Chapter Text
“Oh,” Victor says lamely, as surprised as he isn’t. This didn’t happen last time but it’s not like Benji and Derek were right for each other, or, if they had been once upon a time, it had been a while since that was the case. “Are you okay?”
Benji nods and Victor has to admit he seems almost more tired than upset. “It’s not exactly how I was expecting the evening to go,” he says, a little ruefully.
“No,” Victor agrees, “I’m sorry.”
Benji shakes his head. “Not your fault.” It kind of sort of completely is, but there is no way to tell Benji that without making himself seem like he is sitting on the wrong side of sane so Victor just smiles empathetically back at him.
“Still…”
“I put a lot of work into this,” Benji explains through a sigh, “and he doesn’t even care. Now it just feels like a waste,”
“It looks great,” Victor tries, “Trust me, it’s his loss.”
“Thanks,” Benji’s smile is a little less rueful but it still isn’t happy. “I’ve still got all the food if…”
“I-I couldn’t…”
“You can,” Benji says, standing up from one chair to coax Victor into sitting in the other.
And the thing Victor has to remind himself of every thirty seconds is that this is not a date. There are candles--unlit but clearly lit earlier when the person this was all actually for was here to see them, white wax trailing down their sides--and home cooked food and fantastic company with a person he is oddly sure he loves, and literally everything else that would make this a date. But it isn’t one. It’s an apology, a back-up not-quite plan, a soothing balm. That’s all.
They talk how they always talk, with the same ease and the same humour, but when their hands brush over the bread bowl he doesn’t let the touch linger, doesn’t turn his hand so they’re palm to palm and lacing their fingers together, when their eyes meet he doesn't hold Benji’s gaze like he is looking for something inside of him, instead always makes himself the first to break eye contact, the one who looks away. He spends the whole time either distracted or being batted around between guilty and longing.
“Things were off between us for a while,” Benji admits, somewhere between mouthfuls of ugly but delicious food and laughter that fills up the space well enough to make it seem small. “But I still really thought we’d figure it out. We were together for a year, he’s the only guy I’ve ever dated,”
Victor nods along, his throat dry. “What happened?”
“He was jealous and overreacting to nothing,” Benji says and Victor hides the perhaps misplaced hurt he feels behind one especially intense blink, “and, y’know, I thought we were over it but then he was just really dismissive of everything today. I brought it up and he went right back to where we were last week. I just couldn’t keep doing it.”
“Oh. So you broke up with him?”
“Well, you don’t really think anyone would break up with this face, do you?” Benji still sounds upset when he says it but his smile is as winning as ever and Victor is a lovestruck fool who has been pining to regain Benji’s affections for rather a long time by now. He laughs along and watches Benji’s eyes crinkle and lets himself believe, just for a solitary, fleeting moment, that this is a date, that they’re in love again, that he is precisely where he wants to be.
“I wouldn’t,” Victor says in that moment, tone perhaps lacking some of the tell-tale signs of a joke that he should have imbued it with. Still, Benji looks more interested than put off, his eyes bright if a little puzzled, almost probing. But the moment lapses and, again, Victor is the first to look away.
“Good to know,” Benji says after a beat and then the conversation becomes normal again even though Victor is almost sure his expression is giving him a way a little bit. His crush (if that is even the right word) that is, not the time travelling. He isn’t sure what sort of expression could possibly convey that.
By the time Victor actually gets home Felix is already impatient to tell him all about the day’s miracle. He can’t help but laugh as he finally answers the pleas for attention crackling through the speaker and is immediately flooded with the sounds of excited ramblings. Exhausted from his day and constantly reminding himself that it wasn’t a date with Benji and they aren’t quite there yet no matter how badly he wants, how much he knows they will be which is just making the wait all the more unbearable, he is perfectly content to listen, to react so Felix knows he is listening without really contributing anything to the conversation. Felix tells him all about making out with Lake and how he doesn’t even know how it started because he’s pretty sure his brain has turned to mush and how he can’t believe this is his life since he became Victor’s friend, how these things (good things) just don’t happen to Felix Weston. Victor doesn’t even mention the not-date with Benji. Maybe he should but it feels somehow more special if he keeps it to himself, treats it with a sort of quiet reverence until he has something more than a half-cold dinner made for someone else to treasure.
