Archive of Our Own ^beta

0.

“Steven,” Pitts mutters into the shell of his ear as they cuddle on the couch.

Of course, this behaviour would be implicitly romantic to any average friendship, but they’ve done it so much at the Perry-Anderson residence that not being in Gerard’s warm, gangly embrace would break their innate norm.

(And, if Steven ever finds himself far too comfortable in the hold, if his heart beats a tick too fast, that’s a mystery he keeps private in the depths of his heart.)

Despite the serene atmosphere, he perks up, alert; Pitts only refers to him by his first name, silly sobriquets be damned, if it’s deathly important. “Yeah?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Gerard bites at his cheek and for a moment, Steven thinks the world stops entirely. As though the words that should stumble into their intimate, idyllic space will crash and burn all they’ve built to the ground.

“I think,” Gerard says hesitantly, “I think I’m in love with you.”

1.

He first spots him across the lecture hall in AP College Physics.

It proves a struggle to unearth what could’ve possibly grabbed his curiosity. It’s not like he’s a loud, boisterous presence; no, Charlie Dalton has that job covered immensely well. Rather, his usually-towering figure is completely betrayed by his bent-over posture, toned arms like pillars bearing down on the frail, cheap tablet arm chair, snickering softly at whatever stupid runs from Dalton’s mouth.

Steven continues to stare. Maybe the answer will magically appear to him if he stares long enough.

Cameron peers up from where he had been furiously scribbling the last of the lecture’s notes, following Steven’s gaze until his face screws up with vexation. “I don’t know what anyone sees in that obnoxious piece of crap,” he scowls, “Dalton is a huge loudmouth who compensates for the lack of actual, practical ability with too much bullsh- crap.”

Oh. He thinks he’s looking at Charlie, which makes far more sense. Maybe that’s for the better; simpler than explaining why the looming figure beside him takes all his attention instead. “Yeah,” Steven agrees dumbly, half-hearted.

Cameron takes Steven’s silence as a golden opportunity to continue complaining beside him — clearly, no one had bothered to entertain as an audience for him (“I wish people would realize that he’s full of crap already-”), but Meeks can’t tear his eyes or thought away from the guy, now doubled over but still equally hushed (“He isn’t even that funny!”). His clean, short hair belongs on a soldier, but it’s less intimidating when Steven notices the heavier, outgrown strands that weigh down and flop just above his ears (“Like! Wake up, people! He just says shit and you all laugh!”).

Who are you? Steven catches himself absentmindedly wondering as he gazes at sienna irises under thin eyelashes, and why do you magnetize my attention as though you’re the last man on Earth? This one-sided connection must have been made up of intramolecular forces, a bond stronger than anything, because nothing anything does can sever it.

Including Cameron’s ramblings. He huffs in indignation, finally registering that Steven won’t have any mind for him for the next several minutes. “You’re not listening, are you,” as if the obvious needed to be heard. “Whatever. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“You can’t possibly be this bothered by a stranger you share two classes with.”

“No,” Cameron replies with an incredible amount of spite in his words, “I definitely can. I think hate is an adequate way to describe it.”

Hate, huh? That must be why his heart pounds heavy in his chest, why his eyes inevitably draw back to his unassuming classmate. Why his mind feels so inclined to latch onto him.

It doesn’t quite feel like it, though. Steven doesn’t think hate comes with addicting warmth and inexplicable attraction he wouldn’t mind succumbing to.

2.

“He’s taken up permanent residence in my head,” Steven sighs as he twirls a blue ballpoint pen between his fingers.

Neil quirks a smile, “well, you might want to start charging rent, then. I’m sure the property market is competitive in there.”

It was supposed to be a study session, going over the work, energy and power unit in light of their upcoming test, but somehow they’ve diverged from force versus displacement graphs and the work-energy theorem to the freshman college experience, their own classes, and eventually, their shared physics course with a certain Gerard Pitts.

