Behind Blue Eyes
By: clio21000
Summary: Racetrack knows his senior year of college will be challenging, but he has no idea just who and what he'll be up against. It all begins when he meets his new roommate, Sean…
Warning: Contains slash. Don't like, don't read.
Disclaimer: Yeah, if I owned them, I would so not be living in an efficiency…
Prologue
No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
No one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies…
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through
But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free
from "Behind Blue Eyes," The Who
Chapter One
Sean Conlon threw his duffle bag on the top bunk and surveyed the room. Dorm rooms weren't huge, as a rule, but it felt like the one he was standing in was about half the size of a bathroom stall. A set of bunk beds was crammed along one wall, with two desks and two dressers angled in around it. A second set of beds was against the opposite wall – what the fuck was that for, anyway? He was only supposed to have one roommate – and two closets approximately the size of postage stamps were squeezed in on either side of the door. Sean snorted. It was a shitty layout – you wouldn't be able to see who was coming in your room until they were already halfway in. There was a small sink at the foot of the second set of bunk beds, and windows lined the wall opposite the door. There was also no air conditioning, so the room was about 110 degrees.
He shrugged. It was a dump, but he'd certainly been in worse places. Swiping his longish hair back from his face, he started to unpack.
Race groaned as he hauled a box of books up the flight of stairs. The damn elevator was out of order – again – and he really regretted having chosen a room on the sixth floor. He'd thought it would be nice to be able to see out over the campus, especially after taking lower level floors for the last three years for Crutchy's sake, but he'd completely forgotten how often the elevator in Hearst Hall broke down.
When Crutchy'd decided not to come back this year, Race had seriously debated getting a single. Crutchy had eventually gotten used to all of Race's odd… habits, but it would be so much easier to live alone and not have to worry about bothering anyone with his erratic ways. But, like the apartments Specs and Dutchy and Blink and Mush lived in, a single was just too expensive.
He was supposed to be getting a new roommate, some guy who was transferring in. He tried to remember where the guy was from – New York? New Jersey? Somewhere on the East Coast. He'd read the bio the Office of Residence Life had sent to him, but when he'd received no response to his e-mail introducing himself, he'd put it out of his mind.
Hopefully the guy wouldn't be an asshole. The guy Skittery'd gotten stuck with their frosh year had been a really jerk, and homophobic to boot. He hadn't been too fond of Skittery's less than conventional friends coming around – and since Skittery was in the theatre department, he had a lot of less than conventional friends.
Race snorted. The guy had been a business major. It figured.
He finally reached the top of the stairs, stopped to catch his breath, then headed down the hall to room 606.
There was already someone in the room when he walked in, but the damn closets made it impossible for him to see the guy until he was halfway in the room. When he could see him, Race blinked. The kid had sloppy dark blonde hair and his eyes, when he leveled them on Race, were very light, almost clear blue. He was taller than Race – but then everyone was – but stick-skinny; he looked younger than the twenty or twenty-one years old he must have been in order to be a senior, as the bio had claimed.
Race dropped his box on the floor. "Hey. I'm Tony Higgins."
The kid nodded. "Sean Conlon."
"So I guess we're roommates, huh?"
The kid – Sean – nodded again.
Race turned to survey the room. He sighed when he saw all four beds. "So beds? Dressers? What do you want where?"
Sean shrugged.
Struggling not to roll his eyes, Race pressed on. "Well, they give us two sets of bunk beds so we can store stuff on the top bunk and sleep on the bottom if we want, or so we can loft our beds over our dressers and desks. The guy I was living with last year, though, he and I just got rid of one of the sets and put a desk there and there – " he pointed to the corners under the window – "one dresser there at the foot of the bed and one in between the two desks. That left enough room along the wall with the sink to just wedge in a futon and stick the minifridge next to it."
Sean shrugged again. "Whatever."
"Right." Race bit back a sigh. It looked like he was in for a long year. "Well, I've got a TV and the futon. And a rug. I'll bring those up, I guess." He tapped his fingers against his hips, surveying the room. "They don't let us have microwaves – they're really strict about that – you're supposed to do all your cooking downstairs in the hall kitchen. We can have coffee pots if we want, but I don't have one. I don't drink the stuff."
Sean smirked. "I think it's too late to be afraid it'll stunt your growth."
Race clenched his jaw, swiveled, and headed out the door without saying a word.
David had spent the last hour hauling boxes and bags up the stairs into his sister's suite for her and "a few of her friends." He pulled his car into his assigned parking space in his own dorm lot, threw it into park, and stretched his arms; "a few" of Sarah's friends had felt like half the dorm. When his phone buzzed from the console in between the front seats, he glanced down and punched at the enter button to accept Race's text message.
