#idk if tumblr searches now go after non-tag text as well but oh well

[autolenaphilia]

A review of BBC Sherlock

BBC Sherlock is a terrible show. I’m not the first to say so, and I’m certainly repeating things here that other people have said, like Hbomberguy, who did a flawed but mostly fine critical look at the show. But I still think I have some original ideas to bring to the table, and even if this essay is long by itself, it is probably more approachable case against Sherlock than Hbomb’s long if compelling video (which I liked but don’t entirely agree with. He for example criticizes the show for not playing fair with its mysteries, which I think is fine for a Sherlock Holmes adaptation to do, because the original stories don’t “play fair” either. They pre-date that convention in mystery writing)

The main problem with the show, lies with its main character, Sherlock. The tv series had a problem with hero worshipping Sherlock and having an excessive and uncritical focus on him. The show revolved around the main character of Sherlock Holmes in a way that the original Holmes stories didn’t. Everything in the writing and the world it created was about Sherlock, and how cool he is.

The show makes airs of being a character study, but it is not interested in doing the work required for actually being that. Ultimately, Sherlock is the hero, and for Moffat & Gatiss this means he can do no wrong, even when he is wrong.

Sherlock is an arrogant jerk, being not only rude but outright cruel at times. He does this all the time, including to people who are supposedly his friends, like Watson. The good doctor actually gets the worst of it. In the show’s supposed “adaptation” of “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, Holmes drugs Watson without his consent or knowledge, just to test the drug out.

The show never reckons with all the cruelties the hero commits to his supposed friends. He never apologizes, nor is he confronted with his behaviour, never decides or is compelled to change. Instead Watson and co. remain loyal to the very end. He thinks it is permissible for him to act that way because he is a genius, and alarmingly, the very writing of the show seems to support him in that line of thought.

This is not at all due to the show reflecting the original short stories. The Holmes depicted in the canonical stories can be rude and inconsiderate to others, but seldom outright cruel. Compare the scene in Sherlock described above with a similar scene in The Devil’s Foot. In that short story, Holmes also tests out a drug he found on Watson, but everything else is different. Holmes explains the situation to Watson beforehand, asks if he wants to take part, and exposes himself for the same dangers as his companion. When things turn out badly, Holmes even earnestly apologizes for putting both Watson and himself in danger.

The Canonical stories weren’t afraid to make Holmes fallible either. He is a hero, but one with faults that can make mistakes and loses. Good examples are A Scandal in Bohemia and the charming anti-racist story The Adventure of the Yellow Face.

The original version of Holmes is genuinely heroic. The BBC show has in comparison a very warped view of heroism, being the hero means Sherlock is never wrong, even when he is wrong. The hero is a special person, who can’t obey ordinary rules. It feeds into a form of wish fulfilment. A male power fantasy (and this type of hero is always a man) where you are very clever and being that clever means you can mistreat people as you like.

This focus on Sherlock himself can also be seen in the diminished role given to the supporting cast. Martin Freeman’s Watson is used well in the first episode, as the normal person who acts as our introduction to the strange mind and world of Sherlock (the first episode is maybe the strongest of the entire show). This captures how he is used in the books and does that even without the intimacy of Watson’s first person narration. But that is all we get, he is a non-entity in the rest of the show. He doesn’t do much in the episodes that follow, and basically only exists to marvel and be shocked at how weird Sherlock is, and to be abused by him.

Mycroft exists mainly to provide missions for Sherlock and get him out of legal problems. There is an original female character, Molly Hooper, but the sexism of the writers means she matters even less. Her whole existence is determined by being a fangirl who has a crush on Sherlock, yet is treated horribly by him.

The show’s dubious idea of a hero is why the show has to make Moriarty into an overarching villain, who is behind pretty much every other villain they meet. Their Holmes is too important for ordinary crimes, he is a superhero who can only face a supervillain of equal stature, so Moriarty is changed into that type of villain.  

Certainly the original Moriarty has traits that predicts later supervillains, but ultimately he is just a crime boss, albeit a very intelligent and dangerous one. And making everything about this epic mind duel between Holmes and Moriarty contradicts the tone of the original stories. The cases Holmes takes on in the canon seldom concern more than the people directly involved and often don’t even involve murders. Holmes occasionally takes on bigger things, but the stakes are seldom world threatening. In comparison to the Sherlock show, the lack of empty bombast and faux-epicness in the original stories are very charming.

The character of Moriarty is played very energetically by Andrew Scott, but ultimately he is boring, because his motivations are simply that he is insane and gay. I’m not kidding. Moriarty wants to play mind games with Sherlock, because he is attracted to Sherlock and his intelligence. This, as bizarre as it sounds, literally makes most of the plot of this show caused by Sherlock being attractive .

(Hilariously, they later retcon this to Moriarty being mind controlled by Sherlock’s evil sister. Her motivation, incidentally, is that she is angry because Sherlock didn’t play with her as children.)

It is also unconnected to what Holmes actually does. In the original story, the reason Moriarty is interested in Holmes is because Sherlock was able to figure out that Moriarty is the head of a criminal organization, which is what makes him dangerous to Moriarty. In Sherlock, Moriarty knows of and admires Sherlock from before the first episode even happens and Holmes only figures out who Moriarty is later. It is treated as natural fact in this world that Sherlock is so awesome that people admire and are obsessed with him, without him even having to do anything that proves it.

I can see the appeal of shipping heroes and villains with sexual tension behind them, like Holmes and Moriarty in many versions. But when the hero-villain relationship in this case just reinforces the show’s excessive infatuation with its main character, it turns the whole thing distasteful for me (and that is not getting into the problems with coding your villain as insane and gay in general, as fun as this kind of villain can be).

I can also see the usefulness in setting up Moriarty by having him involved in crimes before he is actually introduced. The original stories don’t really do it, so Moriarty comes out of nowhere in The Final Problem. The Granada Tv show by Jeremy Brett did it by having Moriarty be behind The Red-Headed League case, and that worked fine.

But the way BBC Sherlock just drains the show of any interest in the villains except Moriarty. They are just Moriarty’s henchpeople, their motivation simply becomes that Moriarty pays them. The reason why the Granada version worked so well is that the villains in the orginal short story about The Red-Headed League were almost non-entities, the sole interesting thing about them is their scheme, so Moriarty being behind them makes things more interesting.

Sherlock however doles out the same treatment to some of the most interesting antagonists of the original stories, such as Jefferson Hope and Irene Adler. The treatment of Irene is perhaps the very worst thing the show ever did, and perhaps the worst adaptation of the character ever (and this is a character that is so often distorted in adaptations)

The original short story, A Scandal in Bohemia is the story of Irene Adler defeating Sherlock. She is not a villain, doesn’t actually blackmail anyone, and is not a love interest for Holmes. She actually marries someone else right in front of his face. It is a good story, with Irene defeating him teaching both Sherlock and the audience that women can also be smart.

