Why aren't we together yet? {Scott}

[GIDEON GLASS]

Things were not going well for Gideon Glass.

It had been about a week since his second encounter with Scott Parker -- one that had gone significantly better than the first -- and he still had no idea what he was supposed to think about the whole thing. Scott had kissed him. Just outright done it, in the middle of a conversation. And Gideon knew that he should have been offended, that he should have been upset, but he wasn't.

He'd liked it. And it scared him.

After That Boy in high school who had gleefully seduced him and run off with his trust, Gideon had avoided romantic relationships of any sort, particularly with the same sex. It had become clear to him at that point in his life that following his heart would cause him nothing but trouble and pain, and he had therefore done his best to silence the cries of his emotions over the years. After all, he had college to get through, and then graduate school. There were expectations, standards to which he held himself. There were things he had to do. He didn't have time for...romance.

Or, he'd thought so.

Regardless, he had thought that perhaps he could have something good, something healthy with Scott, even if he had only thought so for a moment, and then...

And then he'd left.

Should have expected that one.

After all, what was there about him to like? He was quiet and serious and unwelcoming. He didn't go to parties and he had only a small group of friends that seemed to be comprised largely of females. There was nothing to be gained by becoming involved with him, not financially or socially or even emotionally. He was like a rock, and everyone knew it. That was why he would never be happy.

He'd found that after Scott's departure, he had been constantly preoccupied with the other young man. It was distracting him, keeping him from his studies. He spent hours at the piano trying to play the feelings out of him, but they stayed, like a residue in his brain that he couldn't scrub out. It was frightening to him, the thought that he could actually be attracted to someone so powerfully after two encounters. Frightening and painful.

He sat in the dining hall with a plate of cold eggs pushed off to the side in front of him and The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking in his hand. He'd barely been eating lately -- thankfully, Cleo hadn't noticed yet. If she did, he knew he'd be in all sorts of trouble, what with her worrying and fretting over him. She'd already seen him in the midst of one of his anxiety attacks. He was sure that she was convinced of his mental fragility, which, as much as he denied it, he had.

Molding his soft pink lips around the end of his pen, he attempted to engulf himself in Hawking's writing, making notes whenever necessary, and neglecting his food, as usual.

OOC: Outfit

[SCOTT PARKER]

Scott Parker was an amorphous blob of self-pity and pathetic laziness, driven only by the basic animal needs for food and self-preservation.

Today was not a good day.

Just a week after the whirlwind almost-romance between Scott and Gideon, Scott was not taking his failure to commit well. He knew that everyone was supposed to have these kinds of moments, near hits and misses with love. He knew that the responsible, adult thing to do would be to just move on and forget that it had ever happened and let go of the awkward embarassment that was building up inside of him.

Scott was not that mature.

It had been positively driving him crazy. He should have just stuck around! He should have stayed with the beautiful Gideon Glass, the boy whose name itself was like some poetic character from an English play. The boy who played guitar so beautifully and poured so much emotion into his singing. The boy who had been so gentle, so fragile, so wistfully unattainable.

These were the thoughts that Scott had at almost all hours of the day. Here it was in the early morning, before Scott had even had his morning coffee, and he was already pining away, wishing for what almost was. It was a constant drone in the back of his head, berating himself for whimping out, for running away.

It didn't help that the past week had already been so surreal. In addition to Scott coming out to Cleo, he'd had her come out to him in return. Well, it wasn't necessarily coming out of the closet. It was more coming out of the... fishbowl? Whatever. Long story short, his friend was secretly a fish. Awesome.

Shuffling slobbishly across the dining hall floor, Scott honestly just wanted food as fast as he could possibly get it inside himself. He was ovetired, overstressed and overly lovesick. The one side effect of going without sleep for a week, constantly kept up by the thoughts of what he could have done differently in that room that night and what he could possibly do now that he had a best friend thinking she was some form of aquatic lifeform, was that Scott kept building Gideon up on this pedestal. This ultimate vision of beauty and unattainable perfection. It was the ultimate sin that Scott had turned him down. He was smart. He was caring. He was gorgeous. It had been the biggest mistake of Scott's life to walk out on him.

