Chapter Text
2008
“Matthew, you have got to be fuckin’ kidding me!”
There’s a slam, shuffling footsteps, and what sounds like a small battalion trying to break down a door coming from the communal hallway.
Bradley stops typing and glances over to Natasha, who has, in the same moment, paused her application of lipgloss to look at him. She raises an eyebrow.
Both shoved into the open doorframe of their dorm, they watch alongside 10 other Columbia students as a not-quite-blonde but very-much-angry guy stands outside Matthew Sobvechik’s room, #203, practically yelling his head off. He looks put-together enough, in jean and a nicely fitting t-shirt, but there’s a wild gleam in his light eyes that burns brighter when he grabs the recycling bin sitting by the community corkboard and tosses it into Sobvechik’s door.
”I know you’re in there, asshole!” he shouts as crumpled posters and sticky-notes flit through the air.
The metal clasp on Natasha’s shoulder bag digs into Bradley’s rib as she huffs out a laugh and mutters, “You know, this is probably the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to Sobvechik.”
Bradley would have to agree. He thinks he’d get more out of watching paint dry than holding a conversation with Matthew Sobvechik. The man is chronically boring, painfully one-note, and seems to be two steps away from being indoctrinated into a strange cult, as Nat likes to say. He’s surprised that anyone gives enough of a damn about him to show up at his dorm and… throw recycling over his doorstep.
The alluring surprise that Bradley harbors—along with everyone else, unable to look away from the mess, most likely—only deepens when the guy shouts, “You’re a fuckin’ cheater, Sobvechik! Go fuck yourself, and him, too, while you’re at it!”
Bradley furrows his brow. “Boyfriend?” he asks in a whisper towards Natasha.
She shrugs. “Chess partner?” she jokingly suggests.
In a wave, curious bodies part from the small crowd that’s formed on the edges of the hallway, as the floor TA moves towards #203. With dead eyes and a clipboard, he stops short of where the pile of recycling has decorated the dormitory carpet.
”Here comes Buzzkill Turner,” Nat mutters.
Turner clicks his pen, standing stiff as if the Grim Reaper has transitioned from scrolls and plumes in favor of ballpoint pens and suffocating responsibility.
“What the hell is going on?” Turner asks, tiredly exasperated, as the guy’s gaze snaps to him with a heat Bradley feels from the other end of the hall. “Only guests who have signed in can be on this part of campus.”
The guy kicks his shoe into the bottom of Sobvechik’s door without looking away from Turner. Then, in a shockingly even tone, he says, “I am a guest. I’m Matthew’s guest. And as Matthew’s guest, I am going to kick his ass so hard that he’s going to have to drop out of Colum because he won’t be able to live with how hard he’s fucked me over—!”
And from there, he seems to devolve back into a brimming anger, a Southern twang biting at the back of his words.
Turner sighs loudly. “You’re going to have to actually have someone sign you in if you want to do that,” he says. “Otherwise, I’m gonna have to get campus police in here.”
The guys stills slightly at this, possibly contemplating jail over what Bradley is coming to assume may be a broken heart. Despite how juvenile has he may find it—at a cynical 22 years of age—he considers himself strangely on this man’s side.
”Fuck the campus police,” Nat complains from beside him; she regularly tailgates Officer Scott because he’s always busting beer bottles in the dorm rooms.
The threat isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, though. The guy huffs loudly before kicking the poor recycling bin, already turned over, and resumes shouting, “Fuck you, Matthew! It’s so fuckin’ over!”
“Dude, sign the fuck in, or get the fuck out—”
“I’ll sign him in,” Bradley then says. Over the quiet whispers and the active (?) break-up; to the surprise of Turner, the guy, and to Bradley himself, the words ring through the hallway.
He can even feel Nat throwing a subtly wild expression his way.
“I mean,” he pauses. The guy is completely still in his stance for the first time, and with his light eyes staring into Bradley’s, Bradley can see the flush over his neck, the frustrated dimples pressing into cheeks, and the sad swirl in his gaze fall away to curiosity. “He’s my guest,” Bradley says, committing. “I forgot to sign him in. It’s my bad, Turner,” he quickly explains, abandoning Natasha in the doorway to insert himself between the TA and the revengeful.
Turner huffs, clearly unbelieving, but hands over the clipboard and his black Bic pen anyway. “Just deal with him, Bradshaw,” he requests. “Take care of this.”
“No problem,” Bradley says. “This is just…”
“Jake,” the guy offers in a murmur.
