Un-Believable

Well. This didn't happen like I planned. It was just supposed to be a conversation with his mother and perhaps an interaction with another student.

Someone mentioned something about Newlyn coming to terms with Tristan liking an American and it started a very, very bad thing, which you will see in chapters to come, no doubt.

The last chapter got a lot of hits... like, almost half of all the hits for the story. Amazing! I'm going to try to do that again, but it depends on how the next chapter goes what with Tristan, his co-workers and Newlyn. I'm liking Newlyn more as each day passes.

I tried writing Adaptation and Hellian today but I've taken ill and am exhausted due to odd hours so three paragraphs of Adaptation were written and Hellian didn't get off because I couldn't concentrate long enough to write a sentence for it.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




Jared showered and dressed while avoiding eye contact with everyone in the hallway and bathroom. He ignored the whispers he heard behind his back and tried not to think about how thin the walls of his room might be. The young biology student who lived on Tristan’s side of the dorm, on the side that they had been on, peeked out and blinked at Jared with a slack jawed awe that Jared countered with a glare of silencing doom.

He slipped into his room, straightened his shirt and settled in front of his desk. Pulling out the netbook, he opened it and flicked it on. Fingers tapping on the keys, uncertain if he was bored or annoyed or frustrated of simply afraid of the conversation that was about to take place.

Logging online, he popped open the messenger and signed in there. The camera came on a moment later and Jared began a video conference call with his mother.

Mother was blonde and blue eyed. She was slim and beautiful and looked younger than her forty-five years. Without the aid of plastic surgery. Father and mother did not get along well but they had a quiet respect for one another. They had married because his grandfathers had pressured them into it and because, having no other option besides being disowned and written out of wills, the pair went along with it.

“Jared, you look ruffled, whatever is the matter?” her fingers traced the small pearl necklace that was her only adornment. A necklace that Jared had saved up for and bought with money earned from summer jobs, “you’ve been avoiding my calls, you do not answer your father’s letter -you did get your father’s letter, did you not?- and your grades have slipped. This is very concerning, your being at the university is balanced precariously on your grades. And where is your roommate?”

One question at a time. “I’m fine, honest, nothing is wrong, nothing at all. I wasn’t avoiding your call, I just forgot, you know how I can be when I start writing something new. I… think I received father’s letter but I may have misplaced it, maybe Tristan knows where it is. My grades are not slipping, it’s just the one class and that’s because the teacher is against me because I won’t write something that I don’t want to write. And Tristan is at work, since father cancelled his scholarship.”

“I’ve been talking to him about that, he still refuses to relent. I hope that it hasn’t cause too much trouble there, for you, I mean. Your father,” she shrugged, “you know how he gets when it comes to money. If it’s between his mistress being… comfortable… and the furthering of any sort of future of young minds, the mistress wins. If my father were dead, I’d have his millions and do it myself. It’s the least I can do for the boy.”

“You didn’t tell him that we’re still…”

“No! Of course not, I would never tell him that you’ve… neglected to inform your roommate that he should be out on the street. If it weren’t for that fit that you threw, you’d have had another roommate already.”

“I won’t share the room with anyone, I didn’t even want to share with Tristan, damn it.”

“There, you did it again.”

“Did. What?” Jared squeaked out.

“You used his name again. That’s. Three times in less than five minutes, what is going on over there?”

“Nothing, nothing is going on, nothing at all!”

“Oh, oh my goodness, is he gay?”

“No!” Jared protested loudly, leaning forward and then sitting back, reminding himself that he was technically talking to a camera and not face to face with his mother, “of course not, whatever would make you think such a thing?”

Mother’s lips turned upward ever so slightly, “he is, you two are involved, aren’t you? Oh, that’s magnificent news, Jared. You’re spreading your wings and finally growing. This is a good thing, good for you. Good for him as well, if your father happens to drop by, you can always tell him that you and your roommate are involved.”