Still, back at school after the weekend, there is a sort of shift in their dynamic that neither of them commits very much thought to but that doesn’t go otherwise unnoticed. Them being friends is nothing new, nothing anybody who isn’t close to them spares a second thought towards, but Felix and Mia note with glee that their rapport has become somewhat flirty, comedic but, at least to Victor, only so much as to lend some degree of deniability. He doesn’t want it to seem like he has been waiting for Benji and Derek to break up to swoop in, doesn’t want to rush Benji into anything he isn’t ready for, doesn’t want anything that comes even close to being a repeat of Willacoochee. Lake notices it too. It’s not surprising really, considering how much time in any given day she spends ogling--she’d say “appreciating”, Victor likes his word better--Benji but it is funny to watch the way the realisation dawns on her, the way she looks at Victor with narrowed eyes until something clicks and they widen comically. “We’re talking about this,” she tells him, clearly intending to talk to him about not leading Mia on, trying to be a little threatening but not mean or judgemental. Excited, if anything. “You have good taste,” she adds after a moment, leaning up to speak quietly close to his ear--not quite a whisper, a feat of which he isn’t quite sure Lake Merriweather, supreme gossip she is, is capable of--as she grins conspiratorially.
“She already knows,” Victor reassures her and Lake’s grin just widens.
“Then this talk is going to be way more fun. I can’t wait until this all works out and I can live vicariously through you.”
“You sound very sure that it’s going to work out.”
“I’m manifesting it for you. Try being grateful sometimes, Salazar.”
“How about I owe you one if it works out?”
“Oh new kid, I don’t think you know what you just got yourself into.”
“Threatening, thank you.”
“You will be thanking me!”
“I don’t know what else to say to you so I’m going to leave now.”
“Boo! You have nowhere to be.”
“I have bio. We’re literally at school, you also have somewhere to be.”
“The only place I have to be is right here.”
“Then have fun. Bye!”
“Wait, no. I’m walking with you.”
There is a lot going on in Victor’s mind when the espresso machine breaks. First and foremost and perhaps a little embarrassingly is just a barrage of thoughts about Benji in a not-so-opaque tank top as he tries to troubleshoot the machine to no avail. Next is an instinctual sort of dread as he remembers what happened last time, the mess he made, how horrible the moment had been and then the drawn-out misery of the fall out. He has to remind himself that won’t happen this time around; he isn’t forcing himself into a nasty spiral of denial and repression, not building any sort of mental cages he needs to spring dramatically free from. There’s no Derek in the picture and, though the longing is becoming somewhat unbearable, no terrible mistake on the inevitable trip to Willacoochee will affirm or destroy his sense of self because he already knows who he is. When he stops to think about it, it’s pretty nice actually.
So when Benji tells Sarah that the two of them should go and she should stay to man the café, Victor goes along with it and pretends there isn’t some sort of half-amused lilt to the way she is looking at him this time that wasn’t there before. He lets himself feel excited about sitting in Sarah’s car for a couple of hours, singing along to the radio and talking to Benji. About exploring Willacoochee, goofing around in the thrift store--even though he isn’t in the market for a suit this time round he could probably stand to buy some new clothes--laughing together until his throat is hoarse. They probably won’t spend the night this time but Victor can still make the most of the day. He tries to snuff out the dread, overwhelms it with optimism.
“You’re in charge of the music,” he tells Benji as soon as they’re on the road, “I trust your taste more than mine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Call Me Maybe!”
“It’s very generous of you to say that.”
Benji hesitates for a second, grins even as he does. “It probably wouldn’t hurt you to improve your taste a little bit though.”
“That’s why you’re here.”
“Is that it? You’re just using me? And here I thought we were friends!” Benji’s hand is over his heart and Victor is loving the theatre of this moment as he laughs along to it and he pretends that the word friend out of Benji’s mouth doesn’t feel like his knees have been kicked out from under him.
“Two things can be true at the same time, Benji.”
“I guess I’m fine with that then?”
Victor smiles at him and turns onto the highway.
He drives past a sign-- Welcome to Willacoochee, where good people count --and watches as the tiny city that doesn’t really deserve to call itself such spreads out before him. It looks the same as last time: wide roads and open spaces; long, low buildings at the roadside, stores packed closely together for convenience; yellowing fields and bright green trees that always seem to be a little bit too far away. There isn’t much here, aren’t any people walking around nor much pavement to walk on, are very few cars passing by them, is a garage workshop round some obscure bend that they are fast approaching. It reminds Victor a little bit of Graham: an animal feed store on what is posing as a high street but isn’t one, between a small clothing store and a rundown chain restaurant; the trucks outside the houses and all the space between dwellings; the way that nothing is happening and the birds are loud and so is his music but the silence is still deafening. Places like these that are made of so much empty space have a special capacity to be stifling in a way you can’t appreciate until you leave, and Victor hasn’t been out of Graham for that long, but he has been.
