Chapter Text
song inspiration: two dumb kids
I skitter into the office. I have no idea if this is the right place or not. The sketchy ride share was late, and while my spoken French is still good, my ability to read French has never been that great. I squint down and try to make sense of the words in the sentences in the folder in front of me.
This entire opportunity is incredibly last minute. I’m overwhelmed and running on fucking fumes from the craziness of it all. I swear I’ve barely slept in the last forty-eight hours. Something about finding out, getting accepted, packing, arranging travel, getting approval to arrive late, and all for a summer internship I didn’t know about three days ago.
The woman at the desk takes pity on me and whispers, “I have a copy in English, too?” I smile gratefully and she blushes and looks down. She hands me a stapled stack of paper to go with the bright yellow folder.
According to the information she gives me, I’m two days behind already. I’ve missed orientation; I’ve missed the initial seminars. I start to panic as I walk out into the corridor. I thought actually getting here and finding out what was required would make me feel a bit calmer, but I’m starting to freak out a bit. There’s so much going on. So much. I see a break in the corridor and step into a little alcove. I lean back against the cool concrete blocks, trying to regulate my breathing and not let myself fly off the handle. Closing my eyes, I count to seventeen. Then thirty-seven. I like sevens; they calm me for some reason.
Someone walks by, then backs up and stands in the cross of the corridors.
“You alright?” It’s a man, around my age, curly dark hair, with kind eyes.
I nod hesitantly.
He doesn’t move at all; just stands there. I see his eyes look me over and I wonder what he’s actually interpreting from what he sees. Can he tell I was panicking? That I have no idea what I’m doing? Or is he making the assumption that everyone makes about me: straight white guy, dumb as a post, likely fuckboi.
“I’m going to grab something out of my backpack, okay?”
He pulls it off his shoulder and pulls out a small bottle. He holds it out to me and I look at him curiously. “It’s just hand lotion. I find it really calming sometimes. You don’t have to use any of it, but you’re welcome to some if you think it might help?”
I take the bottle and flick open the lid. It smells amazing, cinnamon, but not too sweet, almost earthy. I take a small bit onto my hand and hand it back to him.
The slide of it, thickened calm spreads over my skin and I breathe it in. The motion of smoothing it over my knuckles, between my fingers, pressing into my palms and in the fleshy-divot between my thumb and forefinger. I can feel my heart start to slow, and I can actually breathe a little.
He’s just watching me, not staring, just waiting courteously.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “It’s helping a little.”
“Of course,” he says. “Hope to see you around.”
I take a few more breaths and then pull out the itinerary that just set off the anxiety attack, but it feels more manageable now. It looks like I need to be at a training seminar in Aubert 162, but at least it seems to be on this floor. I can do this.
I think.
As I walk toward Aubert 162, I realise that I never thought to find out that boy’s name.
Honestly, the seminar doesn’t make me feel better at all. I feel lost throughout – even though it was all in English. They keep referring to things from the day before and using acronyms that I cannot, for the life of me, figure out.
I mean, what good is a training seminar if you literally don’t know what you’re getting trained for?
None of my stuff has arrived, but the woman at the office says that it’ll definitely be there, she’ll have it put in my room when it arrives and she’s still working out which room will be mine.
At least one good thing about this programme is that everything is self-contained? All of the classroom spaces and living spaces are all in this same building?
Am I still just trying to make the best of something that’s all gonna go tits up anyway?
On the way out of the seminar, someone took pity on me and told me everyone was getting together in the pub later. I figure it’s smart to make an appearance, though the way the past forty-eight hours have gone, I’d rather gently dunk my balls in boiling soup, but I feel like I should go.
None of my clothes have shown up so I have nothing to wear except for what I have in my backpack.
When I walk in, I realise that I have no idea what most of the people look like. I feel like I would recognise the bloke that told me about it, but I don’t see him anywhere.
Great.
I go up to the bar and order a pint. I sit at the bar and take a swallow as I idly look around at the different patrons. A large group of about seven blokes catches my attention. They all seem to be jeering at one in particular, a tall, skinny lad who has his back to me. Something about the tone of their teasing raises my hackles. I know I’ve always been over-sensitive, but because of my appearance, I’ve always been aware of how others can get the wrong idea about you, just by looks.
Being tall, broad, and ginger means that most people assume I’m a sports wanker, a straight himbo they can tell all of their fucking misogynistic fantasies to, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Yeah, I play rugby, but I’m planning to get my PGCE. I'm bisexual, and my mum is literally one of my best friends on the planet. I talk about my feelings and I’ve never really fit in with any group of lads’ lads for more than a quarter of an hour.
So, the teasing makes me watch for a minute.
They’re laughing, pointing, chanting, and I rise, mentally debating whether to say anything or not.
I walk over. I mean, I should at least see.
When I get there, I see them all looking at that same skinny one, shouting something over and over, but so quickly I can’t quite make out if it’s a name or an adjective or something.
I’m at the end of the booth, they really are all crammed in there and I dunno how they can all fit, because it’s definitely a four person booth.
