Okay, one last shot.

Madison moved behind the main room's large, central couch Gavin was seated on, trying to catch a glimpse at whatever he was up to. Her mind immediately filled with images of porn, like a thick cock sliding into a wet, eager pussy, a tongue skillfully lapping against someone's clit, handcuffs, ball gags- 'What the fuck, Mads?' she reprimanded herself, demanding her vagina stop speaking for the rest of her body. 'I will get to you soon, dammit!'

Reality was far more mundane as she finally, quietly reached the other side of the couch and could see him watching something on youtube. On further inspection, though, Madison was actually intrigued. She recognized the channel, for one, and the content didn't look very familiar. 'Fortune favors the bold!' she told herself as she skipped forward, then vaulted the back of the couch, landing beside Gavin.

"GAH!" he yelled in surprise, almost dropping his laptop and his earphones entirely popping out. Madison laughed a little out loud, unable to stop herself. "What the fu-" At seeing her, he seemed to freeze up, going total deer-in-headlights. Before the awkwardness could set in, Madison pushed forward, trying to reach conversational escape velocity.

"Sorry, just noticed what you were watching!" she explained bluntly, Chloe's words echoing through her head a little bit. "Is that a new one? I haven't checked since we got here, but it is update day, so I'm probably behind."

"Oh, um, yeah." He appeared a little less guarded at least. Progress. "I just started watching it, I was going to just do it out here in case Zack or Chloe needed the room."

"Or both." The small tease got a very small smile, but Madison decided she'd take it. "Again, sorry for the dynamic entry. Do you mind if I watch with you? I'm caught up on the other essays, but if you're too far in ..."

"No, I, uh ..." He glanced at his computer and moved his fingers over the trackpad. "No, I'll just start it over." Madison slid up besides him, noting his body going a bit stiff again when she got closer. She backed off a little, leaving a small gap that seemed to weigh less on the clearly-nervous young man.

Roughly half an hour later, the credits and patrons scroll began to roll over the screen, and Madison had almost forgotten all the nervous tension she'd been worried about a repeat of.

"God damn, I love movies," she said out loud after a brief silence, looking over at her viewing partner. "I swear, I could watch film history crap like this all day."

"Me, too, actually." Okay, so, something in common. "It's kind of what I'm going to school for next fall."

"Film history?"

"Film in general. I'm trying to cut into the industry, but it's sort of a hellscape."

"No fucking kidding. I got an internship this year working for Cato Casting, and I still think I may be too late in the door," Madison breathed out with exasperation. "I mean, the politics are insane, I'm just lucky my uncle knew a guy so I could shove my foot in."

"Cato's not bad, though," Gavin offered, body language seemingly far more relaxed. "I mean, depending on what you're trying to do ..."

"What about you?" Madison surged forward in the conversation, a little overeager from making progress with the member of her friend group she thought despised her. "I'm guessing ... not the actor type?"

"Directing, production, technical things." He hadn't even seemed to notice her rolling over his previous statement. "I really want to direct. It's just ... kind of hard to crack into, even for the industry standard. Plus, I'm not the most commanding guy."

"Why, then?"

"Images. The power they have over people. Sorry, that sounds supervillain-y. No, like ... you can say things with imagery you can't with dialogue. Yes, what's being said matters, but the text of a film is so versatile in terms of what you can pull out from performers and capture on the screen. You can express things you never would be able to say out loud, maybe even do so with enough finesse that other people start thinking along those lines. I guess ... I want a voice in the world, it seems like a way to do it that plays to my strengths. Well, my technical strengths, anyway."

The answer kind of shocked Madison, leaving her staring for a few seconds after Gavin finished speaking. She honestly hadn't been expecting a really serious answer, and the boy had clearly thought about this a lot. It was only when he started to retreat again, body language closing up, that she moved to speak.

"Sorry, sorry, I was just thinking, I completely get that. It's ... actually a lot of why I want in, too."

"What area strikes you?"

