Fic: Meet Jeff Galven (for GROT21C AU)
Title: Meet Jeff Galven (for GROT21C AU)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: 2x16
Warnings: angst
Word Count: 2,244
Summary: It's the year after both Blaine and Kurt have left Dalton, and Jeff has become increasingly aware of his feelings for the brunette boy that is always standing near him at Warbler practice.
A/N: This is a background story for Nick and Jeff's beginning relationship in Great Romances of the 21st Century. However, you do not have to read that to understand this.
Just know that Jeff's background is completely my head!canon (besides his last name) and that until I hear of Curt Mega giving Nick a last name, I am sticking with Nick Owens.
This is Jeff's junior year at Dalton (finally). He's been a sophomore for far too long. Last year was pretty interesting, though, so this year's got to be ten times better somehow.
Jeff's in the Warblers, the really awesome singing group at Dalton (they're really awesome), and last year, the Warblers made it to Regionals with the help of this charming performer kid named Blaine and his now boyfriend, Kurt.
Jeff always thought that Blaine and Kurt would end up together. They were too cute not to. That's why when the day came for Blaine to get the Warblers to vote for Kurt to be Blaine's duet partner, Jeff made sure he was one of the first ones that raised his hand. Anything to help a fellow Warbler out.
The Galvens (that's Jeff's last name, don't you know?) are a family of war vets, and Jeff's definitely heard his fair share of war stories. His favorite story is the one where his dad met his best friend, Anthony, to whom Jeff now refers to as Uncle Tony. Jeff has a best friend, too, and his name is Nick. (That's not important yet.)
Jeff's two brothers are named Jake and Jon.
Jake's 15, and like Jeff, he loves to skateboard and play baseball. While Jon was busy playing football with his friends growing up, Jeff and Jake would gather the neighborhood kids to play baseball in the park and then skateboard around town in the summer. It was a lot of fun, and Jake and Jeff continue a good bro-chilling relationship because of those times.
Jeff's relationship with his older brother is a little different, however.
Jon is 19 and is very determined to follow in Mr. Galven's footsteps to join the Marines, and this scares Jeff more than he wishes it did. He's heard about older brothers coming home from training and forcing their younger brothers to shave their heads.
Jeff likes his floppy blond hair. It hides his eyes when he wants to doze off in class. No cutting of the hair, please.
However, Jon's pretty cool. He was the first person Jeff told he was gay, and Jon just patted him on the back and said, "well, looks like we don't have to worry about you getting any girls pregnant." He then proceeded to make Jeff help him fix his car in the excruciating heat.
Jeff was at least hoping for a break or a serious talk, but Jon's not one for deep conversations. He'll tell you what he thinks and that's that.
Anyway, unlike either of his brothers, Jeff's a good singer. (This doesn't stop Jon from singing around the house when he's not in Marine training, however.) Jeff loves singing in the Warblers as a baritone. It lets him fit in with both the basses and the tenors from time to time when Wes decides they should do four part harmonies. He thinks Dalton's kind of silly, and the homework's hard and plentiful, but it gives him the Warblers. It also gives him Nick.
Nick Owens is a senior tenor, but he's been Jeff's best friend since they met in Jeff's sophomore year at the first Warbler rehearsal. During the first practice ever, Wes had assigned Jeff to stand by Nick, seeing if their voices would work together. In the ten minutes they stood by each other before Wes made them switch, Nick and Jeff discovered they had a shared love of zombies.
Nick had randomly leaned in and whispered over to Jeff, "would you survive a zombie apocalypse?"
Jeff had thought of this question many, many times, so the unexpected question did nothing to hinder his immediate response.
He whispered back, "if I had machete, a semi-automatic AK-47 with 40-round clips equipped with a laser scope, and at least two skilled men to back me up... then yes. And hey, I'm Jeff Galven."
"...Nick Owens, pleasure to meet you."
They had exchanged phone numbers right after practice and have continued to be best friends ever since that first practice.
