Chapter Text
“But we have to go!” Gavin whined to Michael, who groaned audibly at the young man next to him.
“We don’t have to do anything, asshole, perks of being American” Michael swivels in his chair, turning to face him directly. “What even is it you want to do?”
“It’s called a Murder Mystery!” Gavin emphasised the last words, his eyes going wide with his enthusiasm. Michael rolled his eyes. Ryan, from his position on the couch looked up at the mention of it.
“You mean those places you go to and they ‘kill’ you off one by one?” He asks. His usual deep tone filled with curiosity. A very similar voice comes from just behind Michael and Gavin, Jack turned around too, suddenly interested.
“Yeah, I heard those things cost like 70 dollars each or something, right?” Jack added, resting his elbows on his knees, looking at the three of them. Ray made some joke about the rules for Puerto Ricans in a place like that. It seemed as if everyone was interested in Gavin’s stupid idea, even Geoff put in a good word, saying that there was one just in Houston that he’d heard about.
“Brilliant! We’ll all go right?! We can have Lindsay and Caleb taddle along too, an achievement hunter day out!” Gavin exclaimed leaning back in his chair, fairly proud of his idea. That smug bastard. Michael groans again and throws his hands in the air.
“Okay, Okay. We should go.” Michael sighs but laughs when he looks over to Gavin and sees him spinning on his cheer, whooping.
“Sorted! We should book it now for the day after tomorrow!” Gavin squealed, closing his editing software and heading to the website. No one much paid attention to him after that, not until he turned around 15 minutes later having announced that he had booked everyone in, including Lindsay and Caleb and that they should just give him the money.
“Trusting Gavin? With money? This has to be a suicide mission” Ryan laughed, already heading for his wallet.
“No, you silly todger” Gavin laughed, as if the notion was completely ludicrous. Michael just tells him to fuck off, but gives him the money he asks for. He’ll tell Lindsay later. He think she’ll actually enjoy it, sounds pretty fucking interesting, although Gavin’s plans always turn to shit somehow.
“So where is it? Houston?” Michael asks, curious. Gavin had brought up his software again and he was about to start work before caught in Michael’s question.
“No, this one’s in Palestine!” Gavin grinned back, swivelling on his chair.
He badgers on about it all day, never ceasing his incessant rambling about the location, saying it’s some abandoned Memorial Hospital, it has reports of being haunted, all the usual bullshit you’d expect to hear about it. Gavin made sure that it was a known thing, even going as far as to organise who was going to be driving who. Michael had never seen Gavin put so much effort into anything. It was quite funny actually, watching him getting all worked up about something so trivial.
He even texted Michael all that night, confessing about how excited he was for it. Michael posted it to Twitter, saying something about how adorable his ‘boi’ was when he was excited. As it turned out Lindsay was excited about it as well, and even speculated in what ways some of us would ‘die’ some of them were outrageous, like Ryan being murdered by a cow sent from hell, and others were worryingly creative and terrifying.
The following day at work was pretty darn slow, however Michael guessed it was the excited atmosphere that buzzed around the office all day, everyone was on the edge of their seat, talking about the experience and placing bets on who would be the first to die, not surprisingly Gavin was their number one choice, much to Gavin’s disappointment. Gavin finished his editing and they managed to get that day’s Let’s Play up. A few more were filmed and Gavin managed to spill everything down him, not all that surprising really.
When everybody went home there was the continuing electric buzz, everyone was texting and Tweeting everyone. Finalising details and making fuel prep. Michael helped Lindsay make their own little lunches for the journey. 3and a half hours was a lot of driving, and they’d only have one stop off for Gavin to go piss. Everything was agreed upon, and everything was set to such preciseness that not even Gavin could fuck it up. All he had to do was wake up. Everything else would be done for him, as made sure of by Geoff. The Memorial hospital was on an intersection between S. Royall St and E. Brazos St, according to Gavin it was run down and had thousands of ‘Ghost Hunters’ inside of its walls, and each one came away with conclusive evidence.
It was nearing Midnight and sleeping was hard. Excitement drew these sorts of things from Michael, making him have a restless night. Lindsay, however, slept unbelievably well, to the point where it almost pissed Michael off how easy she was finding this. Eventually sleep did take him and he drifted off here and there, but he slept nonetheless.
Morning brought some refuge for Michael, today was the day. He and Lindsay take a shower together, and murmured together quietly about the trip, about being stuck in a car with Gavin all day, and Michael have to drive it all. At around 11am they were both ready to head out to grab Gavin, who was waiting excitedly for them. Ray had come along with Michael; living in the same apartment block really helps with these kinds of things. Gavin was waiting excitedly on the door step for them. Geoff, Caleb, Jack and Ryan were already sitting in their car and had been waiting for Michael. At last everyone was in the car and Michael pulled out ahead of Geoff, Gavin turning on his GPS, although Michael knew fairly well how to get to Palestine, he’d never been to wherever the fuck Gavin was taking them and needed some help.
About an hour into the journey everyone is still excited and babbling nonsensically, Lindsay passes Michael over one of the sandwiches they made the night before, and the amount of times Michael came close to choking because of his laughter was ridiculous.
There was a lull in their conversation, however, and Gavin took this chance to speak up – well, more profoundly than he had previously.
“The ghost stories of that place is bloody mental, you wouldn’t believe it!” He begins his voice shrill with excitement. “Like, the patients roaming around the halls, and stuff, bloody bonkers.” Gavin goes on; looking at everyone to make sure they were listening. “Apparently there’s one old geezer going about strapped to a wheelchair looking for his wife, and apparently?” He looks around again, building tension in the car. “Apparently he’ll be heard moaning and weeping through the corridors, crying for his beloved who died days after him. The Intensive Care Unit is supposed to be the worst, hearing people gobbing off and a heart monitor flat-lining too.” Gavin finished; the whole car silent.