Chapter Text
They didn't even speak that first day. There was no reason. At the time it barely registered in Jeremy's mind that Waylon was the reason he kept glancing over to that corner of the campus library. Barely, but just enough.
That attractive young man seeming so young for college really, cocooned in the corner with stacks of books. Something to look at besides shelves. A distraction from the tedium of his own studies. That day he noticed Waylon chewed on pen caps when he was thinking.
The second day came a week later. Same library. Nearing winter break, he remembers because it was snowing and everything seemed so cold and gray. Sluggish. He'd read the same paragraph of whatever textbook he'd been working from five times before he packed everything up to leave. It just wasn't happening that day.
When he rounded a bookshelf his feet caught something and he toppled over, landing rough against the carpet. When he sat up he felt the ground shifting, making groaning noises, and he realized he'd tripped over someone. At first he felt angry, what idiot takes up the floor when there are innumerable chairs and tables around? But they apologized first, voice unusually quiet and small.
That was the first time he heard Waylon speak. Nobody else came through that section and he was having trouble finding the information he was looking for, so he decided to browse there instead of carrying so many books back and forth, he explained.
“Sorry, are you okay?” He smiled then and Jeremy felt like he would covet it for years.
A warm wash that he swore bathed the gray world in gold. That second day he learned Waylon was warmth - radiant and magnetic – unavoidable no matter how hard he would try.
The third day it ceased to be coincidence. It was after winter break and the snow was nearly a foot deep. Most classes were canceled due to weather, but the library was open. So it meant there was a chance Waylon could be there.
Jeremy didn't even know his name at the time. But he thought about him. All break he thought about him. How he wanted to get to know him. Because if he did chances were he'd discover the faults, the inadequacies, like always, and the warm little spark of interest he had would fizzle out.
It didn't.
Because when he found Waylon that day he wasn't studying. Wasn't sprawled on the floor making a hazard of himself. Wasn't smiling.
Instead staring out the window and curled in a worn chair, eyes red and features tired, sad. Cheeks glistening and pink only for the moment, until he noticed Jeremy there and wiped them with the sleeve of his sweater.
There was pain there, deep and dark and it should have made him turn away. He hated dealing with people's baggage. It was the perfect imperfection, the red flag, the excuse he needed.
He sat down, asked if Waylon was okay, and waited minute after minute until he opened up. Let Jeremy hear all the things that should have annoyed him but didn't. And in the end he asked Waylon for his name and Waylon laughed and told him and it was so, so worth it somehow.
On that third day Jeremy realized he liked making Waylon laugh and smile. Wanted to be the reason. The catalyst. The center of his small, warm little world.
The fourth day came right after the third in a furious blizzard that froze the entire University. Even the library, that fortress. So there was no reason to see him at all. Jeremy rented a house off-campus (or, rather, his parents did) and he had no idea where Waylon stayed. Judging from the way he talked about his past chances were it was a dorm.
He wasn't pining. Interested sure but not so obsessed. Not yet. Not as much as he could be. Would be.
The wind and snow died down by noon and he decided to go out, brave the drifts, to get something to eat at the convenience store on the corner. He'd never been to it before, preferring the more prestigious, expensive organic grocery store a few blocks down. But he certainly wasn't walking that far in the snow. Desperate times and all that.
Waylon looked like someone was aiming a speeding truck at him when Jeremy walked in. Dressed in a gaudy uniform and mid-way between ringing up some woman and her kids. Jeremy was surprised too, but he waved and smiled and watched as Waylon fumbled with the customer's change. Watched a flush of pink burst across his cheeks and the tips of his ears.
Embarrassed by his job. Embarrassed Jeremy saw. Knowing somehow Jeremy wasn't having to make ends meet in college. It should have been pathetic, a turn off, but Waylon managed so precisely to seem so adorable, so forgivable.
So in want for all the mercies Jeremy didn't think he had.
The fourth day, somewhere between picking out frozen pizza and asking Waylon for his phone number, Jeremy discovered his time with Way would no longer be measured in days but in smiles and gestures, gasps and whispers, sighs and screams.