The episode of Sherlock which “adapts” this story is pretty much the opposite. Irene Adler is a villain who blackmails people. Instead of being an opera singer, she is now a dominatrix, and this is treated with all the sensitivity of a Frank Miller. And also a lesbian with stereotypical man-hating tendencies.

Now a lesbian villain could still be interesting, but the writing makes sure she is not. She is not even a truly independent villain, instead she is like most villains in Sherlock on Moriarty’s payroll. And the lesbian thing turns out to mean naught, as she falls in love with Sherlock. Apparently Sherlock is so attractive that he can turn lesbians straight. This infatuation leads to her losing to Sherlock and afterwards becoming a damsel in distress that Sherlock rescues.

It is amazing how something written and broadcast in 2012 is far more misogynistic than a short story from 1891, but BBC Sherlock managed to do it.

Jefferson Hope isn’t treated as bad, because he doesn’t have to contend with the writer’s misogyny. But it is still a terrible adaptation of the character. In the original A Study in Scarlet, half of the novel is given to depict his backstory and his sympathetic reasons for killing the people he did.  Some readers dislike that part of the book, but it makes the story much better for being there. It gives the murderer a more complex character.

The show makes a hash out of this when adapting the character for the first episode. Now Hope is a simplistically evil character, who kills people because Moriarty pays him to. Thanks to some decent acting, he gets an ok Hannibal Lecter style confrontation with Sherlock, but it has more to do with Thomas Harris than Arthur Conan Doyle.

And it demonstrates maybe one of the most important differences between the canon and Sherlock. The Canon is very much interested in characters who are not Holmes. The stories are often more about the people Holmes and Watson meet while investigating their cases, than the detective himself.

Sherlock doesn’t give a damn about anyone who isn’t the main character. So despite having one of the most cruel versions of Holmes ever filmed, the stories are actually less morally ambiguous than the original stories. People who were antagonists to Holmes but not evil in the books are turned  into malevolent villains. The show isn’t concerned with creating relatable and complex motivations and backstories for them and make them into characters in their own right, they are only interesting as foils for Sherlock.

The show’s version of Charles Augustus Milverton, who is turned into a Dane named Magnussen, is one of the few villains which are not neutered by being a pawn for Moriarty. His episode, “His Last Vow” is therefore one of the better episodes that don’t directly involve Moriarty. It is helped by a delightfully slimy performance from Lars Mikkelsen, which is enjoyable in a similar way to Andrew Scott’s Moriarty. But the episode also illustrates the show’s problems.

Again the writers decide Sherlock is too important to deal with an ordinary if particularly reprehensible blackmailer, so the show turns Milverton into a supervillain who uses blackmail to control entire governments and has become one of the most powerful people on the planet.

Any tension that is created by the performance and the high stakes is however undercut by perhaps the most serious writing problem this show has: the nonsensical plots and mysteries. The episode’s big reveal is a case in point. The finale reveals Magnussen doesn’t have any physical or digital evidence of the stuff he uses to blackmail people with, he just uses his impressive memory to memorize the information.

The problem with this is that it turns Magnussen into just a huge bluff, with a blackmail empire built on sand. Anyone of his victims could have stopped his rise to becoming one of the most powerful men on the planet by just asking him for proof. Of course, this also means there is nothing stopping anyone from just killing him which is what Sherlock promptly does once Magnussen tells Sherlock his secret for no good reason. This show builds up this super-clever villain and reveals that he is actually just a fool with a good memory, except it treats this as if this ludicrous scheme makes him even more clever.

Sherlock shooting Magnussen is a change from the original story that is very emblematic of how this show works. Milverton is shot in the original story, but by a female victim of his taking revenge. Sherlock and Watson’s role in the story’s finale is merely destroying Milverton’s physical blackmail evidence.

Moffat and Gatiss have removed agency from a female character in the canon and transferred her actions to the male hero. They even suggest the original story by having Mary Watson break into Magnussen’s mansion and hold him at gunpoint.

And her shooting him would have worked so much better as well, for they had prior in the episode made the bizarre reveal that mary was once a professional contract killer. It is an absurd backstory for it comes out of nowhere, but it could have made sense as part of the plot if it explains why Mary is able to break into Magnussen’s home and kill him. But no, Holmes stops Mary from killng Magnussen, and sedates her.  The only reason for this seems to be the scriptwriter’s firm belief that women characters can not affect the plot in BBC’s Sherlock, only the male hero can.

And that seemingly minor change in adapting the story perhaps sums up the show perfectly. It adapts the original short stories with carelessness, picking the bits it pleases for the sole purpose to glorify and idealize its cruel male fantasy in the form of its supposed hero, who bears little in common with the character created by Arthur Conan Doyle.

[voidwaren]

[READ MORE] STORY 2/?

Story Title: idk I don’t have one yet Rating: M for language and themes. Like always. Words: 8k+ Warnings: Video game warnings apply, just in case. In addition: explicit language, dark themes, mental illness. You know, the usual ball game for this AU. (Actually, this one has a little heat to it, but it’s nothing beyond a T rating) Summary: Warren’s called to pick Nathan up from the party he didn’t want to go to. Trevor tags along, because Trevor’s now a central part of the whole AU. Shit goes down. Warren continues to hate parties, but what else is new.

(why is the line break gone. wtf. come on, Tumblr. work with me here.)

-

Warren’s first warning comes in the clipped voice of the Tenth Doctor saying “Allons-y!” as it signals a text coming in, which he ignores at first, because he’s busy reading about gelatinous rainfall in certain parts of America and knows if he lets this Wiki spiral have a moment of pause, it’ll just start up all over again with renewed energy, and he didn’t want to still be engrossed when Nathan decided to show up again.

His second warning comes about a minute after the Tenth Doctor’s deceleration in the form of Daft Punk informing him that they’re up all night to get lucky, telling him both that someone had changed his ringtone yet again—though he couldn’t easily choose a culprit considering both Chloe and Nathan’s past attempts at pranking him—and that whoever had sent the text was also probably the one calling him. With Nathan out at a house party with Hayden and Victoria and her posse, Warren knows he can’t just let it ring in case there’s an emergency. So he answers it.

His third warning, really, should have been tacked-on immediately following his first, because he’s been through enough instances where his life has been threatened before for there to be some kind of Spidey Sense attached to the notion. Like, come on. Where were the perks to almost dying so many times?

Alas, it only comes after Victoria threatens to dislodge one of his favorite body parts and make him guzzle it if he didn’t do exactly what she was telling him to do right now and have it done, like, yesterday. Even if it wouldn’t make sense for him to do it yesterday, since it was happening in the moment, and she wasn’t aware he ever had the ability to fall through time. The guzzling is still threatened, and the fear is still real.

(He wonders if Victoria learned that one from Nathan or vice-versa, because it wasn’t a new one. He also wonders in what capacity either of them might have learned it in the first place, but then decides he probably really doesn’t want to actually know.)

“And you can’t drive him back to campus, why?” Warren risks asking as he wrangles his legs into a pair of jeans he swiped off the floor of his room, cell phone shoved up with a shoulder and plastered flat to his cheek.

