Chapter Text
As soon as Gil reached the door of his apartment, which was just one out of dozens of doors in a long hallway on the fourth floor of a building Liz had seen countless times around campus but had never been inside, he shuffled around in his pockets for his key. Fumbling them as he managed to swing the door open with a creak, he let out a loud, passionate, “Ohhh… fuck,” as he squinted around at the inside of the apartment.
She stood questioningly in the doorway as he stomped his way in, rounding and scouring the seemingly normal if not notably barren scene of his living room.
“God fucking damn!” Gilbert cursed again, plopping down sullenly on a god-awful huge denim beanbag chair that seemed to be the only piece of furniture in the living room. He pulled out his phone, pointedly pushing on the screen with a seemingly accusatory force.
“Um,” Liz started hesitantly, “What’s wrong..? It’s nice in here, Gilbert. It’s… clean?” it was clean, perfectly so. And it smelled nice, which was more than she had expected.
“Well, hell if it’s clean... Look, Lizzie! The fucking couch is gone. And TV! That whore took everything. Hold up,” he paused, seemingly finding what he needed after a minute of alternately squinting and poking at his phone screen, and suddenly dial tones were heard echoing off the barren walls as he held up the screen to his chin, call on speaker.
“Howdy brother!” the person on the other end of the line picked up brightly and unashamedly, and Gil seemed to be turning a new shade of pink.
“God damn you, Alfred! When I left the house this morning there was a fucking couch here, why did you take it without saying anything! Your little boytoy already has a couch! He already has like- a fully furnished apartment! You took from the poor!”
Gilbert sounded angry, and Liz suddenly direly regretted her decision to accept the man’s offer at all. She felt like an intruder in this conversation, even though Gil himself had put the phone on speaker unprompted. Who does that?
“Bruuhh… you don’t want this couch anymore, man. On my life, it’s been fucking soiled, by uh…” there was a pause, and Liz covered her mouth with her hand. She wasn’t sure who the man on the other end of the phone was, but she was stifling a laugh at his deep southern inflection and extremely unbothered tone, “-me and Keeks for like, the past eight hours. We clocked in like it was our day job, got the full shift in, full-time style. Breaking in the whole apartment. Also, fuck off ‘cause I bought it in the first place, dude. It’s my couch, brother, your ass knew I was moving today.”
Gilbert blew a puff of hot air out of his nose, speaking far too loudly into the receiver. “Brother,” he echoes, anger faltering. If Alfred always talked this way, Liz could imagine it would be difficult to stay mad at him. “You’re saying too much. Focus. Where am I gunna sleep tonight then? I have a guest over.”
“Dude. Just share the bed. Wait, did you see The Jeanbag? I left that for you, man, ‘cause I know you like it so much and I love you, I want you to be happy.” said Alfred, ever so helpfully. Liz stifles a laugh again, both at the pun and the fact that apparently, Gil didn’t even own the beanbag.
Gilbert glosses over the ‘I love you,’ easily, “Al… I can’t just share the bed like that. It’s… a chick.” Gil really was turning red now, and Liz wondered if he regretted putting this call on speaker. She has completely lost control of her facial expressions. His sentence petered off, his eyes shifting to her briefly in an unreadable look of embarrassment as he raised his eyebrows in what could be an apology, “I mean- a lady, a woman,” he corrects himself.
Something, despite herself, warmed in her chest, and once again she was reassured of Gilbert’s intentions for the night. She shouldered her purse and walked over to sit on the beanbag chair next to the man, setting the bag of essentials she’d picked up at a convenience store on the way down by her feet.
“Huh…” Alfred supplied dumbly, either lost in thought or completely bored. “A lady. Wait… you brought someone home but you’re refusing to sleep in the same bed with them…? Gentleman-style?” Liz suddenly feels her face grow hot, embarrassment flooding her nervous system. There was a rustle of movement on the other line and another voice in the background, something unintelligible, “What kind of situation even is this- Hey, is it that one girl you mentioned, that-”
“Oh!” Gill announced quickly, “Alfred, would you look at that, buddy! We found another couch, thanks! Rot in hell,” and then as quickly as the call started, Gil jammed the red button on the screen and it was over. He leaned forward and put his head between his knees in exasperation, letting his phone drop out of his hand and onto the floor.