Grunting stupidly with a bagel stuffed in his mouth, Scott filled his thermos, ready to turn around and shuffle back to his room away from the rest of society. He was ready to curl up under a rock and just stay there for the rest of eternity. It was then that he saw him. Gideon was sitting right there with his book, out in the open, dressed like some kind of goddamn male model. It was the ultimate disparity between the two. Scott couldn't help but think of the uncanny symbolism inherent in the fact that Gideon was there in his suit like attire, basking in the morning light, while Scott was scrounging around in a pair of gross sweatpants he'd slept in and a stained sweatshirt. Oh, the humanity.

Scott would play it cool. He would walk right by. He would just pretend like it was business as usual. He would be the epitome of unfazed manliness. He proceeded to try and walk past, towards the stairs that would lead back to his dorm. It seemed like everything was fine until his slipper caught on something or somehow his foot decided to stop working. Either way, one minute Scott was walking right by, cool as a cucumber, and the next he was flying through the air, coffee splashing everywhere and his body tangling itself into a series of knots he hadn't known were possible for non-contortionists. Scott could only utter a short yelp with bagel still clenched firmly in mouth.

Lying there, right at Gideon's feet, bedecked in his utterly hideous sleep clothes and slightly drenched in coffee, Scott could only assume the deer in the headlights look.

He was fucked.

outfit;;here

[GIDEON GLASS]

Gideon had been so determined not to think about Scott. No Scott here, no, not in Gideon's head, definitely no Scott. Just Stephen Hawking. Gideon and the world's most famous physicist. That was it.

He forced himself to focus. Books. Books. Studying. He was studying. Yes. Good.

Slowly, very slowly, he felt himself sinking back into that easy peace he felt when he was fully focused on his work, that sort of undisturbed trance of focus and fortitude and persistence that had always worked so well for him. Gideon's work ethic, after all, was unrivaled, and one of the reasons it was so was because he had trained himself in this way -- trained himself to shut out the rest of the world and devote his mental energy fully upon one task.

In this case, it was a book.

He didn't usually need to use it for books. He didn't usually need to get so invested in a book -- well, one that he was reading for his own enjoyment, anyway. But today, he found that he needed this method. He was...messy. His mind felt messy. It was usually all so organized in his head, everything in its proper place, neat filing cabinets he could sort through at will. But since the encounter with Scott, it felt like Scott himself had personally walked into Gideon's mind office and fucked up everything, pulling open the drawers, throwing around the folders, scattering things. Messy, messy, he hated it.

He needed to focus.

And he was just about there, just about in that zone of peace and quiet and unwavering alignment with himself when a loud crash and thump sounded directly behind him.

Gideon started so suddenly it practically hurt, jumping at least two inches in the air and letting out an alarmed yelp, like a dog whose tail had been stepped on. He twisted around immediately, book falling out of his hands and hitting the table, pen tumbling from his fingers and hitting the floor. As he bent over the side of his chair to get the pen, he glanced to the side and froze, hand frozen mid-reach.

Scott.

Oh, God.

Immediately, Gideon grabbed the pen and sat up straight as a board, his pale cheeks turning a vivid pink. He looked away, clearing his throat, closing his book properly and composing himself in silence before turning back to Scott, getting to his feet to help him up.

"Are you alright?" he asked quietly, trying to keep his voice level and unassuming as usual despite the storm of emotions behind his eyes at the mere sight of Scott. It didn't matter that he was in sweats and slippers and covered in coffee. He was still Scott...

"Are you hurt?" he added nervously. That coffee had looked hot.

[SCOTT PARKER]

Welp. It was official. Scott was officially fucked. There was no way he'd be able to get out of this one. Ya might as well stick a fork in him. He was done.

