This non-band AU fic includes: Friends to Lovers; Anal Sex; Anal Fingering; Masturbation; Hook-up; Angst; Mutual Pining; "straight" Otto Wood
Chapter 1: Boy-Best-Friends
The shower water is scalding hot when Awsten steps in. He can see the steam rise off the off-white plastic under him, and his skin turns quickly pink against the stark shift. Winter is setting in, and Otto's furnace isn't the best, but his water heater is damn good in this building. It takes a while for him to get used to it, but soon it just feels good, purifying in its heat.
He uses Otto's shit without remorse because he figures once a guy's fucked him up the ass he deserves to at least have hair that smells like chocolate-coconut afterwards.
The water soaks into him until even his bones feel scalded, until his skin is raw with the force of scrubbing away the feeling of a bad decision. Or, maybe, a really great one. Either way, he feels like shit, and he can feel in his bones just how much Otto must hate him for this. Really, how else would he feel about Awsten after that?
Otto is straight. Otto is totally, completely heterosexual. He always has been. Awsten has always made himself be, but he was never good enough at it to fool anyone. Otto, though, doesn't even have to try because he doesn't have to fake it. He's happy with girls. He just is. Awsten knows it. Everyone knows it.
So Awsten can't shake the feeling that he did something horribly wrong last night, fucking his best friend. His straight best friend. His straight best friend who's three-year relationship ended last fucking week. Awsten's forehead thumps against the tile wall with a hollow sound that he feels more than he hears. God, he is such an asshole.
He turns the water to cold before he gets out. His excuse is that it's good for his skin, but really it's just to feel the frozen burn against the base of his skull as he rinses his hair one last time, numbing his thoughts. When he gets out, he dresses in his clothes from yesterday, even though usually when he sleeps over he just borrows some of Otto's clothes. Then, usually he isn't sleeping over like this.
He shakes his hair out, ignoring the slight pink stain on Otto's towel. There are stains just like it everywhere in Otto's bathroom from a year of commandeering it for his eclectic, rapidly shifting choices of unnatural coloring. He stuck with plain bleach patches for a long time, and now he can't find something else to stick with. He's never been very good at sticking with anything.
He'd thought Otto, their friendship, would be different. He thought he could stick with it the way he'd stuck with Jawn, but apparently not; apparently, it was not like that at all. He doesn't say anything to Otto when he steps into the kitchen, just offering him a grim little nod. Otto awkwardly stares at the countdown on the microwave until it dings. He pulls out two shitty breakfast sandwiches and hands one to Awsten without looking him in the eyes.
"Need a ride home?" He asks once Awsten is done eating. The silence is pressing, but all Awsten feels like he can do is nod, so that's all he does.
The drive in Otto's shitty old red Ford is the exact same it always is, halfway across town from Otto's apartment to Awsten's parents house, the one he has yet to move out of. He manages to mutter a quick "Thanks, man" before he slips out of the truck, but it's stilted and quiet, and he's not even sure Otto hears it.
The sidewalk is cracked, but Awsten doesn't even need to pay attention to where he steps to avoid all the little breaks in the concrete leading up to the front door. He knows them so well and has known them for so long that it's just habit to step over them in the same pattern he did his whole childhood. He'd felt bad stepping on the dandelions that used to grow there, but now the neighbors spray so much weedkiller that they can't even survive in his yard. There's no point anymore—there are no little yellow flowers he would crush—but he does it anyway out of an ingrained obsession.
"Awsten, hey, how're you, dude?" Jawn waves him over from a seat in the corner of the coffee shop, smiling as he asks a question that Awsten really does not know how to answer.
He takes a seat, shrugging. He slips off his jacket and hangs it over the edge of the pointy wooden chair while answering with a noncommittal, "Yeah, I'm pretty alright."
Jawn raises his eyebrow. Two cups of coffee sit between them, his half gone, and Awsten's the same sweet abomination he's gotten since his sophomore year of high school. "Uhuh. I'm sure. Now spill about what's actually going on. You never fucking sound like that," Jawn says, taking the opportunity to shut his laptop and go from editing mode to listening mode.
"Shit, I don't know. I fucked up, I think, and I just don't really know how to fix it."
