Chapter Text
Vic has a lollipop.
Brennan has no idea where they got it from. Maybe the bars they go to are so used to being frequented by children that they give out candy, he doesn't know. What he does know is that Vic has a lollipop—a strawberry Chupa-Chup, they informed him before he told them to get in the car—and they're drawing it in and out of their mouth and every time it comes out, it makes a wet pop sound that has Brennan's hands tightening on the steering wheel.
"Are you mad?" Vic says.
Brennan forces his grip to relax. "No," he says. "I'm not mad."
They smirk around their lollipop. "Just disappointed?"
The lights from the road play over their face, yellow and orange and red. It throws some features into stark relief, others into shadow, emphasizing their sharp cheekbones, their high forehead. They slouch in their seat and put their feet up on the dash.
"Feet down," Brennan says sharply. "If the airbag goes off, you're gonna dislocate a hip."
They sigh and roll their eyes and make a show of it, but they listen. It's only when both feet—clad in heavy black boots, incongruous with their short skirt and flimsy top—are back in the footwell that Brennan answers the question. "I'm not disappointed," he says. "I was worried."
"Aww, Brennan, you—"
"No," he says firmly, cutting them off. They pout at him around that goddamn lollipop and he pulls his eyes back to the road. "You do not send me a text that says SOS unless it's an actual emergency, Vic. Never again."
They look away and squirm in their seat. "It was an emergency," they mutter belligerently. "The music sucked and I needed you to come get me."
"That's not an emergency," Brennan says. He wants to reach across the centre console and squeeze their knee and make them look at him. He flexes his hands on the wheel. "Text me or call me any time you need me, and I will come get you. SOS is for if you're bleeding or in danger." He shoots them a sideways look. "And I know your generation doesn't know how to make phone calls, but if you're bleeding or in danger, I expect you to phone. Understood?"
He should be telling them to call 911. But they already know that. And if they need to call 911, Brennan wants to know about it. If they call him first, he can tell them to call 911. It's fine.
"My generation," Vic mocks, lollipop now tucked into their cheek. "You're not that much older than me."
"When you were born, I was picking out colleges."
They wrinkle their nose. "That's because you were a precocious little boy. And, no, liar. You weren't picking out colleges when you were ten."
Brennan snorts. "Try fifteen, Vic."
"Oh." They're quiet for a moment. They pull the lollipop from their mouth—pop—and run their tongue around it. "You do text, though."
Despite his frustration, Brennan can't hold back his smile at their gotcha tone. "Yes. I'm not eighty years old."
They twist sideways in their seat to face him properly. "Do you send dick pics?"
"Not answering that."
"Nudes?"
"Or that."
"You could practice on me." They tongue at the lollipop and wriggle their eyebrows. "I'd give very kind, but constructive feedback."
"Have you eaten?" Brennan asks. He's learnt that the best way to deal with their drunken nonsense is to barrel right through it. "Do you have groceries at home?"
They brighten. "Will you buy me pizza?"
Brennan flicks on his indicator and eases into the left lane. "Yes," he says. "I'll buy you pizza."
*
A few months ago...
The thing is, Brennan hasn't done anything for Vic that he hasn't done for any of his friends.
He's picked his friends up when they're too drunk to drive. Taken care of them at parties. Let someone else hand them off to him and said that, yeah, don't worry, he'd make sure they got home safely. He makes sure they've eaten, gives them a granola bar at work if they forgot to pack snacks, buys them coffee and remembers the particulars of their order, texts them at all hours of the night.
It’s just… with Vic…
"You're with Vic all the time, huh?" Grant says, when Brennan gets back with them from a coffee run and they give him a hug before heading away down the hall.
"What?" Brennan says. "No, we were just getting coffee."
"Didn't you hang out with them all night at Zac’s place yesterday?"
"Yes," Brennan says, still not really understanding his point. "They were drunk." They were beyond drunk, honestly. They were sloppy, falling over their own feet, holding onto Brennan for balance, losing track of their sentences halfway through and devolving into giggles. He wasn’t about to leave them unsupervised in that state.
"And you drove them home."