“I have business elsewhere, creepo,” Victoria responds. It’s a wonder he can hear her, honestly, because the music at the party she’d gone to sounds loud in the background.

Warren sighs, replacing the phone in his hand and starting the search to find the one sneaker he’d kicked off the day before and didn’t bother locating today, since he had no reason to leave his room. Well, until now. Apparently. “You were supposed to be their DD. I even asked Nathan if you were really going to, and he vouched for you.”

“Obviously. He wouldn’t throw me under the bus like that.”

Jesus Christ.

“Jesus Christ,” Warren echoes in a sigh. “Okay, fine. Only because I know if I tell you no, he’ll ask someone else, and something tells me everyone there is blitzed out in one way or another and incapable of operating heavy machinery. That’s a non-negotiable factor.”

Victoria’s reply is swift and sharp as anything, “You saying no was a non-negotiable factor.”

“Right. Of course. That one’s on me, I should have known.” Ah, there’s the shoe. Wedged between a rule book and a cardboard box filled with comics. Warren grabs it and crams his foot in. “You have his keys?”

Victoria scoffs, and if she’s at all drunk, Warren can’t tell by the perfect execution of the noise of disgust. She would go places, if there was ever a market for Absolute Destestment and Other Annoyed Noises. “Cut the stupid questions and get over here. I sent the address, don’t bother me again.” And then she ends the call before Warren can say a word more.

Warren sighs and stows his phone away in his pocket, grabbing his jacket from where it hung haphazardly from the corner of a lamp Nathan had stored in Warren’s room earlier that day for a reason he had yet to divulge, and grabs only his car keys after hunting around for a good fifteen minutes and failing to find his room key. If someone stole his stuff, he was going to blame Nathan, because it was his fault Warren kept misplacing the damn thing.

(Not that Nathan would care. He got blamed for things that weren’t his fault enough for things that happened to actually be his fault not to matter much, unless they had dire consequences attached. And there was no way Warren could be dire about anything short of someone getting killed—and Nathan knew that.)

“Grow a spine, Warren,” he mutters to himself grumpily as he veers out of his room and slams his door shut behind him, too caught up in his own self-made petty angst to realize someone was directly in his path until it was too late and he was barreling directly into the chest of one poor Trevor Yard.

“Whoa, Graham my man!” Trevor exclaims, his hands planting firmly down on Warren’s shoulders and anchoring him there. Warren notices offhandedly that he was now taller than Trevor, too, if only just. Weird. 

“Hey, man,” Warren greets sheepishly, his hands automatically reaching up to cup the points of Trevor’s elbows. “Sorry for nearly steamrolling you,” he says, then fakes a cough and tacks on, “again.”

But Trevor only grins. “You got places to be, no worries.”

Warren snorts, pulling a hand away to rub it along the back of his neck. “Not ones I want to be.”

Trevor’s smile drops. Warren can feel the fingers curving around his shoulders tighten their hold. “Are you being forced into something?”

There’s a look on his face that Warren can’t interpret. He wonders if Trevor thinks it’s Nathan’s doing, and immediately feels a spike of irritation despite himself. He squashes that down, because he likes Trevor, and it’s not like he was wrong. Trevor was only looking out for Warren, which, had the positions been switched and Trevor had still wanted to be Warren’s friend, Warren can’t say he wouldn’t try to do the same. Nathan was still a sketchy individual to anyone who didn't know him—and, of course, that was nearly the entire Blackwell student body, so, really, he shouldn’t even attempt at faulting Trevor in the first place.

… If that’s what Trevor was even thinking that. Warren was probably jumping to conclusions.

Trevor’s eyes dart towards Nathan’s door, and, okay. Maybe Warren wasn’t.

“Forced is a strong way to put it,” says Warren sheepishly. “It’s not what you’re thinking, though. Probably. Most likely?”

Trevor’s lips quirk back into a small smile, the minute reassurance apparently enough for him to relax away from the tension of whatever possible situation he’d been worried about. It makes Warren question just how much Trevor trusted Warren’s word, because, with anyone else, he knew he’d have more of a battle to gain some calm.

That’s because everyone else knows you lied to them, he reminds himself sharply, and he had. At least at some point in time. In Nathan’s case? Despite having basically told him everything the moment he woke up in the final loop? The fact he’d lied in past loops were what kept him from skimming by under the wire most of the time, because he’d been an idiot and told Nathan that part, too.

That’s not fair, he pushes back against himself. Nathan wouldn’t trust you immediately even if you hadn’t told him you’d lied.

And Warren knows he’s right. Because that was just Nathan. Nathan trusted Warren, but he was careful about that trust. He only gave it immediately when he knew he needed to.

“Hey.” A gentle voice accompanied by a slight jostle to his arm pulls him back, and Warren blinks rapidly at the worried face of Trevor, whom he’d totally forgotten about. “Earth to Warren, did I lose you? You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Warren says hastily—too hastily, if Trevor’s expression is any indication. Warren clears his throat, pulls away slightly. “Long night. Wikipedia spirals! They can be a real bitch.”

“Oh, yeah,” Trevor agrees. “Been there too many times. Creepy shit, some of the stuff you can find.” He pauses, but not long enough for Warren to think of a way to get going before he speaks again. “Where are you going, man? Is it bad?”

“No, no,” protests Warren, still too hastily, dammit. He needed to calm down. “Nathan and Hayden are at a house party with Victoria and Taylor and— Yeah, you know the crew. Victoria’s sticking around, I guess, and Nathan can’t drive how he is after partying. I’m picking him up.” He frowns. “I don’t actually know how the others are getting home,” he realizes. “I was just called to pick Nathan up.”

“We can ask when we get there,” Trevor says, finally releasing Warren, and Warren turns in surprise as Trevor starts walking down the hall towards the exit.

“We?” he repeats, no less than a little tentative as he catches up to Trevor’s side.

“You’re spacing out, dude. You’re always a space cadet, but, man, I’m not letting you out at a party alone when you’re losing it on me in the dorms.”

That throws Warren completely off guard. He knows that Trevor is a nice person, he’d shown as much in the past months with how much he wanted to be included in the nerdy things Warren liked to do, but this? This went beyond what Warren had expected out of the guy. And, really, that was his bad.

Why the hell was he so bad at judging the character of his dorm mates? Jeez. And he thought he was a good judge of character, too. So much for that.

“Okay,” Warren agrees faintly as they lope onto the asphalt of the school’s parking lot, his hand already in his pocket to fish out his keys.

Trevor throws Warren another grin as the doors are unlocked, but then eyes Warren’s car warily as he slides into the seat. “You know,” he starts conversationally, snapping his seatbelt buckle into place while Warren turns the car on, “this thing looks so much better at a distance, no offense.”

“Uh, offense taken! I bought it when I was sixteen,” Warren responds, throwing the shift into reverse and backing up, only slightly knocking his head against the roof this time when he turns around to look. He needed to lower his seat a little more, apparently, and does so. “Some of us here actually need the scholarship we’re on. Take the boons of freedom life offers, Grasshopper. Cheap, shitty transpiration or not.”

