Top and Tail [boyxboy] [slash]

Chapter 17: You Never Think!

"So..." Jay spoke just as my eyes swept over my mum's signature. I swallowed and winced, immediately regretting it.

"Hey, want to go for ice-cream?" I asked suddenly, eyeing up the twenty conveniently placed on the mantelpiece beside us. Jay raised an eyebrow.

"Um, aren't you meant to be sick?"

"Yeah," I explained impatiently. "But it can be medicinal ice-cream..."

I wagged my eyebrows suggestively while Jay struggled to keep a straight face. Eventually, he had to laugh.

"Fine," he conceded, his lips ghosting over the tip of my ear and sending a shiver down my spine. "But wrap yourself up first. You're still sick, remember?"

I stuck my tongue out at him. "You treat me like a fucking kid," I joked.

"Well, you do act like one..."

He feverishly ducked to avoid the pillow aimed in his general direction.

Said ice-cream really did turn out to be medicinal – as well as soothing my sore throat I was back at school on Friday. Maybe my recovery wasn't entirely due to the delicious dessert, but it was nice to think so. Meant I could always refer back to these events if I ever did get sick again.

So when the bell rang for third period, I was swept into the classroom with a wave of students along with Lee, Lewis and Jay. It was really, really tempting to grab Jay's hand as I was pulled through the throng, but common sense and self-preservation prevented such an act. Especially going into a Religious classroom. In a Catholic school.

The first thing I noticed about the dreaded classroom was that the desks had been rearranged into groups of six, like wooden islands on the sea of blue carpet. I shuffled awkwardly in the centre of the room, keeping one eye on Jay, seeing as I had no idea where to sit.

Until Lee started waving madly from the back of the classroom, that is. She and Lewis had commandeered the back table and had saved a seat for both Jay and I. I slid into a rickety chair position neatly between a radiator and a window directly across from Lee, diagonal from Lewis, and right beside Jay. Two chicks I vaguely recognised took their places at the end of the table, giving us contemptuous looks. Lee gladly returned them twice as intensively.

"Ok kids, today we're looking at life beyond death."

Fuck.

I didn't even have to look to sense Jay tense beside me. I knew he had told the whole student body and the staff that he was living with me because his mum was on a 'business trip', but still... It was a rather insensitive topic to say the least.

The worst possible topic for someone like Jay.

"Hey," I whispered, leaning over so that only he could hear me. "D'you wanna leave? I could like, fake sick or something and you could heroically volunteer to take me down to the office..."

Jay gave me a very small, very sad smile. "Um, I'll be ok... But, um, Ash?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"No bother." I smiled. The moment really called for some mushy hand holding and possibly some kissing, but I couldn't. I didn't imagine my RE teacher (or the rest of the class) would be especially appreciate of a public gesture of homosexual affection. Especially not from two misfits at the bottom of the food chain, like me and Jay. They'd eat us up.

I zoned out while the teacher continued droning on about living, morality, and the promised 'eternal life'. In all honesty, it was statements like these that had drove me away from Catholicism in the first place. The whole 'heaven and hell' scenario annoyed me. It seemed pretty petty that an all-knowing, all seeing God would banish somebody to eternal torture for something as vain as not believing in Him...