He remembers having picnics by himself because Fabian is an asshole, and said playing pretend was for girls. So he’d eat pieces of invisible pie and drink invisible lemonade by himself until his mother felt bad for him, brought him out a ham sandwich and told him it was okay that he was a bit different, no one thought any less of him.

People are always lying to Gideon.

But he doesn’t mind so much.

It means he never feels like an idiot.

At least he has Fabian, sometimes. They like to call each other “limp dick mother fuckers” because at eleven, it is the funniest thing in the world. Up there with fart jokes and flicking boogers at each other. By the time they’re taking their OWLs fifth year, they’ve got a whole drawer in caretaker’s office dedicated to their misdoings. The incident during the Quidditch game where they sat under the stands trying to look up girls’ skirts, the time they kidnapped the mice from Transfiguration and set them free in the staff room; the time they managed to blow up a Cauldron in potions because “Professor, we explicitly recall the recipe saying that five Cherry Bombs were necessary to create a calming drought.” Neither of them manage to make Prefect, because both of them have their heads too far up their butt holes to realize that there are bigger things out there than sneaking dirty magazines into their dormitories and trying to convince girls that they’ve got nipples made out of gold.

The last thing Gideon will always say were Fabian’s words, just as the time they made prophylactic balloons to decorate their respective common rooms with during Valentine’s Day was Fabian’s ideas.

Gideon wasn’t a bad kid.

He was just misguided.

Like one of those dogs that goes around humping peoples’ legs at parties because it doesn’t know any better.

————————

“Okay?” she demands, hair hanging her eyes so she’s looking like a vagabond. She’s wearing jangly bone earrings that keep distracting him.

Gideon nods. “Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you say.”

And then she’s dragging him off and he doesn’t know whose bedroom this is, but it doesn’t bother him much because she’s kissing him and he knows this is probably the only time she’ll kiss him like this. They’re grappling over who’s going to be on top, with her batting at him whenever he tries to flip them over; until she relents because he’s found this sweet spot on her neck and he’s running his fingernails on her bare stomach. She’s mumbling to herself—he doesn’t try to listen. Too busy working the buttons on her skirt (why does she have so many buttons on her skirt?) and rolling her tights down her legs. When he wakes up in the morning, the pillow next to his is cold. There’s one of her jangly bone earrings on top of a folded note, thanking him for the night. She doesn’t sign her name, or leave the expected row of x’s and o’s. Just that piece of paper and the magenta lip print on his forehead.

He could really end up loving her, though.

————————

“I never said I wanted to live on a farm with her or have her bear my children or have her make sweet love to me on a kitchen counter or, you know. Anything.” He lays down his card, scrubbing at the growing blush on his face. Like it’ll magically go away if he tries hard enough to make it go away.

Fabian sighs. “You’ve gone on one date with her. Not even a date, really. Chinese take out and sitting in your apartment can’t be considered a date.”

“It’s hard to go on a proper date!”

“Yeah, your working two days a week must leave you with such little time to take her out like a lady.”

“Get off my dick about it, Fab.”

“I was only saying.” They glare at each other instead of talking through the rest of the game. Then Molly plops a baby each in their laps and tells them to make sure they don’t put anything weird in their mouths because she needs to take care of something and no, Gideon, she does not mean that she needs a fag or an afternoon wank, so please, don’t ask.

————————

“Fuck off and watch the movie.”

————————