Fun
A The Missing Fanfiction
"How come you don't wear your sweatshirt anymore?" Gavin Danes asked, kicking a stray pebble into the gutter where it rolled and then landed with a hollow plop.
He and his closest friends – band of hoodlums as adults liked calling them, but who cared what they thought? – all wore matching sweatshirts with skulls emblazoned on the back, but lately Antonio never seemed to have his. He used to have a jacket sporting the same skull. That, too, had been pointedly absent. Today he wore a black turtleneck and khaki pants. He looked like a dweeb. A grownup dweeb.
Everything about him seemed older these days – not just the way he dressed, either.
It was everything – the way he walked, the nerdy way he parted his dark hair...
It wasn't that Antonio hadn't told Gavin about his going back in time, about everything which had happened to him – no, he'd said enough about that, insofar as he talked at all. What bothered Gavin was Antonio didn't mind. He didn't mind being changed. He didn't mind being two people now instead of one.
How he couldn't mind baffled Gavin, who did.
He didn't know all that much about Alexei Romanov, had deliberately kept himself from diving deeper than he had to there, because he didn't want to it matter. Because once being some Russian kid a hundred years ago mattered, it would go on mattering.
And then what was he meant to do?
He hated, hated, hated how having been Walks With Pride mattered to Antonio. He hated that it changed things between them just like it changed everything else. He just wanted them to keep getting in trouble together – like normal.
And, the way Antonio turned and looked at him (as if he were ever so much older than poor, silly Gavin who just didn't know any better – yet), he also wanted to punch him.
"Guess I don't want to wear that kind of stuff anymore."
"Why not?"
He sucked his teeth. "Gavin, don't you ever get tired of doing the same kind of crap all the time, every weekend?"
"No." He raked a tense hand through his dyed-purple hair. His tone was morose, sulky.
"I'll see you later, dude, okay?" Antonio tried to give him a half smile, a little sign of remaining friendship, but Gavin's blue-grey eyes were daggers in return.
"I guess so. But only if I'm not suddenly too tired from doing crap," he said icily after an awkward pause.
Sighing and giving him a resigned side-wave, Antonio left him. He knew better than to argue with Gavin when he got like this. It wasn't just his tough-guy phase. Gavin had a chip on his shoulder about people being mad at him, or weird with him. Probably it was his personal version of fear of abandonment, but – ironically – the only way you could deal with it, without him becoming vicious (and he could be extremely vicious), was to abandon him.
It was painfully counterproductive.
Gavin watched his – former – friend vanish round the corner, onto the next street. Good riddance to boring rubbish. There was still a whole afternoon ahead. Time enough left in the two hours he'd told his parents he'd be gone (not that they cared) to spy on Angela for a while. He'd show Antonio who wasted time doing 'crap'. Once he had an Elucidator, he'd go to the future with the code Gary gave him and have a wonderful time, especially once he didn't have to worry about hemophilia.
He'd thought of inviting Antonio along, to really show him, and to have a friend to play with once he deigned to forgive him, but he'd become so boring lately, he likely wouldn't enjoy it even if Gavin'd wanted him there anymore.
He didn't.
Nope. He'd pay Antonio back for being so stuck up by not inviting him at all. It would just be him and Daniella and those other kids.
And it would be fun.