“Why would he be stopping by?”

“If you read the letter, Jared, you would know. He’s planning to set up an office in the city there. Heading his old lover as the vice president of the branch to get him out of the east because the new mistress is throwing a fit about that. The lover at least, I could agree with. He, at least, did not run us amok with his demands. Women.”

“You are a woman,” Jared reminded his mother even as she looked away and said something in Italian to one of the maids.

“Anyways, I came to warn you that he was going to be in the city. If you had taken or returned my call four days ago, then you would have had a good deal of warning. However, he’s in the city now and had mentioned stopping by the university.”

“But he doesn’t know where my room is,” Jared muttered.

“No, he just knows the name of that pub you frequent, the… uhm. What was it called?”

“The… Rusty… Cauldron?” Jared asked, feeling his throat close up as panic swelled through him, “no. Tristan works there, he’s working there now. When did his plane leave?”

“Four hours ago.”

“Ahhhhhhhh,” Jared said, hopping up and making for the door.

“Jared! Sweetie.”

“What? Mom, I have to stop Tristan from finding out that my father is a bigger ass than I am. I have a reputation to uphold as an arrogant jerk!”

“Take your netbook, darling, so you don’t look like you’re trying to stop Tristan from finding out that you have a heart of gold.”

“Moooother.” Jared sighed, closing the window and shutting down the computer. As he waited for the netbook to shut down, he pulled on a jacket and put his shoes on, retying the laces so that the shoes didn’t come undone halfway there as they tended to do.

Once the computer was off, he packed it into the carrying case along with the USB and shouldered it as he left the room. Down the hall, out of the building, Jared paused on the road and thought about which way would be faster. Across the grounds was more direct but it was the route that every student took. Around was longer but rarely used.

Jared bolted straight, sliding out of the way of this one or that one who didn’t move for him. He caught a startled face with his carrying case and muttered an apology as he ran off. Heart pounding in his chest, Jared rounded the corner and stomped down the concrete and stumbled to a stop in front of the Rusty Cauldron. He took the briefest moments to catch his breath before he straightened and marched into the pub as if nothing was wrong.

Tristan was behind the bar, an alcohol wipe packet caught between his teeth as he tended to a cut on one of the waitress’ hands. One hand holding the waitress’ wrist, saying something about how it wouldn’t hurt at all, Tristan tore the alcohol wipe open with the other and one handed removed the wet gauze. Tristan wiped the cut on the woman’s hand, all the while murmuring quietly to her in that deep timber of his.

Which just made Jared want to jump Tristan again.

That. Well, that thought made Jared recall what had happened that morning. He went bright red as Tristan glanced over his shoulder and gave his welcoming smile, though the smile faltered just slightly before it quirked open and showed teeth, reached the man’s eyes. Jared cleared his throat and settled in one of the empty tables. He pulled his netbook out of the case and set up as if he planned to write there. The entire time he pretended to write, he was keenly aware that Tristan watched him, and then, a few minutes later, the lanky young man who walked into the pub.

One of Tristan’s friends, Jared recognised the young man a moment before cold clawed through him and he realised that that had been the person he had caught with the carrying case. Jared stared, wide eyed, as the young man walked up to the bar and those eyes flickered. Dark blue and shaped just so, the jaw and nose were so like…

Tristan’s. Jared had spent long enough watching that face over him, touching it and feeling the shape of it. Only that morning, Jared had noticed the off-shape to Tristan’s eyes. A bit too round to be normal.

“Jared,” a deep voice growled.

Jared looked up at his father. He swallowed, shut off his computer and met his father’s eyes. Gray eyes and greying hair. Jared and his father got along, depending on his father’s current mistress or lover. And his current one was eighteen years old -though very likely younger than that- and acted very much her age. She was a selfish little bitch and thus Jared and his father did not get along well.

“What is this I hear about your roommate still living with you?”