“Alright?” I boldly ask them and the table goes eerily quiet.
“Yeah, mate?” One of them says to me.
“You were pretty loud, so I was just checking to make sure everyone was okay.”
They all look at me curiously and I really wish I were literally anywhere else right now. Like that proverbial floor might appear underneath me and I could sink in and be swallowed down, not for a blowie, though that would be amazing to be honest, but swallowed down so I wouldn’t be here anymore.
The skinny one is right on the end, so I make deliberate eye contact with him and oh my fucking glorious god, I feel electricity flicker inside me, through each and every nerve until I’m pretty sure it’s flowing out of my fingertips, sticking me to the floor I’d been hoping would swallow me up.
“You alright?” I ask him deliberately.
“I’m fine,” he bites out at me and his words are enraged.
What the fuck?
“Look, no big deal. I just wanted to make sure.”
He stands.
“–the fuck is your problem?”
I hold my hands up and start to step away. “Sorry. Look I was just making s–”
“What? Making sure the skinny nerd was in the right place?” His eyes flash. “Like because I don’t look like them I don’t belong here? I’m so tired of people like you assuming things about me!”
The fury in his voice is palpable. I can feel it almost enter through my skin, harden some of my blood cells and start to agitate in my veins. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”
He steps toward me, so angry. “How dare you think I can’t take care of myself? You had to come rescue the misplaced twink from the group? Should I suck your gigantic saviour cock for you? Maybe let you bend me over the sink in the gents and show you how grateful I am?”
I can feel my face heat, both from embarrassment and, um, because all the shit he’s shouting at me is putting really fucking hot images in my mind and I just can’t right now, not with with how badly I’d actually like to pull him against me right now and shut him up with my fucking tongue.
But I’m... not a fighter.
I’m also really embarrassed because I didn’t mean to assume that he couldn’t take care of himself, that there was something wrong with him, or any of those things.
So I step back again, mutter some apologies and turn tail to get out of the pub as quickly as I went in.
That went well.
By the time I get back, I’m quietly fuming, my heart is beating faster than it should be, and I’m just a fucking mess. I haven’t slept for more than thirty minutes at a time in a few days and I feel bleary and unsteady and frazzled as fuck.
There’s a new person at the desk and I check in with them. They squint at the screen when I give them my name and hand them my ID.
“Oh!” they say quietly. “Well, this can’t be right.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You did show up after all.”
I look down at myself, as if somehow double checking to see that I am here and not some invisible ghost person that can apparently communicate with the living. And then I shake my head because I swear I’m fucking delirious.
“Yup,” I say. “Here I am.”
“You’re in–” they clack a few more keys, squint again – so much that I literally want to go buy them a pair of readers you can get at any chemist – and mutter to themselves, “Yeah, that’s the right one, I think.” And then aloud to me, “You’re in 427, on the fourth floor.”
They hand me a key and I’m in business.
Or at least finally one step closer to getting my arse into a bed.
When I enter 427, I see my suitcase and pack have been put here, just like they said, so that’s good. There’s also... another bag under the window? I look around, but the bed is made, so I wonder if they put someone else’s bag in here by mistake? Maybe there’s some other miserable fucker that’s had a right runaround like I have and I’m not the only one trying to catch up?
I sit down on the bed and exhaustion crashes over me like a barricade. Fuck it, I think. I can deal with it in the morning. I lay back and close my eyes for a moment. What a fucking day. The noxious bus and the questionable rideshare. Being two days late and not being able to comprehend written French as much as I thought I could. No bags or luggage all day. The seminar that I barely understood. Then the excruciating moment at the pub.
After I left the pub – never even seeing the bloke that originally invited me – I walked around a bit to clear my head and shake off the anger and frustration I was feeling after that shitty interaction. I still can’t imagine what went so wrong and how I fucked it up so badly. I mean, I’m not perfect; I fuck up a lot, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had an interaction where my intentions were so badly misunderstood.
I groan. Because fuck me, the man that yelled at me is so my type. All lean lines and angles. Dark curly hair and wide blue eyes. Stubble on a jaw line that I could carve a mug out of and drink from daily. Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense, but I’m so tired I’m almost in delusional territory here.
I imagine that in a different timeline, he bumps into me at the bar and I quip something brilliant. He looks up and down my body slowly and asks me if I want some fries with that shake or something equally stupid or suggestive but we both immediately know what we want and pretty soon we’re out behind the pub, snogging and frotting and laughing as we wiggle our hands into each other’s trousers, reaching for the promised land – dicks obviously – and just getting each other off by sheer desire and joy and the illicit spice of making out with a stranger seven minutes after meeting them.
I can feel the smile on my face and I’m tempted to brush my teeth, fall into bed and have a good, therapeutic wank. But before I can decide whether it’s even worth it to get up or if I should just set my phone alarm and not move until morning, I hear the sound of a key. I can barely force my manic mind to have another thought when I hear:
“Oh for fuck’s sake. What are you doing here?”
I sit up and look into the eyes of the furious twink from the pub, his eyes narrowed and his face a veil of anger.
Oh this is going to be fun.