"What, I was meant to let them get on a bus? Come on, Grant." He didn't just drive them home. He walked them into their apartment and made them drink water and held their hair when they puked it all back up. He gave them two aspirin and insisted they at least take off their shoes before they got into bed.
"No, I meant…" Grant has the look on his face that he says shows great emotional depth and intelligence, and Trapp says makes him look constipated. "You guys are just hanging out a lot, that's all."
"We're friends."
And that's the end of it, because it's the truth. They are friends, and everything Brennan does for them, he'd do for any of the people he loves.
It's just. With Vic. It’s kind of happening a lot, isn't it?
*
It's none of his business, it really isn't, but Vic drinks too much. Brennan probably wouldn't notice if he hadn't apparently been elected as the designated Drunk Vic Wrangler by the whole Dropout crew. Or maybe he would notice. He seems to have started keeping an eye on Vic no matter where they are—at work, at a party, out for lunch. They're the youngest in the group and they're the giddy kind of 21 Brennan doesn't remember ever being. He's been wondering if he should ask everyone to stop playing drinking games in front of them because they'll never say no to one.
He thinks Vic needs to start saying no a little bit more often.
He gets it, intellectually. The way American society glorifies drinking even as it makes it taboo creates a mystique around it that is seemingly impossible to resist once a person comes of age. Well, you know, he resisted it, but he also realises that his mom approaches topics like drugs and alcohol with a lot more practicality and honesty than most parents.
So it's normal that Vic seems incapable of going out without drinking themselves to the point of vomiting. It's normal that Brennan picks them up at least once a weekend, usually more often, and has to help them to their apartment and put them to bed. It's normal that when someone calls for a game of beer pong or a post-work trip to the bar, Vic is the first to say yes.
It's all so incredibly normal and Brennan hates it. He hates knowing that every time they drink, they’re going to do it to the point of throwing up, if not passing out. He hates that on weekends that they’re not at someone’s house or at the bar together, he has started waiting up to make sure they get home safely.
The other option is going to bed and hoping that Vic’s friends, who are all as irresponsible as they are, will take care of them.
He realises that it’s maybe become a thing on the Saturday night that Vic sends him two going-out selfies—one taken too close to their face at an upward angle, the other an awkwardly posed mirror picture. He knows they’re out and so of course he waits up. He drinks cup after cup of coffee, and at 3 a.m. he texts to ask if they're okay. He doesn't hear back and they don't pick up when he calls and he paces a hole in his floor until 7 in the morning, when he tries to call again.
"Jesus," they say, their voice rough and muffled. It sends a rush of relief through him that's so strong he needs to sit down. "Is something on fire?"
"Are you okay?" he asks. Demands.
"Yeah." A rustle, a groan. "No."
"What's wrong?" He's already standing, reaching for his keys.
"Hangover. It's—Jesus, Brennan, it's 7 a.m. I was sleeping."
"You're home." It's not relief that rushes through him this time. It's a cold, distant fury. Do you know how worried I was? "You're safely at home?"
"Yeah. Well, no. A friend's house. Well." They yawn; their jaw cracks. "Someone's house."
The keys are in his hand. "Send me your location," he says. "I'm coming to get you."
"Brennan—"
"Hush."
They give him a wordless whine, but his phone pings with a text: a link to Google Maps. "It's early," they say.
"And you're in the house of someone you don't know," he says. "I'll be there in twenty."
He takes them for breakfast and they slump over their stack of pancakes, both hands wrapped around their mug of coffee like they'll bite if someone tries to take it away from them. They don't seem hungover, just exhausted. Red-eyed, last night's make-up smeared, their hair flat on one side and sticking up on the other. As if they can read his thoughts, they look up at him and pull a face. "I'm tired," they say.
"Oh, you're tired?" he says. "Were you waiting up all night to make sure your—" He falters on the word. It just disappears completely and he has to take a moment to grasp for it. "Your friend got home safely?"
They look genuinely surprised at that. "You waited up?"
"Vic." He drags both hands through his hair, rubs at his stubble-covered chin. "You texted to tell me you were going out."
"I didn't ask you to wait up," they say, as though they've ever asked him to wait up, as though he doesn't anyway.