“Jared!” the dark eyed young man stepped up to the table and Jared jumped.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Jared squeaked at the young man, assuming that he must be related to Tristan somehow, “your face just sort of appeared.”

The young man pressed his hands onto the table and Jared immediately removed his from the wooden surface instinctually. Jared’s father set a hand on the table and turned towards the young man, annoyed.

“Do you mind, I am trying to have a conversation with my son.”

“And I am trying to have a conversation with the man who is fucking my brother and taking up all of his god damned time. He’s supposed to be living with me and looking after me, his dying promise to my mother of all things and he breaks it so that he can sleep over at your son’s place and have wanton sex.”

“Every night?”

“Every night. Worst part is, neither of them will admit to anything so everyone thinks they’re roommates still and then what’s my argument? That two people living in the same room as roommates is a bad thing? Get him under control, he is tearing my family apart.” And the young man left just like that, back to the bar and to Tristan, who was frowning at them, hand in a glass, cleaning it as he asked the young man:

“What was that about?”

“Nothing,” the young man responded.

Jared shifted his eyes back to his father and glanced down at the hand pressed firmly onto the table. The older man pulled his hand from the wood as if it had stuck to something there, he grimaced and wiped the hand on the leg of his pants.

“You’ve got a boyfriend now?” his father demanded, annoyed.

“It’s. Why I’ve not been returning mother’s phone calls. I’ve been very busy, you aught to know what it’s like to fall into someone’s arms and that new feeling of love, the gracious enjoyment of sex after a long dry spell.” well, it was a half truth. Jared had been a virgin when he and Tristan had…

“Is there a problem here?” Tristan drew their attention as he slid up to the table effortlessly. Muscle and width gave Tristan the advantage over most of the students who patronized the bar and Jared’s father was no exception to the rule, “ah, Paul, nice to see you again. I hadn’t realised that you were in town, Jared didn’t say anything about you visiting us. If I had known you were coming, I would have cleaned the room better. The windows need washing and… the beds.”

The little pause was just enough to give Jared’s father a mental image that made his face go bright red. Bisexual or not, his father didn’t like thinking about Jared as being gay. Coming out had been fairly easy, he had known that his father was bisexual when he had done it, but getting his father to meet his eyes afterwards was more difficult.

“Two beds, why not have one?”

“It’s more practical with two,” Tristan said.

“You and mother have two beds,” Jared pointed out.

“I just stopped in to check on how you were doing, Jared,” his father responded coldly, “I need to get back now to head up a meeting at the ground breaking of the new building. Excuse me.”

Tristan and Jared were quiet as Jared’s father left. Then Tristan said, “Newlyn said that there was trouble brewing. What was going on?”

“He decided to drop in, apologise to Newlyn for me, I sort of hit him in the face with a bag,” Jared said as he tucked his computer away once more, “I have to go to the library and write there, it’s my schedule and all. He, Newlyn, is he your brother?”

“Yes,” Tristan muttered, pulling the dish towel over his shoulder, “Jared. Are we okay?”

“Of course we are! We’re perfectly fine,” Jared said quickly, then paused, realising that that could be misunderstood, “look, it’s complicated, that’s what it is and we should take it as it comes. You know, the way people say relationships work, play it by ear. I’ve never had anything serious and. And, well, truth be told that was the first time I had… you know…” his face heated so very much, “plus there’s the whole part where you believe in writer’s block. I’m not entirely certain I could date someone who thinks that they can be stopped from writing via something that doesn’t actually exist.”

Tristan’s lips quirked upward, “alright, I believe you, we’re alright.”

Jared nodded, “excuse me, I’ll see you back at the dorm later?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe. You could bring Newlyn by sometime and introduce me to him?”

“Uhm… sure?”

Jared nodded and left the Rusty Cauldron, glancing back only once. Through the window he saw Newlyn and those too dark eyes watching him walk away.

He just couldn’t shake the feeling of those too dark eyes boring into his soul.


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