Honestly, did this even happen to other people? Somehow Scott doubted it. He didn't think there was anyone else in the whole wide world with just as much bad fucking luck as this. How could he have POSSIBLY tripped? How did that even happen? It was a nightmare come true! Jesus, now he looked stupid and he was scalded by coffee and he was drenched and curled up in a ball at the feet of the boy who he'd run away from that night. It was like the universe had personally decided to kick him down to make up for him being a serial killer or something in a past life. That was just how karma worked.

Looking up at the gorgeous, perfect, tortuously beautiful face of Gideon. Immediately, Scott fell into a kind of shocked silence, caught like a deer in the headlights.

"Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

Shit. Shit what did he say? Scott wished with all his heart that he was somewhere far far away. If there was a god, hell, if there was ANY sort of wish-granting deity he hoped it would have the courtesy to whisk him away.

Failing that shot in the dark, Scott mumbled something rather incomprehensible, momentarily confused as to why his words were coming out all jumbled before realizing he still had a bagel shoved between his teeth. Quickly tearing the damn thing out, Scott smiled apologetically, his best sheepish smile for the most awkward experience he'd ever had.

"Nah, I mean, I'm fine, like, totally," he blurted out hastily, trying to get his two cents in before running off to the safety of his dorm where he could just curl up in his bed with his now half empty cup of coffee and either cry himself back to sleep or merely sit there rocking back and forth worrying about how he would ever have himself a boyfriend if the only one that had ever seemed right, ever seemed like it could be an even PLAUSIBLE opportunity he had shot down faster than he cared to remember.

What the hell was wrong with him?

"I mean, uh, you know, just don't, like, mind me. I'm just, uh, passing by." The weak laugh he provided certainly didn't relieve any tension but then again, Scott didn't know what he thought it WOULD do.

"I didn't interrupt anything, uh, did I? I mean, like, I can just g if you're busy, I mean, yeah." Scott was getting ahead of himself. There he was, still sprawled on the floor like some kind of worm and he was already offering to hightail it out of there. He realized that it might make more sense in his argument that he was perfectly fine if he bothered to actually get up off the floor instead of talking up at Gideon's crotch region from his position on the ground. Knowing this, he hastily scrambled to his feet, drenched in coffee and holding a mangled bagel and an even more scraggly looking coffee cup.

[GIDEON GLASS]

This...this was bad. This was really, really bad, a bad and horrible and just generally nasty idea and he really just needed to get out of here because he just really didn't want to be here right now and if he could just maybe get back to his dorm or maybe the music room he could slam out a couple classical pieces and--

And the thoughts just kept going round and round in his head in that way. It was maddening. He didn't even realize, for a moment, that Scott had spoken.

Oh, God. He wanted to leave. Right now? Yes, of course right now, stupid, he was probably embarrassed...and anyway, he clearly didn't care very much about Gideon. What with the whole...walking out on him thing, he'd...well...it had to be as awkward for him as it was for Gideon at that moment.

But, he reminded himself, that was no reason to be impolite. Gideon was incredibly courteous just as a standard, even if he did tend to be serious. Even if Scott was curt or rude to him, Gideon would be perfectly polite in response, because that was the way he was raised. In addition, he didn't want Scott to know how much he'd really gotten to him.

What would he do, if he did?

Would he laugh?

He would probably laugh. Most people laughed. He had laughed when Gideon tried to explain to him how badly He'd hurt him. Gideon hadn't been fond of sharing his feelings with potential candidates for relationships after that.

Not that he'd actually...been in any relationships after that. Or even gotten close. But that was okay. He liked to be alone.

He liked to be alone. Definitely liked it.

Clearing his throat, he knelt down to help Scott back to his feet.

"Just passing through and spilling coffee all over the floor? I think not," he said, checking Scott to make sure he hadn't broken anything before sighing though his nose, pushing up his glasses with his index finger.

"You weren't interrupting anything. I was just reading. Are you sure you don't want any help? No burns or anything?" He looked politely concerned, but at the same time consciously removed, as if he was aware that it was possible Scott wanted nothing to do with him and was respecting that with the appropriate amount of space.