Work Text:
"Well I'm glad to hear that your second semester at Howard is going great," Willow's laughs finally come to a halt "And that you thankfully didn't give your entire floor food poisoning from your mustard ravioli."
Gus' snicker trails off as he pushes his glasses up his nose, "hey, I thought my mustard ravioli recipe got better. Turns out I was horribly, horribly wrong."
Somehow, Gus misses Willow more than he already knew he would after he moved into the dorms. Gus loves Hunter, he is like the brother he always wanted, he loves all of his friends. But Willow has a soft spot in his heart as the first real friend he ever had. They try to make it seem like there isn't miles and miles of space in between them, contacting each other daily and screensharing on Kosmi when they both have the time.
The goodbye when she left for the airport while Gus remained in his dorm hit hard and he barely stopped himself from begging her to stay. To finish getting her degree at Howard, ready to argue that Willow would fit in perfectly despite being completely Korean-passing in terms of her appearance. Still one of her dads counted as black, that had to mean something to the student body even if they would have to awkwardly skirt around the fact she is biologically related to both of her dads. That there was magic involved in her creation. But he didn't, knowing her heart was in Gravesfield. The local university had a botany major over the more general biology major Howard offered, not to mention Gravesfield had Hunter.
"I miss you," Gus tells her, holding himself with one arm. "Tell Hunter I said hi, by the way. We definitely need to combine our creative genius once more for something specific to Cosmic Frontier. I miss my convention buddy." No one on his floor watches it but he is fine with that miraculously Gus thinks while Willow calls out to her boyfriend. That just means Cosmic Frontier is something he shares with his family. Besides, he has more than enough fun watching trash reality TV like Love is Blind with his floormates. How the show manages to get worse each season in terms of couples matchups, he has no idea. But if Gus is going to watch a relationship crash and burn, he much prefers it to be a relationship that isn't his own.
Case in pointー
"So." Oh Titan no. Willow's voice is teasing and Gus knows what question is coming. "How are things with Quincy?"
Gus groans internally, gritting his teeth as he grumbles, "We..." Gus embraces the inevitable fallout. "Broke up. A month ago."
"What?!" Willow squawks in complete and utter shock.
"He said it felt like I would rather be dating someone else," Gus wishes he could disappear as he divulges to his best friend the truth of a breakup that happened a month ago. "That I was dating him to get over someone else." Gus pictures Quincy, the boy he met in a Spanish I class Gus had no business taking after already learning from Camila. His hair was long, dreaded and usually pulled back in a bun and he smirked more often than he smiled. His confidence bordered arrogance but when Gus mentioned it, Quincy replied he spent the bulk of his life being insecure and he wasn't going to be in university. "Worst part?" Gus sees a crooked smile, light brown skin and dark brown eyes. "He was right."
He knows Willow knows who he is referring to without mentioning his name. "Augustus," Willow murmurs and he can tell she is disappointed. Or maybe she isn't and it is just his own self-loathing narrating his perceptions.
"Hey, Augustus!"
"I know, I know, I was really wrong for that. I shouldn't have dated Quincy if I wasn't actually ready to date." It goes beyond a code of romantic ethics, it's basic witch (human) decency. "I shouldn't have dated him when... when I was just seeing him as another version of someone else."
It's painful admitting that.
"It's just stupid," Gus grabs a handful of his hair in frustration. I'm stupid. "I should be over this. It's been years. Mattholomule and I didn't even go out, I shouldn't be this hung up over him!" Yet he was. Is. "I don't even know what his last name was, Willow." Yet somehow Mattholomule No Last Name Given is still living in Augustus Porter's head rent-free like the ghost of Krampus Night's past. The gratuitous hair flips, the snarky remarks, the afternoons they spent together fixing the Looking Glass Ruins. "I don't know his last name but I just keep..."
"I don't know what it is," Quincy fixed Gus with a stare. He was angry but he seemed more tired than anything else. "You're here but you're not here. Are you cheating on me?"
"No!" Gus snapped, aghast at the accusation.
"Then what is it!?" Quincy threw up his hands in exasperation, hurt and confusion all over his face. "Because you aren't kissing me when I kiss you, you're kissing someone else! When we're in bed together, you're not there with me you're with someone else! I swear half the time it just feels like you're using me to make someone else jealous or like you want to get over someone else. Is that it?!"'
When Gus' mouth clamped shut, Quincy laughed but his eyes shined with pain. "Wow."
Mattholomule was in everything Quincy did. It's like he is living in Gus' skin, imbedded deeply into a part of him that he thinks is broken.
How else can he explain the fact he was never able to gain more than 3-minutes crushes on his peers at Gravesfield High?
"I hated it sometimes," Gus murmurs when Willow says nothing, letting him speak freely. Moments circulate through his mind of the memories he's accumulated over the years. He remembers Luz awkwardly fumbling her praises to ask if she can borrow his library card in order to see Amity. Remembers stumbling on Hunter tearfully laughing while Willow hugged him closely to her chest and quietly leaving so their moment would remain uninterrupted. Titan, even Vee and Masha made things work after several tour guides and a part-time job later. Masha even eventually learning the truth of Vee's nature and the origins of the strange amount of teens living in the Noceda household. And somehow, all those relationships managed to work out despite the statistically rare odds of high school romances working out.