Trevor holds his hands up, grinning. Most people would look like a dick, presenting the gesture after a comment about how derelict the state of the vehicle was, but Trevor manages to make it look as innocent as it probably actually was, damn the guy.

“So long as I don’t get tetanus, I’m game.”

Warren rolls his eyes in Trevor’s general direction, mentally patting Trevor on the back for even knowing what tetanus is, before the less asshole-ish side reminds him that just because everyone else at the school might not be as smart as him, it didn’t mean they were dumb. Blackwell Academy wasn’t exactly easy to get into, after all. That didn’t make the accusation any less rude, though.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Warren mutters, pulling out of the student parking lot, and Trevor only laughs in response. 

-

They end up needing Trevor’s GPS about ten minutes into the drive when Warren realizes he isn’t as familiar with the outskirts of Arcadia Bay as he probably should be by now, and then stop needing Trevor’s GPS two streets before finding the one that the house actually sits on thanks to the volume of the music the premises is emitting. Warren is both shocked and amazed no one has called the cops yet, because deafening doesn’t even begin to cover the noise that greets him when he parks the car in an empty lot four odd houses down the road and pulls himself out. Trevor meets him at the trunk, looking like he was second-guessing everything about this whole ordeal, and they share a look before turning and making their way down the street and to the party.

“I knew there were big parties around here, but my imagination apparently sucks, because I didn’t think this is what we were getting into, ” Trevor remarks to Warren as they press close together to be heard, his voice a low rumble just barely heard over the pounding of the bass in Warren’s ear, then jerks away in order to narrowly avoid the careening path of a probably-drunken girl as she thundered between them with another girl on her shoulders, both hollering like they were at a concert and the limited-edition T-shirt gun had majorly misfired off into the distance. Warren turns to watch them continue on, both in curiosity of where they were going and in mental calculation of how far they could get with how much momentum they seem to have gained, but Trevor doesn’t, and it takes him a moment to notice Warren’s lagged behind.

“Blood in the water, Shark Bait?” he calls good-naturedly.

Warren winces and turns, jogging a little to return to Trevor’s side. “That nickname is never going to leave me, is it.”

Trevor snorts. “Not for as long as you keep tangling tongues with a biter. Not that I’m judging!” Trevor says quickly, turning so fast to face Warren that he nearly trips over the toe of his own shoe. No wonder he wipes out so much, Warren thanks.

“If anything,” Warren reassures, “I’d say you were one of the more accepting of the whole ordeal, considering you found out before most of the school.”

That seems to placate Trevor, because he gives Warren a smile reminiscent of a happy puppy dog before suddenly going still as a statue. He clears his throat, maybe twice, but the music is so loud that Warren can only judge by the way his Adam’s apple bobs with the movement, and the count is fairly indeterminate. 

“You good?” Warren asks him, ducking his head.

Trevor laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh if Warren’s ever heard one. “That’s why you were bleeding, wasn’t it? That whole fight you two had, back in November. Your mouth was bleeding when I found you in the stalls, and it was because he bit you, didn’t he,” he asks, but it sounds less like a question the second time Warren runs it by himself in his head. The quiet swear Trevor tacks on doesn’t make it sound any more like one, either. “He better not be biting other places.”

Warren cringes and shoves his shoulder into Trevor, knocking him off-kilter. He lets out a faint yelp, but then starts laughing, and all the tension is gone in a flash. 

“I hated everything about that statement, just for the record,” Warren mumbles, but, judging by the loud “What?” Trevor offers in return, Trevor didn’t hear him. Warren only shakes his head and grabs Trevor by the arm, and into the fray they go.

-

They’re met immediately by a gaggle of females in smeared makeup taking selfies on the front porch. Warren can’t help but gawk at the shimmering bikini tops they’re clad in despite himself, like he’s never seen a girl in a scanty swimsuit before (which—come on, he technically hasn’t, if movies and porn don’t count), and Trevor yanking him on ahead is the only thing to save him when one of them looks up and gives him a smile worthy of a lioness.

They don’t get far from the girls, though, before one is calling out to them with a “hey, you two!” and Trevor winces to a full stop two steps up the porch.

“You gotta pay to get into this party,” the girl informs them as she saunters up, a little unsteadily despite her bare feet, and her friend giggles and holds her hand out for what Warren presumes is the fee until the first girl gently pushes her hand away. “Not money,” she corrects, her eyes never leaving Trevor. “Give us something good.”

“Good?” Trevor repeats, frowning at Warren, who can only shrug. He’s not exactly a master of parties, and the biggest ones he’s ever hit have been Vortex ones, which, at most, had a monetary fee. “Uh, we don’t have drugs?” Trevor tries, then starts pulling out his pockets as if to prove his statement.

“Or alcohol,” Warren tacks on.

“Yeah, so— Whoa, okay!” Trevor stumbles away, into the step behind him, and nearly falls when the first girl goes in with her arms like she was trying for a hug with some face. Warren makes a noise of surprise and lunges for Trevor, but Trevor’s a lot heavier than he looks, and they both tumble onto the top of the porch with a thud.

“Ow,” Warren moans.

“Sorry,” Trevor croaks.

“Ew,” the girl sneers, and, before Warren can even blink, she vanishes with her friend without another word.

“Did— Did I just imagine that?” Warren says, sitting up and blinking. The girls were gone. Completely. “Where did they go?”

“You didn’t imagine it,” assures Trevor grimly, rubbing his head as he pulls Warren to his feet.

They huddle together as they flee, Trevor’s face so close to Warren’s that he can hear him breathing as they move around the wrap-around porch to the back of the house.

“Dana’s going to kill me,” he whispers, his fingers twisting in the cuff of his jacket absentmindedly, and Warren finds himself nearly physically restraining his own hand against reaching out and stopping the fidget, like he might’ve had Nathan been the one executing the action. 

Get ahold of yourself, Graham, he chastises.

“You didn’t ask for that to happen,” Warren reminds him, pressing a hand against Trevor’s shoulder and gently pushing him away again so he couldn’t trip on Trevor’s close steps. “Dana’s pretty understanding anyway. It’ll be fine.”

He should have known better, anyway, considering the lawn was filled with drunk humans having what looks like either the best or worst time of their lives as they trek their way around and through the house. None of them wore anything identifying them as an admittee, so, clearly, the girls were trying to play them.

They break apart when they reach the backyard, where a giant pool sits steaming into the cold air, filled to the brim with people in various states of undress.

Warren swallows and tries his best not to stare. Again. “Okay. We’re here for Nathan. If I were Nathan, where would I be?”

Trevor glances around. “Uh,” he tries, then shrugs, “literally anywhere? This place is massive. Can’t you call him?”

But Warren shakes his head. “Victoria is the one who contacted me. She wouldn’t bother with me if it didn’t mean Nathan couldn’t do it himself for one reason or another.”

