Oneshots • Gawsten

it always follows me

It's 5am. I have been listening to it follows on repeat and writing this since 1am. It's mostly unedited but I'm still in love with it and it follows gives me a major closeted vibe and I'm on a HFTC block so take this if you want it. It's messy and I haven't slept, sorry.

Awsten overhears it when he's in the library. He doesn't mean to, it's subconscious as first, but it's coming out of his mouth and whatever comes out of his mouth gets picked up. He's trying to bury his head into his textbook, but he can't avoid the way his mind is drawn to the conversation that he's having with his friends.

They're going to a gay club. Tonight. That's what they're talking about, and Awsten knew that he was gay, but this was an entirely different thing. Geoff is going to a club with his friends and is probably going to get drunk and that's good for him, but a gay club means boys. A lot of boys. A lot of single boys who are going to be all over Geoff, who's excitable and brave and kind and attractive and thinking about it makes Awsten feel dirty.

Awsten is a pretty sociable person, right? He's cheerful and loud and he talks to anyone and everyone. If he needed to, he could interview a brick wall and get some redeeming, essay-worthy quotes from it. He could get shot in the heart and he'd say that he's grateful that at least it wasn't his brain, right before getting shot in the back of the head and dying. These were seemingly positive personality traits, because they meant he was a positive person, but he wasn't. Not always. He's anxious and he's secretive and he's fucking closeted. He's so closeted that he's inside his crawl space because you can only back up so far, but you sure can crawl a good ten or twenty feet back depending on how big your house's foundation is.

He wants to go. He's never been to a gay club, even though he's twenty two years old, and he's only recently come to terms with the fact that he's gay. He's really gay. But how gay is he, really? Is he gay enough to go to a club that's literally made for it? Maybe. Yes, yes, he definitely is.

Maybe he should go. He's always wanted to, before he even knew he did, if that makes sense. He's always wanted to dance beneath the flashing lights and he wants to take non-alcoholic jello shots that probably don't even exist but he doesn't drink, and he wants to have fun. He wants to have a good time because ever since he realized his feelings for boys weren't always platonic, he's been in a constant state of nauseousness and he needs to vomit it all out.

Okay, gross. Maybe that wasn't the exact way he felt, but Love, Simon had stolen his metaphor for being closeted but he was a writing major and knew that plagiarism was a big deal. It was like he'd been holding his breath for his whole life and was finally getting the chance for air. He needed to take it. He was going to breathe oxygen, if only for one night.

It had nothing to do with his obnoxious crush on Geoff Wigington. This was his own redeeming sort-of coming out story, a tale he'll tell his grandkids when he's in his fucking seventies or something. Yeah, your grandpa came out by going to a club full of strippers and predatory old men... Okay, maybe not the tale he'd tell to his grandchildren. He'd just tell them the first time he'd officially talked to their other grandpa was because they met up somewhere Awsten wasn't supposed to be in the first place.

No, no! He'd scolded himself. Too creepy. He was showing up, though. He was going to the only gay club in Houston that (hopefully) nobody else that he knew would be there, and he was going to come out. To a large amount of complete strangers. So, not out of the closet, but out of the crawl space. Or, crawl closer to the entrance of the crawl space. Kind of.

It was a start.

Once Geoff left, though, Awsten collapsed his head straight into his textbook because how in the hell was he supposed to go to a club full of attractive guys and expect Geoff to notice or even find him. Another thing, how the hell was he supposed to act chill around so many attractive guys when he'd never even been kissed by one.