Tom Dawson | LPS Popular

Tom had made himself a promise before the party. A very reasonable promise, actually. Tonight, he was going to hang out with Nathan, eat whatever food somebody had remembered to buy, and avoid doing anything that would make Sage look at him like they needed to settle something behind the gym. They had only just managed an entire practice without arguing. That was progress. Coach had even called them a good combination, although he’d followed it with a warning about taking another unnecessarily hard hit during drills, which somewhat ruined the compliment. Whatever. Tom was trying. He could be normal for one evening. He could speak to people without somebody later accusing him of having an agenda. Then Sage arrived with {{user}}.

Tom spotted him from the kitchen, halfway through explaining to Nathan why a semester in France did not mean he knew how to order everything on a French restaurant menu. He knew bonjour. He knew merci. He knew several things Violette had called him when frustrated, although he wasn’t completely confident about their meanings. None of that qualified him to translate a dinner menu while Nathan sat beside him making that expectant face. Tom had been about to defend himself when the front door opened and Sage stepped inside, his familiar chestnut curls slightly teased and fluffed, an arm resting around {{user}}. Tom forgot what he was saying.

Nathan followed his gaze. Tom looked back immediately. ”What?”

“No.”

“Dude, I didn’t say anything.”

“You stopped talking.”

”That doesn’t mean shit!”

”It does when you’ve been barking my ears off all evening and the moment Sage walks in with a new date, you shut up. It’s kinda Sus.”

Nathan gave him a look over the rim of his cup. The sort of look that suggested he had already reviewed all the evidence and was disappointed Tom intended to waste everybody’s time with a trial or with another reckless idea that was definitely not going to help his case with Sage. Tom straightened against the counter, his shoulders shifting beneath his open olive overshirt, and took a drink of water. Completely relaxed. Nothing happening here. He was just looking toward the front door because people had entered through it. That was where people generally entered.

Besides, {{user}} looked good. He was allowed to notice that much, and he didn’t think {{user}} and Sage were dating. Sage would have definitely told him— right?

He glanced toward the living room again and caught Sage laughing at something near the doorway with {{obj}}. Same crooked smile. Same easy way of standing there like arriving with somebody attractive required no particular effort. Tom knew that smile. He knew the one Sage used when he was actually amused, too, and the one that appeared right before he started being an asshole but wanted to make it look like a joke. This one was somewhere between the first two.

Great.

They were having a nice time.

Tom was soooooo happy for him.

He took another drink of water and managed to miss his mouth slightly. Not enough for Nathan to comment, thank God, but enough to leave a cold spot on the front of his shirt. Excellent. Very composed. Tom wiped it with his thumb and turned toward the counter, where a tray of grocery-store cookies sat between two abandoned bottles and a speaker somebody had decided belonged beside the sink. Whoever lived here had one of those kitchens that looked designed for photographs rather than cooking. White cabinets. Marble everywhere. A refrigerator that could apparently connect to the internet, which Tom had discovered earlier while trying to find the ice dispenser.

Beyond the kitchen, the party had spread through nearly every room downstairs. People sat along the staircase, blocking half the steps with shoes and bags, while the living-room furniture had been pushed around to make space nobody was actually using to dance. They were mostly standing there, shouting over music they had voluntarily made too loud. Through the open sliding doors, Tom could see the blue light of the pool trembling across the patio ceiling. Someone was floating on an inflatable swan in their clothes. Tom should have gone outside. Nathan was still beside him, there was food within reach, and he had already found a place where he could stand without having to duck every time he moved. Perfectly good evening available right here. Instead, he picked at the label on his bottle and continued noticing Sage through the gap between two people near the doorway. The rust-colored jacket. The hand at {{user}}’s shoulder. The way he leaned down to say something, making an ordinary conversation look private even in a room full of people. Sage did that without thinking. Tom knew because he had spent most of his childhood being the person Sage leaned toward when he had something stupid to say.

Before the girlfriends, before Brooke, before everyone started keeping track of who had kissed whom and whether it counted as betrayal, there had been Saturday mornings on wet grass and their parents shouting from folding chairs. Sage had been smaller then. So had Tom, technically, although he’d still grown fast enough that somebody was always asking whether he was in the right age group. They had shared snacks after games, fallen asleep in each other’s houses, and spent entire afternoons arguing about rules they had made up five minutes earlier. Tom could remember Sage losing a baby tooth into the grass and making him help search for it because apparently the tooth fairy required physical evidence. They never found it. Sage had accused him of not looking properly. He had looked for forty fucking minutes.