Jeff thinks Nick is cool. Really cool. They have a really good relationship. Really good. Nick comes over sometimes and they watch the old Stars Wars films, and Jeff thinks it's awesome that Nick would even want to watch them. Nick's so rich, he could probably get NASA to build replicas of the ships used and hire new actors to do what he says. Or something like that.
Instead, Nick hangs out with Jeff, and they're best friends! It's awesome. So awesome. However, Jeff feels the dynamic of their friendship changing. Last week, Nick hugged him. Pretty neat, right? Jeff doesn't know what to think anymore. He knows what his own fluttery feelings stand for; he's known he was gay since he was thirteen. His entire family knows and does nothing but support his every endeavor, so hell, that's not the problem either.
Nick is the only problem. How does Nick feel about him? What would Nick think about him?
~*~
It's a week before Dalton's winter break starts, and even though Jeff knows he'll be spending a lot of time hanging out with Nick over break, he thinks it's the right time to tell him that he's gay. More importantly, he's planning to tell Nick that he likes him.
This way, if it turns out that Nick's surprisingly homophobic and will hate Jeff for all of eternity, then they'll have a nice little winter break to tide things over. Yeppers peppers. Really though, you should know that Jeff's nervous. Nervous to tell Nick that he likes him, and even more anxious to find out what Nick thinks about it.
Nick's really smart, a lot smarter than Jeff (but definitely a lot lazier). He gets good grades, but Jeff remembers when he was always asking Kurt Hummel for help last year. Kurt wasn't even in the same math class as Nick, since Kurt was a sophomore like Jeff, so why did Nick ask him for help? Jeff thought it was because Nick liked Kurt, but the entire group of Warblers could see that Kurt was smitten with Blaine. Therefore, since Blaine was their sort of leader, it was all hands off limits. Nick had stopped asking Kurt with homework help, and Jeff for some reason had felt a lot more relieved.
He still doesn't know if his best friend is gay, though. Nick has never said, and Jeff is secretly too afraid to ask. He's still afraid, even as he's walking to Warbler rehearsal for the last time before break starts. This will be it. Nick likes to articulate his words and tends to sound condescending, but really, it's just because almost everything Nick says is sarcastic. He doesn't look too highly on the world as a whole, but that's probably because he's grown up around politicians and lawyers his whole life--what Nick would consider “the true scum of the Earth”. Jeff likes to think the more time that Nick spends with him, the more Nick will appreciate all the good in the world.
Jeff knows that Nick's goal is to become a professional photographer and maybe attempt at being a school counselor after he's exhausted his first profession. You're one of those rebellious rich kids that is trying to make his parents mad. I get it, Nick.
One day, Jeff wants to be in one of Nick's photo shoots. They could make a nice date day out of it.
----
As Jeff heads to Warbler practice at 5pm, the hallway to the room is painfully long to walk.
Is he going to say no?
Nick sits close to him at lunch, and this one time, Jeff brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat, and they shared it.
I hope he says yes.
Nick sometimes pays for Jeff's Mountain Dew, and that's pretty awesome. Borderline flirtatious, right?
Please, say yes, Nick. I want to hold your hand.
He plans to tell him on Friday.
~*~
It's Thursday night, and Jeff can't get to sleep knowing that tomorrow afternoon will decide how he's going to feel for the entire winter break. It sucks that he already knows Nick has that much control over him.
It's cold in the basement where Jeff's bed is (his room is the entire basement), but he daydreams about Nick coming over to play video games to distract himself from his shivering. In his daydream, Nick's sitting close on Jeff's bed while they shoot zombies, and though the imaginary world starts off innocent, what teenage boy wouldn't start thinking about other things?
Nick's hand goes to Jeff's cheek, and even though neither of their hands are on their game controllers, the shooting sounds from the game are still going off. Time is just moving in slow motion. Nick is smiling, a smile Jeff adores, and is leaning in to kiss the blond boy. It happens slowly in Jeff's head as he's feeling Nick's nose press against his cheek when Nick tilts his head to kiss him. In this moment, Jeff really thinks that he now knows what Nick's lips would feel like against his own.