U here yet?
He turned off the car and unbuckled his seatbelt, then picked up the phone.
Just got here. Y?
Me 2. Just met new roomie.
And?
Asshole.
That sucks.
Yeah. U and Jack coming over?
Gotta unpack.
Please! Leave it til 2nite.
U'R that desperate?
YES.
K. We'll rescue U asap.
Thnx.
Shaking his head – poor Race – David climbed out of his car and started pulling out boxes and laundry baskets. A window three stories up opened and a shaggy brunette head stuck out.
"Hey, Davey!"
He looked up and grinned. "Jack!"
"Need help?"
He waved his hands at the belongings clustered around his feet. "You bet."
When Jack bounded out of the front doors of the hall a few minutes later, he grinned again. "You're tan."
"Summertime in Santa Fe, Davey. It'll do that to ya." Jack bent down and slung a duffel bag over his shoulder, then picked up a box. "You're white as a ghost, as usual."
David snorted. "I'm Polish, dumbass. If my skin sees sun for thirty seconds I burn and peel." He picked up a box of books. "As you should remember after that little beach trip we took during Spring Break."
Jack laughed as they began trudging up the stairs with their load. "Now, Davey, you're just upset because you spent the entire week rubbing sunscreen and aloe on yourself and never found a hot chick to do it for you." He winked. "Which I had no problems doing." He dropped the stuff was carrying as they entered their room. The furniture was already in place, arranged just as it had been in their last room, and the room before that, and the room frosh year when they had been assigned to each other. Jack's belonging were put away – it was probably the only time all year Jack would have his clothes in his dresser drawers instead of in a pile on the floor – but his bed was rumpled.
"You get here last night?" David asked, setting the box carefully on his desktop and glancing around.
Jack nodded.
"Looks good," David said. "So, Race texted me right before I got here. He's having trouble with his new roommate, wants us to come up and rescue him."
"'Kay," Jack said, then dug in his pockets as a tinny version of "Friends in Low Places" filled the air. David wrinkled his nose. "I can't believe you're still listening to country."
"I spent the last three months in the Southwest, Davey," Jack said as he glanced at the screen on his cell phone. He flipped the phone open and held it to his ear. "Hey, Blink. Yeah, we're going to go see Race. Sure, we'll come over." He raised his eyebrows at David, who shrugged. "Yeah, we'll be over in a half hour, hour or so. Later." He flipped the phone closed. "Let's get Race and get over to the apartments. It sounds like Blink and Mush have the first party of the year going already, and I think Blink's band is playing."
Race almost sighed in relief when he heard a knock on the open dorm room door, quickly followed by Jack's voice calling, "Race!" He and his new roommate had spent the last half hour unpacking in total and complete silence. Race felt like a wire drawn so tightly it was going to snap.
Jack and then David's heads poked around the corner of the closets, and he stood to introduce them.
"Hey, Sean," he said. Sean glanced up, looking completely uninterested, from where he was putting some very battered T-shirts in his dresser drawer. "These are my friends, Jack and David. Jack's in computer science, David's an overachiever – he's a double major in English and communications." He turned to Jack and David. "This is my new roommate, Sean."
"Hi," Jack offered, while David gave Sean a friendly smile.
Sean nodded once, then turned back to his T-shirts. Jack and David both looked at Race, eyebrows raised, and he nearly laughed at their identical expressions. For all that he was a pretty tough guy, Jack was also a pretty friendly guy, and Dave – well, Dave was just innocently kind to everyone. Having Sean shoot them down without a word must have been disturbing for both.
"Well, Race," Jack cleared his throat. "We told Mush and Blink we'd head over to their place once we got you. You ready to go?"
Race stood, tucked his keys in his pockets, and hesitated. "I don't know how late I'll be," he said in Sean's direction.
"I ain't gonna wait up," Sean said, not looking up from where he was tucking some exceptionally ragged jeans into a dresser drawer. Piles of clothes and half-empty boxes were pooled around his feet, and though his posture was casual, it was also defensive – hunched shoulders, arms tucked in near his body. He suddenly looked impossibly alone and thin and young. Race bit his lip. "Uh, you, uh…You want to come along, Sean?"
Jack's expression screamed "you've got to be kidding me" so blatantly that David elbowed him. Sean's shoulders squared. "You don't gotta baby-sit me," he said.
Race shot David a pleading look. David cleared his throat. "You should come, Sean," he said. "It'll give you a chance to meet all of our friends. Plus Blink and Mush usually have live music at their parties."
