None the Worse ✓

7) 'Don't Do Drugs, Kids' And Other Things Thijmen Doesn't Pay Attention To

7) 'Don't Do Drugs, Kids' And Other Things Thijmen Doesn't Pay Attention To

Thijmen took Benjamin to the back of the school.

Yes, the back the school.

The Dutch sat down on a bench and took out a cigarette. He offered another to Ben with a smirk, knowing full well that he didn't smoke.

"N-no, thank you."

"Good choice," Thijmen replied, stuffing the pack back where it came from. As he lit the cigarette, Ben wondered what else Thijmen had hiding in the deep pockets of his jacket.

"Do you have a knife?" he blurted out.

"What?" Thijmen replied, a cloud of smoke erupting from his mouth. "Do you need one?"

Ben wrinkled his nose and waved the smoke away. "No, why would I need a knife?"

"I don't know. You're the one who asked."

"I was just... Never mind. Why did we go here?"

"Because I needed a smoke."

Benjamin made a face. Figures. Just when he'd decided to stop judging, Thijmen had come, incentivized him to skip class, taken him to one of the school's shadier areas and smoked. As if nothing. 'Don't judge' his butt. Nonetheless, Benjamin kept this to himself. Being the fantastic conversationalist he was, he replied with, "ah."

Being the amazing conversationalist Thijmen was, he let the chat drop and decided to focus on wrecking his lungs.

Benjamin picked at the grass beneath and idly plucked blades of it out. To think this had all started because he'd hit his head against the desk for absolutely no reason. Perhaps because of that and for absolutely no reason, he found himself skipping class with a thug at the back of the school. Who smoked, no less. Benjamin glanced at him from the corner of his eyes.

He wondered if he thought it made Thijmen look attractive. As in, sophisticated. Mature? There were probably a lot of girls who loved it when boys smoked a stick of pure toxin every now and then. And it didn't really look that bad. It looked pretty fancy, actually. The way he gracefully held the cigarette pinched between his fingers and brought it up to his lips to inhale the tobacco practically begged for eyes to be glued on him.

Benjamin flat-out stared, and he didn't realize he was doing it so shamelessly until Thijmen asked, without even looking at him, "What?"

"I'm not looking at you," Benjamin said.

"Of course you're not."

"I'm looking at the smoke."

Thijmen smirked. "Yeah, sure."

Stupid thug. "And at the huge pimple on your nose."

That wiped the smirk off. In a jarringly off-character moment, Thijmen put the cigarette down and grazed at his nose with his other hand. There was nothing, of course, but the reaction knocked Benjamin's cool—or lack thereof?—as much as he'd done to the Dutch guy. Oh, dear. Okay. He hadn't expected that.

"Where?" asked Thijmen.

Benjamin felt like digging his face into the ground, and he didn't even know why. Embarrassed by his own outburst, he shrugged and looked away. "N-never mind. Joke. I was joking."

He gave Thijmen a shy grin, but the latter just shot him a look.

He'd killed the moment. Benjamin had killed the moment. Stupid. So stupid—