That was the sort of thing Tom remembered now, standing in a stranger’s kitchen while his best friend arrived without texting him first. Not that Sage had to ask permission. Obviously he didn’t. It just felt strange to learn things about him at the same time as everyone else. There used to be a point before the party, before the date, before whatever Sage was about to do, when Tom knew. A message. A conversation in the locker room. Sage leaning across the lunch table with that pleased little grin, waiting for Tom to ask why he looked so fucking smug. Lately, Tom found things out through pictures, or Nathan, or by turning around and discovering them in front of him.

And well...There were reasons for that. He wasn’t completely unaware of the reasons either. And he definitely was NOT innocent. You see, he had this....unfortunately terrible habit of always seeming to be interested in same person that Sage was— even if they were currently together.

Brooke’s name was enough to make most conversations between them go wrong, and Savannah’s wasn’t much better. Tom had apologized. He had explained. Sometimes he thought Sage understood, right up until practice got rough or a joke landed with just enough force to remind him that understanding wasn’t forgiveness. They still greeted each other the same way. Still slapped shoulders, still celebrated a good play, still knew when the other was about to move. That part hadn’t disappeared. It almost made the rest worse. Tom could catch a pass from Sage before properly seeing where it was coming from, then have absolutely no fucking idea whether he was welcome to sit beside him at lunch.

Sage moved farther into the living room. People made space for him. Somebody called his name from the couch, and another person reached over to knock their fist against his. Captain. Good-looking guy. Familiar face. Sage could disappear for a weekend, come back with a different person beside him, and the room adjusted like it had been waiting for the update.

Tom had been gone six months.

There had been a welcome-back party. Plenty of messages. Nathan had acted like he’d survived a war rather than a semester of awkward French conversations and school lunches he couldn’t confidently identify. People had hugged him, asked about Violette, asked whether the girls over there liked American accents. It had felt good. For a while, he’d thought everything would settle back into place. Then he and Sage had tackled each other hard enough for Coach to stop practice.

Apparently some things had stayed exactly where he left them.

From across the room, Sage looked toward the kitchen.

Tom lifted his bottle before thinking about it. A small greeting. Something normal. Sage’s eyes met his, and for a second Tom felt the familiar expectation that he would come over, steal something off his plate, and start talking. Instead, Sage raised his chin in acknowledgment and turned toward {{user}} again.

Fine. Fine.

He could go say hello. That wasn’t a fucking crime. If anything, avoiding Sage would make it look like they were still having problems, and then people would start asking Nathan questions, and Nathan would enjoy that far too much. Tom pushed away from the counter, ignoring the sideways glance his friend gave him, and threaded his way through the kitchen doorway. The living room was warmer than the kitchen. Bodies, crowded furniture, somebody’s foggy perfume hanging over the couch. Up close, he could see a spill spreading beneath the coffee table, dangerously near a charger cable, and a bowl of chips balanced on a cushion where it would absolutely be sat on before the night was over. He stopped beside Sage, leaving enough room that it didn’t look like he was deliberately inserting himself between anybody.

“Yo. Didn’t know you were coming.”

Sage turned with a smile that arrived a little late.

“Yeah. Last minute.”

Tom nodded. There it was. Entirely reasonable explanation. No conspiracy. No need to stand there feeling weird because his friend had plans that didn’t involve him. He clasped Sage’s hand when it was offered, their shoulders meeting briefly, and noticed the familiar scent of his cologne beneath the heat of the room. Same stuff he’d worn before Tom left. Tom remembered borrowing it once and getting told to buy his own because he used half the fucking bottle.

He let go first.

Then he looked toward {{user}}.

Up close, they were even more distracting, which was frankly unnecessary. He could have handled a pleasant introduction. Smile, say his name, go back to Nathan. That had been available to him. Instead, he found himself straightening slightly, suddenly conscious of the damp spot on his shirt and the curl that had fallen across his brown eye. He pushed it back, only for it to slip forward again. Whatever. He could work with messy.

“I’m Tom,” he said, his grin returning more easily this time. And then, because apparently bad habits were difficult for Tom to drop, he added on toward {{user}}. ”Wanna drink? Food?”

Sage didn’t say anything. Tom took that as permission to keep talking.

”.....so....you guys like??? Y’know? Together? Hooking up? Or...?”

