappy and stupid over someone, there are parts of a relationship that sound nice on paper. Adaine made it look nice, with how bright and sure and happy she was earlier.
(Or really, it’d be even nicer if it turns out he is just a late bloomer and he’s not aromantic, and he’s not an alloromantic person who’s just broken. Is it so wrong of him to want something to be easy for once? He’s a goblin. He’s socially awkward as fuck. (And probably at least one flavor of neurodivergent but who has the time or money to open that can of worms?) His body is already starting to give him so much shit and he’s only twenty. He’s asexual. Hasn’t he at least earned the right to have one thing about him be normal? It just… is starting to feel like that maybe isn’t an option here.)
But on the other hand, the idea of turning his back on that entirely is a little scary, for all that he doesn’t want it to be. His friends, his mom, the people in his life, they’re enough. More than enough. But is it so bad if it turns out he does want something else, too, even if he’s starting to think he doesn’t at all need it the same way his friends seem to? He just wishes he had any kind of clarity at this point.
“Is– is it the not feeling anything about anyone or not knowing that’s bothering you most?”
“Is it also kinda fucked up if I say the not knowing?” Don’t get him wrong, the fact that the feeling hasn’t come doesn’t sit with him quite as easily as it had when it’d been about sexual attraction. But one problem at a time: there’s no use spiraling over not crushing on anyone or not getting butterflies or whatever it is romantic attraction feels like if it turns out that all the things that come with a romantic attraction are only things he’d like as an abstract, wistful, maybe-in-another-life kind of thing.
…Even if it if it turns out he does actually really want it, and he isn’t feeling it, that’s just another thing to navigate, in addition to the whole asexual thing. Cool. Neat.
Honestly, fuck this whole thing. Romance fucking sucks. Wanting sucks. Being a person sucks. He needs another drink.
Fabian snorts. “No. It’s very you, The Ball.”
“So I’m very kinda fucked up,” he surmises, and he might’ve been joking, teasing Fabian about his wording, if not for how forlornly it comes out. “Good to know.”
This time, Fabian doesn’t bother with a knee or a pillow; he sits up, lunges over, and playfully shoves Riz’s face into the cushion with his own hands. “I will wrestle your mopiness into submission,” he threatens, and Riz laughs from surprise more than anything else.
Even with as unhappy and messy as his head is, it’s kind of hard to hold onto it when Fabian makes good on his threat, poking and prodding and wrestling a Riz that’s too drunk to evade him the way he normally would be much better at. By the time he finally calls uncle, his hair is so fucked, he’s breathless from laughter, and he feels like he might actually be sick from the dizziness that really doesn’t go with the rum in his stomach, but the smile that’s on his face when he throws the pillow at Fabian’s head feels like the first real one he’s had all day.
It’s not the first time he’s worked an opening shift while hungover, and he’s sure it won’t be the last, but by the time noon rolls around and he’s being set free, all Riz wants to do is climb back into bed. It doesn’t help that winter’s hanging around stubbornly long, and the part of his stupid physiology that still somehow hasn’t picked up on the fact that he’s going to school and working a job and living a very urban life and not holed up in some mountains somewhere still has him lowkey in hibernation mode. His feet drag through the gross, greyish sludge of what remains from last week’s snowstorm, and he’s already so dreamily imagining how nice and cozy his bed will be when he crawls back in it that he almost misses his name being distantly called.
Well. Not his name, technically, but not not his name.
“The Ball!”
He turns around just in time to see Fabian try to jump over the huge snowbank across the quad. His dancer’s body almost gets him there unscathed, but his foot catches the top of the pile and he fumbles. Somehow he manages to still look almost graceful while tripping, and he recovers without losing either of the styrofoam cups in his hands, but his shoulders are far more hunched as he crosses the rest of the far more even ground as he all but sprints over to Riz.
Riz, because he is a very good friend, pretends to believe that the pink on Fabian’s dark cheeks is just the wind and the cold and not embarrassment. He isn’t so good a friend that he doesn’t just stare a little and go, “Dude. You could’ve walked around that.”