"Come on, just fucking tell me, dude. As long as it's not, like, murder or something, I promise not to tell the FBI," Jawn complains.
"I'm pretty sure you don't go directly to the FBI with that." Jawn shoots annoyed daggers with his glare until Awsten continues. "But fine. Yeah, it wasn't murder. I fucked Otto. Or, he fucked me, actually."
"Seriously? Dude, fucking finally, you've been making eyes at him for so long, congrats," He says, grinning like it was something inevitable, like he just won a goddamn bet. Awsten gnaws on the inside of his cheek even though he knows it's not really the best coping mechanism. He doesn't really know what to say, so he just shakes his head and takes a sip of coffee. The sugar makes him feel better. Sugar fucking always makes him feel better—at least until he inevitably feels like shit the next day.
"No, it-it's weird now. I feel like I, I don't know, messed it up. Like he just broke up with Elly, you know? He's straight, and he's going through a lot without me in the picture too." Jawn's smile drops as Awsten talks, and he shakes his head in disappointment once he's done.
"Straight guys don't fuck their boy-best-friends, Awsten. You didn't do anything wrong; that's a choice he made. I mean, maybe you did something wrong, but not that. Also, Elly is a cheating bitch. I think he deserves to have some fun," Jawn points out, sounding more serious than Awsten has heard him be in a long time.
Awsten just rolls his eyes and, oh-so-strategically, shifts their conversation to Jawn's new projects. He must feel a lot of pity because, for once, he takes the bait and moves on.
Travis’ dorm smells like popcorn and McDonald’s. It’s not terrible for a college guy, all things considered, just slightly nerdy. Well, really nerdy. Movie posters decorate his side of the bedroom, along with a compact Blu-ray player and a bookshelf overflowing with the damn things. And in the age of streaming, no less.
Tonight they’re watching some B-list horror flick, the kind with a final girl and some mildly attractive lead actors who probably barely passed middle school drama class. They watch shitty movies more often than not because nothing is easier or funnier. When five early-twenties guys get crammed on one bed staring at a shitty TV for two hours, there’s bound to be at least one person not exactly enraptured, so it’s easier to play something dumb they can laugh about instead of trying to take it seriously.
A bowl of popcorn sits on Geoff’s lap, squished in the middle of their usual dogpile. Except tonight, Awsten and Otto are on opposite sides of the bed instead of practically on top of each other. This time, it’s an unspoken rule that they don’t talk, don’t sit next to each other, and don’t even look at each other.
Awsten’s jokes don’t land, and none of it is quite as fun as usual. The bed just feels creaky, shitty, and too small. Usually it’s endearing and funny, one of those little things he likes to tell everyone about just to prove how interesting he really is, because no one will believe him otherwise, and he knows it. Tonight, it doesn’t work, and it just feels like a poor excuse for an actual couch. He can’t tell if it’s because he feels like shit or Otto feels like shit, but he gets the feeling everyone in the room knows there’s something up between them.
They don’t even get to the halfway point in the movie before Otto is launching himself off the bed, looking like he got a spider bite on his goddamn dick. His shoulders are curled in, and he’s standing in such an un-Otto-like way that Awsten’s first instinct is to reach out and hug him until he feels better. But he doesn’t, because that would be weird now, right?
“Hey man, are you okay?” Geoff asks, shifting the popcorn bowl off to Jawn’s lap and standing up close to Otto.
“Uh,” he responds. "Yeah, I’m good. I just. Forgot that… Uh. I need to call my parents tonight. It’s important, so. So I’m gonna go do that, and, uh, I’ll catch you guys later.” By the time Otto’s done talking, he’s already opening the door to leave. Geoff stands still and bewildered before taking his seat back. The bed fits them better with four people instead of five. Too well, really, in Awsten’s opinion.
He leaves as soon as the movie’s done, even though the other three are starting a conversation about Otto, asking if he’s okay. But Awsten just leaves, slips out the door, and then walks out of the apartment building like a ghost. He feels like it too, a wraith drifting into the cold wind that shakes him to his bones, with nothing to say and too much to think. He doesn’t put his jacket on even though he loses feeling in his fingers after just a minute, and the walk to his house is twenty. Instead, he savors the sting in his core, like he’s been doing too goddamn much lately, and takes his time on his way back.