Trevor opens his mouth to reply, seems to consider himself, and sighs. “Yeah, okay. Makes sense. I’ll check inside, yeah?”

Warren turns his gaze back on to the pool. “... Sure. Yeah. Fantastic. Wet people. Love it.”

“Enjoy the sights while you can,” Trevor says happily, clapping Warren on the back, and then all but vanishing into the shadows of the party. How, Warren really can’t understand, but he’s seen enough weird shit not to question it for now.

“Here we go,” he mutters to himself just as someone yells “Cannonball!” and five people jump into the pool at once.

Operation “Where’s Waldon’t Make This Easy For Warren, Why Would You Do That?” ... commence.

-

Finding Nathan … turns out much easier than is expected.

Keeping Nathan, though? Much harder than anticipated.

Warren finds Nathan not even ten minutes after breaking from Trevor on the independent search, chanting “chug, chug, chug, chug!” with a group of people huddled around a keg with someone—is that Hayden? —upside down and, well, chugging.

“Graham?” Nathan says in surprise before Warren can even get close enough to call Nathan’s name without freaking him out. He blinks a few times in confusion, then pulls a face of annoyance when he realizes why Warren must be here after declining to come when asked earlier in the day. “Aw, fuck me. Vic’s bailin’?”

He’s slurring so much, Warren thinks he maybe should have shown up earlier and not wasted so much time, you know, driving the speed limit. Shit.

Warren reaches out all the same and grabs Nathan’s hand, which turns in his palm and latches on. 

“Rescue squad, at your service,” he announces. The person on the keg is released, and Nathan whoops his glee at what is indeed Hayden. Okay. Great. “Am I supposed to be taking Hayden home, too?”

“Warren Graham!” Hayden greets happily before Warren can get an answer, lunging drunkenly at Warren and wrapping him up in a hug. He reeks of alcohol and sweat and beer, so much beer, and Warren tries his best not to gag. He definitely doesn't manage. Hayden doesn’t seem to notice, making a noise deep in his throat that Warren is pretty sure is a half-step from becoming a laugh, but that Hayden is way too drunk to bring to completion.

Yikes.

“Hayden,” Warren struggles, trying to not suffocate in Hayden all on his own, Nathan’s guffawing not helping anything at all. “Hayden. Let me go, for the love of Sputnik, please.”

“Oop, ah, sorry!” Hayden says, finally releasing Warren. He grins down at Warren, and if it weren’t for the way he sways slightly while even standing still, everything about him right in that moment would seem perfectly sober.

Warren struggles to regain himself after the interaction. Nathan’s still laughing, bent over at the waist, and so obviously drunk in clear contrast to Hayden’s weird pseudo-sobriety.

“What are you doing here, dude?” Hayden asks before Warren’s recovered, and, there, he sounds drunk. Mostly. It was all smoke and mirrors, totally wouldn’t pass a standardized field sobriety test.

“Vic’s got ‘im takin’ us home!” Nathan offers, apparently over himself, and Hayden’s face falls.

“No!” he stage-whispers, scandalized, and looks to the house forlornly. “I didn’t get to dance!”

“I gotta talk to Vic,” Nathan announces suddenly, then turns and starts to leave. Warren maybe overreacts just a little and literally jumps after him, grabbing his arm to stop him in his tracks.

“Wait!” he calls frantically, and Nathan looks back at him like he’s lost his goddamn mind. “What if I can’t find you again?” he tries meekly once he’s tried at a recovery. He doesn’t release Nathan.

Hayden offers insight on this: “Not that big of a place.”

“Not a big fuckin’ place, bitch,” Nathan echoes, like it was his idea.

“Nathan, there are so many people here,” Warren says, and he wouldn’t exactly deny that it’s a half-whine. He just really wants to get out of there. It’s so not his scene, and he’s so over parties as a whole, Vortex-hosted or not. “So many,” he pushes when Nathan only frowns, bored. “What if I can’t find you?”

“Call me. Duh.”

“And if you don’t answer your phone like you haven’t been all freaking night?”

Nathan seems to consider this, his free hand tapping on his chin, as the party around them screams, shouts, and generally gives Warren a headache. Then, he snaps his fingers, and Warren is immediately sure that the answer he wants is not coming. Nathan was never this easy.

“I’ll come lookin’ for you,” Nathan decides firmly, and, yeah, definitely not what Warren wanted, but Nathan’s hand slaps over Warren’s mouth before he can say so. “Come on, Graham. I’m havin’ fun. Just need t’ talk to Vic. ‘Kay?”

Too tired to argue about it any more, Warren only nods his head once, and he’s released. Nathan pries Warren’s hand off his arm and smiles his half smile.

“Hold this f’r me,” he slurs, swaying forward as he digs in his pocket and deposits a handful of items into Warren’s outstretched palm, then staggers away to god knows where. Warren watches him go, then looks to his hand to find the stub of what he was pretty sure was a blunt, along with a dime, two quarters, a key—his key, dammit Nathan—and three and a half peanuts.

From his left, Hayden bends over and surveys the contents of Warren’s palm with an almost-sober level of scrutiny, then gives a snort of a giggle and plucks two of the peanuts away from where they’re nestled between the dime and the key. Warren hears the crunch before he has the chance to even think of maybe stopping the drunk guy from eating something that had been in Nathan’s pocket for lord knows how long, and the deed is done.

“Gross,” Hayden comments shortly, without any inflection to his garble of the statement, then ambles off in the direction Nathan had vanished, leaving Warren alone amongst the strangers that littered the backyard.

“Why me?” he whispers to himself, and then has to beg off a girl when she tries to answer the question for him in something that sounds like it’s supposed to be English, but isn’t coherent enough to actually be intelligible.

-

He finds Trevor again next while he’s trying to hunt Nathan and Hayden back down, looking a little lost in the small sea of people surrounding him as he stands in the dead center of a tiny kitchen with a multitude of snacks in his hands, all the cabinets around him flung open and more than one person petting his face and arms.

His eyes light up the second he spots Warren, but his hands are too full to do anything more than nod his head enthusiastically for a few seconds before one of the girls in the cluster reaches out and jostles his shoulder in that sloppy but endearing kind of way only drunk people can really execute. He looks down at her, blinking in surprise, then says something Warren can’t hear over the noise of the party and starts opening one of the many bags clutched in his grip. Granola, it looks like from where Warren stands. Or trail mix? Something like that.

“Hey!” one guy slurs as Warren tries to wiggle his way closer to Trevor, grabbing Warren around the waist to stop him from continuing his journey. “Wait your turn!”

Warren blinks down at the guy. “What? No, I’m— My turn for what?”

The guy releases Warren to gesture at Trevor like he was presenting Warren with the presence of a god of some higher status. “Magic fingers!” he declares, fumbling on the word “fingers” and punctuating the statement with an ill-timed thrust of both hands. “He’s got magic fingers! You have to wait your turn to use them!”

Warren blinks owlishly, first at the heavily-intoxicated man, and then at his friend, who’s now in the middle of ripping open a packet of fruit snacks and handing it to a sobbing boy who doesn’t look any older than Warren himself.