Fabian shrugs one shoulder. “This was faster,” he blusters, and thrusts the cup in his left hand out to Riz, who automatically takes it. He’s never going to turn down a free coffee – please, please, please let it be coffee – from Fabian, especially not when he’s this cold and when he can see beautiful, glorious steam rising from it into the dull grey afternoon.
He doesn’t ask any questions, just immediately presses it to his chapped lips and starts tipping it back. Fuck yes. Coffee, just like he hoped – when they all gang up on him to try to forcibly cut down his caffeine intake, Fabian only listens for long enough for Riz’s threats to turn into mopey whines, and then he’s far too easily swayed over to the correct side again – and still hot but not so much that he burns his tongue, even if he really wouldn’t care all that much at this point. Good coffee, too, dark and rich and thick and with a hint of something only barely sweet, the way Riz really prefers it instead of the sickly sweet syrups the closest coffee shop to his dorm likes to stock up on, and a note of something he can’t quite put his finger on. “Holy shit, what is this?” he asks once he stops greedily gulping at it.
The little pleased smile on Fabian’s face immediately turns more smug. “So that’s a yes on pistachio?”
Riz rolls his eyes, amused and won over despite how much he’d really like to be annoyed at Fabian for being the cause of the headache he’s had all morning and at how unfair it feels that his best friend looks perfectly fine and not at all hungover. “It’s okay,” he lies with a little shrug of his own.
Fabian’s eye narrows. “Well, if it’s just ‘okay’,” he says, and reaches out to grab the coffee cup back, like he doesn’t know just how dangerous it is to come between Riz and his coffee.
Riz curls himself protectively around it and hisses. Smartly, Fabian decides to keep his hand intact, and reaches out to flick him on the forehead instead of trying to wrestle the cup away. Riz only swats at it, deciding it’s not worth the energy to retaliate further, especially not when he could be taking another gloriously warm sip of the coffee.
“So I was thinking. We should date.”
The coffee is not so glorious when he’s hacking around it, spluttering and coughing. His eyes sting, and his lungs burn, and he barely registers the cup being taken out of his hands and someone smacking him on the back like they’re trying to save him from choking. Is he choking? Is he dying? Is he drugged? Was the coffee drugged and he’s hallucinating and choking and dying? That makes way more sense than those words actually coming out of Fabian’s mouth.
“What the fuck, The Ball,” Fabian says once Riz can finally see and breathe again.
Riz just looks up from where he’s still hunched over, his hands planted on his knees, and gapes. “What– what the fuck, me? What the fuck, yourself, Fabian?! Did you just say we should date?”
It’s been a long time since he’s seen Fabian’s face go as instantly red as it does now, and he starts spluttering nearly as badly as Riz had. “Not like that!”
“Then what the fuck!”
They’re drawing a crowd, he realizes, a handful of other college students staring and giggling at the scene they’re making now, and Riz would actually think this was hell if he hadn’t, you know, been to actual hell more times than he could count on one, heavily-scarred hand. He hisses again, far more threateningly than playfully this time, but rudely, it only gets more laughter, even if a few of the people around them start walking again, continuing on wherever they were headed before Riz inhaled coffee down his lungs so noisily it’d caught their attention.
“Not really dating! That’d be weird!” Fabian waves his hands around dramatically, and Riz only has the tiniest space left in his brain to mourn the bits of coffee he can see coming from the mouth of his cup that’s being sacrificed to the movement. It’s far less than the amount splashing from Fabian’s, at least.
Riz feels insane. Fabian’s clearly insane. If there’s another explanation, he’s sure not offering one. “Hey, Fabian? Usually when people say ‘we should date’, they don’t mean ‘we shouldn’t date, that’d be weird’.”
“It would be weird!” Fabian insists, like he’s not the one who said the fucking words in the first place. “I don’t mean we should date, but like. We should try dating.”
Riz stares. “You– please tell me you hear yourself. Tell me how any of that makes any sense to you in your brain, because that is not normal people logic.” He takes the momentary distraction to lunge at the coffee, and Fabian doesn’t even try to fight off the attack, just distractedly lets Riz take it.
“I mean– shit, The Ball, I just mean what we were talking about last night.”
