One Shots 3.0 [boyxboy]

Schoolboy Crush

I looked down at my blazer with the Dalton Academy crest on the lapel dubiously. 'Is that a good idea?' I hedged. 'Couldn't I get in trouble for being on the grounds?'

Doyle shrugged. 'Nah. That kind of elitism only exists at your school.'

I made a face and elbowed him, but followed him through the gates of his school trying desperately not to stand out - pretty impossible considering what I was wearing, when everyone else was in street clothes.

We rounded a corner and I saw some picnic benches by the edge of a green area where a group of kids were playing soccer, using bunched up jackets as goal posts. Doyle raised a hand over his head and some of the people on the benches waved back, beckoning him over.

They exchanged greetings and then Doyle gestured to me. 'This is Adam,' he said. 'Adam, this is everyone.'

They smiled and said hi and took turns introducing themselves; Melanie, Jason, Imran, Trevor, Jessica, Becky. I immediately forgot which name belonged to who and hoped it wouldn't come up.

'So you're Doyle's fancy private school friend,' one of them said cheerfully.

Doyle emitted a tsk of impatience. 'He lives on my street,' he said. 'He's not that fancy.'

'I'm really not,' I confirmed.

'Sure you are. That blazer is working it's ass off for you,' one of the girls joked, grinning. 'Why are you slumming it with us public school plebs today?'

'One of my morning classes got cancelled,' I explained. 'So I thought I'd run a quick anthropological study on the early morning behaviour of working class youths in their natural environment before reporting back to the Academy with my preliminary findings.'

Seven pairs of eyes stared back at me while I waited for the joke to land; after a couple of seconds the girl who'd mentioned my blazer, Becky I think, let out a sharp breath of amusement and soon they were all laughing.

'You're such a freak, Adam,' Doyle muttered, rolling his eyes.

I sat and chatted easily with them for a few minutes until some of the kids playing soccer noticed Doyle had arrived and started shouting at him to join them; he jogged over and I felt a moment of discomfort that he'd abandoned me with strangers but then I heard him calling my name.

'We need one more,' he explained from fifteen feet away. 'You in?'

I glanced quickly at the time; I could play for a few minutes before I had to leave in order to make it to school for my second class. I nodded, standing up and shrugging off my blazer, folding it carefully while Doyle's friends jeered at me, but I would be in more trouble than was worth it if I turned up at Dalton with it wrinkled or dirty.

I followed him to where he was standing with a group of the other boys, loosening my school tie and undoing the top couple of buttons on my shirt as I went. He didn't do much other than to point out which goal I was scoring in, leaving it to me to figure out who else was on my team. He and another boy shuffled the ball back and forth between them a couple of times before he tried to dance past me with it but, light on my feet, I stole it and dribbled it around the edge of what I perceived to be the sidelines before pausing to glance around and then shooting for the goal. The kid who'd been standing there watching me dived for it but missed and it sailed past him easily.

I was accosted by a couple of the others, laughing and messing up my hair, and Doyle's friends on the picnic benches cheered, half making fun of me.

We continued to play for fifteen minutes until the bell rang signalling they had to get to class and I really needed to go to make it to school on time as well.