Jack turned his disbelieving face on David.
"I'm sure it'll be the social highlight of the season," said Sean, sarcasm dripping from his voice. But he turned from his dresser and put his keys in his pocket.
Race blinked. Jesus, he was actually going to come along? "Uh, great. Let's go, then."
Jack and David hung back, letting Race and Sean exit before them, but Race could hear Jack hiss, "You crazy? I thought we were coming over here to get Race away from him!" as he waited to lock the door behind them.
Cloth rustled – David must have shrugged. "Race invited him."
"He seems awfully…arrogant," Jack said.
David laughed. "And you didn't when I first met you?"
"Hmph. I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, Davey." Jack's indignation was clear, but so was his affection for David. When the pair came out into the hallway, they were grinning at each other and Jack's arm was around Dave's shoulders.
Sean raised an eyebrow. "So, are they like – you know?" he asked Race.
Race shook his head. "They're just very touchy feely. Most of our friends are. But look, Sean," his face hardened, "if you have problems with gay people, we might as well just head over to Residence Life and arrange a switch now. A lot of my friends are gay."
But Sean's expression didn't change. "Whatever. Don't make a difference to me."
Downstairs, the foursome piled into Jack's rusty truck. When he started the engine and the radio started playing, David immediately changed the station.
"Hey, that was Kenny Chesney!" Jack protested.
David rolled his eyes. "I heard three words and my ears are bleeding. No, Jack."
"It's my car!"
"No, Jack."
In the back seat, Race smirked and Sean raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything.
David found a station playing what sounded like Pink Floyd and settled back, sighing.
"You know, for someone as straight-laced as you are, you sure like druggie music an awful lot," Jack said.
"Pink Floyd is genius. One does not need to be high to appreciate that."
"Kenny Chesney's a genius," Jack muttered.
"Kenny Chesney is a Jimmy Buffet-wannabe who actually refers to himself as a hillbilly. The high point of the man's career was when he mentioned a Stones' tape in that one song," David said. He closed his eyes and hummed along with "Us and Them."
Jack frowned and hmphed a little.
"Stop pouting," David said without opening his eyes.
Race cracked up. Sean snorted and looked out the window.
The party was well underway when the four young men got to Blink and Mush's apartment. The music was loud, easily loud enough to be heard as soon as they stepped off the elevator.
"How do the neighbors never complain?" David wondered as they headed towards the end of the hall and Blink and Mush's apartment.
Tony snorted. "Knowing Blink and Mush, they're all at the party."
"Jack!"
"Hey, Cowboy!"
"Race!"
"Heya, Dave!"
Several voices around the room called out as the boys went through the open door. Sean hung back slightly, checking out the crowd. There were a lot of people packed into a really small apartment, but most of the furniture was pushed back to the walls to make room for dancing. At one end of the room, a live band was playing; David hadn't been exaggerating. A blonde guy with an eyepatch and guitar slung across his chest was currently singing a Doors tune – interesting; they might actually have taste – and doing his best impression of Jim Morrison. Sean rolled his eyes. Behind him was a skinny blonde chick with big tits, an eyebrow piercing, and tattoos on the backs of her hand, playing bass, and a Latina girl playing a violin with an amp cord coming out of the bottom. A drum set crowded in the back was being played by an Asian guy with a really ugly hat.
A curly-headed, friendly-faced guy with latte-colored skin approached them. "Jack! Dave! Race! Who's your friend?"
"Heya, Mush," Tony said. "This is my new roommate, Sean."
Mush stuck out his hand. "Hey, I'm Mush. Welcome to USU."
Sean raised an eyebrow disdainfully, and didn't take Mush's hand. "Mush?"
Mush dropped his hand slowly, looking confused, but answered, "Yeah, it's a nickname. We're kind of big on that – most of our friends have nicknames. Art people, you know?"
Sean snorted.
Mush looked at Tony in confusion, but Tony just shrugged. "Well, okay, anyway, so the keg's in the bathtub, and obviously Blink and Swifty and Gabby and Del have the dancing going already. Just have a good time, and let me know if you need anything." He wandered off towards the band.
"Well, I'm getting a drink. Or five or ten," said Jack, heading for what Sean assumed was the bathroom.
David sighed. "I better go watch him and make sure he doesn't drink himself sick. Again." He trailed after Jack.
Tony stood silently next Sean. "You don't gotta baby-sit me," Sean said again.
Tony shrugged. "Whatever. Come on, I'll introduce you to some of our friends."
"Oh joy."