Someone on the sidewalk nearby actually whistles, and Riz takes back what he thought about this not being hell. Clearly this is just one of the circles he hadn’t visited yet. And, actually? He so doesn’t have the space left in his brain to deal with any of this. At all, probably, but especially not now, hungover and freezing and horrified and embarrassed at how much he’d blabbed last night and absolutely fucking at a loss as to what’s going on here. “Nope. Not dealing with this, bye,” he blurts out, and turns to flee. He only gets an inch or so before Fabian’s gloved hand closes around his wrist.
“Come on,” he whines, and it’s rich of him to sound frustrated when Riz isn’t the one making zero sense here. He heaves this big sigh, and lets his hand travel down to grab Riz’s hand.
It’s only for long enough to tug him forward, signalling that he’ll walk towards Riz’s dorm with him, but given this impromptu holding of hands is coming on the heels of Fabian saying they should date, Riz feels justified in how quickly he snatches his hand back, cheeks flooding with warmth as he shoves his hand as deep into his own jacket pocket as it’ll go. More for the lack of a better option than anything else, he starts walking, falling easily into step beside Fabian. “What,” he says through gritted teeth, “does this have to do with anything we talked about last night?”
He doesn’t look up, but he can hear the way Fabian noisily exhales, how the air hisses as it escapes his teeth. “Look.” All Riz dares look at is the icy, sludgy sidewalk in front of them. “You said you didn’t know if you even wanted things in any real, not-hypothetical way, and you still hadn’t met anyone you liked or trusted enough to have it be worth figuring out yet, right?”
It sounds so childish and stupid coming out of Fabian’s mouth, especially out in the open, in the light of day, and Riz has a feeling his cheeks are doomed to be stuck in this mortifying blush for ages still. “It’s– I was drunk,” he tries, despite knowing how useless it is.
Fabian makes this little noise as his feet stop, and he reaches out to tug at Riz’s coat until he stops, too. “The Ball,” he says, unhappily.
It takes another tug at the bottom of his coat for Riz to dare look up, and when he does, he really doesn’t know how to feel about the look on Fabian’s face. There’s sadness, and something far, far too close to pity that makes Riz’s stomach turn, but most of all there’s this familiar stubbornness. “You trust me.”
“Against my better judgment sometimes,” he shoots back automatically, but there’s no heat in it, and Fabian doesn’t even flinch.
“We should date,” he says again, and this time Riz doesn’t choke, but he does feel something awful and strange and uncomfortable rising in his throat. “Not for real, obviously, that would be crazy and weird, but like– we can fake date. No feelings, no pressure, just– you can see what it’s like in theory, in a controlled environment. No unknown variables other than the ones you’re trying to figure out.”
“Stop trying to talk scientifically like it’s going to convince me.”
It’s a relief, though, the way that Fabian smiles again, the warmth in it reaching his eye and softening some of the seriousness that’d taken root there. “Oh yeah, baby, talk nerdy to me.”
The drama in Riz’s eyeroll is only barely exaggerated. “Fabian.”
“What about this isn’t perfect?” he says, arms coming up to fold across his chest. “Obviously it’s not the same as trying it out with someone you have feelings for, but isn’t that even better, in a way? You can be objective about it. No blurred lines worrying if you want it for real or if you want it because you think they want it. You can go ‘actually, you know what, Fabian? I think I hate this’ about something and not worry about it hurting my feelings. No pressure about it being too awkward to handle, because we have been through far worse.”
Riz grimaces. “I have seen you shit in a dead man’s mouth,” he agrees.
That, of all things, makes Fabian flinch. “The Ball,” he says, betrayal dripping from the two haunted syllables. “We don’t talk about that.”
Something about this just feels weird. …Beyond the general weirdness of the whole concept. “I know what you say I’d get out of this, but what about you?” he asks, frowning. “What do you get out of this?”
Fabian blinks a few times, like he’s surprised by the question, or like he doesn’t have an answer or something, and just shrugs and brings his styrofoam cup up to his lips to take a long sip. “That’s just how good of a best friend I am.”
He’s blustering, Riz realizes, and it’s so obvious, down to the way that he bought himself a moment to think with the sip of coffee. What isn’t obvious, the thing Riz doesn’t have a clue about, is why. “Most best friends don’t offer to fake date their best friends.”