“... He’s opening food for you guys?” Warren concludes and, as if the universe was on his side for once, witnesses his confirmation in the form of a redheaded girl with raccoon eyes fumbling with a family-sized bag of Cheetos before Trevor takes it from her and does the deed, earning himself a squeal of delight and a clap of the hands like he’d performed a miracle.

“My fingers aren’t magic!” Drunk Guy informs Warren in wonder. Warren realizes a second later that the hand is back on his waist, but he’s not sure if the guy himself realizes it or not.

“I mean,” Warren tries, taking the guy’s hand off so he can move again, “that’s great he’s pulling a Rasputin on you and all, but I kinda need to talk to him.”

The response he gets is one of incredulity, and the guy looks legitimately offended even as his hand latches back onto Warren’s torso the second it’s freed from Warren’s grip of removal. “You gotta wait your turn!”

And then, the next thing Warren knows, he’s being forcibly removed from the kitchen.

The next thing Warren knows, Hayden’s arm is in a vice-locked grip around his shoulders and he’s being lead into the fray of sweating, writhing people the next room over.

Exactly the place he had been avoiding since even being aware he was going to have to set foot on the premises of the party.

“Whoa, wait, hold up,” he says frantically, scrabbling at the hold Hayden has on him. It’s no use—Hayden was a big guy, and his grip was akin to that of King Kong, with Warren as the unwilling damsel in distress. “No, no, nuh-uh, no. Can’t dance, Hayden!”

Hayden laughs, the music doing nothing but amplifying the sound of it. “You don’t have to know how to dance! It’s a party, man, you need to chillax a little more! Have some fun.”

“I’m not here to chillax,” Warren protests as Hayden’s hands grab his and tries their best to get Warren to add to the communal gyration happening all around them. “I’m here to take Nathan back to the school, but he keeps vanishing on me.”

“S’cause he’s having fun. They got all the good shit here—Nathan doesn’t have to play delivery boy for once!”

“Hope he’s not mixing drugs,” Warren mutters to himself, trying his best to twist out of the way when someone’s ass bounces into his hip and pushes him further into Hayden’s hold.

“He doesn’t do that kind of stuff anymore,” Hayden replies, like he heard Warren somehow, then spins Warren around while he’s too caught off guard to physically revolt. The noise he releases in response is decidedly not girly, and, no, he won’t take constructive criticism on that.

Hayden laughs all the same, and then his head drops dangerously close to Warren’s as he leans in, still dancing awkwardly against Warren’s half-stuttered forced moves that are somewhere between trying to get away and trying not to get smothered by the people way too up in his personal bubble right now. “Okay, Sherlock, he’s right over there,” Hayden half-sings. Why, Warren can’t deduce, because his tempo is nowhere near that of the song’s. He also gives no indication of where “right over there” is, exactly, and Warren’s jolted looking around doesn’t remedy the mystery. 

Hayden groans, then wrenches Warren’s head in the right direction.“You’re being such a mood-killer,” he grumbles. “He’s gonna hate that if he sees.”

Warren doesn’t have an answer for that, and he doesn’t have a moment to think of one before he finally catches sight of Nathan, sans the jacket he’d been wearing the last time Warren had run into him, dancing in what seemed to be dead center of the dance floor (of course, where else would Nathan Prescott be?) with Victoria close at hand. 

They make a remarkably good-looking pair, is the first thing that Warren thinks once they register in his brain as people he knows and can put names to amongst the sea of strangers. Nathan’s head is bent in such a way that his light brown hair, freed from its usual styled prison by means Warren doesn’t think he wants to know of, mixes with Victoria’s golden blonde as their foreheads press together, Victoria leading the dance with one hand wrapped around Nathan’s jaw and the other at his hips. Nathan, high on whatever the hell it is he’s actually taken, does nothing more than sway with Victoria, and yet it still manages to come off as exactly what the music calls for.

It’s hot—they’re hot, Warren thinks, and holy shit—it spikes a hot flare of irritation from somewhere deep inside him, that they looked so perfect together, that they looked like they were made for each other—and that, in reality, they probably were. It must result in some physical reaction, because Hayden stills momentarily, something like a question coming from his mouth without registering as actual words in Warren’s head, but then Victoria’s eyes are opening and centering on him in, and the green coating his vision immediately melts away as she throws him a smirk and pushes away from Nathan.

“About time, Pumpkin Boy,” she calls cryptically, Nathan raising his head just in time to witness Victoria grab Warren by the collar and haul his ass right where she wants it—which apparently is where she’d been dancing just previously. He nearly wipes out when his foot lands wrong on the floor, but Nathan catches on fast enough to keep Warren from eating anything more than his own yelp of alarm, his cold hands gripped tight on the skin under Warren’s shirt where it had rucked up from Victoria’s ministrations.

“The fuck am I going to do with you?” Nathan asks acidly as he helps right Warren, shaking his head in a way Warren’s pretty sure he’s seen on a principal once. In a movie. About delinquents. Which he certainly wasn’t.

(Those past brawls notwithstanding, as they weren’t part of his current loop, thank you very much.)

“I’m not here to dance, Nathan,” Warren protests, but he’s already moving along with Nathan despite himself, and it seems like all of Nathan’s moves were in Victoria, because he’s not much better at it. “I’m here to take you home.”

Nathan all but ignores everything coming out of Warren’s mouth in favor of sliding his fingers through Warren’s belt loops and holding him anchor. “Yeah, well I’m here to fucking dance,” he all but growls, somehow sounding leagues more sober than he had just before. “Pick up your feet.”

“Oh, at least make it worth my while,” he whines sarcastically, voice low, and then sighs heavily as a new song starts up, a little slower than the previous one. He isn’t aware Nathan can even hear him until the moment when Nathan’s eyes flash something dangerous in response. His lips curl, his hands tug, and, before he realizes what’s happening, Warren finds himself flush up against Nathan’s chest. His heart nearly stops right then and there.

“Nathan—” he chokes, then stops abruptly when Nathan tilts his head back and runs the sharp of his teeth against Warren’s ear. It’s more action than he’s ever gotten in real life, and the fact it’s not happening in his head sends him into a tailspin of contradiction as his body both wants to respond and knows now is not the time or the place.

He feels, rather than sees, Nathan grin in triumph, and Warren realizes he was having trouble breathing, making his mindset on the whole thing blatantly obvious. Nathan’s hands crawl up Warren’s sides, his ever-cold fingers tracing icy paths along Warren’s skin, and Warren closes his eyes and gulps loud enough to break the sound barrier.

“Oh, my god,” he gasps, and Nathan’s laugh puffs against his neck. “Now? You’re choosing now to do this? You’re playing so dirty! I’m supposed to be taking you home, Nathan.”

Nathan hums, deep and enticing, and Warren feels it resonate in his sternum. 

