Hard To See (Gawsten)

twenty-six

:)

***

With a friendly but quick goodbye to Patty, Awsten walks away. He goes over to Alex and Gerard.

"Y'all good?" Alex asks, careful to not say too much in front of Gerard.

"We're good. You were right, I was catas..." Awsten stops, unable to think of the word.

"Catastrophizing?" Alex offers, and the blue-haired boy nods.

"It wasn't anything even close to what I was imagining. I need to talk to Geoff, Jawn, and Otto-"

"Well then stick around. I brought them," Kellin says as he saunters over to the the three boys after quietly coming through the sliding door, lit blunt in hand. "Jack's pissed that he's running the shop by himself, by the way."

"I asked Ben to go in early. He should be there by now. I was hoping he'd be there before you left," Alex responds.

Awsten tunes their conversation out in favor of focusing on finding his friends. More people have arrived, and the house is very crowded. He can't see the front door through the glass like he could before.

"I'm going to find them," Awsten says, and Alex nods. He's proud- he knew Awsten could do it.

"Thank you, Alex. For everything," Awsten says, and the pink-haired boy smiles and watches the smaller boy head toward the house.

The smoke is thicker than before, but it still doesn't have the same rancid smell that his mom's house parties usually have.

The sea of people is thick, and there's a bass-boosted pop song playing instead of the early 2000's pop-punk throwback songs that were playing when he first arrived.

Something tells the blue-haired boy that Geoff and the others showing up at the party isn't entirely coincidental, but for once he's okay with it. Whoever organized it has good intentions- he can feel it.

Awsten is good at navigating a crowd, but he's not so good at finding someone in one. He spots a staircase, and makes his way over to it, climbing the first few steps so he can see over the heads of everyone in the living room.

He sees people making out on the couch, drunkenly dancing, smoking against the walls, and just generally socializing. Even with an aerial view, it's still hard to pick out specific people.

Suddenly, Awsten catches sight of bright purple hair in the crowd and gets and idea. Even though Jawn's hair is a darker red, he should still be able to pick it out easily.

He looks around for a minute more before finding red hair, and a very distraught but familiar face with it. The blue-haired boy instantly rejoins the crowd to get to his friend.

Once Awsten finally reaches him, Jawn's eyes widen. "Kellin said you'd probably be here! Wait, what are you doing here?"

"I came to confront Patty," Awsten responds, examining the expression Jawn has.

"Did he explain everything?" Jawn asks, looking in the crowd around him, seemingly searching for someone.

"Yeah, he did. Everything's okay now- or at least it will be once I talk to you, Otto, and Geoff. What's going on?" The blue-haired boy asks, noticing that there's slight panic on Jawn's face.

"Travis is here," Jawn replies, looking at Awsten with worried eyes.

"What?" The blue-haired boy asks loudly, immediately turning to search the crowd for Geoff.