(Steven discovers his name after scrounging the digital classroom to no avail and unsubtly eavesdropping his conversations from the back of lecture halls. The morality and quality of execution of his methodology is largely irrelevant to his results.)

“I just can’t seem to get him out of my head.” Steven would love to find a cure to his restless focus. It’s getting distracting as his attention lingers on a head of hazelnut and a strong jaw and subsequently fails to catch the rest of the class material. But Neil doesn’t need the details of Gerard’s facial structure, meticulously mapped in Steven’s memory.

Steven doesn’t even know why he’s spilling all these feelings to Neil. Neil just has those kind eyes that makes substantial confessions feel less like an altar or a cramped little booth and more like small talk about weather.

“Well,” he says slowly, pushing his glasses from where they’ve slid off his nose bridge. “Maybe it’s like a competition to you.”

Steven scrunches up his nose. “Competition how?”

“Like, you’re both really smart. Physics, in particular. You could see him as an academic rival?”

Steven really tries not to compare himself to others, especially academically; it only fuels his barely restrained imposter syndrome. Still, his curiosity gets the better of him, “what did he get on that last physics test? The one on forces.”

“Uh. Ninety-nine, I think.”

Shit, he feels as though fresh wounds have pried open across his scarred skin. He thought he did pretty well — got a ninety-eight on that one. Steven feels something warm clench in his stomach; not unlike the shame that follows an awful grade, but miles kinder. “Maybe you’re right,” he grimaces.

“Well, there’s not much higher to go from that,” Neil catches onto his disappointment, “Pitts is a bit of a force to be reckoned with in physics. It comes to him enviously naturally.”

What Steven wouldn’t give for that. Perhaps if he spends some time around Gerard, he’ll absorb his dedication to the subject. Become an academic rival worthy of reciprocation.

“I should introduce the two of you,” Neil grins, “but then you’d be an unstoppable unit, and I don’t feel like being responsible for a global cataclysm.

“Anyways, you’re friends with Todd Anderson, right?”

(Steven does alright on that next test — potential energy had never been his strong suit — but from the way Gerard’s eyes light up as he receives his paper, Steven knows he got a grade he deserves.

Strangely, he doesn’t feel antagonized or threatened by his success. Instead, his heart swells with pride.)

3.

Charlie Dalton, for all the shit Richard says about him, isn’t borderline manic every hour of the day or completely stupid. In fact, Steven can guide him smoothly through rotational kinematics, formula after complicated formula, and get some semblance of understanding from him.

He is still, however, equally enthusiastic; that virtue doesn’t fade with hours of physics that should bore through one’s mind. “And like, oh, oh!” Charlie exclaims as he throws both hands onto the table, leaning back into a stretch. “That makes so much sense, dude.”

His pleasant mood is contagious — Steven can’t help but grin alongside him, “yeah, it’s pretty simple once you get the whole gist.”

“I owe you my life,” he proclaims theatrically. “Now I’m so much less fucked for that test on Tuesday.”

Steven isn’t sure how to respond to that declaration. So instead, he seizes the chance to rid what had been itching the back of his mind through their entire study session, “why didn’t you go to Pitts for help? Neil told me he was good at physics.”

“He’s busy with some English essay,” Charlie says dismissively. “And between you and me — you’re probably the smarter one.”

Steven shoots him a faux-scornful grin, “keep up the flattery. Makes me feel so much better about myself.”

“Good enough to tutor me in Trig and Latin?” Charlie wiggles his eyebrows.

Steven only scoffs in return, but the offer to ease his growing boredom is far more tempting than he’d like to admit. Ever since arriving to college, Steven finds more free time on his hands than he knows what to do with. Hell, he’d even been learning the physics material ahead of schedule.

“Has anyone you know looked into oscillations yet?” he wonders out loud. He can’t be the only one bored enough to engross himself with the torture of independent study.

“Os-ill-a-what now?”

“Oscillations. I’ve been reading them up for the next unit, but I don’t know if I’ve quite got them down yet.”