"Of course I did. Just—" He rubs his gritty eyes. "If you're out, at least text me to let me know you're safely home. Home. Not on some random couch." That's probably the worst part of it all. It would have been frustrating if they were safely home, tucked up in bed while he worried—but at least they would have been where they're meant to be. Not an a random house, with random people, on a random couch.
They bite their lip and wriggle in their chair. "I can't believe you waited up all night," they say, and that lip bite does nothing to hide their smile as they drench their pancakes in syrup.
*
Brennan: Hey. Weird question. How would you feel about sharing your location with me?
Brennan: You can say no, obviously.
Vic: [water droplets emoji]
Vic: [sunshine emoji]
Vic: [ocean wave emoji]
Vic: [umbrella emoji]
Brennan: I don't know what any of that means.
*
Vic shares their location with him without any hesitation, like it wasn't a weird thing to ask. It was a weird thing to ask, right?
*
Brennan thinks that he might be overthinking it. No one else acts like his friendship with Vic is weird. When Vic passes the threshold from tipsy to drunk, someone steers them over to Brennan and says, "Make sure they get home?" When they find him at work just to show him an incomprehensible meme, no one says, "Why didn't you just text it?" When Brennan says no to plans because he needs to pick up Vic later, they just nod and say yeah, of course.
Right now, he has Vic in his lap, their legs draped over him and their arms around his neck, and no one has looked twice. On the couch beside them, Trapp is arguing with Siobhan about whether the Myst games are actually good—"Oooh, let me write that in my notebook! Oh, the fun we have! That's not a game, Siobhan!"—and neither of them even looked up when Vic came over and crawled right into Brennan's space. Trapp just shifted over to make room for them.
So, if no one else sees anything weird, then there's nothing weird, right? It's all good, as long as Vic is comfortable with everything—and they certainly seem very comfortable. Brennan thinks they might be falling asleep with their head on his shoulder.
So it must be normal when Brennan decides they've had enough to drink and stands up with them in his arms. It must be normal when he carries them out to his car and gets them settled in the passenger seat, doing up their seatbelt and dodging their arms, which have suddenly turned into clingy tentacles trying to hold onto him. It must be normal when he knows the quickest way to their apartment and he helps them up the stairs because the elevator's busted again, and when they slump down in the third floor stairwell and refuse to walk any more, it must be normal that he scoops them up and carries them the final two flights.
It's nice, in a way. He knows that if his friends saw a guy carrying an unconscious person out of a bar or party, they'd intervene. He has seen Siobhan get right into a dude's face when he was dragging a hazy-eyed girl tripping over her heels out of the bar. It's nice to know that they trust him to get Vic home safe. It's nice to be one of the good ones.
He's just not entirely sure one of the good ones would be having the thoughts he's having.
*
He just wants them to be safe, that's all.
The problem is that his brain has decided safe means within arm's reach of Brennan at all times.
*
They settle into a rhythm. Vic texts Brennan when they're going out at night, and they text when they're ready for him to pick them up. Sometimes they catch the bus or one of their friends stays sober enough to drive everyone home—Brennan makes Vic promise that they'll only get into a car with someone who's sober and absolutely no one who is probably fine—and they text Brennan once they're back safely.
The only problem is the other things they start texting.
Home safe! A string of incomprehensible emojis. There was a guy who sooooo obviously was thinking about cumming on my face.
Brennan should have shut it down there. Should have said, "That's inappropriate, Vic", and they would have apologised, and it wouldn't have ever happened again.
But his brain kind of whites out and he decides to ignore it. He reacts to their first text with a thumbs up, and goes to bed, and doesn't spend the whole night staring at the ceiling and thinking about what Vic was doing to make some random dude think about coming on their face.
The going-out selfies start coming with captions. twinkcore or slutcore? says one, where they’re wearing short white shorts and a little white vest. Another night, when they’re in some lacy thing that can barely be called a dress, they send, I think even I'd fuck me but i have very low standards.
The can-you-pick-me-up texts start coming with additions that Brennan really, really doesn't need: almost fucked someone in the bathroom attached to a gif of a lizard running across water, and $75 vibrator = expensive or no?, and a link to an ASMR video with the message these are horny right??? it's a fetish thing right????