“Exactly,” Fabian says, proudly puffing his chest out. “That’s what makes me an even better best friend than most best friends.”
The thing is, Riz has so little clue about anything when it comes to anything regarding romance or dating. It’s kind of why they’re having this frankly surreal conversation at all. The only thing he really has to go on are all the ridiculous rom-coms that he’s sat through with Fig and Kristen, something he’s experienced far too many of if only because Fig and Kristen get a huge kick out of the commentary they get when he and Adaine watch them together, and Adaine rarely makes it through a whole one before she gets bored and goes off to do something on her own. He’ll at least sit with them, half-scrolling on his crystal, content enough in their company even when the movies leave so much to be desired. But he’s seen enough of them through to the end to know some of the tropes. And obviously real life is nothing like those movies. Obviously. Even if Riz is clueless enough about romance to wonder if he’s aromantic or just tragic and doomed, he knows that much. But the only time he’s ever heard someone suggest something as stupid as fake dating has been in one of those stupid, ridiculous rom-coms. And they always end the same way. The best friend that suggests something as wild as this, some harebrained scheme as a way to get closer to the protagonist and spend more time with them is always secretly in love with them. In one of those movies, this would absolutely just be a soft-launch into a real relationship, a way to test the waters until someone had some big epiphany and they fought over some absolutely convoluted miscommunication that could have been solved if the characters got a single fucking sentence out and had some overwrought reunion. Way too often rain or snow would be involved for some weird reason, and even though Riz doesn’t have a single clue about what kissing is like in real life or if he’d even like it at all, he can’t think of anything he’d like less than being soaking wet when he put that to the test.
It’s– anyway.
The idea is just as stupid and ridiculous, but when he stops and peers up at Fabian, he realizes he… really can’t come up with a better answer than the one those ridiculous rom-coms would suggest. “Holy shit,” he says aloud. “You’re not, like, in love with me, are you?”
It’s like the words are a sucker punch, the noise they elicit from Fabian, the way he wheezes in shock. “What?” His laugh is reedy and wild. “How the hell did you get from ‘no feelings’ and– and ‘no blurred lines’ and ‘scientific experiment’ to– to me being secretly in love with you?” Every word seems to increase in volume and pitch. He’s even redder than he’d been earlier, and his eye is darting around everywhere, looking at anything but Riz.
Holy shit, Riz thinks, but this time he doesn’t say it aloud, more from shock than any desire to spare Fabian’s pride. It’s not a smoking gun, and the idea is so beyond weird enough and he has such little experience in this area that he doesn’t feel confident at all in his intuition, but it’s sure as fuck not the kind of normal laughing it off response he’d imagine any of their other friends would give in a similar situation. …Except, he can’t picture any of their other friends offering this fake dating scheme in the first place, and that’s… not exactly helping Fabian’s case, here.
“It’s not– that’s not– the Ball, really, I can’t believe you’d. What.”
Riz can’t tell if the way his stomach is turning is in dread or delight.
There’s only one way he thinks he’s going to get an answer here, to both if his hunch about Fabian is correct and to how, exactly, the fuck he plans on dealing with it if he is correct. It doesn’t mean he feels any less insane when he sucks in a large, freezing cold breath. It burns his lungs, and on the exhale, he says, “Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Let’s– what?” Fabian’s voice is still high-pitched and strained, and he’s looking at Riz like it’s a trap, like he’s the maniac who suggested this in the first place.
Riz huffs out a breath of something that could almost be called a laugh, if not for the fact that it’s, like, two steps away from some kind of hysterical breakdown. “Let’s date. Not-date. Fake date. Whatever you wanna call it.”
There’s still a note of wariness to his face, but at last, Fabian smiles again, even if it’s far shakier and more suspicious than it’d been before. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Does he actually think it’ll help him come to any answers about his maybe-maybe-not aromanticism? Probably not. But there’s much bigger, much more important fish to fry right now. His identity issues can wait: it’s so much easier, anyway, pushing them to the back burner. They’ll keep. They always do. He attempts a smile of his own, and hopes it doesn’t look quite as weak as it feels. “Might as well give it a shot, right?”
Fabian beams. “Just you wait, The Ball. This is going to help so much, I promise.”
Riz’s stomach only keeps churning.