"Don't laugh." Madison rolled her shoulders, trying to shake off the stress of looking stupid and shutting this whole thing off. "I want to be an actress. I know, I know, I'm a cliche."

"I don't think you're a cliche. You've done tons of plays at school, you always really throw yourself into it. Which ... I mean, it's high school drama productions. Most people just don't."

"That's, um, that's pretty fair." Madison relaxed a little, smiling at the compliment. "But that's what I mean about getting what you said. I feel ... present on stage. Most of the time, I'm loud and I'm a lot, which I know, but so much of that is struggling to be heard. If you have a platform, you have a say. Bigger platform, more say. On the serious side, there's a lot of stuff I want to help fix and draw attention to, but it's not stuff I'm good at. This is, at least I think it is. Personally ... no one wants to feel invisible, right?"

"No ... they really don't."

The two relaxed into more subdued conversation, comparing favorite movies and perspectives. From the idea of propaganda of propaganda, the evolution of women in the director's seat, and why in God's name Asylum stays in business despite producing nothing but sheer crap (it's cheap and television needs filler, mostly), they went on and on until, while discussing favorite movies, one of them happened to glance at the clock.

"It's a master class in conservation of attention to detail, that's all I'm saying," Gavin breathed out, clearly done arguing the point of whose favorite movie was better.

"No, I like Hot Fuzz, everyone with a soul likes Hot Fuzz, but I just think there are better movies! Technical performance isn't everything, you know."

"But Club Dread? It's ... it's just not very good. Like, on any level."

"I didn't say my favorite movie was artistic. I said it was my favorite. Club Dread is a weird piece of trash, but it's my favorite piece of trash and no one can take that away." Madison grinned and felt at-ease when Gavin did the same. Honestly, the night hadn't been a bust at all. She was having a lot of fun, none of their other friends were as into this stuff as she was, and she had to admit that seeing him warm and open instead of distant and mysterious was ... hotter. Madison shook her head, clearing out the lusty, distracting cobwebs spinning around her mind, and gasped as she glanced at the ostentatiously fancy clock. "Fuck me, it's two in the morning."

"Jesus, really?" Gavin looked back at it, then down to her. "I mean, I'm a night person anyway, but yeah, that's ... kind of late. Especially if Heather drums us out of bed in the morning."

"Which is really likely." Madison stood up, then immediately felt a wave of regret wash over her. She didn't want to leave. She didn't want to go to bed. She wanted to keep talking. She'd had a good day in general, and this was still the best part of it for her. A little faster than Gavin expected, judging by the small jump he made, Madison spun back around to face him and threw herself back down on the couch. "Did you used to hate me?"

"What? I ... what?"

"Well, before ... this ... and I've really been loving the 'this,' it's been really fun, you kind of always froze me out whenever I tried to talk to you, and I know I can be just super-intense sometimes, and I just wanted to know if it was something I did or if it's something I should be apologizing for, because you're actually a really interesting guy and I don't get the vibe that if I pissed you off, I did it on purpose." The words came out far faster than Madison meant them to, the sudden change in tone forcing her to speed up in fear she'd be cut off before she finished. But she wasn't. Instead, Gavin just sat there in silence, looking away again. 'Fantastic, just love undoing an entire night's worth of emotional work,' Madison thought, feeling her heart dropping as she immediately regretted pushing into a sensitive subject too soon.

"Um, yeah, I didn't hate you. At all. I'm really sorry you thought that, I know I kind of have resting serial killer face," he finally spoke after almost a full minute of silence.

"Oh," Madison said slowly, looking back at him and willing him to look back up and engage. "Then, um ... do you mind me asking why? I mean, you're always fine whenever I've seen you with Ashley or Heather or especially Chloe."

"Becsiliu." That wasn't a sentence. That wasn't even a word. Madison blinked, trying to puzzle out the excessively fast and very soft thing Gavin had just that.

"Um ... I ... didn't get that?"