It manages to make him feel bitter and exasperated at himself at the same time.
"All of us hanging out together. It isn't anything you guys did anything wrong or made me feel left out, you guys have always been the best friends I've ever had. You even went out of your way to always make sure I wouldn't feel like a third wheel at school. But sometimes I just get so mad and think 'why does everyone get to be with their first crush but me?' Everyone's person came with them to the Human Realm. Everyone but mine's. But then I feel terrible for even thinking all of that because it's no one's fault that Mattholomule is back in the Boiling Isles and it's no one's fault that I don't even know if he's okay. And then I feel terrible for even thinking about that when I should be worrying about my dad and we don't know what Belos or the Collector didー"
"Breathe, Gus, breathe," Willow begins counting almost immediately and Gus hastily counts along, breathing deeply.
"Sorry," Gus says once he's able. "This is stupid."
"It isn't stupid," Willow tells him immediately.
"Willow, I'm hung up over a guy I had a crush on when I was 13." And I've been bitter about everyone else being cuffed like some hater in one of those k-dramas mad that the protagonist got the guy or girl. Emmiline snuggles against Gus' ankle, the one with the Flapjack tattoo, with a chirp. He gives her a loving nudge against her head in return. There are a lot more things for me to be upset about than an old crush that never went anywhere. "And I'm mad at you guys for stuff you can't help. Well, not 'mad'. I don't know how I feel." Quincy had said it bitterly but maybe Gus should listen to his advice to talk to one of the free counselors on campus. I don't wanna bother Camila and ask about therapists.
The woman did enough for him already. Gus didn't want to bother her with the fact he is in university and mourning a relationship that never happened.
Willow's voice pulls him out of his thoughts once more. "Did... did you love him?" She asks carefully and Gus feels his heart lurch at the question. Not in the way it lurched whenever Mattholomule would grin with a wink, proudly showcasing his improved construction magic skills. He always looked down on himself, Gus can't help the small smile. He was actually really good when he wasn't thinking in the Glandus way of doing things. Then he started taking illusion track classes, sitting right next to Gus. Gus who swore his heart would stop when he'd see Mattholomule brush back a stray hair behind his ear, completely unaware Gus was dying right next to him.
"I... don't know, I don't think so." I think it was too short to be love. "How can I love a guy I didn't even-"
It's almost as if Willow can read his mind as she suddenly says, "and don't compare how you felt to the relationships we have." It falls silent between them once again and Gus can almost hear the sound of her brain ticking. "You don't have to talk to me about this if you don't want to, okay? I just don't want you to keep this all inside. I think we all know it is way worse for everybody when a witch does that than a human." Oh yes, Gus can attest to that completely. He knows how he gets when he bottles his emotions and his magic goes out of control. The last thing he needs is to do something like that on the campus of a human university. "Even if it's in a diary, promise you'll let this out."
Gus doesn't respond immediately and it's then he hears the song the girl next door is playing. Is that...?
It is.
"Of course," Gus groans, falling limp to lie on his pillow. When Willow makes a noise of confusion, he clarifies. "The girl next door is playing 'If It Isn't Love' by New Edition." The universe is just trying to spite me, right now. Willow seemingly agrees as she lightly giggles that maybe it is the song he needed to hear. Maybe it is. "If it isn't love, why do I feel this way?" Gus sings with a weak chuckle.
"Why does she stay on my mind," Willow sang back quietly.
"And if isn't love," Gus bites his lip. His mind makes quick work of finishing the rest of the chorus: Why does it hurt so bad? Make me feel so bad inside? He sighs, wiping at his eye. "I don't know for sure if I was in love with him, not yet. But I think I was and I wanted him to love me back. I thought maybe he did love me back." He thought it when Mattholomule asked him to teach him the basics of illusion magic. He thought it whenever their hands accidentally brushed against each other and even though Mattholomule would awkwardly clear his throat, he always seemed to let his hand linger against Gus' own. "When we went to the Skull, I told myself that if we lived and saved the day like one of those superhero comics, I'd go right back to Hexside and tell Mattholomule how I felt." But then we ended up in the Human Realm and the moment we finally got our hands on Titan's blood...
Gus doesn't want to remember.
He doesn't want to remember Hunter's body contorting into horrifying ways or how he lied too still in Willow's arms. Nor does he wish to remember Belos and his bone-chilling voice as he exited behind a portal that closed too quickly for anyone to react.
Doesn't want to remember Flapjack's sacrifice and Hunter opening his eyes, now brown.
"I hate that I won't ever know," Gus admits softly. He grieves many things about the Halloween where everything went wrong. He grieves for nearly losing his brother, he grieves for losing Flapjack and he grieves for his father. So many things to grieve and it feels painful but freeing to admit that among all those things, he grieves a relationship he could never have with a boy he doesn't even know is alive or not. "I miss him, Willow. I miss him so much. And I don't know if I'm ever going to be over this."
Sometimes, Gus wonders if he even wants to.
"I'm afraid to move on because I think if I do," Gus remembers the boy he once thought was the worst member of the Human Appreciation Society. "I'll forget him and I don't want to forget Matty. That scares me more than anything."