Gil doesn’t move when he speaks again, voice coming out stilted and echoing up from the floor, “I’m sorry about him. He’s a funny guy but he’s got a big mouth.”
His phone lay face-up on the ground, on the screen it’d last been on before the call, showing Alfred(Gil’s supposed fat-ass free-food-giving and furniture-owning former roommate)’s contact in all its glory. The name was only a lone cowboy hat emoji, and the font size was insanely big. The profile picture was indeed a large, shirtless blond man with massive tits in the frame.
Liz sighed and reached her hand out to pat his back lightly, and she found herself speaking before she was thinking.
“He sounds funny,” she assures, “you can… you can take the bed, Gil.” His face was still buried between his knees, and she felt the need suddenly to take on the role of comforter, one that he’d assumed for the better part of the evening. “I don’t care, I’ve imposed on you enough, I can even find somewhere else, we’re not that far from my apartment anyways.”
She knows that by finding somewhere else, she means she’s going to return to her previous plan of sleeping in the backseat of her car. She feels a little exhilarated and uncomfortable being in his apartment anyway, she’s always thought it was so interesting to see where people live. She’s always thought it shows a lot about a person, although the empty, barren nature of the living room in which they’re currently squished on the same beanbag says that Gilbert doesn’t own enough furniture to fill an apartment.
He raises his head from between his long, spindly legs and looks at her. He’s furrowing his translucent eyebrows at her and pursing his lips before he speaks, “Lizzie. We’ve established you don’t have anywhere else to go. I’m going to change my sheets so you can sleep in my room and I’m… I’m going to sleep on The Jeanbag.” He pats the denim monstrosity at his side. He sounds resolute, and the corners of his mouth are already quirking up, presumably at the absurdity of the situation. He uses his knees to bounce them up and down slightly, and she finds her shoulders being pressed hard into his as the cushion they’re sitting on shifts beneath them. “See? It’s comfortable. I’ve definitely slept on this thing before. I think.”
-
Hours ago, he’d left to take a shower and change his sheets, and he left her a t-shirt and joggers that she could wear to sleep. When he came back he smelled like mint and soap, he had his big coke-bottle glasses on and his laptop tucked under his arm. He pulled a blanket on top of them and asked her what type of movie she liked.
The night turns into the two of them sunken into the flesh The Jeanbag, watching movies on the laptop he has propped up on his knees.
They settled on a horror movie series that she’d never heard of. She wasn’t really paying attention at all, warmed in the comfortable oversized clothes. Throughout the first movie, Liz slowly grows more at ease in the proximity of another person. The two of them are pressed together at their sides in the dip of the cushion under them, a blanket wrapped around both of them as they flinch and giggle at the scares of the film.
Liz can’t remember the last time she had fun like this, the last time she felt like someone enjoyed her presence and wanted to be close to her. Gilbert, to his credit, was being exceedingly sweet. Gentleman-style , she remembers his roommate -Aflred- saying. They were simply sitting close together, laughing and discussing the movies. She feels safe. Safe and happy.
When the third movie ends she checks her phone, noting that it’s nearly three in the morning. She’s been able to hear Gil lightly snoring for the past twenty minutes, so she carefully reaches her hand out and sets his laptop to the side. She’s exhausted, it's been a long night. Gilbert is asleep at her side, and as soon as the laptop is put away he’s rolling over and snoring face-first into the denim below his head.
He’s funny, she thinks, and not funny in the mean way that Roderich can be. Well, he was a little mean to Alfred earlier, but they seem close. He’s funny in a way that doesn’t rely on a bad attitude or digs, he’s just clever and silly and maybe a bit too cocky for his own good.
I really like him. It’s a thought that doesn’t truly surprise her; she’s known for the better part of the night that she likes him, and the fact that they’re cuddled up together on the stupid Jeanbag means it's certainly not just one-sided.
She hasn’t truly experienced anything like this in a long time. She’s had small crushes on celebrities or pretty strangers, but they were always more fantastical than anything else. This is different than that, different than anything else she’s had before. They barely know each other and yet here she is, her eyelids growing heavy as she listens to the even sound of his breath muffled by denim. She finds his glasses folded up and digging into her side, and she fishes them out from under the blanket and sets them aside with the laptop. She pulls the blanket closer around them both before she lets her eyes close, head lolling over to rest on his shoulder , making herself comfortable to settle into sleep as he’s tangled up in an impossible position beside her.