They drop the espresso machine off and hang around, drink gas station coffee until they both concede that it tastes like battery acid no matter how many sachets of sugar and pots of creamer they dump into it, then Victor semi-subtly drops a hint about needing new clothes and they are heading to the big thrift store a short drive away. They dodge dirty glances from the cashier as they dance along to the music playing over the store’s speakers, the three of them apparently alone on the shop floor. They laugh as they find the ugliest shirts known to man hung up on a clothing rack shoved into the corner as though the store is ashamed to even be selling them and promptly start forcing the worst of the worst into each other’s arms. They find a purple sequined blazer on another rack and Benji suffers because Victor gets to it first, sees it calling to him from across the shop floor like a ghastly lavender beacon and hightails over. A pair of tiny tennis shorts and a matching shirt are thrust upon Victor and he takes the loosely strung tennis racket provided alongside them as an accessory with grace.
They have too many things to properly fit on the racks inside the fitting rooms so stack what doesn’t fit on the chairs on the other side of the curtains and after every outfit they step out to parade around for each other, laughing in the mirror as ill-fitting and objectively ugly clothes fail to make Benji look less attractive to Victor.
It’s fun though unproductive so, once they have been through the worst the store has to offer, they start trying in earnest to find clothes they actually like. A soft t-shirt, a perfectly serviceable button up that needs to be ironed, a pair of stiff denim jeans Benji swears will look nice even if Victor isn’t quite so convinced. Amongst the clutter Victor finds a few band t-shirts that probably once belonged to someone’s father--Nirvana, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin--that he hands over to Benji who positively beams. He looks surprised almost, but Victor knows him, very well in fact, and even if it weren’t for the time travel it isn’t hard to know what Benji likes when Victor sees him almost every day. It makes him wonder a little bitterly exactly how inattentive of a boyfriend Derek was. That thought does away with the remnants of the guilt that have, up until this point, continued to linger, at least for now.
Benji gets a call from Sarah at some point, then comes back with the information that they can stay the night if the machine isn’t ready in the next couple of hours and Victor knows not to hope, because it will be ready even though he has nowhere to be tonight, because Mia convinced Lake that the opportunity to play Daughter or Trophy Wife and the mini quiches would make attending the auction worth it and Victor was no more obliged than anyone else to go. He hadn’t exactly struggled to enjoy the day with Benji before he ruined it last time, but now there is no worry about being on time as they dance in the thrift store, sing in Sarah’s car, give vile coffee a second chance now that it has gone cold and choke on its sour sweetness together. He tries not to think about the fact that it’s ending soon, enjoys that he’s technically at work right now as he drives long roads to nowhere and sings Love Story with Benji, all the while making sure to look absolutely anywhere but his face.
They eat crappy fast food for lunch and Victor gets Pepsi and Benji gets Sprite but somehow they end up sharing, and Benji steals Victor’s fries even when he still has plenty of his own left and Victor lets him, doesn’t even comment on it and smiles to himself as he takes another sip of Benji’s drink.
“How are you doing?” Victor finds himself asking, fry in hand. Benji cocks his head like he genuinely doesn’t understand what he’s getting at, and Victor regrets bringing it up at all. “With the break-up?” he amends.
“Oh! Yeah.” He looks Victor directly in the eyes across the plastic tabletop and, because Victor doesn’t want to look away, he doesn’t. “Like, way better than I thought I would. I’m upset about it, don’t get me wrong, but, I don’t know, I guess I feel like I only stayed with him as long as I did because he was my first boyfriend, y’know? It feels mean to say, but maybe he felt like my only option.” Victor nods along, pretends Benji wasn’t (isn’t? Tense can be strange at times, when the future is the past and he quite literally is not living in the present) both his first option and, as he came to realise too late (though not too late anymore. The tense, again, has become strange, confusing, easier to just not think about), actually the only option for him.
“I’m still sorry it happened,” Victor lies.
“Don’t be. And thank you for keeping me company afterwards.” Victor smiles at him, looks over his shoulder and out the window he is sitting in front of. Being backlit by the sun has created a sort of golden halo around him, made him look angelic and fuzzy at the edges like he is some sort of dreamy-eyed figment of Victor’s imagination. The sun will be setting in a few hours and it won’t be long until the phone rings and the espresso machine will be ready and they’ll have to head home but at least Victor won’t embarrass himself, won’t ruin his friendship with Benji, won’t spiral into a deep, dark blackhole of self loathing and searching for answers he already knows, has known for a while and hasn’t wanted to accept.
Still, he is disappointed when he inevitably really does have to tell Benji that the machine is ready and Sarah is waiting for them so they have to go home, have to go back to Brasstown, have to burst the fragile little bubble they have spent the day in. “The machine is ready,” he says, pocketing his phone.
Benji smiles slyly at him, says “No it isn’t.”