Marshall could be described with many adjectives. Cautious, analytical, self-aware – people had called him all of those in the past, and others as well. The one no one had ever used for him, however, was forgetful - unless he had forgotten they called him that, and that was highly unlikely.

Until one day, in the middle of the trimester, when he ran out of the room quickly – too quickly, leaving his browser window open on his computer screen. If he didn't get moving, he would be late for class, and being late for class was the last thing he'd want to do.

It was the furthest thing from his mind, really, until he came back from class.

And Kurt was sitting in the computer chair – his computer chair, come to think of it – and he heard a video playing, a familiar male laugh coming from the speakers – and the expression on Kurt's face was one of subdued surprise.

"What is this?" his roommate asked, and Marshall felt as though maybe, just maybe, it was possible to die of embarrassment at that very moment.

Instead, he hit the floor.

The ceiling shouldn't be moving, he thought, so why is it? He sat up with a start. No. The ceiling wasn't moving; it was his wobbly self creating the illusion of movement.

Kurt leaned over the back of the computer chair and looked at Marshall. "Did you hurt your head?" he asked.

"No," Marshall said, "I'll be fine." Standing up slowly, he took the bottle of Tylenol out from his window hiding place and popped two.

"I thought you said 'I'll be fine,' not 'I need to take painkillers,'" Kurt said.

Marshall winced. "I said, 'I will be fine,' not 'I am currently, at this very moment, fine.'"

Kurt waved his hand. "Same difference. So who's the guy in your YouTube videos?"

"I hit my head, and you want to know who a guy in videos from four years ago is."

"As you insisted, you'll be fine."

Somehow, he figured that using former – though current, at the time – boyfriends in his videos wouldn't hurt him. He eased himself onto the foot of his bed and looked at Kurt. "He is - was - is? my former boyfriend."

Kurt nodded, almost in understanding. "So, you're gay."

"I didn't want to do the whole 'your-roommate-is-gay' spiel and make you uncomfortable."

"Make me uncomfortable?"

"Because, you know -"

Kurt laughed quietly, almost as though he was recollecting some distant memory. "I'm gay too."

"Oh." Marshall laid down and closed his eyes, sending out a silent thought that he hoped a short nap would ease the throbbing headache that had settled in squarely behind his eyes. He wasn't sure, however, if the headache was caused by his fall, or something else entirely.

When he woke up, the sun was beginning to set outside, and Kurt was nowhere to be seen, except for a green post-it note stuck to his computer screen. "M. - went out for dinner, be back later, take more Tylenol - K." Beneath the screen was a small cup of water, two Tylenol, and a small white square, that upon further examination, appeared to be a small pre-moistened washcloth.

He rubbed his forehead and hoped for some sort of quick answer to come. It had not been intentional for Kurt to find out about Jason. It was a stupid, careless mistake.

He reloaded his YouTube user profile and clicked on the top video, the last one he had uploaded before leaving for California. He'd watched it a thousand times since - not because he was still in love with the boy in the video, but because it reminded him of what he had left behind back home.

It was a warm summer's day a few years before, not a cloud in the sky. In the distance, an ice cream truck's melody played faintly and the sounds of children playing soccer in the street could be heard, but Marshall was only focused on the person in front of him.

"Smile for the camera!" he said, and Jason grinned - a wide, toothy grin - and waved for the camera, before tugging it out of Marshall's hands and letting the impulses of their youth take over.

After the breakup, Marshall kept the video hidden away under his bed, over time forgetting that it was even there. It wasn't until he was packing his things to head off to college that he found the shoe box it had been hidden in, and after a quick debate - "should I keep it?" "should I throw it away?" - he decided to upload it, but keep it private, so his subscribers wouldn't find it.

No one else needed to see it. No one else would understand the meaning.

He shut his laptop, laid back down on his bed, with his arms crossed across his chest, and waited for Kurt to come back from dinner.

"Feeling better?" a voice from above him said.

Marshall opened his eyes and looked up to see Kurt hovering above him, an unreadable expression on his face. "Yeah. I'm fine," he said, with a small smile.

Everything would be fine, he was sure of that. For now, at least until some other incident happened where they'd have to face the events of the day.

As the calendar hanging precariously on the wall clearly showed, however, Halloween was quickly approaching. Kurt's careful handwriting indicated that there was a Halloween masquerade party that both of them had been invited to, weeks before.

-to be continued-