Sunsets and Constellations | B X B

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Detention wasn't as eventful as Elijah would've liked it because he was always tired after practice and one week of detention had been moved because Arius simply refused to do more work than Elijah. This is where the prosthetic arm came in handy; pun unintended, and Arius wasn't afraid to use it to his convenience.
He hadn't seen the boy much and was sort of relieved.

What the fuck was he thinking? Crush? On him? No way, he had to get over this before anyone found out.

They'd lost their second game miserably against the Highland Tigers, getting kicked out of the tournament. Coach Amy Lee had been pissed, but they needed more practice together as a team. Their practices were more rigorous now and Elijah could see the team getting better.

Jake and him had snuck out a handful of times during the night to go play soccer so Jake could polish his skills for the season.
More often than not, they had ended up just exploring their vast campus until the morning and had still not reached the boundaries.

Just how big was this place?

There were rumours going around about Arius that were simply outrageous. He'd heard that Arius was in gang and had gotten his arm ripped off because he had formed an alliance with the rival gang. Another version was that he had been bitten by a snake and they'd amputated his arm cause they were too late. Yet another one was that he was depressed and suicidal and had gone one step further than slitting his wrists and hacked his arm off with a saw blade.

Teenagers just loved gossip. If he had to be honest though, the first allegation seemed plausible because of how bad tempered Arius was.
Also, the girls were obsessed with him because of his mysterious self. He only ever hung out with Viggo, and Madilyn and Koovs occasionally.
He'd seen Megan flirting with Arius by the lockers, running her finger along the side of his face and she had proceeded to kiss him smack on the lips. Elijah couldn't make out if Arius liked it or not because his face was absolutely unreadable. He had gently pushed her off and pulled his phone out, completely ignoring her.
After that, the only times he had seen Megan were when she was trying to get with Arius. The boy had incredible amounts of patience; he always turned her down politely which she would totally ignore. She was smitten.

As for Elijah, he tried his best to ignore him at all costs although he would have to fight this insatiable urge to irritate him or piss him off completely whenever they were in close proximity. But he'd done a good job of covering it all up so far. His erratic heartbeat and blushing included.

Elijah was never one to fight his feelings. He believed that going with the flow was the best way to deal with things. There were exceptions of course, his infatuation with the brown haired boy for instance.
Apart from Ryder, nobody else even had the slightest hint, and she stayed true to her promise. He had realised during their late night Lord of The Rings marathon that Aragorn was one sexy king. Ryder argued that Legolas looked better.
After that open conversation with Ryder, he started noticing that he did stare at the shirtless males way more than the lead actresses with bikinis and all that jazz.
Around Ryder, he could be his complete self. He longed to open up to Abby and his mother but he thought it would be better to do it in person.
He wasn't afraid of telling Jake or Tirzah but it was awkward.
So he had made up his mind that he would tell these four people and be done with it, he wanted them to know. Ryder had told him that he didn't have to come out, but he wanted to.

He was gay. Officially gay.

Now it hadn't bothered him that much that he wasn't straight, but it was still weird, because he had lived his whole life thinking he hadn't found the right girl yet. He hadn't even considered that maybe he liked boys. That's how it all worked right?
He was actually really surprised at how calmly he had handled it. This surely wouldn't have been the scenario back at his old school. His teammates made gay jokes and homophobic comments on the daily, and he had laughed along, finding it funny. How ironic, he was one of the gays now. Part of the reason why he was calm was because he wasn't the only one. Ryder was asexual, Tirzah was pansexual and he was gay. Jake? Well Jake was the only straight dude among them. It was like the universe had brought them all together.