Brennan ignores all of them, other than the ASMR one because he can't resist tapping out a reply while he waits for his car to warm up: I refuse to believe that a woman making wet mouth sounds into a microphone isn't at least a little bit a sex thing.
The problem is that Vic doesn't keep it to texts. Well, no, the texts were already a problem. The problem gets bigger when Vic stops keeping it to texts.
On the night that they followed up fetch me, pls? with ugh wet panties, they fling themself into his car and flop their head back against the headrest and say, "They're sticky, why are vaginas like this?"
"Vic," Brennan says.
"I wasn't even doing anything. Well." They roll their head to the side to look at him. They've done something to their eyes that makes them look even bigger than usual. Their lipstick is a dark shade that doesn't suit them. "I was thinking about a certain someone."
Brennan closes his eyes and counts to three and then eases into traffic. "I don't need to know any of this, Vic."
"Guess who I was thinking about. Guess. Brennan. Brennan, you have to guess. Brennan."
"I don't want to and I'm not going to."
"Ugh." They spread their knees wide, their dress riding up their thighs. They clench their fists between their thighs. "He's older than me… and incredibly hot… very biteable arms… He drives a—what is this? A Toyota?" They giggle and bring their hand up to their mouth to bite at their knuckles. "He doesn't drink and he should because mojitos are tastyyyyyy."
"Oh buddy," Brennan says, glancing over at them. "Are you going to remember any of this in the morning?"
They leer at him. "I'm gonna remember you in the morning."
"If you stop talking, I'll buy you fries for the drive home."
They stop talking. But they start up again the moment they have their packet of fries in their hands.
*
It all gets categorically ignored. The texts, the selfies, the comments, by both him and Vic whenever he next sees them. Usually the next day. At work. Where they either smile and wave at him like nothing ever happened, like they hadn’t spent the drive home complaining about the taste of come, or they pretend they don't see him when he walks into a room.
*
Okay, but the actual problem? The real problem in all of this?
It isn't Vic. Vic is just young and finding themself and being kind of stupid about it, but at least they're being stupid with someone they can trust. Someone like Brennan, who's older and sober and steady and would never ever do anything about the stupid, horny things that come out of their mouth.
Someone like Brennan, but apparently not Brennan himself because Brennan cannot stop thinking about the stupid, horny things Vic has said.
Someone who was a good person, someone like the person Brennan should be, wouldn't lie awake and think about Vic with come on their face. They wouldn't think about putting their hand on Vic's thigh and pushing that dress up even higher as they drove them home. They wouldn't think about finding Vic on the dance floor when they're contemplating fucking someone in the bathroom and showing them how much better it would be in Brennan's bed.
He's their friend, he reminds himself every single damn day, when Vic stops by his desk with a coffee for him or when they plunk themself down beside him and yank off their sock and put their foot in his lap saying, Do I have weird toes? or when they send him a selfie with their fingers in a V and their tongue sticking out between them. He's their friend and their coworker and he's the safe older guy who drives them home when they have too much to drink and they say filthy things to him because they trust him enough to joke with him about that kind of stuff because they know he'd never take them up on any of it.
He stares at himself in the mirror and rubs at his growing-in beard and wonders if 37 is old enough to be a dirty old man.
*
A few days after the SOS incident, Vic calls him. In a rare twist, they're sober.
"Hey," Brennan says. He's walking in the evening sunlight to meet Emily and Murph at a small Mexican place, but he stops in the middle of the sidewalk just in case he had to bail and rush back to his car. He remembers what he said to them just a few nights ago: If you're bleeding or in danger, I expect you to phone. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm good."
He waits for more, but nothing's forthcoming. "Do you need something?"
They huff. "I don't only call you when I need something."
That's a lie. The two of them talk a lot and they text a lot, but Vic never calls. Brennan, who likes talking on the phone, tried to call them a couple of times, but they would never pick up and instead would text while the phone was still ringing to say, ew why are you CALLING?
just wanted to talk to you, weirdo.
This IS talking.
"Okay, fine," they say, even though Brennan hasn't said anything. "I'm out with friends, okay?"