Charlie nods like he understands completely. “Oscations. Of course. I know what that- oh!” He pounds a fist into his other palm, and a match lights in his eyes, “Pitts might’ve mentioned it once or twice.”

Huh, how convenient. Steven hasn’t had an excuse to properly meet him, but after Neil had mentioned how well they’d get along, his mind seems to redirect to Gerard at all given moments.

It follows a customary routine — every time he has a passing thought of Gerard, electrons run wildly around the closed circuit of his heart, each electric current triggering the little light bulb in his brain that yearns to be within his proximity. The signal that rallies between only motivates the process to accelerate; completely frictionless, unending, physically impossible. Steven can’t seem to keep a hold of it.

“You should put us in touch,” Steven forces his voice to stay lighthearted, “so I can bother him with questions about classwork we haven’t gotten to.”

“I’m honestly surprised you two aren’t friends already. I’ve caught him staring at you a couple times. Has he not tried talking to you?”

Steven blanks. “Sorry, what?”

Charlie grins at him as if it’s been the most obvious thing in the world, like light or gravity or the solar system, “yeah, I almost think he’s a bit enamoured with you.”

He has to force the blood far away from his cheeks, “well, it’s a no-brainer to give me his contact, then.”

Charlie only raises an eyebrow back, before throws an arm over his shoulders with a sly, all-knowing glint in his chocolate eyes. “Oh, Meeksie,” he laments, “you could’ve just told me to set you up with Pitts.”

4.

Gerard Pitts is even better up close.

He has to do a double take at what his mind had just supplied him. Not in the carnal way Steven isn’t even sure exists to him. No, it’s the warm presence that he finds himself eagerly burrowing into and familiarizing with, completely unlike any other.

Since oscillations (which Steven now has a far better understanding of), they’ve hung out even without the excuse of academics, before lectures and after classes. In physics, Todd and Cameron join in, and soon Neil and Charlie and Knox follow. Their odd, rag-tag group that has somehow been dubbed “the poets” thanks to the history of their eccentric English professor.

Cameron complains at every opportunity about Charlie’s presence, and actively starts and participates in petty spats about whatever with him. Todd doesn’t seem to mind the new additions, though. Especially not Neil.

And Neil and Charlie were undoubtedly right — Steven and Gerard get along fantastically. Maybe it’s their shared passion for the sciences, or the way their logic seems to share a wavelength, or how neither have the survival or legal reservations Steven was sure had been programmed into every human but him to achieve a satisfying product.

Simultaneously, Gerard is everything Steven lacks. He’ll listen wordlessly and shoot back with ideas Steven could only hazily dream of, and assemble the heavier, larger parts so Steven can focus on the tangle of circuit board and wires. He’s a prism — soft, white light refracts within him and just in his presence, Steven’s world is lit up in a technicolor of reds and greens and blues where it had all been greyscale.

It doesn’t help that Pitts is great company. More often than not, Steven finds himself sneaking into a closed lab with Gerard instead of hanging out with the other poets, narrowly avoiding night patrol and “temporarily borrowing” equipment and stifling their giggles as they slip through one hallway to the next.

Unfortunately, Pitts has come down with a fever, leaving him bedridden for the night and unable to work on their beloved primitive radio, composed of old, disused electronics and the aforementioned stolen materials. So instead, Steven finds himself approaching Charlie and Knox in the common area, ready to collectively struggle through trigonometry.

(Well, struggling is a stretch. Charlie and Knox are very much struggling, while Steven plans to pretend to in solidarity. Obtuse triangles really aren’t much of a challenge to him.)

“How gracious! Meeks is taking time away from his boyfriend to suffer with us commoners,” Charlie greets him with a teasing laugh, “I’m afraid neither me nor Knoxious are particularly passionate about engineering.”

“We’re not-” Steven feels his face burn up as red as his hair. His feet snap frozen where he’d been walking over, “he’s not-”

“It’s perfectly alright! We’re a very accepting and diverse community. Yes,” he clasps a hand on Knox’s shoulder, “even of Knox and his heteronormativity over here.”

