A long time ago, I brought up to Tk/caffelester the idea of hs!CrissColfer in an awkward seven-minutes-in-heaven where they’re just friends and so they spend their time telling each other bad jokes before one of them realizes he really does like the other one. So now, for her birthday (which was yesterday), I bring her (and you) exactly that. Happy (late) Birthday, lovely!! <3 I should’ve mentioned that it can be read as a sequel to Senior Bastard. I think I’m gonna start my first verse!
High school!CrissColfer + awkward teenage seven-minutes-in-heaven au, 3k words, PG-13.
[Also read on AO3]
Chris was going to kill Darren.
He was actually going to kill him.
At least, this was half of what he was thinking as he saw the bottle Darrenhad just spun land on him.
The other half was a mantra of holy shit holy shit fuck fuck FUCKHOLY SHIT WHY.
Chris raised his head from the bottle, sure that his face looked like he had seen a ghost. His eyes were wide and he was shaking, though thankfully not noticeably, the Diet Coke on the red cup he was holding threatening to spill on the floor. He had hoped, kind of foolishly, that the bottle would never land on him. Darren had assured him that he’d talked to the people in their Spin-the-Bottle circle (who were drunk as fuck by now) so that they wouldn’t pressure him into doing the whole seven-minutes-in-heaven thing. After all, Chris was only in this stupid party because Darren had dragged him into it.
Actually, he hadn’t exactly dragged Chris. He had used his magical powers of persuasion to convince Chris to agree to go with him without much thought.
Which was why Chris was going to kill him. Right here in front of everyone.
It all started when Darren was in Chris’ room one day, both of them minding their own business: Chris was listening to Darren play random notes on his guitar, stringing chord after chord after chord in an inexistent order that was probably already a song in Darren’s head.
“Do you wanna go to a party with me?”
Chris blinked and stared at Darren instead of at his fingers on the guitar. “Hm?”
“Do you wanna go to a party with me?” Darren repeated, glancing up at Chris with only his eyes. “It’s Friday night. I don’t really feel like going anymore, but I promised Blake I’d be there and I’d love it if you could come along.”
To be honest, a party wasn’t Chris’ idea of spending his Friday night. He had a lot of reading to catch up on, he needed to call his mother because he’d forgotten to do it last week, he wanted to start getting some final papers done, even though they weren’t due for at least a month and a half, maybe even seven weeks…
“I totally understand if you don’t want to,” Darren said, pulling Chris out of his thoughts. “But… I don’t know… could you just, like, think about it before you shoot it down completely?”
He thought about everything Darren had done for him since they had met, a couple months ago. Darren had gone out of his way to help Chris and make him feel as comfortable as he could in this friendship thing they had going on. He had gotten so underneath Chris’ skin that Chris let him into his room after class almost every day when he’d had trouble sharing his space with his sister, even though they had always shared a room.
As it turned out, Chris only needed abound three seconds to think about it.
“Yeah, sure,” he ended up saying. “I… I guess it could be kind of fun.”
Now he wanted to go back in time, punch his past self, then come back to the present to punch Darren. And then kill him.
Darren was looking down at the bottle, and his expression was so unreadable that Chris didn’t know what he was thinking. Was he cursing his luck? Was he glad he’d gotten Chris and not someone else? Was he seriously considering doing this?
Their Spin-the-Bottle circle started catcalling and whistling. Chris heard a girl next to him say, “No wonder why you didn’t want us to pressure him into doing anything, Criss,” which only inspired the rest of their peers to whistle more and act like animals. Some guys even howled. Was this what drinking did to people? Turn them into assholes?
Darren raised his head, and his eyes met Chris’. They seemed to be… asking him something. Pleading. The rest of his face was still strangely unreadable, but Chris saw the question clearly shown in his eyes.
Trust me on this?
And Chris trusted Darren. Almost unconditionally. That was what had gotten him into this mess to begin with.
Still, when Darren stood up, Chris immediately followed, leaving his cup of Diet Coke on the space he’d been occupying. When Darren started heading towards the supply closet, so did Chris, trying to ignore the sounds everyone was making behind their backs. Darren opened the door of the supply closet and stood aside so that Chris could walk inside first. When they were both inside, he heard the door click shut, and he and Darren were enveloped in complete darkness.
“All right, boys!” someone—maybe the same girl who’d made that crude comment next to Chris—called out from the other side of the door. “You’ve got seven minutes starting… NOW!”
For the first few seconds, neither of them said or did anything, as if both were hoping the seven minutes would go by without them taking any part in it.
“Chris—” Darren began.