There's grinning and soft whispers, and in the daydream, Jeff's room is overwhelmingly bright with white light. He feels the sun on his face, and it all just feels right. When he opens his eyes, Nick is gone and so is the ability to see anything in front of him. It's pitch black in Jeff's room, in the entire basement, and he feels alone. More significantly, he feels cold again. What if Nick doesn't even want to be his friend anymore? What if it gets awkward? Maybe he should just let it go and wait for Nick to say something one day.
But that felt so right...
What's wrong with having hope?
~*~
"Hey, Nick? Can we hang back for a sec? I just want to talk about something real quick, if that's cool." No. No. No. No.
Warbler practice is over, and after all the other members leave the rehearsal room, it's just Nick and Jeff standing by one of the couches. Nick smiles and motions for them to sit down.
Please don't smile at me. What if I make it go away? That'd be awful.
"What's up?" Nick asks, sitting down across from Jeff.
It's now or never. Maybe he won't hate you.
Jeff starts off slowly. "What if, um, you ever found out something about someone that you didn't like? Or maybe, not that you hated it, but it just made you like the person less?"
Nick sits up on the couch and smirks. "Well, Jeff, it would just depend what that something was. Are you a serial killer but only kill the bad guys? If so, that's amazing. If not, well, carry on..."
Jeff forces himself to smile in order to keep from frowning, but he ends up just sighing and starts playing with the fringe on his jacket. "No, um, okay... be honest, what would make you hate me? Like really hate me?"
Nick looks up for a moment to consider the reason that would possibly make him hate Jeff. "If you despised Twizzlers, like... our friendship would end. But if not, then you're totally in the clear, Jeffster." Jeff wishes Nick would stop kidding. If he's not going to act serious, then he probably won't take what Jeff has to say as serious either. This is serious. There's a friendship on the line. Please say yes. Please.
"...I think I really like you. Like I honestly love you or something, Nick."
Jeff bites his lip right after he says it, and he watches as Nick blinks and furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "Jeff... What? No. Come on, Jeff... No, you don't."
It'd be nice if Jeff could work out his next reply in his head, but his brain is currently focusing all of its energy on making sure his heart doesn't keep beating as fast as it is. Breathe. Breathe. Live. He just shakes his head a couple times, staring down at Nick's knees. "Um, no, actually. I really do. I think I'm in love with you."
Nick can't think of anything else to do but frown, wishing he had more time to come up with a polite way to say what he knows Jeff doesn't want to hear. Instead, he sees Jeff open his mouth again, so he waits for him to say something else. Jeff looks down and rubs his lips together to keep them from feeling so dry. "I get it, Nick. I didn't expect you to be gay, but I just... had to tell you. I'm sorry."
Nick sighs, frowning at Jeff once more before sighing again. "No, I am gay. That's not it."
?!?!???!?!?
He continues with "but you're my best friend."
"Oh."
"I love you, but... just as a friend. I'm sorry. Shit, I'm really sorry, Jeff. I didn't know."
Nick's gay. Gay. Gay. Gay. Gay. Why hasn't he said anything before? Why is he saying he has to get home to do homework? Why is he leaving?
And then it's as if Jeff's back in his basement--unable to see anything in front of him, but this time it's because of the tears streaming down his face.
Unable to keep warm, because his heart feels cold. Maybe soon he'll stop hurting so much.
Meet Jeff Galven, the boy who's in love with his best friend.
----
If you hate that ending/it gave you the sniffles, then you could possibly read Great Romances of the 21st Century. However, it's uber long (and has one chapter until it's finished), so I don't really suggest it, and it's more Klaine-centric, but the later chapters do follow up to this story.
