Summer was quiet, hazy, and hot. Roderich hated how even the air felt oppressive, that going outside begged the constant feeling of being weighed down. Of struggling to breathe. Of struggling to exist. And sweating. Sweating was horrid enough on its own to be added to any list of unfortunate outcomes of summer.
Roderich hated the current summer for a different reason, though. Instead of two months of unlimited time with Gilbert, learning the edges of their relationship and smoothing them out, the damn boy was working. Excessively. At a coffee shop. Taking orders and cleaning the floors. Not making coffee.
And Roderich?
Roderich spent way too much time at that coffee shop, writing music without his piano to help guide his thoughts. Gilbert guided them instead. He was his compass and a useful excuse to avoid his father, who had suddenly decided to be home. Often.
He didn't get a lot of composing done, though. He was often distracted, watching Gilbert sweep during the slow times, listening to his cheerful voice taking orders. Gilbert was always joking with the customers, guaranteed to put a smile on even the surliest mother-of-five desperate for caffeine. How could he not? Everyone found him adorable.
Roderich had different words for Gilbert.
Despite time to watch and listen to Gilbert, there were some definite problems with sitting in the coffee shop. Like how easy it was to get jealous.
"What's with the long face?" Gilbert had pulled up a chair on his break and was sitting backwards in it, persistent grin plastered on.
"Nothing." Roderich drew in a treble clef, the most he had managed to get done all morning.
Grin faltered. "Seems like something."
Roderich drew a bass clef in the staff below the treble. The dots around the F line came out a little darker than he intended. "She was flirting with you."
Both of Gilbert's eyebrows shot up. "Who?" While he sounded legitimately surprised by this assertion, Roderich didn't see how he could have missed it. There was no way he was that oblivious.
"Triple caramel no whip soy latte." Roderich could still hear her high voice and the slight giggle at the end of her order, almost like the drink was a secret code. He had been concerned enough to look up the drink after she had finished rattling it off. It did not seem to be any kind of code.
Still suspicious.
It took Gilbert a moment. Roderich could see the wheels working in his head. The order had happened quite some time prior, so he tried not to be too frustrated that Gilbert couldn't remember it immediately. He even felt rather smug that Gilbert hadn't found her important enough to remember. Roderich had been concerned, as she had been quite cute. Dark hair in braids, glasses on a freckled nose, sharply dressed.
Roderich knew how Gilbert liked dark haired, glasses-wearing, nicely dressed people.
It finally clicked. "Right! Sophie. She comes in here pretty often. It was a new drink for her and she almost said it wrong. Plus, I was all prepped to write her regular, so she got a little embarrassed…" Gilbert trailed off. Roderich wasn't looking at him, but he could feel the stare, hot on his head. "Roddy, were you jealous?"
"What?" Roderich broke off from tap, tap, tapping his pencil against the paper, trying to come up with the appropriate key signature for this ugly emotion. "No. No, of course not."
He knew he had been. He often felt the desperate claws of worry hooking into his chest. He knew from conversations they had had that most of Gilbert's crushes were on girls. Wouldn't he rather date a girl that looked like Roderich than deal with Roderich and his propensity to get over-attached, his inability to respond to things in a logical way, and his difficulty regulating his own emotions? Wouldn't he rather anyone other than the boy who couldn't ever figure out where he was, who always had to get driven everywhere because he refused to learn how to drive, who had long spells of silence where all he wanted to do was make people hurt, make people feel sorry for him, make people apologize for doing nothing wrong?
If Roderich were Gilbert, he knew that he would want someone better. Especially if Roderich were this Gilbert, the one who still didn't want the world to know that sometimes he liked boys.
But he looked up at Gilbert and just saw amusement. That was somehow worse than what he thought it would be, so he looked down.
The humor was still evident in Gilbert's voice: "Boy, she's a freshman. And I've got you. Anyone else would be a downgrade!"
Roderich found himself smiling, but inside he was feeling sick. Inside, he was thinking: if only he knew.
If only he knew. If only he knew that suspicion led to jealousy, jealousy lead to overthinking, overthinking led to suspicion and the cycle went on and on and on. And Gilbert, oh Gilbert… He was naturally flirty. His being nice came across as so flirtatious, it caused Roderich to realize both how he had fallen (fallen?) for Gilbert so hard, so fast, he didn't even notice it was happening.
It also showed him just why everyone else loved him. And when the rest of the senior class went into the year thinking Gilbert was single? It was enough to make an apparently-secret boyfriend suspicious. And jealous. And all that came with it.
Felicyta had first period with them. On the first day of school, she had claimed the seat right next to Gilbert before Roderich had even gotten there. He stared at her, the way that she was leaning in toward Gilbert, her chin propped up on her perfectly manicured hand. The way Gilbert was grinning, his sheepish grin.
Gilbert's eyes flicked toward Roderich. Roderich raised his eyebrows.
Gilbert didn't ask Felicyta to scoot over a seat. He just looked vaguely apologetic.
Roderich took a seat on the opposite side of class, slamming his books down.
Lunch was silent on Roderich's part, despite Gilbert's attempts at conversation, but Gilbert was driving him home. Roderich threw his backpack into the backseat and curled up on the passenger side, leaning right, as far away from Gilbert as possible. Staring out the window. He was simmering.
Gilbert was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He waited a second. He sighed. He pinched his nose. "Okay. The fuck is up?"
Roderich stared out the window. "Nothing. I'm ready to go home."
The car didn't start up, so Roderich assumed that Gilbert was ignoring him or something. "Roderich. What. The fuck. Is wrong?"
In his lap, Roderich's fingers laced together, squeezing tight. "Nothing," he repeated. His teeth were clenched.
Another beat of silence. Gilbert turned on the car and threw it into reverse, heading out of the parking lot and off toward their hill. Roderich, if he closed his eyes, could practically feel waves of annoyance hitting him. He tried throwing them right back.
They stopped outside his house. Roderich reached for the door handle.
"Look," Gilbert muttered. "It's not my fucking fault if Felicyta wants to flirt. It's not like I'm flirting back."
Roderich's hand froze, resting on the handle. He still wasn't looking at Gilbert. He hated when Gilbert was angry. It darkened his whole face. "It doesn't matter if you flirt back." His voice was maybe strong enough to carry to the other side of the car. He didn't particularly care if it did or not. "You didn't stop her. So she goes and takes that to all her friends and then it's all around the school and then they're trying to weasel you into taking her to homecoming or whatever."
His brain filled in what his words didn't: And then you realize that it's easier with her and maybe you like her better than me because she's normal and perfect and a girl and I'm that guy with two parents that don't give a shit that you've been carting around since freshman year.
A loud noise from the other side of the car broke his thoughts. Gilbert had hit the steering wheel. Roderich stared over at him now. Not at him. At his hands.
"Why the fuck does that matter? It's not like I'm going to do anything with her! Not my fault if people wanna think what they think!"
Roderich curled his fingers tighter around the door handle. He opened the door. He swung his legs out.
"It matters because it can only happen because you don't want people to know about us."
He grabbed his backpack, shut the door, and headed into his house. It took several minutes before he heard Gilbert's truck pull out of the driveway; Roderich, sitting on the other side of the front door, pressing his fists to his eyes to try and push the stricken look on Gilbert's face out of his head.