“Look,” Chris said before Darren could say another word. He took a step back until he felt shelves behind him. “I really didn’t sign up for this. I mean, I wanted to come here because you’ve done a lot for me and I had no problem in hanging out with other people for a while as long as you were there, but I…” He swallowed in an attempt to dampen his dry throat. “I’ve never… I’ve never, like, kissed anyone or even wanted to kiss anyone, at least I don’t think I have, and you’re my friend, kind of like my only friend, to be honest, and I like you but I don’t like you like that, and I don’t want to ruin this because I’m awful at any kind of relationship, I mean, the only relatively good relationship I have is with my sister, and I’m sure I’m rambling and you probably think I’m a jerk and—”
He felt tears prickling behind his eyes and had to shut up so that he wouldn’t cry. He was nervous and he felt like he couldn’t was three seconds away from hyperventilating. He had known it would eventually come to this: Darren Criss being his friend had been something the universe had never wanted to happen, and now it was putting an end to it.
But Chris hadn’t known how used he’d gotten to being Darren’s friend, how afraid he was of going back to being on his own all the time, to be suspicious of everyone around him because he feared they only wanted to use him, how scared he was of not having Darren go to his room every day and talk to him and just make him aware of being alive, make him aware that he was someone, that he existed, because he existed to someone else.
He didn’t want it to end. He had questioned all the time why it had happened, but he wouldn’t anymore if it meant he could keep it.
Chris felt Darren’s hands on his arms, gripping them as if to keep him in place.
“Chris,” he said, and Chris wanted to breathe out and sob in relief. He could hear the smile Darren had without needing to see it. “I didn’t bring you here to make out with you. I brought you here so that no one out there bothered you about saying ‘no.’”
“But you said you talked to them—”
“Doesn’t mean they’ll remember that when they’re that drunk.”
Darren’s arms let go of him, and suddenly a light bulb above them was on and lighting the small supply closet. He hadn’t realized how tiny the space actually was until he could see it. A short chord hung from the bulb, and Darren let it go as soon as he’d made sure it was on.
“So we don’t…” Chris took a deep breath. “We don’t have to do anything?”
Darren smiled, and suddenly Chris felt like he’d had nothing to worry about. That he could trust Darren with his life and Darren would not let him down.
“Of course not,” Darren said. “Not that I think our friendship would be ruined if we kissed, but nothing is worth risking it, especially if it makes you uncomfortable.”
Now Chris did breathe out in relief. He still didn’t think he deserved having Darren as his friend, but he wasn’t going to let him go.
“FIVE MINUTES, BOYS!” called out the same girl from before.
Chris and Darren glanced at the door before their eyes met again.
“So,” said Chris. “What do you want to do for five minutes?”
Darren stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before he looked back at Chris with a smirk. “Knock, knock.”
Chris raised an eyebrow. He didn’t know whether he was successful or not. “A knock-knock joke? Honestly, Darren?”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
He didn’t.
“Knock, knock.”
Chris sighed, but he smiled in the end. “Who’s there?”
“Daisy.”
“Daisy who?”
Then Darren cleared his throat and sang, “Daisy me rollin’, they hatin’…”
Chris stared at Darren for a moment. He blinked more times than he could count.
Then he completely snapped and started laughing like a maniac.
Darren started laughing, too, only his laughter was now quieter instead of the other way around, like it usually was. He waved his hands at Chris. “Shh!” he said between giggles. “Shh! We’re supposed to be making out, not laughing!”
Chris covered his mouth with his hands. All the nervousness and awkwardness he’d felt when they’d enclosed themselves in the supply closet was completely gone now. “That was so bad, oh my god!”
“But it still made you laugh!” Darren said. “And that’s kind of what mattered.” Then he grinned like he was a five-year-old who had seen Santa Claus. “Now you try.”
Chris didn’t know any jokes. Not any good ones, at least. He’d always felt stupid when he made jokes, because the people around him didn’t get them or because they simply hadn’t been paying him any attention. But he knew it would be different with Darren. So he searched deep in his repertoire of jokes—no matter if they were good or bad—to try to find one he could tell Darren.’
“Okay, okay, I got one. How many lives does a Nazi cat have?”
“Oh, Chris Colfer showing the History geek he carries within. Um…” Darren pretended to ponder over it. “I don’t know, how many?”
“Nein.”
Now Darren was the one guffawing like a moron while Chris tried to shush him. They spent the rest of their seven minutes in heaven telling each other bad jokes and trying to stay quiet through it all.
“What did Mario say when he broke up with Princess Peach?”
“I don’t know, Darren, what?”
“It’s not you, it’s a-me, Mario!”
“Why is the ocean blue?”
“Why, Chris?”
“Because all the little fish go blu, blu, blu.”
“What does a clock do when it’s hungry?”
“What, Darren?”
“It goes back four seconds!”
“Why should you not write with a dull pencil?”
“Why not, Chris?”
“Because it’s pointless!”
When the girl outside the door yelled that they only had one minute left, Chris and Darren were sitting on the floor, leaning back against the shelves behind them. Darren had his legs crossed while Chris had his knees pulled towards his chest. Darren wiped tears of laughter from the corners of his eyes, and the two looked at each other.
“Well,” said Darren, “that was fun.”
“It was,” Chris agreed, nodding his head. Then he glanced down at his knees. “Except that we don’t look like we just made out.”