That was my first take on writing strictly a Niff tale, but I just wanted to write a slight background story for Jeff in order to understand him better in GROT21C, since there isn't a lot of Niff left to write for it.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: 2x16
Warnings: angst
Word Count: 2,244
Summary: It's the year after both Blaine and Kurt have left Dalton, and Jeff has become increasingly aware of his feelings for the brunette boy that is always standing near him at Warbler practice.
A/N: This is a background story for Nick and Jeff's beginning relationship in Great Romances of the 21st Century. However, you do not have to read that to understand this.
Just know that Jeff's background is completely my head!canon (besides his last name) and that until I hear of Curt Mega giving Nick a last name, I am sticking with Nick Owens.
This is Jeff's junior year at Dalton (finally). He's been a sophomore for far too long. Last year was pretty interesting, though, so this year's got to be ten times better somehow.
Jeff's in the Warblers, the really awesome singing group at Dalton (they're really awesome), and last year, the Warblers made it to Regionals with the help of this charming performer kid named Blaine and his now boyfriend, Kurt.
Jeff always thought that Blaine and Kurt would end up together. They were too cute not to. That's why when the day came for Blaine to get the Warblers to vote for Kurt to be Blaine's duet partner, Jeff made sure he was one of the first ones that raised his hand. Anything to help a fellow Warbler out.
The Galvens (that's Jeff's last name, don't you know?) are a family of war vets, and Jeff's definitely heard his fair share of war stories. His favorite story is the one where his dad met his best friend, Anthony, to whom Jeff now refers to as Uncle Tony. Jeff has a best friend, too, and his name is Nick. (That's not important yet.)
Jeff's two brothers are named Jake and Jon.
Jake's 15, and like Jeff, he loves to skateboard and play baseball. While Jon was busy playing football with his friends growing up, Jeff and Jake would gather the neighborhood kids to play baseball in the park and then skateboard around town in the summer. It was a lot of fun, and Jake and Jeff continue a good bro-chilling relationship because of those times.
Jeff's relationship with his older brother is a little different, however.
Jon is 19 and is very determined to follow in Mr. Galven's footsteps to join the Marines, and this scares Jeff more than he wishes it did. He's heard about older brothers coming home from training and forcing their younger brothers to shave their heads.
Jeff likes his floppy blond hair. It hides his eyes when he wants to doze off in class. No cutting of the hair, please.
However, Jon's pretty cool. He was the first person Jeff told he was gay, and Jon just patted him on the back and said, "well, looks like we don't have to worry about you getting any girls pregnant." He then proceeded to make Jeff help him fix his car in the excruciating heat.
Jeff was at least hoping for a break or a serious talk, but Jon's not one for deep conversations. He'll tell you what he thinks and that's that.
Anyway, unlike either of his brothers, Jeff's a good singer. (This doesn't stop Jon from singing around the house when he's not in Marine training, however.) Jeff loves singing in the Warblers as a baritone. It lets him fit in with both the basses and the tenors from time to time when Wes decides they should do four part harmonies. He thinks Dalton's kind of silly, and the homework's hard and plentiful, but it gives him the Warblers. It also gives him Nick.
Nick Owens is a senior tenor, but he's been Jeff's best friend since they met in Jeff's sophomore year at the first Warbler rehearsal. During the first practice ever, Wes had assigned Jeff to stand by Nick, seeing if their voices would work together. In the ten minutes they stood by each other before Wes made them switch, Nick and Jeff discovered they had a shared love of zombies.
Nick had randomly leaned in and whispered over to Jeff, "would you survive a zombie apocalypse?"
Jeff had thought of this question many, many times, so the unexpected question did nothing to hinder his immediate response.
He whispered back, "if I had machete, a semi-automatic AK-47 with 40-round clips equipped with a laser scope, and at least two skilled men to back me up... then yes. And hey, I'm Jeff Galven."
"...Nick Owens, pleasure to meet you."
They had exchanged phone numbers right after practice and have continued to be best friends ever since that first practice.
