#so he ran the field by himself and this is coach daybreak telling him he’s gonna fail when he tries to do things without his friends

[teammightypen]

From episode 1: The Beginning Begins

Foreshadowing to Fabian’s Bad Day all the way back there. The dice like some irony.

[bisexualdaemon]

Gin and Juice: Part III

a/n: In which Reader lies, Shawn is gets kicked out of football practice, and the two of them arrange a meeting. 

This is a little bit of a setup chapter to get to Part IV...the italic block is a flashback.

|| PART I || PART II || MASTERLIST ||

warnings: none, really. maybe light anxiety? a cute sleeping giant?

You got back to your room just after daybreak. Trying to open the door as quietly as possible, you cracked it open and slowly pushed. Suddenly, the door flew backward out of your hand, putting you face-to-face with Caroline. Her eyes were crazed, bright and wide with exhaustion mixed with panic.

“Where. Have. You. Been?!” she shouted between deep breaths, exacerbating your pounding headache. “Shhh, Caroline, your voice is reverberating in my skull,” you whispered, holding your hands over your ears and squinting at her.

“No, no, no. No, ma’am. You don’t get to storm off in the middle of a huge party alone and then not show up to our room until the next morning,” she was still shouting, bordering on hysterical, “I thought you were coming back to the room! Needless to say, it was a surprise when I got back and you weren’t here!”

You gave her a moment to collect her breath. You started this conversation already frustrated because you had a hangover and you’d been silently reaching a boiling point while she screamed at you. Gritting your teeth, you gave her a serious death glare.

“Caroline, I respect and appreciate your concern, but if you’ll remember correctly, I wouldn’t have stormed off in the first place if you hadn’t been basically forcing alcohol into my hand.” Your voice was low, more menacing than it had ever been. How dare she be accusatory when she was in the wrong too?

She dipped her head, acknowledging that you had a point. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” she said, remorse hanging on every syllable, “I just wanted you to have a good time...and I really was worried when you weren’t here when I got back. Where did you go?”

You cringed internally. You knew she’d ask eventually but you hadn’t had time to come up with a good enough answer. “Uhm, I walked around campus for awhile and then I went to the library,” you waffled, coming up with the first round-the-clock open place you could think of.

“The library?” she quirked an eyebrow, voice dripping with disbelief, “really?”

You worked up your best fake indignant tone, “yes, Caroline, I happen to feel safe in the library. It’s quiet there and I can think, which is more than I can say about this dorm room with you!” Caroline’s eyes widened and immediately welled with tears. She really did care about you and you’d just hurt her on purpose. It stung harder than you thought it would, but you’d felt betrayed.

And more than that, you had to protect what really happened last night. You had decided that no one needed to know. No one could know. Your future depended on it. Hell, you weren’t even sure if Shawn would know, he’d been so drunk. He said he loved the blackout. Even if he did remember, he wouldn’t want to acknowledge it, right?

You were really starting to regret leaving your number.

It was still dark outside when you woke up drooling, the strong scent of gin filling your nose. Your face was pressed against his firm, expansive chest and you could tell the alcohol was still making its way out of his system, practically oozing out of his pores. His soft exhale tickled the back of your neck. At some point during the few hours you slept, Shawn had draped his arm around your back and curled into you. If anyone had walked in, it would have looked like a couple’s embrace.

Oh God. You needed to get out of here. No one could know about this. Not just because one of the university’s most precious assets had come perilously close to admitting he was an alcoholic, but because you needed to protect yourself. Getting an education. Getting a good job. Involving yourself in a college football scandal was not a part of that plan.

You slowly, carefully wiggled out of his arm and crawled to a sitting position beside him. He slumped slightly, but remained a sleeping giant. You studied him for a moment.

He looked so peaceful, so different from the boy she walked in on, passed out in search of escape. His brow was relaxed, but there was just a hint of that charm he used as a shield even in his sleep, a sign that his demons ran deep. Even though you’d never met him before tonight, you’d seen a glimpse of who he might be underneath all the pressure and the anxiety. That person just wanted to play the game that he loved uninhibited—perhaps not without pressure, but free of overwhelming expectation from every person in his life. You hoped he found that balance.

Trying to make as little noise as possible, you gently pulled yourself off the floor, moving to unlock the door. You stilled at the door knob and looked back at him. A thousand scenarios ran through your head, but the most vivid one stuck out—Shawn keeping everything he told you bottled up alone; Shawn at the next party with the next gin bottle; Shawn passed out in the next bathroom; Shawn submerged in the blackness for longer than a few hours, for longer than a night.

You pulled a pen from your pocket, glad you always kept one on you, and crouched down next to him. Taking his hand in yours, you softly scratched a message onto his skin.

* * * * * * * * * *  

“MENDES,” Coach Bradford shouted from across the field, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!”

Shawn had just overthrown his fourth pass in practice. He was still hungover, his head still fuzzy from the night before. Hustling over to his coach, he braced for the ass-kicking he was about to receive. Coach grabbed his facemask and jerked his head down to eye-level.

“GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS, BOY,” he screamed, mere inches from your face, “YOU THINK I CAN’T SMELL THE ALCOHOL FROM LAST NIGHT ON YOU?” Shawn’s face flamed. Most of the guys at practice had been at the party last night, but their asses weren’t getting chewed. Admittedly, he wasn’t doing such a great job at hiding the fact that he’d been shit-faced. He knew his eyes were practically black from exhaustion and his skin was a little sunken. His head was still pounding, a fact that his coach was clearly exploiting. He closed his eyes against the barrage of sound, Coach still yelling indiscriminate obscenities at him.

“GET YOUR SHIT AND GET OFF MY FIELD,” he finished, pushing Shawn’s facemask away from him in disgust, “I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN UNTIL YOU'RE SOBER.” He called the backup quarterback from the bench, a fifth-year senior who had started before Shawn was recruited. They exchanged death glares as Shawn jogged off the field, hanging his head and feeling all the disappointed eyes of his teammates follow him off the field.

He ripped off his helmet when he entered the locker room, slamming it into the nearest bench. The sound of hard plastic hitting metal reverberated in his skull. He shook out his curls, soaked with sweat, and silently fumed. He’d never been kicked out of practice before. No matter how drunk he’d gotten the night before.

Stripping off his shirt and throwing himself onto a couch in the athlete’s lounge, Shawn roughly scrubbed his face and tried to clear his mind. In truth, it wasn’t the headache or the exhaustion that was distracting him. He’d dealt with those things before every time he drank. This time was different. This time, there was  a cryptic message and a phone number burning in his failed memory. He had never wanted to remember what had happened during those lost hours in his life until now. The neat, loopy handwriting suggested a girl. What would he want to talk about with her? What did he already talk about with her?

Normally, he would write it off to a drunken one-night stand, but he definitely remembered entering that bathroom and he just had a feeling that he hadn’t left it until he woke up this morning. There were no outward signs of sex. His clothes had been exactly as he remembered them the night before. Plus, with the girls he’d dealt with before, there would be scare quotes around “talk,” because talking was always the last thing they had on their minds.

Who was this girl?

He guessed he could just text her. Whatever they did, she could piece it together for him. If she was a jersey chaser, that would likely make itself apparent rather quickly—they usually screamed when they saw him—a signal to make a quick exit. Though he couldn’t remember exactly what happened last night, he knew that he would never say anything remotely genuine to a girl just looking to use him as a trophy.

He took his phone out of his practice bag next to his locker and quickly memorized the number off of the picture he’d taken of his hand that morning. Typing it in, his pulse quickened. He didn’t know why he was so nervous. It was probably nothing. But, the fact that he couldn’t remember had set off panic alarms like he’d never had before. It was almost like his subconscious was trying to tell him what his brain wanted him to forget. Like it wasn't a hook-up or a superficial encounter. Like he might have told her something real, something he doesn't tell just anyone.

Hey, it’s Shawn.

* * * * * * * * * *

You stared at your phone for five minutes before putting it face down on your desk. This wasn’t happening. He didn’t actually text you less than six hours after you left him in that bathroom. Didn’t he have practice? Didn’t he have a hangover? Didn’t he shower and not notice your note before it washed off?

You picked it up again, hoping you’d had a hallucination, but the screen lit up and there it was:

Hey, it’s Shawn.

You put it down again and went back to your American Literature essay that was due next week. This Great Gatsby essay was much more important. Getting an education. That was part one of the plan. Remember the plan. The plan didn’t include or accommodate distractions like a drop-dead gorgeous star athlete with substance abuse problems.

Your phone vibrated against the desk, startling you, and you scrambled to pick it up again:

Err, Mendes. It's Shawn Mendes.

The corner of your mouth quirked up. Like you needed the clarification after last night. That endearing charm was immediately there, and as much as you wished it wasn’t his armor, you had to admit it was cute.

Uhh, you know you have read receipts on, right?

Shit! You put on read receipts for your mom last night and forgot to take them off! Scrambling to your settings, you turned them off. But, you’d been caught. You had to answer now.

You: You caught me.

Shawn: She speaks.

You: She does.

You: How are you feeling?

Shawn: Like shit haha you?

You: Surprisingly well, but I didn’t drink an entire bottle of gin like someone in this conversation ;)

Shawn: Touché.

Shawn: Listen, you said to text you if I wanted to talk.

You: I did.

Shawn: Well, do you think we could talk in person?

You: (...)

A sinking sense of panic filled your lungs. This wasn’t what you meant when you left your number. Texting kept a safe distance between the two of you. You never had to worry about people seeing you—watching you—with him. He talked about the girls that followed him around and you couldn’t imagine the kind of attention he drew on campus, even among people who didn’t want to sleep with him.

Shawn: I’m on pins and needles here.

You: (...)

You: It’s no offense to you, but I just don’t want to be seen with you on campus.

Shawn: Ouch. That felt like offense.

You: No, no. It’s me. I get nervous when I feel like people are watching me.

Shawn: What if there was a place we could talk where I promise no one would be watching?

You: (...)

Was he about to invite you to his apartment?

Shawn: I’m not inviting you over or anything weird.

You breathed a sigh of relief.

You: Okay, then where?

Shawn: The library. I have connections.

The library. You felt the chains around your heart rattle, straining around emotions you’d tried really hard to keep under control for a long time. What was this boy doing to you?

You: Tell me when.

to be continued...

Next time: A secret library meeting. 

Leave me some feedback! I want to hear how you’re feeling about this! Oh, and let me know if I should start a taglist!