His parents are asleep, so he heads in quietly, stepping up the stairs in total darkness and closing his door slowly and carefully behind him to avoid squeaking it. The light flickers when he turns it on; he really needs to get on with replacing it. He drops his jacket on his desk and faceplants into his bed without even bothering to get under the covers. He falls asleep right there, his skin still tingling with cold and his skinny jeans sticking to the goosebumps on his legs.
He doesn’t bother to turn the light off, partly because he couldn’t be lured out of bed if someone offered him a million dollars, and partly because he’s pretty sure that if he turned it off, the shadows in his room would fucking eat him alive. God, he is such a fucking idiot.
Two days later, he still hasn’t heard a word from Otto. He does this sometimes, it's not that weird, but it still leaves Awsten feeling like everything is going to crumble around him. It’s not like he’s reached out, either, but he just really doesn’t know how. He can’t just text him like, ‘hey dude, know we fucked and all, but can we go back to just being best friends? miss our cuddle piles, xoxo.’ Or, maybe he could, but he’s not going to because opening that conversation at all sends a sting of sharp anxiety right down the center of his fucking being.
He has avoided all conversation with Jawn about it because he knows that all he would do is make it worse. He’s avoided conversation with most of his friends, really. All Awsten wants to do is laze around and fucking punch something. He does some pushups because of the energy it gives him and because he doesn’t actually want to punch something. He writes shitty lyrics he’s never going to make into a song. He doodles in his notebooks and forces himself to go to his shitty gigs, teaching asshole kids guitar.
But none of it works; none of it erases the feelings or thoughts that swirl inside him, indistinguishable from each other at this point. It just builds and builds into an unspeakable, looming boulder at the edge of his existence, a shadow that never fully goes away. He can’t quite pull his mind away from it, no matter how hard he tries.
Also, he hasn’t jacked off in, like, a week now. Every time he tries, he can’t get into it. It’s just fucking with his emotional state even more, and he knows it. Hell, every time he tries, he feels shitty for even attempting, even if he knows a good jerk-off-and-cry would probably make him a whole lot more functional.
So he lays in bed with his hand down his boxers and some dumbass porn open on his laptop, and forces his brain to shut the fuck up. He’s not usually even one for watching porn, but he doesn’t trust his own mind right now, so he needs something distracting.
He starts low, working the base of himself for a while until he can even really get into it. He moves up slowly, a twist in his wrist, and his other hand reaches behind him to get his backside in on the deal. That always makes this go a little quicker, and he honestly just wants to get it over with at this point.
Awsten spits into his hand, lets it drip over his fingers until they’re slick enough, and slips them underneath him, hooked around the back of his thigh, to reach his ass. He pushes one in and then the other in quick succession, scissoring them apart and stretching himself open. Precum is already beading at his tip, and he speeds up his pace a little now that he’s properly into it, slipping into a more consistent rhythm and pushing his boxers down.
His muscles tighten steadily into the pleasure, and it’s just like when Otto- It’s like Otto when he was inside him—though more on beat than Awsten is. When he was the one stretching Awsten open and running a hand along Awsten’s hip, down his V-line, and around his dick. Fuck. He so should not be getting off to the thought, but he can’t help it because it’s all he can think about, and it was probably the best dicking he’s ever fucking had.
He can imagine it in vivid detail. All the callouses Otto has that he doesn't, and the way they ran along his body in a pattern he could never hope to replicate himself. He knows the way it feels to have those fingers inside him, slick with actual lube, and so sure in their path. He rocks his hips into his own hand and bites down on his lip, half to stop himself from making noise and half for the grounding sensation of not-quite-pain.
When he comes, it’s in spurts, with the image of Otto’s body beside him and an immediate, overwhelming shame as soon as it's over. And, yeah, some tears, because all his physical focus is on the faltering of his hand as he comes down from it, and nothing is there to stop the emotional release that arrives with it. He lets himself lie with it for longer than he usually would.