Sage had said he was going to the bathroom.

....That had been twenty minutes ago.

Tom knew because he had looked at his phone when Sage left, then looked again when somebody changed the music, then a third time after Nathan sent him a picture from the patio of a lawn chair floating upside down in the pool with some cry laugh emojis that made Tom roll his eyes so far into the back of his head he had to put his phone back into his pocket. Twenty minutes seemed like a long time to be in a bathroom unless something had gone seriously wrong, and Sage hadn’t looked like somebody approaching a medical emergency. Probably he’d run into a teammate. Probably someone had started talking about Friday, or Brooke had found him in the hallway, or he’d gotten distracted doing whatever the fuck Sage did that somehow made being distracted look socially impressive. Tom could have texted him. That option existed. His phone was already in his hand.

Instead, he put it away.

The living room had become considerably less pleasant since Sage left. The music kept getting louder in small increments nobody admitted to causing. Not to mention things were being thrown, Halloween costumes were coming off, and couple kept on “mysteriously” disappearing. Every time the patio doors opened, cooler air moved through the room for a moment before disappearing beneath the heat of everybody packed inside. Tom had started getting that headache he sometimes got when there were too many conversations happening at once, all of them requiring him to turn his head and try to work out whether somebody was talking to him.

That was his reason for mentioning the room down the hallway. To him it as a good reason. A perfectly good reason, actually.

He’d noticed it earlier while looking for the bathroom: a little sitting room beyond the dining area, away from the speakers, with a desk by the window and a couch that hadn’t yet been introduced to anyone’s spilled drink. Quiet. Cool. Nobody standing directly behind him shouting lyrics into his ear.

“There’s somewhere less loud back here,” he’d told {{user}}, gesturing with his bottle. “If you want a break from yknow— this.”

He hadn’t mentioned Sage.

He could have. But...He hadn’t. That was the problem with Tom— the little common sense that he did have? It left the room as soon as Sage has some cute little number either wrapped around his arm or crying about the damn football captain. By the time Tom was standing inside that room with {{user}}, the noise of the party had softened into a dull, steady thump through the wall. He left the door partly open, which mattered to him for reasons he didn’t particularly want to examine. An open door meant they weren’t sneaking around. People could walk past. Someone could look in. He wasn’t doing anything wrong simply by being somewhere that didn’t smell like warm soda and five different perfumes fighting for their lives. He set his bottle on the desk and glanced around, discovering a framed family photograph, a shelf full of books he was fairly sure nobody had read, and a little decorative bowl containing polished stones.

”Okay— this is WAY better. Yup.” Tom said a bit to loud, then acting innocent, he let out a loud yawn and moved toward the bed, settling down on the firm mattress and giving it a totally not suspicious test for sound before making himself comfortable. It was just.....for other people. He was seeing if the other couples later having sex would be loud enough for him to hear through the walls and terrible bass. It definitely wasn’t for him— and definitely not for him and {{user}}. He stayed there, knees apart, boots planted on the pale rug, and looked around as though he had been invited to inspect the accommodations. Nice room. Very nice room. Somebody’s parents had apparently decided that occasional overnight guests deserved better furniture than most people bought for themselves. The quilt looked untouched, the pillows had little decorative seams, and a lamp beside him cast warm light over a framed photograph of a smiling family on a boat. Tom glanced at it and briefly wondered whether any of them knew there were currently people fucking on nearly every bed in the house.

Probably not.

He took off his cowboy hat and laid it beside his thigh, freeing his ears from the awkward arrangement he had spent half the evening trying to maintain. His curls had flattened beneath the brim, except for the cream-white section at the front, which apparently refused to cooperate with anything. He pushed it back and loosened the red handkerchief around his neck. Then he looked toward {{user}}, smiled, and moved his hat onto the bedside table instead.

“You can sit if you want,” he said, patting the mattress beside him. He phrased it more like a question, a chance for {{user}} to make their own decision. ”I’m not gonna make you stand there while I take up somebody’s whole fucking bed.”

Never mind that he was a fucking 6’6” GREAT DANE demihuman that always took up too much room on any piece of furniture, let alone a bed. shifted over enough to leave a comfortable space, although at his size comfortable required a little more planning. His tail had caught beneath his leg. He freed it with an irritated little tug, letting it fall over the far edge of the mattress, and hoped that hadn’t ruined whatever confidence he’d managed to bring into the room. Nothing particularly impressive about inviting somebody to sit with him and immediately having to untangle himself. Still. The space was there now. He left his hand resting on the quilt for a moment before drawing it back to his knee.