For the first time in a while, she’s asleep almost as soon as her eyes close.
-
She wakes up to the sound of her phone ringing right next to her ear.
When she opens her eyes she’s blind, unsure of where she is, and an unfamiliar arm is slung around her waist. She’s sitting up in a hurry and subsequently falling off the massive cushion she and Gilbert fell asleep on and tumbling on the floor.
When she finally brandishes her phone it's Roderich’s contact that shows on the screen. The time is almost five in the morning. When she answers her greeting comes out more in the form of a grunt than in any kind of words. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Gilbert start to stir and sit up blearily, blindly staring into the darkness without his glasses, his hair flat on one side and sticking up in every direction on the other.
It takes her a moment before she can process the words being spoken to her on the other line. The voice doesn’t sound like Rod at all.
“- and he’s- hello? Is this Erzsébet?” The voice isn’t one she knows at all, and she blinks for a second at the original Hungarian form of her name.
“Um. Elizabeta,” she affirms, her voice groggy from sleep. Something seems increasingly very wrong about all of this, “Who is this? Is this- this is Roderich’s number, where is he?” She sounds more frantic than she expected, but her exhausted mind is struggling to keep up. But all of this is waking her up fast, so when the person on the other line starts talking again she doesn’t miss any of it.
“Oh- he’s fine, he’s asking for you. He’s- he’s drunk. Bad. He won’t talk to me, and you’re- you’re basically his handler or his mother or something, so you need to come get him. He’ll only talk to you.” The stranger, a young man, she thinks, has a strange trait to his voice that sounds both harsh and gentle at the same time. Above all else, it sounds tired, and maybe not completely sober.
“Who is this? What is your name?” She still sounds more scared than she means to. He dodged the question before, and she has no idea who this person is or where they have Roderich.
“My name is Vash. I’m his boyfriend, not that that’s what he’s- whatever. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it, can you get here? I can send someone to come get you-”
Liz’s head is spinning, her eyes focusing again on Gil, who has found his glasses and is stretching his arms and back out in a big yawn. She can see a sliver of skin near his waistline where his t-shirt raises. The soft white hair on his belly catches the light of the sunrise through the blinds. Her mouth feels dry- she can still feel his arm around her, something that must have happened while they were sleeping. She doesn't want to leave here or to deal with whatever fresh hell this call has brought upon her.
Still, she has a sneaking suspicion about all of this, the revelation of Roderich’s supposed boyfriend making some of this situation line up. “Vash,” she repeats, watching Gil frown in confusion, “Are you- was it your party last night? Are you- related to Gilbert?”
There’s a pause on the other line before Vash responds, Gilbert sitting across from her mouthing a question in confusion, gesturing, “Uh, weird. But yes. Do you two… know each other, or?”
Her hand works fast to pull the phone from her ear and change the call to speakerphone, looking over at Gil who is now scratching the flattened side of his hair, “Yeah, uh. Gil, Vash is on the phone-”
“What’s up,” he supplies helpfully, his voice husky, “what is this?”
“Gilbert, great, I’m not asking questions.” Vash almost sounds relieved, and now that Liz has more context for who this person is, she can make out an undercurrent of an accent around the edges of his vowels, “can you drive Elizabeta back to my house? My- whatever he is, Roderich is asking for her, and he- can you guys just get here? I have clinicals at six and he isn’t talking to me and– I can’t just leave him here to die of alcohol poisoning. Or-whatever. I don’t care.”
Gilbert is already dragging himself to his feet. Once he gets steady enough he reaches a hand out to Liz, helping her up, her knees and back aching in protest. Maybe The Jeanbag isn’t the best place to sleep after all. It had seemed like the right choice in the moment.
“Yeah, man,” Gilbert’s voice betrays his exhaustion. If he were well-rested, Liz thinks he might poke more fun at this situation. Or maybe Vash commands more respect than others she’s seen Gil interact with. “You owe me. But I’m on my way. Uh- by alcohol poisoning, do you mean-”
“He’s fine.” Vash interrupts, hurried, “I think. He’s just- you’ll see.”