Jesus. That was so not appropriate. Warren hates what that does to—well, all of him.  He’s lucky Nathan isn’t in the consenting mindset, because, otherwise, he wasn’t so sure he’d be able to stop himself from allowing Nathan to take it elsewhere. Thank you, moral code.

It doesn’t stop Nathan from being the most attractive thing he’s ever seen, though. He wonders, vaguely, if he can convince Nathan to keep the messy look, but the thought is gone in a blink when Nathan presses his nose into the hollow under Warren’s ear.

Shit.

“Nathan—” he tries again, only to fail once more when Nathan’s fingertips turn to nails and it’s all he can do not to outright gasp.

“Tell me to cut the shit, and I will,” Nathan murmurs, the words ghosting along Warren’s jaw, and everything in Warren’s brain comes to a screeching halt. Nathan’s breathing hitches, the warmth of the bodies around them seeping in deep, and Warren feels it race all along his spine. “I will stop,” Nathan continues, so quiet Warren almost can’t hear him, “I swear.”

Warren swallows, gentler this time, and Nathan brushes his lips against Warren’s chin.

“Tell me,” he breathes, “and I will.”

Warren drops his head and doesn’t say a word.

-

The night from there is a blur, up until the point where the songs pick up to a speed even Nathan finds he’s too tired to keep up with, and Warren is positive he doesn’t come away unscathed. A public setting and dubious consent from Nathan while drunk means he didn’t allow anything more than a lot of close movement and fluttering touches, fingers drifting and breathing stuttered—but that doesn’t mean he won’t be having dreams of more, even after Nathan pulled him from the trance he’d been put under with a jostle of a shoulder and a grin so sharp Warren could have used it to carve ice.

They find Hayden sprawled out on the porch deck when they go looking for him, waiting for them to wrap it up and move on with their night, a few equally worn out people sitting around him and listening as he told a tale Warren doesn’t manage to catch more than a few words of before they’re all saying goodbye to one another and Hayden is walking away with a few numbers and emails scrawled on his arms in purple ink. They stumble away from the party and head towards Warren’s car, heads echoing with the phantoms of the songs they leave behind.

Warren doesn’t see Trevor anywhere on the outskirts and, if he doesn’t find him along the way, decides he’ll just text or call him once he gets the other two safely in the car, because he doesn't want to risk taking them back in and potentially get caught up in something else, like he knew his luck was bound to allow.

Nathan and Hayden flank Warren’s sides as they amble along, Hayden with his eyes closed and humming one of the songs from earlier, and Nathan with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jacket, recovered from God knows where, because Warren hadn’t seen him do it, and his cheeks ruddy from either the cold or his own ministrations, Warren isn’t sure. 

His heart is just managing to slow its rhythm after the strain it’s been put through, and he tries to focus on relaxing completely before starting up the drive back, listening to Hayden softly hum his own tune, completely different from the bass that still echoed from the house and down the street. It’s an easy thing, Warren thinks.

But then he spots something out of the corner of his eye and turns to it fast enough to get whiplash, almost knocking himself off his feet with the momentum of the action. 

And, suddenly, Nathan is completely sober.

“What? What is it? Where’s the fucking inferno?” he barks, the words coming out so fast they nearly clip each other off as they’re spoken. “Graham? Hey!” Nathan pushes when Warren only slumps down, holding his chest like he’d nearly been startled to death. He grabs Warren by the shoulder in a pinching hold and shakes him. “What was that, you bitch? Tell me!”

“Deer,” Warren explains tiredly, gesturing to the only animal decoration capable of giving him a panic attack by doing nothing more than existing. It was just a plastic deer that lit up at night, sure, but it was a bastard in its own right, adorable exaggerated eyes and all. 

Nathan curses sharply in response. Warren reaches up and presses a hand to Nathan’s, and Nathan’s fingers immediately relax.

Hayden stares at the both of them, the alarm on his face so wrong that Warren accidentally lets out a startled laugh. Hayden’s gaze centers on Warren alone, and Nathan leans away from Warren in obvious distaste.

“The fuck was that?” he accuses, and Hayden nods his head once.

“Uh, yeah, was gonna ask both of you the same, actually,” he says hesitantly. He doesn’t stop looking at Warren. “Did you just get jump-scared by a fake deer?”

“I, uh—” Warren starts, but Nathan smacks him in the chest to stop him and finishes quickly with: “got attacked by one as a baby. Walked right up to his stroller and tried to eat his face off!”

Warren blinks down at Nathan, and Hayden looks as if he isn’t sure Nathan is exactly telling the truth, but doesn’t know enough about deer attacks to exactly question it.

“Er—” Warren offers, scrambling, and just then Trevor manifests on the scene, looking haggard.

“Who tried to eat whose face off?” he asks breathlessly, turning wide, haunted eyes on Warren, and Warren immediately feels bad for leaving him alone.

“Graham,” Hayden offers faintly, then frowns and reaches out to finger the object Warren just then realizes is hanging from around Trevor’s neck. “What—”

“Is that a bathtub plug?” Nathan asks loudly, effectively cutting the quieter inquiry from Hayden off.

Trevor ducks his head. “Uh, yeah. They gave it to me. Said it was a prize for being the miracle man and—um, saving the party.”

Nathan gapes. Warren tries not to start laughing again. Hayden hasn’t removed his fingers from the rubber bung.

“The shit did you do?” Nathan asks incredulously.

“Opened—food?” Trevor replies, so hesitant that Warren thinks he’s possibly questioning the reality of what he just went through. Warren can’t say he doesn’t relate.

“Wow,” Nathan muses. “The world has low standards.”

“Look who’s talking,” Warren mutters, and only snickers when Nathan turns and slugs him on the arm before walking off again.

Hayden releases Trevor’s makeshift medal, and they all follow after. They’re maybe a house and a half away, walking in relative silence for no more than a minute, when Nathan does what he always does best: decides quiet is not his favorite way to occupy the time.

“So why’d you bring that fuckbucket?” Nathan asks, eloquent as always, jabbing a thumb in Trevor’s direction and effectively breaking the—in Warren’s opinion anyway—enjoyable silence.

Trevor jumps, blinking rapidly, like someone just slotted a coin in and brought him to life. The plug swings violently with the motion. “Ran into him in the hallway,” Trevor explains after a moment, and Warren thinks it’s pretty nice of him to dignify Nathan’s childish acid with a response they all know it doesn’t deserve. “Didn’t think it was a good idea sending him into the fray alone like that, when people could take advantage of him.”

“What?” says Warren, blinking at Trevor in surprise. He didn’t know that last part.

Nathan scoffs. “It’s just a college party. Warren’s not some candy-assed pansy man, he can manage the scene. Victoria wouldn’t have texted him if he couldn’t handle it.”

Trevor just slides his eyes in Warren’s direction, radiating dubiousness over Nathan’s statement, but he thankfully keeps his mouth shut. Warren wants to be on Nathan’s side, because Warren certainly can handle it, but Victoria? Would truss him up in a Chicago overcoat and throw him in the deep end just to watch him drown. She’d even supply the cement to help the deed along. There was no love lost between them, and Warren knew she would have texted him to come collect Nathan even if it meant bodily injury along the way.