Jeff thinks Nick is cool. Really cool. They have a really good relationship. Really good. Nick comes over sometimes and they watch the old Stars Wars films, and Jeff thinks it's awesome that Nick would even want to watch them. Nick's so rich, he could probably get NASA to build replicas of the ships used and hire new actors to do what he says. Or something like that.
Instead, Nick hangs out with Jeff, and they're best friends! It's awesome. So awesome. However, Jeff feels the dynamic of their friendship changing. Last week, Nick hugged him. Pretty neat, right? Jeff doesn't know what to think anymore. He knows what his own fluttery feelings stand for; he's known he was gay since he was thirteen. His entire family knows and does nothing but support his every endeavor, so hell, that's not the problem either.
Nick is the only problem. How does Nick feel about him? What would Nick think about him?
~*~
It's a week before Dalton's winter break starts, and even though Jeff knows he'll be spending a lot of time hanging out with Nick over break, he thinks it's the right time to tell him that he's gay. More importantly, he's planning to tell Nick that he likes him.
This way, if it turns out that Nick's surprisingly homophobic and will hate Jeff for all of eternity, then they'll have a nice little winter break to tide things over. Yeppers peppers. Really though, you should know that Jeff's nervous. Nervous to tell Nick that he likes him, and even more anxious to find out what Nick thinks about it.
Nick's really smart, a lot smarter than Jeff (but definitely a lot lazier). He gets good grades, but Jeff remembers when he was always asking Kurt Hummel for help last year. Kurt wasn't even in the same math class as Nick, since Kurt was a sophomore like Jeff, so why did Nick ask him for help? Jeff thought it was because Nick liked Kurt, but the entire group of Warblers could see that Kurt was smitten with Blaine. Therefore, since Blaine was their sort of leader, it was all hands off limits. Nick had stopped asking Kurt with homework help, and Jeff for some reason had felt a lot more relieved.
He still doesn't know if his best friend is gay, though. Nick has never said, and Jeff is secretly too afraid to ask. He's still afraid, even as he's walking to Warbler rehearsal for the last time before break starts. This will be it. Nick likes to articulate his words and tends to sound condescending, but really, it's just because almost everything Nick says is sarcastic. He doesn't look too highly on the world as a whole, but that's probably because he's grown up around politicians and lawyers his whole life--what Nick would consider “the true scum of the Earth”. Jeff likes to think the more time that Nick spends with him, the more Nick will appreciate all the good in the world.
Jeff knows that Nick's goal is to become a professional photographer and maybe attempt at being a school counselor after he's exhausted his first profession. You're one of those rebellious rich kids that is trying to make his parents mad. I get it, Nick.
One day, Jeff wants to be in one of Nick's photo shoots. They could make a nice date day out of it.
----
As Jeff heads to Warbler practice at 5pm, the hallway to the room is painfully long to walk.
Is he going to say no?
Nick sits close to him at lunch, and this one time, Jeff brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat, and they shared it.
I hope he says yes.
Nick sometimes pays for Jeff's Mountain Dew, and that's pretty awesome. Borderline flirtatious, right?
Please, say yes, Nick. I want to hold your hand.
He plans to tell him on Friday.
~*~
It's Thursday night, and Jeff can't get to sleep knowing that tomorrow afternoon will decide how he's going to feel for the entire winter break. It sucks that he already knows Nick has that much control over him.
It's cold in the basement where Jeff's bed is (his room is the entire basement), but he daydreams about Nick coming over to play video games to distract himself from his shivering. In his daydream, Nick's sitting close on Jeff's bed while they shoot zombies, and though the imaginary world starts off innocent, what teenage boy wouldn't start thinking about other things?
Nick's hand goes to Jeff's cheek, and even though neither of their hands are on their game controllers, the shooting sounds from the game are still going off. Time is just moving in slow motion. Nick is smiling, a smile Jeff adores, and is leaning in to kiss the blond boy. It happens slowly in Jeff's head as he's feeling Nick's nose press against his cheek when Nick tilts his head to kiss him. In this moment, Jeff really thinks that he now knows what Nick's lips would feel like against his own.
