Serendipitous (Gawsten)

79. Sidetracked

Please vote and comment, I'll love you forever :)

"We shouldn't be down here together, baby."

Awsten was slowly drifting off as he lay cuddled into Geoff's side, his head on his chest, still timing his own heartbeat with Geoff's. The older boy was warm, and Awsten was always cold, so it just made sense that he always lay so close to him; Geoff kept him warm.

"What d'you mean?" Awsten mumbled, keeping his eyes shut in his sleepy state. He ran his hand softly across the older boy's warm stomach and across his waist where he let it rest. Their legs were tangled together under the blankets that Geoff had lay down over them when they had first cuddled up, since Awsten had a habit of tending to shift as close as he possibly could to him. He wouldn't call it a bad habit, and his guess was that the older boy didn't, either.

"I mean, my mum said that she doesn't want us alone together while you stay here," Geoff whispered calmly as his fingers found themselves playing around with strands of the sleepy boy's hair, running his fingers soothingly across his scalp. "She thinks we're probably gonna have sex and make out all the time, which is probably a rational thought, seeing as though you and me tend to get rather horny when we're together," Geoff smiled, although Awsten couldn't see his face.

"Sorry for being so irresistible," Awsten responded slyly, although his grip on Geoff's hip tightened a little; he was stressing, the older boy could hear it as he exhaled loudly in a shaky sigh. "She's homophobic, isn't she?"

Geoff sighed quietly, trying to decide on what answer he was going to voice. "I'm not sure," he began, moving his hand from Awsten's hair to his bicep, rubbing gentle circles into his skin through the thick material of the hoodie he was wearing. "I think she might be. She says that she isn't and that she's just upset that I've kept my sexuality from her, which I guess I understand. I don't know, it just doesn't seem right. It didn't feel genuine when she said that. I think she was expecting me to marry Chloe, and now I'm not even planning on spending my life with a girl, and I think it spiked some sort of internalised homophobia within her."

"Oh," Awsten mumbled in acknowledgement, still trying to process what the older boy had just said. "Is it my fault?"

"For making me gay, yeah." Geoff tried to keep the conversation light in tone to try to prevent the younger boy from spiraling into a state of panic, he'd had enough emotional damage for one day. "But, no, lovely. It isn't your fault. And she's trying, okay? I think we need to give her some credit for that. She's trying to adjust to the fact that I'm attracted to boys, it just might take a while, that's all. I mean, look at how long it took me to accept it. She's trying, and I appreciate that."

"Yeah," he whispered, running his fingertips across the skin on Geoff's stomach underneath his pale shirt again. "I'm assuming I can't sleep on top of you every night then," Awsten sighed with a tinge of playfulness, although it was obvious that he was disheartened and disappointed by that.

"Sorry, sweetheart. I wish that we could fall asleep just like this, but it won't take much to convince her to send you back home so we really do need to listen to what she says," Geoff responded softly, untangling himself from the small boy. "My mum wanted you to stay in the guest room but I figured you would be more comfortable in here. I'll stay up there, instead."

Awsten whined quietly at the loss of contact as Geoff slid out from underneath him and stood up, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips as he did so, which the younger boy supposed would make up for part of the detachment. "Where's the guest room?"

"It's at the far end of the house, past the living room," he answered as he started to pull clothes from drawers that he may need to keep in the spare room with him. "It's not the worst room in the house so don't feel bad about it, okay? I know that you have a tendency to take the blame for things that don't even have a blame to take, but I just want to make sure you don't feel bad about taking my room, okay?"

Awsten felt the heat rush to his cheeks with slight embarrassment. Was he really that easy to read? "A-Are you sure?" He stuttered out, softly chewing on the inside of his bottom lip.

"Of course, sweetheart. I want you to have my room. I wouldn't be able to get to sleep down here if I knew that you were up there in an unfamiliar room all alone, I'd never put you in a situation like that if it was avoidable. And it is, so you're going to stay down here whether you feel guilty about it or not," he concluded, clearly not lenient with changing his mind. What he says, goes.

He was far too sidetracked by the realisation of being absent of Geoff's body to appreciate everything that the older boy was actually doing for him. He was being ungrateful, he knew that, but he didn't know how well he was going to be able to cope without him.