“This is just Jake,” Bradley tells Turner, penning in Jake in a guest box, and then resorting to doctor-like handwriting to conceive the most unreadable cursive in place of a real surname. He passes back the clipboard. “Thanks, Turner,” he says sheepishly.
“Sure, Bradshaw.” Turner pivots on his heels and sighs. “Everyone, stop crowding the hallway, yeah?”
***
”Uh, welcome to my Friday night,” Bradley says as the door shuts behind them. Nat’s taken off by this point, surely on her way to hitting Callie and Bob’s, and then the bar, and then almost but not quite! Officer Scott’s rear bumper. His computer sits, thesis gone dim, on his desk. Jake’s eyes flick around.
”Thanks,” Jake says, a little deflated. He purses his lips, dimples poking smoothly through his cheeks, as his eyes drag over Bradley’s cluttered desk and Natasha’s strewn textbooks. “No offense,” he says, glancing to Bradley, “but who are you?”
Bradley tentatively sits back down at his desk, turning the wheeled chair around to face Jake, who seems to pick up on the memo—or at least be socially unanxious enough, which he’s already proven to be—to take a comfortable seat at the edge of Bradley’s bed.
”I’m Bradley,” he answers. He watches Jake lean back over his sheets, t-shirt pulling over his shoulders, gaze lifting up to ceiling as if flipping the name over in his head.
“Bradley Bradshaw?” Jake voices in the juvenile way that Bradley’s become familiar with.
Bradley rolls his eyes. He’s heard it all before—and yet, his subtle show of nonchalance flickers when his gaze returns to the small grin on Jake’s face. Bright teeth, a little sharp, framed with smiling lips.
“Well, I’ll definitely be rememberin’ that,” Jake says. “Jake Seresin,” he introduces.
”Sobvechik’s… ex-boyfriend?” Bradley guesses.
Jake snorts. “As of 10 minutes ago, yep,” he says. “That would be very fuckin’ correct.”
Bradley watches the words leave his mouth, feeling already a little too in over his head. It’s rude to stare, he thinks. But.
Jake is something else. Tanned skin peeking out from under his worn collar, light eyes luring him in under dark lashes. A strand of hair falls over his forehead, either from a force of nature or the aftermath of his own reckoning. He glances into eye-contact with Bradley, fingers tapping in his bed sheets, and it feels like a challenge.
“Can I ask?” Bradley tries, watching as Jake raises an eyebrow. “Why would someone like you—” he pauses as Jake raises his eyebrow higher, a small smile on his lips. “I mean,” he pivots, “Sobvechik is… boring. Like, excruciatingly boring,” he laments.
He can’t imagine Sobvechik to be stimulating on a date. He can’t imagine Sobvechik to be interesting into the night. He can’t imagine Sobvechik as anything but the bare minimum in bed. But he guesses he wouldn’t know, a little cringe in his brow.
The questions persist, however. He can’t imagine someone like Jake, in the little time he’s known him; someone with enough character to throw a semi-public scene when it’s deemed deserving, to even somewhat believe that where they could even possibly belong is next to Matthew Sobvechik. The man will sit at the bar and talk you through his entire thesis project, and then purse his lips when you order a shot of vodka because it’s hard to talk to him sober.
In Bradley’s quickly-formed, fully-biased opinion, Jake is light years out of his league.
Jake lets out a small laugh. “Well, he was interesting enough to cheat on me, so.”
Bradley cringes. “Sorry,” he offers lamely.
”S’okay,” Jake shrugs. “I mean, it’s not. I did just toss your guys’ recycling all over the hallway to make a point,” he says, not exactly sounding remorseful in the slightest.
“You don’t go here,” Bradley says.
”Nope,” Jake announces, falling back onto Bradley’s bed in a feigned defeat. “NYU. I commuted for this nonsense. Can you fuckin’ believe?”
“Honestly, I can’t believe that you’d date here in the first place,” Bradley says, a little too freely.
Jake suddenly sits back up on his forearms; eyes flicking to Bradley, full of life, a glow that refuses to scream dead-inside academic! Well of course he doesn’t go to Colum. He looks like he should be at an underground bar. He looks like he could flirt his way behind the DJ booth.
“What does that mean?” Jake laughs with a sharp smile tugging at his lips.
“You just seem so…” Bradley mutters off.
Entirely out of Matthew Sobvechik’s league. Entirely too cool to grace the campus of Columbia, New York. Entirely too magnetic to waste time on trying to beat Sobvechik up over romantic wrongdoings. Entirely unreal.