Gritting his teeth, Tony said, "All right, then, just look and listen. It won't require any polite conversation that may strain you." He pointed to the band. "The one with the eyepatch is Kid Blink. Swifty's on the drums, Del is on bass, and Gabby's on violin. They're all music majors, but Blink's here on a baseball scholarship; he's gunning for a shot at the majors more that a band contract. Blink shares this apartment with Mush, the guy you just met. Mush is a theatre and dance double-major."
He turned and pointed at the guys sitting on the couch shoved under the windows. "Tall mopey-looking guy's Skittery, he's theatre too. Bumlets is next to him – another dance major. He's Gabby-from-the-band's brother. Tall guy with the glass is Specs, history. Really blonde guy straddling on Spec's lap and making out with him is Dutchy, film."
Now he turned towards the bathroom door, where Jack and David were coming out, a brown-haired girl wrapped around Jack. A tiny redheaded girl with tiny, fine braids and sparkly white streaks in her hair trailed in their wake. "The girl hanging all over Jack is Sarah, Dave's sister. They date on again, off again. The girl behind them is Teensy. I think they're both in visual arts of some sort, I don't know. Gabby, Del, Teensy, and Sarah have a suite together in Halverson, the girl's dorm hall."
He paused, looking around the crowded room. "Those are the main guys we hang out with. The other people here…" he shrugged.
"Whatever," Sean said.
"Fine," Tony said. He pointed toward the kitchen. "Food." He pointed toward the bathroom. "Booze. We'll find you when it's time to go home. And now I'm going to go play poker with some nice drunk people and win all their money." He strode off, and soon was gathering circle of players in the corner. Sean tried half-heartedly to remember their names. Tiny? Spiffy? Bum-something or other. And Comet, Cupid, Sneezy, and Doc.
He watched from his position leaning against the wall by the door as Jack and the chick who'd wrapped herself around him – David's sister? – started sucking face, then headed for what he assumed was a bedroom. David stared after them with a look of disgust on his face, then headed over to chat with the group on the couch. The little redheaded midget followed him and immediately started talking to the one with the glasses and the really blonde one, who'd stopped making out and were now cuddling.
He watched as Tony, a cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth, proceeded to clean out everyone he was playing with. Over on the other side of the room, the band took a break, and the violinist wandered over to where the poker game was going on. One of the players was her brother, Sean remembered. He could see the resemblance; they were both clean, earnest-looking Latinos with lots of thick, glossy black hair. Mush bounded over towards the eyepatch guy – Blink? – but immediately turned and headed in the other direction when Blink started fighting with the bassist, shouting at her with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth; he'd lit up as soon as the band had stopped.
Sean's fingers twitched. He could use one. He glanced around the room. A few other people were smoking, including Jack, who had just exited the bedroom with a satisfied grin on his face and a very rumpled looking girl in tow.
Mush moaned from across the room. "Oh, God, Jack. Tell me you didn't have sex on my bed again."
Jack shook his head, blew out a stream of smoke. "Nope. We had sex on Blink's bed this time."
"What?" Blink shouted at the same time David groaned, "Ew, Jack, that's my sister."
Sean lit a cigarette.
Around eleven, Race stood up, pulling his winnings toward him. It was a nice little pile of bills and coins, and Bumlets, Teensy, and Skittery groaned as he pocketed them and his cards. He felt bad for them momentarily, but… you shouldn't get involved in betting if you weren't sober or if you couldn't afford to lose.
"Not going to hang around and let us try to win any of that back, huh?" Teensy said.
He bit on the end of his cigar and grinned at her. "Nope." He looked around the room. The band had stopped playing an hour or two ago, and had been replaced by Mush's stereo and Blink's endless supply of CDs. Some of the crowd had thinned out; Sarah, Gabby, Swifty, and Del were nowhere to be seen, along with a good chunk of the people he hadn't really known. Race had looked up from his cards at some point in the last hour and seen Dutchy dragging Specs towards the door – not that Specs looked at all unhappy to go – with an unmistakable look of lust on his face and his shirt already half off. Their apartment was just down the hall, and it was a good thing, too; neither looked like he was willing to wait too long.
Blink and Mush were sitting side-by-side on the couch, leaning against each other companionably and talking in low voices. Sean was still slouched against the wall where he'd been since they'd got there. As far as Race knew, he'd neither eaten nor drunk anything, but he'd sucked down about half a pack of cigarettes. Jack and David – where were Jack and David? Race looked around. Well, it was a three-room apartment – four if you counted the bathroom – there weren't that many places they could be. Sure enough, when he poked his head in the bathroom, there they were. David was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, holding Jack's messy hair back out of his face as Jack retched into the toilet. David's eyes met Race's above Jack's heaving back, and he just shook his head, looking both irritated and resigned. There was no trace of either emotion in his voice when spoke softly to Jack, though.