"Okay," he says. "Text when you want me to come pick you up."
"No," they say, sounding frustrated. "Tanya's doing this whole cleanse, no alcohol thing, it's stupid."
"Okay…" Brennan says slowly. “And?”
They make a noise that’s almost a growl. "You're my best friend," they say, speaking too fast and too aggressively. "Okay?"
Brennan laughs. Not because anything's funny, but because if he's smiling this widely, it feels like he should laugh. He leans against the wall of a building. "Vic, are you avoiding your friends so you can call me?"
"I'm hiding in the bathroom, yeah."
This fuckin' kid. "Go hang out with your friends," he says. With people your own age. "Text me if you need me to come get you, okay? Even if you haven't been drinking."
"Okay," they say. "Bye."
"Bye."
Neither of them hang up. "Ugh," Vic says. "I'd rather be at your place, playing Scrabble or whatever you do on a Wednesday night."
"You know me," Brennan says. "Always chasing that triple word score."
Vic snorts. "Hot," they say. "Okay, I'm going to go listen to Tanya talk about cleansing toxics or whatever."
"Tell Tanya that our bodies are actually perfectly capable of—"
"I'm not gonna do that," they say. "I'm going to drink carrot juice and pretend it's a margarita."
Honestly, Brennan isn't mad about Vic having a night out that doesn't involve heavy drinking. "Have fun, Vic."
"Love you," they say. "Bye."
*
"I miss you," Aabria says, and they're sitting right next to each other, but Brennan knows exactly what she means. "Let's go for dinner soon? I'll buy."
So they do, on Saturday night. Brennan texts Vic in the morning to tell them he'll be busy tonight. If you can't find a SAFE way home, get a taxi, he says. Don't worry about the cost, I'll pay for it. He doesn't hear back from them, and he shouldn't be annoyed by that, but he is, a little bit.
At dinner, Aabria turns her phone off and he puts his on silent, and she reaches across the table to squeeze his hands. The server calls them a beautiful couple and Aabria tells him that they're celebrating their tenth anniversary. “Don’t tell Ryan,” she says to Brennan.
“I will take our affair to the grave,” he says, and she laughs so loudly that several people turn to look at them.
It's good to catch up. To sit and talk without either of them getting distracted by their phones, without all the everyday responsibilities of adult life cutting in. They talk about storytelling and Aabria's attempts at growing tomato plants on her balcony and the fantasy novel Brennan swears he'll write one day. Brennan riffs for fifteen minutes about the Lord of the Rings themed wedding they would have had, complaining that they’re celebrating their tenth anniversary here at a restaurant rather than in New Zealand, and Aabria ends up facedown on the table, gasping for air through helpless laughter.
“Okay, but seriously,” Aabria says, once she’s caught her breath. When she tilts her head at him, he knows what's coming before she even asks. “How’s the search for the Legolas to your Aragorn?”
Okay, maybe he didn’t know exactly what was coming. She grins at his laughter. “I mean it,” she says. "What's going on in your dating life?"
"Who has time for a dating life?" he shoots back. Between Dropout and spending time with friends and making sure Vic doesn't wander off at parties and fall into someone's pool or something, he hasn't even thought about trying to date. "No, really, though. It just really doesn't feel like a priority right now."
She rests her chin on her hand, her elbow on the table. “What does feel like a priority?”
He doesn’t allow himself to even think it. To think about quietly leaving Vic’s apartment once he’s made sure they’re safely in bed, their spare key tucked safely in his pocket. To think about Vic’s open body language when they’re sprawled in the front seat of his car, drunk and hungry and half-asleep. To think about how casually they said Love you on the phone, the way they must say it to all of their friends.
“Work,” he says, and she rolls her eyes at him, but she’s laughing. “What did you expect me to say?”
*
He pulls his phone out once he gets back to the car. In an ideal world, Vic will have texted to say they’ve decided to spend a quiet night at home, no alcohol, no strangers. He’ll settle for a safely home! text with something unimaginably crude following it.
He has two missed calls. Three texts.
SOS, the first one says.
Use it if you’re bleeding or in danger, Brennan thinks.
SOS, says the second one.
SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS.