“Gavin, please, come out from there,” Lindsay called, gently, sitting at the edge of the bed, enough to give him space but still letting her weight on the bed let him know she was there. “It’s not a big deal, Gavin, really.”
Gavin didn’t move, just stayed in the dark, near stifling warmth of underneath the covers, where he was safe.
After a moment of no response from him, Lindsay tried again.
“Gav, at least come out so I can see your face while we talk.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he replied, muffled by the blankets and teetering on the edge of whining. “I don’t want to think about this ever again.”
“Okay, so then we won’t talk about it,” Lindsay said, conceding, hands up in surrender. Then she leaned over, reaching her arm out until her hand brushed the Gavin-shaped lump under the covers. “But I wanna see your dumb face. Let me see your dumb face so I can hug it and squish it.”
Gavin, after a moment, didn’t emerge completely but had thrashed under the covers for a few seconds and then lifted a corner of the blanket just enough for his eye to peek through. Gavin’s gaze was looking past her and Lindsay followed his eyes to where Michael was standing in the corner of the room, arms crossed and pouting.
“Oh, he’s not going to do anything,” Lindsay reassured him, turning back to Gavin, but not before shooting Michael one last warning glare. Gavin’s lone eye looked unconvinced.
“Gavin, I promise you that Michael will not mess with you.”
There was a pause. “Promise?”
She heard Michael scoff behind her back and Lindsay subtly reached into the back pocket of her jeans and showed him her butterfly knife menacingly. She’d never use it on him, they both knew that, but then again they really didn’t. He didn’t offer any more commentary after that.
“Cross my heart,” she promised. “Now come on out. Please?” She fluttered her eyelashes, just for extra effect, because she knew she always got what she wanted that way.
Gavin pulled the covers back down, retreating from view, but after a few seconds of hesitation, he pulled it off completely, cheeks flushed from the heat of the confined space, but looking significantly less green than before, though no less weary.
“That’s my Gavvy,” Lindsay said, scooting down the bed and pulling him into a hug. He went willingly, seeming very comforted by the contact.
From across the room, Michael watched mildly.
“I bet Geoff got fisted,” he said nonchalantly, though he allowed himself to sneer as he said “fisted” and Gavin gagged, wrenching himself away from Lindsay and disappearing back under the covers, to Michael’s uproarious peals of laughter.
“Michael!” Lindsay chided, eyes hard but lips fighting off a smirk, which was exactly why Michael loved her. Despite that, she crossed the room to give him a good thump square on his shoulder, which was fair.
“What? Come on, he’s acting like a baby,” Michael griped, clutching his arm with his good arm and gesturing towards Gavin with the bad.
“He is, but he’s entitled to!” Lindsay hissed, having recomposed herself, though Michael didn’t fully buy it. “What he saw was traumatic.”
“Lindsay, he’s immortal. He’s literally died in really gross, gruesome ways, he has no excuse for this,” he argued, noticing with a mild feeling of guilt that the mound of person under the duvet was trembling slightly.
He glanced between the Gavin-lump and Lindsay, who was alternating between glaring and making puppy-dog eyes at him. He sighed, then made his way over to the bed, sitting right next to Gavin on the bed.
He put his arm around Gavin over the blanket, feeling the lad jump a little beneath him, then relaxed, hesitantly.
There was a moment of quiet between the two of them, then “So you saw the parents fucking.”
There was a wail of despair from under the blanket and Lindsay snapped, “Michael!”
“No, listen, hear me out,” Michael said, tightening his hold on Gavin so he couldn’t squirm away, like he was trying to. “So you saw Geoff, Jack, and Ryan in the middle of boinking. I get it, it happens. It’s like walking in on your parents doing it.” Gavin whined from his prison of bedding.
“You’re not helping,” Lindsay growled.
“But you get over stuff like this, you know?” Michael continued, ignoring her. Absently, he reached under the blanket and yanked Gavin out into the light. “I need to see your face, stupid. And I know it’s really inside your head now. The image of your father figure getting just reamed. Hardcore, man. Just deep and hard.”
“Michael,” Gavin whined pathetically.
“I’m still talking, asshole,” Michael said, covering his boyfriend’s face with his hand. “You’ll get over this someday. Slowly, over the course of many years, this will eventually fade away.”
Gavin didn’t answer.
“In the meantime, you’ll just have to live with the knowledge that your boss and surrogate father takes it up the ass on the reg,” Michael waved his hand around, either unaware or ignoring the horrified look that returned to Gavin’s face. “Because I didn’t see it, but from what you’ve told us, this isn’t a one-time thing. Geoff is an ass-fuck veteran.”
“You are the worst,” Gavin said and Lindsay’s glare reflected the sentiment.
“Look, it’s called desensitization,” Michael insisted. “If he familiarizes himself with the idea of Geoff getting fucked in the butthole, eventually, it won’t bother him anymore.”
“Um, I don’t-“ Gavin stopped, cupping a fist over his mouth as he gagged again.
“And think about it this way,” Michael pressed on. “You take it up the ass all the time. So in a way, this should bring you closer to Geoff.”
Gavin looked past Michael’s shoulder at the wall, wearily. “I wish I was blind. Or dead.”
“Look, you take it up the ass from all of us, so it can’t be because it was Jack, right?” Michael seemed to be genuinely trying to be helpful now, with very little success. Lindsay saw this as her cue to step back in.
“Okay, Gav, here’s what we’ll do. We’re gonna get out of here, get you plastered so you won’t remember this in the morning, and when we see the Gents tomorrow, we’ll politely request they offer some sort of warning before date night so we can get the fuck outta dodge,” she said, moving to sit next to Gavin and rubbing his shoulders. “Sound good?”
Gavin did look a little less nauseous at the suggestion. “Can we go to the place with the Bloody Mary’s?”
“Whatever you want, buddy,” Michael said, arm around Gavin’s shoulders and pulling him into a one-armed hug. “Now go wash your dumb face, we’re going out!”
“Cool, let me go find Meg, she’ll-“
Almost as if on cue, an ear-splitting shriek pierced the air and the second they recognized it to be Meg’s, they had their weapons drawn, even Gavin, who was still halfway under a blanket.
“Meg?!” Michael called in alarm, stalking towards the door slowly and almost getting decked as Meg hurtled into the room, whimpering.
“I’m going to kill myself!” she cried, diving for their closet and reemerging with one of Michael’s belts in hand.
“What? Meg, calm down, what?” Lindsay said, reholstering her gun but looking no less concerned. Meg was a bit of a drama queen and liked to use her immortality to her advantage. That is, whenever something arose that she didn’t want to have to deal with, she’d sometimes just off herself to avoid dealing with it.
Despite her always coming back from it, Meg’s need for excessive drama usually drove her to more violent means of death that one of her partners would have to clean up, and also they just didn’t enjoy watching their girlfriend kick the bucket because the nearby Starbucks didn’t have her favorite flavor of frappuccino, so Michael, Gavin, and Lindsay tended to try to keep her from doing it as much as possible.
“I’m going to fucking kill myself, I don’t want to be on this Earth!” she screeched, waving the belt around, as if for emphasis. Michael strode over to her and grabbed her around the waist before taking the belt from her hands and handing it off to Lindsay.
“What’s the matter with you, Little Red?”
“R-Ryan!” she was hysterical, thrashing around in his arms in the direction of the bathroom. “He-! There-! Oh God, somebody give me a gun, for Christ’s sake!”
“They’re still going at it?!” Gavin squeaked, looking even greener than before.
“Like rabbits!” Meg shrieked, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, sending her glasses askew.
“Oh Lord.”
Over their distressed partners’ shoulders, Michael and Lindsay shared a look.
“So I’m thinking we rent a hotel room?” Lindsay said.
“For the night?” Michael asked.
Suddenly, Gavin’s stomach seemed to finally give out and he was rushing for the bathroom, and in the confusion, Meg was able to free herself from Michael’s hold and started banging on the locked bathroom door.
“Let me in! Let me in, I’m going to sit in the tub with my hair dryer, I swear to God!” she hollered.
“Maybe three,” Michael answered.
“I’ll pack a bag.”