Like, entirely something else.
***
The wind’s only a little cold.
Cold enough that Jake’s got a blanket wrapped around him as his shoulders press into Bradley’s on the small rooftop sofa. Bradley’s not often out here, because of the breeze and the loud sounds of traffic over the edge, but, under the stars with the perfect not-so-stranger that is Jake The Ex-Boyfriend beside him, it doesn’t seem too bad.
If we’re lucky enough to have rooftop access, then we are putting a fucking couch out there, Bradshaw! Nat had urged. Now grab a damn side! In retrospect, he appreciates her hustle.
Jake sighs dramatically. A plane rises into the sky, into the dark twilight. A car honks from the street.
“No offense,” he says for the second time that night, “but this is not how I saw this night goin’.”
”Oh, really?” Bradley asks sarcastically. He passes a resealable bag of M&Ms to Jake, who pops a few of the chocolates into his mouth.
“Five hours ago, I thought I was gonna fuck Matthew,” Jake says bluntly.
Bradley coughs and clears his throat. Jake eyes him casually.
”Three hours ago, I thought I was gonna fuck him up,” he continues. “Two hours ago, I thought I was gonna find a rebound. And now I’m here. Love fuckin’ sucks,” Jake laments.
Bradley snorts, and then tries to pretend he hasn’t, curiously asking, “You loved Sobvechik?”
“Eh,” Jake says, taking another handful of M&Ms. “Probably definitely not. But in the grand scheme of things, I think my point still stands.” He shifts to lean against the sofa’s armrest, facing Bradley head-on. “You datin’, Bradshaw?” he asks.
”No,” Bradley admits. Not in a while. His thesis is his toxic lover these days—which is how he saw this Friday night going before the second-floor hallway burst into calamity.
“Since when?” Jake asks. “Since ever?”
Bradley shoots him a look, which just makes Jake raise an eyebrow playfully.
“Since freshman year, I guess,” he says. Kim in the first semester, hanging on from highschool; Santiago in the second, he remembers. Then he let engineering steal the light from his eyes, and all that.
“Why?” Jake asks. “You’re kind of hot,” he shrugs.
This time, Bradley fully chokes on a single M&M.
”What?” Jake asks innocently when Bradley shoots him a glare of asphyxiation. He seems to enjoy the wild blink in Bradley’s unbelieving gaze, eyes crinkling in the starlight. “You’re nice, you’re interesting, you could grow the mustache in a little,” Jake muses. He pops another candy as if he’s bored in the theater, watching a movie play out in front of him. “Why aren’t you goin’ out?”
Bradley blinks and tries to process how they’ve gotten here—from Jake’s revenge streak to Bradley’s rare impulsivity. He can’t quite wrap his head around the most attractive guy he’s ever met, freshly single, saying, Hey, you’re kind of hot.
”Uh, I guess I’m not a casual dater,” he manages to answer as Jake languidly nods.
“Boo,” Jake says, throwing a red M&M at his chest. It quietly clatters to the cement ground after bouncing off Bradley’s sweatshirt. “No chance of a rebound hook-up, then?”
Like a scratched CD, Bradley half-laughs/half-chokes before settling into a disoriented silence. Is this guy trying to kill him?
“What, you and me?” he asks uselessly.
Jake makes a show of looking around the rooftop, from the large and broken AC unit, to the remains of leftover scaffolding, to the door leaking light out into the evening, propped open with a brick. “Who else?” he asks, quippy smile on his lips. Lips that he licks chocolate off of the corners of. Lips that he’s practically offering to put on Bradley. What the fuck?
He stares at Jake, his casual lounge across the sofa. He blinks back at Bradley as if it’s totally normal for him to offer no-strings sex to a stranger. Dimples cement into his cheeks as he lets out a laugh.
”Damn, bad idea?” Jake asks, voice ringing clear between them, a charm in his question.
Bradley glances down to his hands, tan and clean, as they reseal the M&M bag and toss it towards Bradley. ‘I mean—’ is on the tip of his tongue.
”Or, you don’t swing that way?” Jake guesses, eyes light and simple.
”No, I do,” Bradley says, teetering on defensive about it. There’s a beauty in the way that Jake’s asked the question, one that Bradley can’t replicate. A comfortability. An ease.
Obviously hooking-up with Jake would not be the end of the world. But the way he grins sharply, talks fast, and flits his gaze over Bradley in a way he now feels deeply immune to ignoring—it feels like it. The end of the world is flirting with him. And he, Bradley, is enjoying it.