Nathan meant far more to her than Warren did, far more than Warren knew he ever would. And Warren was okay with that.

“Shotgun!” Nathan hollers suddenly, nearly leaping off the street as he bolts towards the shadowed shape that was Warren’s car. Hayden makes a noise of offense, reminding Warren of his presence, and takes off at a run after Nathan.

“You still happy you signed up for this?” Warren asks Trevor as they watch their two classmates barrel into first the car, and then each other, cursing and spitting and laughing.

“No,” Trevor admits, fidgeting with his rubber prize, “but I’m not mad I came with you. I really didn’t want to just let you go to something like this on your own.”

Warren huffs quietly. “I can handle myself, you don’t have to be my knight in shining armor.”

Trevor looks over at Warren, his face wrinkled up, and he shakes his head. “No, not like that. You’re my friend. I got your back, Warren.” Trevor’s arm reaches out, and Warren feels his hand pat once, twice, before transitioning into that comforting rub Warren could never quite perfect without it coming off as slightly creepy, but that Trevor seems to be a master of. Warren feels tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his shoulders relax. 

“Thanks, man,” Warren says, and he means it. “Not exactly easy finding the real ones in a school full of wannabes and fakesters.”

“And yet you seem to be racking them up,” Trevor replies with a pointed look in the direction of the car, where Hayden and Nathan have piled in the back and can be seen pushing each other back and forth in the back seats. So much for Nathan’s declaration of shotgun. Trevor sighs. “You ready for this drive back?”

“Not even close. Don’t be surprised if Nathan argues with you about getting the front seat.”

“But he’s in the back.”

“You think that’ll stop him?”

Trevor puffs his cheeks out. “Right. Prescott, coming in hot. I’m ready.”

“That’s what you think,” Warren mutters, then reaches for his door in the same moment Trevor does, and into the car they go.

-

They stop at a drive-through farther away from the school than where they started, solely to distract Nathan from pestering Trevor about taking his seat up front and from badgering Warren to do exactly what he ended up doing. It’s a little chaotic, going through the window at such an early hour when only one poor employee was working the entire establishment, especially when both Hayden and Nathan decide they absolutely have to give the guy their order themselves and not relay it to Warren because they “know Warren will fuck it up” (Nathan’s words, but Hayden’s nod had been an affirmation, so Warren was holding the insult against him, too), and then take entirely too long trying to make their order coherent.

Warren tries to give the guy his best “I’m so fucking sorry we exist” expression when he rolls up to the window, but the guy is not impressed, and Warren really can’t blame him. Nathan shoves his card up before Warren can even reach for his wallet, decidedly paying for all of them, and Warren only sighs when Nathan refuses to let Warren hand the card up.

(Nathan nearly climbs over Warren’s lap to give the card over, and Warren finds absolutely none of the action enticing in any remote sense. Not even when Nathan sloppily smacks his lips against Warren’s forehead on the way back, because the guy sees, and he only raises his eyebrows before silently handing the food over and closing the window in their face.)

They scarf their meals down with no small amount of stealing from first Nathan, then Hayden and Trevor, and finally Warren once he hits a red light and nearly throws himself across the car to snatch the curly fry right out of Trevor’s grasp, laughing and jabbing and essentially having what Warren might dare even call one of the best late-night escapades he’s ever had in his life. 

The food is gone within fifteen minutes of receiving it, and Hayden begs Warren to crank the radio up as high as it’ll go for the remaining ten-minute drive they had into the sound-restricted street the school sat on, his hands on Warren’s seat and his chin digging uncomfortably into Warren’s shoulder. Warren obliges, and they all crow and sing off-tune to 80s favorites—courtesy of the only station his sad excuse of a car can get so late at night. Trevor proves to have the best voice of them all, and Nathan retaliates to this newfound information by trying to smother Trevor’s mouth with his hands, which he fails epically at.

They cut the music as they pull up on the street, but they’re laughing loud enough for it not to matter, giddy and high on the energy between them.

Tumbling from the car, Hayden and Trevor lock arms and take off towards the dormitories, singing Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name in what could probably be considered acapella if Warren had any understanding of music whatsoever, and Nathan and Warren trail behind them, tangled up in each other, Warren laughing so hard he’s sobbing and Nathan’s eyes bright with all the things Warren didn’t have names for. Warren has to stop himself from grabbing Nathan and pressing him close, but Nathan has no such qualms, and the moment on the dance floor comes rushing back when Nathan stops them both in their tracks and tugs Warren down, slotting their mouths together with a practiced ease, the heat between them all but searing him right down to his bones. He feels Nathan gasp into his mouth when he scrapes his teeth against Nathan’s lip in a mimic of a move he’d been shown before, and just about loses it right then and there.

It takes the combined wolf-whistling of Hayden and Trevor to get them to come to their senses, and then both boys grappling them into a foursome of a hug to get them back in motion, and they somehow make it into the hallways as the conglomeration of far too much testosterone and no small amount of affection shared between them all, only to get yelled at to shut the fuck up two feet in the door. Nathan doesn’t go after whoever had yelled, only because he’s laughing too hard to speak.

Though Trevor’s room is technically the closest, they fall into Warren’s room when no one is able to procure a key, discarding clothing and pulling off each other’s shoes. Trevor looks up at Warren with his eyebrows gently raised in silent question from the floor when it becomes clear both Nathan and Hayden are both staying by the way they roll into the bed nearly as one in a botched fight to get to it first, and Warren only has to smile and nudge him with his one socked foot in response. Trevor’s shoulders relax, and Warren reminds himself to maybe treat Trevor as more of a friend in the future, because he knows now he wouldn’t have made it out of that event easily without Trevor there to watch his back. Warren drops to the floor next to him and hooks the metal chain of the bathtub plug Trevor still wore around his neck between his fingers, and then smashes his nose against the curve of Trevor’s shoulder when a pillow nails him in the back of the head.

“Whoops!” is all Nathan offers, his hands out in a pathetic excuse of an apologetic shrug, when Warren whips around to locate the culprit and finds Hayden hanging off the bed in obvious defeat. Warren flips him off, and then gets rewarded with a second pillow right to the face, which sets them all off again.

Three of them end up only in their underwear by the time the communal helping of cloth-removing has ceased, spurred on by no small amount of jibes and playful taunting all around once they had regained their breath and rushed to finish getting undressed for the night, with only Nathan the victor of a shirt in addition to the boxers that were—fuck, Warren’s, okay, alright, he can handle that, sure—and they pile into the mess of what once covered Warren’s bed like the children some of them were robbed of being.

Warren falls asleep with Nathan’s head on his chest, Hayden’s on his stomach, and his head resting under Trevor’s chin, all boundaries lost, at least for that night, in the moment they all needed to share, and Warren thinks, as he drifts off under the hazy blanket of sleep, I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world.

And it’s a comfort that, never again, would he have to. This was his end.

This was his.

And no one was going to take that away.