Darren leaned his head back against the shelves and turned it sideways to stare at Chris. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Maybe we can.”
Chris frowned. “Maybe we can what?”
Instead of answering him, Darren ran his hands through his curls, ruffling them so that they looked as if someone had had their hands all over them for a while. Before Chris could react, Darren was doing the same thing to his brown locks of hair.
“What the hell are you doing?” Chris nearly shouted, resisting the urge to slap Darren’s hands away from his hair. They felt… kind of nice, actually.
“Giving them a show,” Darren replied. “If they want proof that we made out, we’ll give it to them. C’mon, get up.”
He got to his feet and then held out his hands to help Chris do the same. As soon as they were both standing, Darren placed his hands on Chris’ cheeks, and they were so warm that Chris almost jumped. The mere contact of Darren’s hands on his face made him want to jump, and not… not necessarily to get away from them. But he didn’t want them to stay there so long because he felt like he might spontaneously burst into fire, why did Darren’s hands feel so warm?
“Now think of something that’ll make you blush,” Darren said.
Chris had nothing to do other than focus on his friend’s hands still on his cheeks. He didn’t know if he was blushing out of embarrassment or nervousness, but he felt all his blood rush up to his head, so quickly that the motion made him a little dizzy. If Darren hadn’t been holding him in place, he would’ve swayed a little.
Or a lot, maybe.
Probably.
Darren smiled, like he was amused, and Chris blushed even more. “There you go!” Darren finally let go of him, and Chris felt the urge to say, No, wait, come back, where are you going? What was wrong with him? Had someone spiked his perfectly fine Diet Coke? Why was he feeling like this all of a sudden?
Darren looked him up and down, and Chris suddenly felt self-conscious. His blush must’ve deepened even more than before, because Darren seemed satisfied with his appearance.
“Yeah, I think that’ll work,” he said. Then he looked down at himself and started pulling his shirt towards his front, “So it looks like you were pulling at it,” he answered to Chris’ confused expression.
“So I grabbed your shirt but you didn’t grab mine?” Chris asked before he could really think about it.
“Maybe I did it with more subtlety,” Darren said, and he winked at Chris.
He winked.
And Chris felt like the air left him for a second.
“TIME!” came a voice from the other side of the door. “Come out of there, boys! Come out of the closet!” Then there were loud laughs and giggles at the meaning of that sentence, and Chris wondered if his face would remain like a tomato for the rest of his life because of his stupid blush.
Darren cocked his head to the side. “Shall we?” he asked with a hand on the knob. Chris nodded, not trusting his voice not to crack if he spoke. With another smile that left Chris momentarily breathless, Darren opened the door, and both of them walked out of the supply closet, one after the other one.
They were received by more catcalls and whistling, and Chris even heard one of the guys say, “Hot damn, you guys really got going!” Darren pretended to smile sheepishly, and Chris had no option but to do the same.
“Well,” Darren said as the circle of people around them dispersed. He spoke with enough volume so that they could hear him. “It was a pleasure spending seven minutes in heaven with you, Chris.” The guys yelled while some of the girls squealed and clutched each other, as if they had seen their favorite celebrity materialize out of thin air.
Chris bit his lip and tried not to let his smile show. “Likewise.”
The people surrounding them went back to other party activities: some of them went back to Spin-the-Bottle, some others played beer pong, and some others went to different rooms of the house, whether to just talk or to participate in some… less appropriate activities. Darren smiled at Chris before he went to talk to a friend of his, most likely Blake, who was to blame for everything that had happened tonight.
Except that Chris wasn’t angry anymore. Now he felt almost… cheated. Like he’d been promised something that hadn’t been delivered.
He’d been promised seven minutes in heaven (though “promised” was probably not the right word for it) and he hadn’t had them.
Why was that making him so upset? He himself had said that he didn’t like Darren, not like that, anyway. So why was he upset that they hadn’t actually gotten to kiss? Why was he upset about something that had nearly made him cry when he’d thought about it?
Chris remembered Darren’s hands on his hair, on his cheeks, the wink he’d given him, how his smile had taken Chris’ breath away.
So I grabbed your shirt but you didn’t grab mine?
He’d wanted to feel Darren’s hands pulling at his shirt, even if it was just to pretend.
Oh. Oh, no. Oh, hell no.
Chris hadn’t liked Darren seven minutes ago. Now it was almost like a switch had been turned on, like a switch had gone from Darren Criss is my friend to I really want to know what it’d be like to kiss Darren Criss.
He was thinking about kissing now?
Oh, no, no, this was so not what he’d expected out of his seven minutes in heaven!
If I’d only liked him seven minutes ago, Chris thought, I could’ve actually kissed him!
And that thought just made him more upset.
Yes. Chris definitely wanted to go back in time, punch his past self in the face, and then come back to the present to punch and murder Darren.
Except that he didn’t want to damage Darren’s gorgeous face.
Oh, he was so screwed.
Chris Colfer was positively, definitely, completely, absolutely fucking screwed.