"How're you doing, Jack?"
Jack moaned.
"Do you think you can handle the ride home?"
Jack mumbled something unintelligible into the toilet bowl. David stood. "All right, I'm going to get you some water, and then we're going to try to make it home, okay?"
Jack nodded weakly. David grabbed a plastic cup from the stack next to the keg and filled it at the bathroom tap, then handed it to Jack, crouching down and steadying Jack's hand as he drank.
"All right?" he asked, watching Jack's face.
"Yeah." They stood, Jack a little shakily, and started out of the bathroom, David's hand under Jack's elbow the whole way.
Race shook his head in amazement as he followed the pair out into the living room. This happened at most of the parties they went to: Jack got trashed, David didn't drink. And it wasn't that he kept it to one or two casual drinks, like Race tended to – he stayed absolutely stone-cold sober. Race had never seen him touch a drop of alcohol.
Jack, on the other hand, loved his booze. He went through alcohol with the same careless abandon he used with cigarettes and sex.
David clearly didn't approve of Jack's casual attitudes towards alcohol. Race knew that he also hated smoking, and couldn't imagine that he approved of Jack's fast and loose ways with women, particularly since one of Jack's most frequent partners was his sister. And yet, Jack was his best friend. David came to every party with him, appeared to mingle with their friends and have a good time, and was always there to take care of Jack if he got sick or so drunk he couldn't find his way home.
Race waved good-bye to Blink and Mush, then jerked his head at Sean. "C'mon. We're leaving. That is, if you think the wall can manage to stay up on its own without you to hold it up."
Sean raised an eyebrow, his opinion – "Oh, we all know I don't have to listen to you, but I'll do what you said just this once to humor you, little man" – as clearly expressed as if he had spoken it out loud, and fell into step behind them.
Sean trailed behind them without a word as Race helped David half-lead, half-carry Jack down the stairs. Race looped his arms under Jack's and held him as David pawed through his pockets for the keys in the parking lot, and then helped tuck him into the cab of the truck. David drove back to their dorm in silence. Once they'd parked, Race helped get the half-conscious Jack out of the truck, drag him up the stairs – damn the elevator again for not working – and dump him on the lower bunk in Jack and David's room.
"Thank God he's got the bottom bunk," Race said, panting a little. "We'd never get him up on the top."
David looked up and lifted and eyebrow ironically before going back to untying Jack's shoes. "And why do you think I made him take the bottom bunk?"
Race chuckled. "You're a smart guy, Dave. You need anything else?"
David tossed Jack's shoes in the general direction of the closet. "Nope, I know the drill. Thanks, Race."
"Yeah. Night, Dave." Race headed towards the door, where Sean was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. "You ready?"
"Nah, I want to stay and kiss Jack goodnight, too," Sean drawled.
Race just sighed. It was going to be a very long year. "Let's go."
David shut and locked the door behind Sean and Race and stretched until he heard his shoulders pop. Jack was not a lightweight guy, and he was still a little sore from all the hauling he'd done for Sarah that morning. He sighed and headed back towards the bed where his roommate was laid out, already sound asleep.
The first thing he did was turn Jack on his stomach so that if he started puking in his sleep he wouldn't drown in his own vomit. It disgusted him that he had to be the one to think of these details, that Jack wanted to get so completely wasted that he needed someone else to make sure he didn't pull a Jimi Hendrix overnight.
But his disgust didn't stop him from tucking a blanket around Jack gently, or from digging a bottle of water out of the minifridge and setting it on the edge of the desk next to Jack's alarm clock. He even dug around in Jack's toiletries – ignoring the obscene number of condoms – until he found the aspirin, and shook four out onto the desk next to the water. If past experience was anything to go on, Jack would have a mammoth hangover in the morning. Smiling a little, David pulled Jack's sunglasses out of his jacket pocket and stuck those on the desk beside the water and aspirin as well. Then, satisfied that his roommate was taken care of, he began to get himself ready for bed.
AN: This is the first chapter in what's going to end up being part one of a two- or three-piece series in the same universe. I'm pretty far along in the story, so look for quick updates. Also, I'm pretty excited about this fic, and if anyone else is excited too, I could use a beta or two, since my usual betas belong to a different fandom.… If not, I won't hold it against you. ;) Thanks for reading.
Hopefully soon to be crossposted at The Refuge, the coolest Newsies slash site out there.
- clio21000