“Charlie, we are both bisexual.”

“That’s great. There’s nothing going on between Pitts and I,” Steven retorts, dropping his textbook, notebooks, and pencil case onto the table with a loud bang.

Charlie remains unfazed, waving a pencil around aimlessly with his right hand, “no need to be embarrassed! At least your feelings are reciprocated, and I’m sure you couldn’t be more insufferable about Pitts than Knox was with that blonde.”

“Her name was Chris. And I wasn’t insufferable, I was passionate.”

“— Completely infatuated, this one. Hopeless.” Charlie grins as he pitches his voice low with dramatics, drops his eyes into a lovesick, half-lidded faraway look, “to touch her would be paradise—”

He’s cut off swiftly as Knox lunges at him across the table, shrieking “Charlie!” loudly as Charlie himself yells for help like a faultless victim.

Steven gathers his things leaves them to bicker. He’d rather risk rhinovirus with Gerard than entertain this futile argument.

(Charlie’s words of boyfriends and infatuation and reciprocated feelings stubbornly plant their roots into his head. They don’t leave.)

(Steven wakes the following morning, curled at the foot of Gerard’s bed with a stuffy nose.)

+ 1.

“How did you know you were in love with Neil?”

Todd splutters into his coffee, staining into his stack of lined paper as he searches for a napkin to wipe with. “Uh. Why would you ask that?”

It’s no secret that Todd and Neil have something for each other — anyone would realize within five minutes of their joint proximity. The way they look at each other screams “we’re irrevocably in love with each other” with blinking neon signs, and it’s a myth how neither have taken any action on it.

“I’m not very well-versed in the whole romantic love thing,” Steven shrugs. “Don’t think I’ve ever felt it for myself.”

“Oh. Well.” Todd bites his cheek as he rifles through his next words. “I feel warm. Comforted, just by being around him.”

Intramolecular attractions. Electrons in his heart’s circuit. Optical prisms. Pitts’ mere presence fills every missing gap in his life.

“I want to be good enough for him because I feel like he deserves worlds more than me.”

He doesn’t remember being happier that semester than receiving his final grade — an A, matching Pitts’ own — knowing that he’s capable of rivalling his intellectual prowess. That he’s someone who sufficiently compeers, because Pitts deserves someone who can.

“I want to be around him all the time.”

They’re rarely spotted without each other anymore — anyone who is looking for one of them just has to find the other. Somehow, they had become Steven and Gerard, Meeks and Pitts, Meeks-and-Pitts. A pair, a set, a shared pronoun. A couple.

“And I- I don’t think I was ever truly myself until I met him.”

Steven’s never felt quite so complete in his entire life. He isn’t sure how he’d managed before Pitts; he doesn’t recall a life before him, nor does he think there will be a life without him — not one where he functions so wholly.

When had that become the norm, a fact of life?

“The fact that he’s eye candy really helped, but I fell for everything underneath it.” Todd finishes, before adding on quizzically, “Though, I’d expect you of all people to have experienced it, with whatever you have going on between you and Pitts.”

Maybe this whole love thing isn’t so foreign after all.

(Oh. Oh. It’s a bit earth-tilting to realize that you’ve been in love with your new best friend all this time.)

Outside, snow tranquilly piles on pavements and windowsills. Completely unhampered; yet, the silent tension in the room threatens to crack like black ice.

What a wonder — so much emotion crammed into a singular vocabulary. Steven almost laughs with incredulity, because it shouldn’t be, but that is the word for it, isn’t it?

Love.

Steven reaches up to cup Gerard’s face, and plants a soft kiss onto his lips. All he can feel is a flicker of warmth like a candlelight in his chest, an electric spark that bursts between his lungs, the way his heart jumps to life like he had been walking dead before meeting Pitts.

It feels like a ship quietly returned to harbour. It feels like home, in all its primitive, literal sense.

“I think I’m in love with you, too,” he whispers softly against Gerard’s mouth.