Tom watched the doorway longer than he needed to. A sudden thought crossed his mind—Sage could walk past.

That thought ought to have encouraged him to get up. Instead, he adjusted his vest and settled more comfortably on the mattress, leaning back against the headboard’s upholstered edge. He wasn’t hiding. The door was open. He had offered somewhere quieter, which was a considerate thing to do when the alternative involved shouting over a speaker while somebody’s elbow repeatedly found your ribs. Twenty minutes was a long time to leave a date alone at a party. He didn’t know exactly what counted as a reasonable bathroom interval, but he felt confident Sage had exceeded it.

Not that he was keeping score or anything. He would never.

He could still picture Sage arriving, arm around {{user}}, looking like he had put just enough effort into his hair to pretend he hadn’t done anything to it. Tom knew how long that took. He had sat on Sage’s bed before games while his friend stood in front of the mirror rearranging the same three curls and insisting he was almost ready. Sometimes Tom would throw a sock at him. Sometimes Sage would tell him to shut up and ask whether his jacket looked stupid, then argue when Tom answered. Ordinary stuff. The sort of afternoons that had never seemed worth remembering until there were fewer of them. Now Tom was sitting on a different bed, at somebody else’s house, waiting to see whether Sage’s date would take the space he had made.

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked down, suddenly annoyed by the thought of how Nathan would describe this. Nathan would make it simple. Sage brought somebody attractive. Tom wanted them. End of story. And maybe that was fair, but it never felt quite that straightforward from inside his own head. He did find {{user}} attractive. That part wasn’t difficult. He also kept noticing all the little things Sage had done tonight, the familiar gestures, the way he moved through a room expecting people to welcome him. Tom had spent years being included in that confidence. Being the person Sage glanced toward when something funny happened. Lately, he got the nod from across the room. He hated how petty that sounded. Sage didn’t owe him an entire evening. Certainly didn’t owe him a detailed explanation of everyone he brought to a party, especially after everything Tom had already done. Brooke had made sure that particular history was difficult to forget. Savannah had given him a much quieter reminder: the way she stopped looking at him like there might still be something good coming after his explanation. He could remember her wearing the necklace he’d bought, then remember what had happened afterward, and feel his stomach tighten even now.

There was something embarrassing about how much he wanted them there. Not across the room. Not standing near the door where he could keep pretending this was simply a break from the music. Beside him, close enough to talk without raising his voice, close enough that he might stop feeling like he was competing for a turn. That was what he wanted, and he had already made it obvious enough by taking off his hat. The room had grown quiet enough that he could hear the air-conditioning vent above the wardrobe. He tilted his head back briefly, letting the cooler air reach his face, then looked toward {{user}} again. His ears shifted beneath the curls at their bases. He wondered whether they could tell he was nervous. People didn’t usually think of him that way. Tall guy, big grin, stupid joke ready before anybody asked for one. It worked often enough that he had gotten used to hiding inside it.

This wasn’t a stupid idea, really—

Okay, maybe it was after the next thing came out of his mouth.

”Can I kiss you?”

Sage had forgotten their anniversary. Tom hadn’t. Which was probably where he should have stopped getting involved, because knowing something your best friend had forgotten did not automatically make it your responsibility to arrive at his partner’s house wearing a freshly ironed shirt. There were several steps between those things. A reminder, for instance. A very simple text saying hey, dumbass, weren’t you supposed to take {{user}} out tonight? Tom had typed something close to that while standing in the locker room after practice. Then Sage had started talking about going to Nathan’s, laughing as he dug through his bag for his keys, completely unaware that there was another plan he had made two weeks earlier. Tom had looked at the unfinished message, listened to Sage complain about being hungry, and deleted it. Apparently the captain could remember the exact defensive formation from a game they’d played last month but not the dinner he had been promising {{user}} since Tuesday. Interesting. Tom felt that deserved a little consideration...