Finally, he knows he has to pull himself together, so he carefully brings his boxers back up to rest across his hips and reaches over to the tissue box on his bedside table, wiping the evidence off of his stomach and chest. He tosses it in the trash, and really, he does feel better, though the guilt of what he conjured up still rests heavy in his chest.
He shuts the laptop, and the room goes dark except for the red blinking of his alarm clock and the bright humiliation burning in his chest.
Chapter 2: Wine and Dine
Otto’s couch is not, at all, big enough for two grown-ass men to cuddle on it, but it does the job, just like it always does. The springs shift into his back uncomfortably; it’s shitty and old, and Awsten is half falling off the side, but it’s worth it to Otto.
His arm is slung over Awsten’s waist, and a movie is rolling credits on the screen in front of them. They’re even closer than they usually are, and Otto really, really likes that. And sure, maybe part of it is that he’s freshly broken up, but fuck if this hasn’t been building inside of him for a long time.
“Hey, can I sleep with you tonight?” Awsten asks quietly, half twisting around so his face is scarily close to Otto’s, “’Cause last time I slept on the couch, my neck fuckin’ hated me for it.” Otto has to pause for a second to process it, but then he’s nodding.
“Yeah, of course, anytime.” God, he wants to fucking punch himself. He thinks one thing, and instead of saying it, instead of saying, ‘Hey, Awsten, can we sleep together, actually?’ He fucks it up like he always does, and only half of what he means comes out of his mouth. Sometimes he wishes he was capable of making dumbass, impulsive decisions. At least then, he would get something done.
Awsten is studying his face at a too-close distance, still twisted at his waist to watch him. He does this sometimes, like he’s trying to memorize every contour of Otto’s skin for a sculpture. It’s weird as fuck, but Otto never complains because it gives him more time like this: close, comfortable, and not in conversations he wishes did more.
So it’s a surprise when Awsten presses a kiss to his lips, soft and sudden and utterly confusing. Otto kisses him back without even thinking, because what else is there to do? He’s thought about it so much that it doesn’t even feel like a choice anymore.
“Sorry, I-” Awsten pulls back, but before he says anything else, Otto just shakes his head.
“It was good. I mean. Yeah, it was good," He manages to whisper before they’re back together, noses bumping before they twist the right way. He’s not even sure who kisses who, but it happens, and it feels right, close and warm.
Otto has never been one for kissing. It’s never been something that’s turned him on all that much. Every girlfriend he’s ever had has loved make-outs, and supposedly he’s not too bad at it, but he’s never gotten whatever feeling they did. It was just hot breath and weird, slimy tongues. He can’t say that it's any different with Awsten because, physically, it isn't. He can’t say that it clicks why people do it because it really doesn’t.
But it does give him the intimacy he craves with Awsten that he never did with those girlfriends. He appreciates it more, that’s what it is. He still doesn’t like kissing, but he likes the person he is kissing, and that makes all the difference because it’s Awsten, it’s finally, finally Awsten.
They just about fall off the couch approximately two seconds after Otto has that revelation, but instead of ruining the mood, it just prompts them to move it to the bedroom instead. Otto doesn’t let himself dwell on the implications of what they’re doing as he follows Awsten to the bedroom. He just basks in that moment of accomplishment. It takes longer than it should to even get there because neither of them wants to pull their bodies apart for a second.
“So, this is good, yeah?” Awsten asks, breathless, as they pull apart once they finally make it to the bed. “Because, like, if it’s good for you, then it is so good for me. I’m down for, like, whatever.”
Otto doesn’t hesitate before he answers, “Yeah, yeah, it’s good. Can we… I mean, I want to-” God, Otto is so red right now, he can feel his face warming with every fucking word, “I want to be inside you, if that’s alright.”
“That is so more than alright. As long as you have condoms and, like, lube.” Otto reaches over to the drawer on his nightstand in lieu of a response and goes back to kissing Awsten while he blindly searches for what he needs. He pulls away for a second once he finds it and starts fiddling with the shitty cap to get it to open.
All said and done, Awsten is under him ten minutes later, looking so blissed out of his mind that Otto can’t even complain when his fingernails leave thin pink scratches down his shoulder blades. Otto wants to hold onto that look forever, his eyes half open and his cheeks flushed a pretty pink. His sounds were quieter than Otto had expected, but still there, staccato and breathy.
It’s good, and it’s over too fucking fast. Awsten smiles at him as he pulls out, already looking tired and sated. Otto can’t help but smile back even as he drifts away to clean up, and by the time he’s back with a warm washcloth in hand, Awsten is already half asleep.
He follows soon after, spooning Awsten from behind and running his fingers over the smooth skin of his hips as an almost unconscious habit. But before he falls asleep, in the quiet darkness of the room, he whispers, “I love you,” Only really for himself, because he can feel the silent, shallow rise and fall of Awsten’s chest, meaning he’s asleep. But then, Otto can never say what he wants to when it matters. He can only seem to do it when nobody’s there to listen.
Otto has been climbing this tree since he was old enough to climb anything. He’s been climbing it since his days were comprised of skinned knees and learning fractions. The branches feel smaller now, so much smaller. The ones he used to sit on to feel like he was on top of the world barely come up to his chest now. The bark has gotten rougher, but so have his callouses.
The grass waves at him from below, beckoning him back to the ground with false promises of a soft landing. It’s turned all golden-brown this time of year, the ends wilting down and sad from the frost.
His parents are supposed to be home in two days, and then he has to go back to the real world, away from the middle of nowhere and back in the cell-service range. He doesn’t want to. He wants to stay out here with an aching back and a list of chores and no one to bother him or make him deal with his problems. The horses are perfectly good company for him, especially right now.
The air is turning foggy from his breath, and the wind raises the hair on his arm with its chill, but he stays out anyway. Orange-pink is bathing the sky as it works from blue to purple to black far out on the horizon. He asked Awsten to come out here once, and within two hours, it’d become more than clear just how much he hated it.
Well, he hated being here. He had very explicitly told Otto he didn’t hate spending time with him, or the wildflowers they’d picked from the field together, or the long-ish drive filled with warm conversation and loud music and shitty fast food. He’d hated the bugs, how bad the Wi-Fi was, and how cold the wood floors got in the morning. But he’d loved spending the time with Otto, pretending they were living together in a real house, on their own against the world. Awsten said all of that, and if there’s one thing Otto knows, it’s that Awsten isn’t a liar.
It’s that Awsten cares about him. And Otto really doesn’t know how to tell him that in return.
Otto is five minutes back in cell range when his phone starts ringing. He fumbles for his pocket as his eyes scan the twisting highway ahead of him. The hinge of his shitty flipphone fights him as he opens it, and he doesn’t hit the right button to accept the call until it’s halfway through its fifth ring.
“Hello?” He asks, rearranging it so the phone sits between his shoulder and his cheek as he brings his hands back to the wheel. There are many things Otto could be called, and an irresponsible driver is not one of them.
“Hey, how’re you?” Jawn’s voice filters through the static of shitty cell towers and a shittier phone as he says, “We haven’t heard from you for a while. I was worried.”
Otto pauses as he takes a sharp turn—God, he fucking hates this road—before he has the wherewithal to answer, “’m good, yeah. I was watching the farm for my parents and couldn’t get a signal. Sorry. How’s it going for y’all?”
“Ah, fair, fair. I’m good. Geoff has a new girlfriend. She seems nice, you should totally come out and meet her sometime.”
“For sure, that sounds fun.” The cab of his shitty pickup is too cold, so he carefully reaches his left arm under his right to fiddle with the AC and pretends he doesn’t cross over the white line a little while he does.
Jawn goes quiet for a minute, and Otto is about to guess he hit another dead zone until he hears, “Awsten misses you,” from the line. Otto breathes in sharply, and he hopes to God that his microphone didn’t pick it up.
“Does he?”
“Yeah. I think you should say hi. You know, talk to him maybe?” Jawn suggests in a voice that tells Otto he knows more than he’s really letting on. “He’s fuckin’ miserable. He’s not doing too well without you.”
“Yeah, well. I’ll see what I can do. My signal’s cutting out again. I should go,” Otto says before quickly ending the call and snapping his phone shut with a decisive click. He tosses the phone into the backseat and ignores the insistent ringing until it stops, until Jawn gives up trying to call him back.