There's grinning and soft whispers, and in the daydream, Jeff's room is overwhelmingly bright with white light. He feels the sun on his face, and it all just feels right. When he opens his eyes, Nick is gone and so is the ability to see anything in front of him. It's pitch black in Jeff's room, in the entire basement, and he feels alone. More significantly, he feels cold again. What if Nick doesn't even want to be his friend anymore? What if it gets awkward? Maybe he should just let it go and wait for Nick to say something one day.
But that felt so right...
What's wrong with having hope?
~*~
"Hey, Nick? Can we hang back for a sec? I just want to talk about something real quick, if that's cool." No. No. No. No.
Warbler practice is over, and after all the other members leave the rehearsal room, it's just Nick and Jeff standing by one of the couches. Nick smiles and motions for them to sit down.
Please don't smile at me. What if I make it go away? That'd be awful.
"What's up?" Nick asks, sitting down across from Jeff.
It's now or never. Maybe he won't hate you.
Jeff starts off slowly. "What if, um, you ever found out something about someone that you didn't like? Or maybe, not that you hated it, but it just made you like the person less?"
Nick sits up on the couch and smirks. "Well, Jeff, it would just depend what that something was. Are you a serial killer but only kill the bad guys? If so, that's amazing. If not, well, carry on..."
Jeff forces himself to smile in order to keep from frowning, but he ends up just sighing and starts playing with the fringe on his jacket. "No, um, okay... be honest, what would make you hate me? Like really hate me?"
Nick looks up for a moment to consider the reason that would possibly make him hate Jeff. "If you despised Twizzlers, like... our friendship would end. But if not, then you're totally in the clear, Jeffster." Jeff wishes Nick would stop kidding. If he's not going to act serious, then he probably won't take what Jeff has to say as serious either. This is serious. There's a friendship on the line. Please say yes. Please.
"...I think I really like you. Like I honestly love you or something, Nick."
Jeff bites his lip right after he says it, and he watches as Nick blinks and furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "Jeff... What? No. Come on, Jeff... No, you don't."
It'd be nice if Jeff could work out his next reply in his head, but his brain is currently focusing all of its energy on making sure his heart doesn't keep beating as fast as it is. Breathe. Breathe. Live. He just shakes his head a couple times, staring down at Nick's knees. "Um, no, actually. I really do. I think I'm in love with you."
Nick can't think of anything else to do but frown, wishing he had more time to come up with a polite way to say what he knows Jeff doesn't want to hear. Instead, he sees Jeff open his mouth again, so he waits for him to say something else. Jeff looks down and rubs his lips together to keep them from feeling so dry. "I get it, Nick. I didn't expect you to be gay, but I just... had to tell you. I'm sorry."
Nick sighs, frowning at Jeff once more before sighing again. "No, I am gay. That's not it."
?!?!???!?!?
He continues with "but you're my best friend."
"Oh."
"I love you, but... just as a friend. I'm sorry. Shit, I'm really sorry, Jeff. I didn't know."
Nick's gay. Gay. Gay. Gay. Gay. Why hasn't he said anything before? Why is he saying he has to get home to do homework? Why is he leaving?
And then it's as if Jeff's back in his basement--unable to see anything in front of him, but this time it's because of the tears streaming down his face.
Unable to keep warm, because his heart feels cold. Maybe soon he'll stop hurting so much.
Meet Jeff Galven, the boy who's in love with his best friend.
----
If you hate that ending/it gave you the sniffles, then you could possibly read Great Romances of the 21st Century. However, it's uber long (and has one chapter until it's finished), so I don't really suggest it, and it's more Klaine-centric, but the later chapters do follow up to this story.
That was my first take on writing strictly a Niff tale, but I just wanted to write a slight background story for Jeff in order to understand him better in GROT21C, since there isn't a lot of Niff left to write for it.