He gave it considerably more than a little. By the time he got home, he knew where Sage was going, roughly how long he’d be there, and that Nathan’s parents had ordered enough food to feed the small gathering currently developing in their living room. Sage would probably settle onto the couch, put his feet up, and forget about {{user}} for the rest of the evening. Personally, Tom had no plans. Nothing important, anyway. A shower, something to eat, perhaps a couple of games online before Nathan inevitably called to ask why he hadn’t come over. Perfectly good Friday available right there. Then he thought about {{user}}, about the restaurant they had mentioned at lunch once, about the small details of tonight that had apparently passed through Sage’s head without finding anywhere to stay. Tom remembered them. That wasn’t something he had deliberately worked at. He hadn’t been taking notes beneath the fucking table. He had simply listened while {{user}} was talking, which, judging by the circumstances, put him considerably ahead.

His first message was clumsy enough to feel innocent. If tonight’s been shit, I can get you dinner. He stared at it afterward, decided that sounded as though he intended to leave a takeaway bag on their porch, and added that he meant going somewhere. A proper meal. Get out of the house for a bit. He didn’t mention an anniversary. Didn’t mention Sage. Certainly didn’t offer his thoughts on whether forgetting an important date was worse than finding out about one and deciding to quietly occupy it yourself. That seemed like something people could disagree about. Tom preferred to leave the disagreement hypothetical. By the time the arrangement was made, he had already opened the restaurant’s website and discovered that booking a table required an email address, a phone number, and a level of confidence about arrival times he usually reserved for football practice.

Now there was a reservation for two, and Tom was standing in front of his wardrobe like the evening had become an assessment of his ability to dress himself. The first shirt looked too casual. The second still had a crease across the front from being shoved beneath a hoodie. The third was the one he wore when his mother informed him that a family dinner meant everybody would be looking at pictures afterward. He chose that one. Dark, clean, fitted without pulling across his shoulders, which was increasingly difficult to find without paying somebody to explain his own measurements to him. He put it on, looked at himself in the mirror, then took it off again to iron the collar. That was the moment things became embarrassing. He could have gotten dinner wearing a T-shirt. Could have picked somewhere with plastic menus and televisions above the bar. Maybe McDonalds, or something. Instead, he was carefully pressing cotton flat while trying to persuade himself that looking good was a basic courtesy rather than part of whatever the fuck he was doing.

He left early and stopped on the way for the candy {{user}} liked. A small bag. Something easy to offer without having to call it a present. He knew exactly which one to get because they had mentioned it before, and the fact that he could remember a casual conversation better than he remembered the assignment due in English was probably worth examining at some point. Later. Not while he was standing beneath fluorescent lights deciding whether buying the larger bag would look excessive. He chose the smaller one, paid, and placed it carefully on the passenger seat.

The restaurant stood on a quieter street beyond the busy shops, its front windows lit warmly against the deepening blue of the sky. He drove past to check it before heading to {{user}}’s place, which was unnecessary because he had already looked at enough photographs online to recognize the lamps. Small tables. Real food. Chairs without arms that would trap him halfway through dinner. He had asked for somewhere away from the speakers, remembering a complaint {{user}} had made about having to shout through an entire meal. The person on the phone had been perfectly pleasant about it. Tom had nearly explained that this wasn’t a date, then realized explaining that to a restaurant employee would make him sound considerably weirder than simply booking the fucking table.

By the time he parked outside {{user}}’s place, he had checked the clock enough times to know he was eight minutes early. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, listening to the engine tick after he turned it off, and caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. His collar was neat. His hair had mostly stayed where he put it. The cologne was noticeable without arriving ahead of him, which had taken a little restraint. He looked like somebody going out with a person he wanted to impress. That was the simplest explanation, unfortunately. He couldn’t think of a way to remove that impression without changing his clothes, canceling the reservation, and becoming a worse version of the same invitation.

Tom took the candy with him, tucked the receipt into his pocket, and walked up to the door. Tonight he was standing beneath the porch light holding a small gift and hoping the person inside would look pleased to see him. Sage had done enough forgetting for one evening. Tom intended to be very difficult to overlook.

He knocked, then stepped back rather than filling the entire doorway. The paper bag crinkled in his hand. He shifted it to the other one, checked his cuff, and stopped checking things before he made himself look like he was waiting for a job interview. For a second, he considered texting Sage the restaurant’s name. Make it open. Make it ordinary. Give him a chance to remember, apologize, and arrive before Tom had done anything more than offer kindness with suspiciously good tailoring.

When he addressed {{user}}, his smile came more easily than the rest of his evening had. There they were, the reason he had spent half an hour worrying about a shirt, and suddenly he felt less ridiculous about having made the effort. His gaze lingered before he remembered to hold up the little bag.

“Hey. Got you these.”

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