Jake shrugs and leans back into the couch with his arms crossed, blanket sliding off his shoulders. The smooth expanse of his neck graces Bradley’s eye-line once again. “Say no, then,” he prompts. “S’okay. When am I gonna see you again, anyway? God knows I won’t be back on your floor anytime soon,” he snorts. “Except, I am thinkin’ about vandaliz—”
”I’m not saying no,” Bradley mutters after a second. Jake raises an eyebrow, and seems to tuck his further revenge plans into his back pocket. “I’m just—” Bradley huffs and reaches down to the floor, decently sure that his phone is somewhere kicked under the sofa.
He pulls it up from the depths, clicks the small screen saver on, and marks the time: 11:42. He glances back to Jake, who looks content on curiously watching him, not at all plagued by the idea of sex that lingers between them.
How often does this happen? Definitely never. How often does Bradley let this happen? Definitely less than never.
But then, how often does Bradley let an opportunity—a willing, antagonistic, devastatingly beautiful opportunity—pass him by? Definitely more than never, but both him and Natasha have been working on trying to get that number lower.
Bradley clears his throat. “Nat will be home in two hours,” he says, like a flimsy excuse that he hopes will hide his desperate intensity while easily snapping between Jake’s hands.
In his favor, Jake bites down on a smile, and stares at Bradley from under those dark lashes.
“Oh, we can be done by then, baby,” he teases, which effectively drags a heat over the back of Bradley’s neck.
This might be mortifying. And yet Bradley can’t find it in himself to take back his yes. Especially when it’s all his body’s screaming. Especially when Jake pushes himself up from his side of the sofa, and moves himself into Bradley’s space.
He fits his hand at the crook of Bradley’s shoulder, as Bradley drags his hand comfortably under the hem of Jake’s shirt. He’s warm to the touch, skin smooth under Bradley’s.
Jake raises an eyebrow as if to ask Yeah? and the only answer Bradley can come up with is the slow press of his lips into Jake’s.
Kissing Jake is easy. He tastes like chocolate and he moves with experience; fingers idling at the nape of Bradley’s neck, tongue sweeping languidly over Bradley’s bottom lip.
Being pushed down into the couch is easy. The worn cushions press into his back in a comfort as Jake fits himself over Bradley like it’s where he belongs.
Bradley finds a searing peace at the rhythm of Jake’s open mouth against his, a tension bleeding from his shoulders. He doesn’t think of Nat’s insistence about how a little bit of getting laid will go a long way in regard to his general demeanor and stress levels. He doesn’t think of his thesis-writing night, lost to the stars. He doesn’t think of Matthew Sobvechik.
Except for when Jake saves him from getting up and having to dig through the back of his dresser drawer, admitting that he’s got five condoms in his left pocket.
“What kind of Friday nights are you having, Seresin?” Bradley asks as Jake rolls his eyes from a practical straddle. He sinks deeper into the cushions as Jake shoves his shoulder down, unamused.
“Fuck you, Bradley,” Jake drawls, keeping his hands still to make a point, even as Bradley trails his fingers up under his shirt. “If you shut up for a second, then I can show you.”
“I don’t know what the fuck Matthew’s into, but I am not doing five rounds,” Bradley deadpans, the façade breaking open slightly as Jake leans down over him.
“Don’t bring him up,” Jake complains, pressing an open kiss into Bradley’s mouth. “Rule One of rebound etiquette.”
“Lot to learn,” Bradley comments, parting his lips under Jake. His hands trail up Jake’s back, scrapping sensation into his skin that gave Jake shivering into his warm mouth.
Maybe it’s because he’s been in self-induced dry spell, or maybe because this feels like the type of Opening Scene of a Romcom that Natasha likes to rag on, but Bradley just can’t imagine—why anyone would let Jake go. Why anyone would let him slip out of their fingers.
“I’ll tell you something, though,” Bradley says as Jake’s lips move from his mouth, to his jaw, to his neck. Jake hums against his skin.
“Yeah?” he asks, a little muffled. He licks a stripe over Bradley’s neck, and Bradley tries to keep himself on this plane of existence. He remembers what he’s trying to say.
”I won’t cheat on you,” he jokingly promises as Jake tugs at his sweatshirt’s collar.
Jake laughs and presses another open kiss to Bradley’s collarbone. He may be stretching out Bradley’s Colum hoodie. Bradley doesn’t care.
”Honorable, Bradshaw,” he says. “Very honorable.”