None the Worse ✓

13) 'Can A School Make You Gay?' And Other Questions You Pretend You've...

"What?"

"It's just... the squad supports you. You know that, right?"

Benjamin blinked. "What do you mean, the whole squad? Do Martin and everyone else..."

Messiah nodded solemnly.

"Oh."

"You're rather obvious."

"I am not obvious!"

"When are you not obvious?"

Typically, Ben was lost for words. He slumped down on Messiah's divinely chair and twirled around for a moment. "So... everyone thinks I'm gay, huh?"

"Everyone but yourself."

Benjamin frowned, wrinkled nose and all. He had no idea what to think of this.

Considering the fact that he wasn't freaking out meant he wasn't all that objective to the idea, was he? But Thijmen? No way. Not in a thousand years.

Not in the time it took for the universe to die out and be born again until it died again.

It didn't matter that Benjamin blushed every three seconds when he was around Thijmen and that he thought about him all the time and that he thought his smell was pleasant. He did not like Thijmen. Impossible.

"I don't like him."

"And your nose has always been that long?"

"Shut up."

"Don't lie to yourself, Ben."

He glared at Messiah, wishing his words to be untrue like it was his life mission.

He didn't even want to like Thijmen. He was a criminal, a know-it-all and a weirdo. If Benjamin had to choose any boy to like, it would definitely not be Thijmen. It wasn't Thijmen.

"Whatever," Benjamin huffed.

"Maybe we can help you?"

"No. I don't like him."

Messiah sighed and suddenly, a cookie flew at Benjamin's face. It broke into a dozen pieces and the crumbs fell all over Ben's legs. "You're so stubborn, Benjamin!"

"Sorry," he murmured, wiping the crumbs to the floor.

"Sorry, my ass. Do something about it! Go tell him or something."

"What?! NO! I'm not gonna tell him. I mean, I have nothing to tell him. I don't like him! Messiah, shut up. You're crazy."

"I'm not the one who's crazy. Just tell him. Jesus."

And that's reason number two why Benjamin was absolutely terrified of talking with Thijmen, and now, he started to notice it. It took everything Ben had to make sure he wasn't too obvious about it, but well... as Messiah said, he wasn't very good at not being obvious. Of being scared, that is. Intimidating. Ben didn't even know. It felt as though fifty percent of the time Thijmen had this friendly sparkly unicorney aura, and the other fifty percent he looked like he drank the tears of children as a youth elixir.

All of a sudden, when Benjamin least expected it, Thijmen had him cornered. He'd trapped him in the kitchen, with nowhere else to go.

"Benjamin, what is up with you?"

Well, actually, Benjamin happened to be thinking, which burned calories, which made him hungry, and so he ended up raiding the cookie jar late at night whilst forgetting Thijmen did the exact same (except he made himself manly, brutal things like eggs and bacon and ham-and-cheese sandwiches). "Nothing," he blurted out, though with his mouth stuffed with peanut butter cookies it sounded more like, "Niwovnwfv."