He’s not doing too well without you rings in Otto’s head long after the phone is done.
Awsten’s parents aren’t home. They never are on Wednesday nights. Instead, there's an empty driveway where their car usually sits. A thin, powdery layer of snow coats the front yard—the first they’ve gotten in a long while. It melts as soon as Otto places his foot down, but that doesn’t stop the coldness from seeping up past the thin, worn-through bottom of his sneaker. The porch light is on, and it casts an almost eerie glow along the concrete path and the wire screen door, contrasted with the other people on the block who already have Christmas lights set up and are blaring bright red and green into the dark.
He pulls the first door open and ignores the doorbell entirely; it’s been broken for years now. The wood is painted white, but it’s chipped now, flaking off around the edge of the brass knob and the knocker that doesn’t actually move. Otto’s breath comes short and hot, a cloud of steam out and a shallow bit in that keeps his heart beating far too fast and not much else. He knocks in an easy pattern, ingrained in him now, onetwo-three-fourfive, the same as he always does.
It takes a few moments, but before long, he can hear the jingle of keys in the lock, and Awsten opens the door. He’s still in his pajamas, an oversized hoodie, and a pair of pants that pool around his ankles. His hair is wet, dripping vaguely pink down the sides of his neck and the tip of his nose, and he smells like he stole his sister’s fancy shampoo.
"Uh!" Awsten falters, “Hi.”
“Hey.” They go quiet, and if it weren’t for Spongebob playing on the TV behind Awsten, then Otto could have sworn the whole world got put on mute.
“Do you, uh, wanna come in?” Awsten asks, stepping to the side and opening the door further. Otto feels warmer the second he gets inside, like he’s melting from his bones outward. He stops as soon as Awsten shuts the door behind him, his palms sweaty even though he can barely even feel his fingers. He wishes for the umpteenth time he knew how to say what he wanted out of this. Instead, all he can think to do is kiss Awsten square on the lips and proceed to live happily ever after without an awkward conversation for the rest of their days.
He doesn’t do that, though, because that would be shitty and rude, and Awsten doesn’t deserve either of those. So he says the first thing that comes to his mind and blurts out the ever-cordial, “I think I’m in love with you.”
Awsten goes still, key half turned in the lock, and frozen like a statue. He spins around slowly, and Otto is fully prepared for him to decide he’s done with Otto’s shit and send him right back outside. Instead, Awsten just stares at him like a deer in headlights and says, “Uhm, what?” in the most dumbfounded voice he has possibly ever heard.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Otto says again. Somehow it’s easier the second time, a lot easier, and he isn’t sure if that’s because he’s done it before or if it’s because Awsten is looking at him this time.
“Oh,” Awsten practically sighs out. "Well, I guess it’s good that I love you too, then, huh?” His tone is joking in the way it always is when he has to talk about something he really cares about. He’s never able to handle vulnerability without at least trying to make it funny, but Otto can’t really handle vulnerability at all most of the time, so there isn’t a complaint he can make about it.
It takes a minute to sink in when terrible cartoon sound effects interrupt his thought process every time the shock is about to wear off. It would be comical if it weren’t for the stark distance Otto feels from everything right now. He has the distinct feeling that it’s his turn to say something. Maybe produce some grand romantic gesture out of nowhere to sweep Awsten off his feet. Sadly, he’s too busy doing his very best to ignore the nervous fire burning in his ribcage to think very well.
“So, do you want to, like, try it out?” Awsten asks, drifting away from the door and closer to Otto.
“Try-try what, exactly?”
“You know, like, dating. Being a couple, or whatever. I’d like to, for the record, but we can take it slow.”
Otto would like to do the very opposite of take it slow but he also knows damn well now isn’t the time to talk about that. He nods before he can quite get his words to agree with him enough to say, “Yes. Yeah, sure, we could—we should try it out.”
Awsten grins, “Great. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pretend fucking Nickelodeon wasn’t playing this entire conversation, and we’re going to make, like, shitty macaroni and have a real date. You didn’t wine and dine me last time, so now you owe me.”