AN- fuck all of you for making me wanna write this before i finish bluejay's story lmao
THIS IS THE LAST LEEGENE ONE UNTIL THE END OF THE MAIN BOOK. IM PUTTING MY FOOT DOWN. except i love you and im literally perfect, so here's another one to tide you over ;))))
Eugene, 2 days after the party
"Thank you so much for doing this for me."
"Jace, I'm not doing anything for you."
The idiot called me at 1am- 1am - asking me to go and pick up his drunk brother, 'cause he was apparently 'way too comfy to move'. All I tuned in on was the word 'brother' and realized without a doubt that I was the last person Lee wanted to see.
"What about Enzo?" I grunted.
"Ew. Next."
"Cella?"
"Getting laid."
"Corey?"
"Definitely not getting laid, but definitely too incompetent to look after a living thing."
I couldn't argue with the gospel. Even if Lee was probably going to hate me forever.
"Fucking fine-"
"I'll text you the address," Jace interrupted, his voice dropping to a whisper. I heard the muffled sound of someone's slow breathing, and I frowned. Jace never stays with his hookups overnight. "You're the bestest best friend-"
"I'll kill you."
"Love you too! Bye," he hissed, hanging up before I could protest.
Well, fuck.
~~~
I'd tried to speak with Lee earlier, when I first arrived at the weird ass summer camp I was forced into visiting. While Marcella went off with a spring in her step and a devilish gleam in her eye, I just stood there, watching him with a lump in my throat. Me and Marcy probably looked like hitmen, clad in black and hunting down our victims. But my victim was lounging on a sunlit patch of grass, laughing with his friends and looking to all the world like some kind of angel. Who I'd forever ruined by being an asshole.
I couldn't let him see me. I wouldn't know what to say. Not that I was big on talking anyway; but how do you apologize for ruining someone's life? How do you look into a soul as beautiful as his and not corrupt it?
So, that night, I trekked across the camp to begrudgingly meet my fate. Or my doom.
The sight of a bonfire through the trees drew me into a clearing, where red cups and music and stupid, wasted teenagers did stupid, wasted teenage stuff. Swallowing down the blatant fact that I was superior to every single person there, I pushed forward to find a head of loose, brown curls. Desperately, I avoided the memory of how it had felt to have my hand tangled in them.
Right on cue, I found him. With his head resting on a wooden picnic table, Lee Jackson was very, undeniably, drunk.
I stood awkwardly over him, not knowing what to do. "Lee," I said dumbly, my voice gruff.
He groaned, dribbling slightly. "God?"
Idiot, I thought to myself as I looped an arm around his body and pulled him up. Adorable, but still an idiot.
After getting him to trip over the bench and into my arms, Lee groggily opened his eyelids and narrowed them at me. "You... why are you here?" Weakly trying to fight me off even though I was carrying his entire body weight, he called out towards the hoards of drunk kids. "Befany! Noooah! I'm being-" hiccup,"-abducted..."
"Fucking hell," I grumbled, tugging his dead weight behind me.
Lee stopped in his tracks, forcing me to face him while he jabbed a finger into my chest. "You, are an asshole. A big fat asshole. And a jerk. Yeah. Hear that, mister? J-A-R-K." He smacked his lips together and paused, seemingly forgetting his train of thought for a moment. And then, his smug eyes lit up as he thought of some grand new insult to throw at me with slurred words. "And you're an asshole." He frowned. "Did I already say that?"
I didn't quite recognise the chuckle that left my lips. I wasn't prone to 'chuckling', but Lee was forming a lot of firsts for me. "Yes. Three times," I mumbled, helping him hobble along.
Given Lee's state, it took us about half an hour to find his cabin. He was face planting into the grass for most of that half an hour. Well, when he wasn't slurring confessions of hatred at me.
"I can't believe you just... left," he huffed as I got him through the front door. All three beds were empty, thankfully. "You practically break my back- when I say I was limping, I mean limping- and then you just... ugh. My hurts head. Head hurts." While he giggled drunkenly, I plopped him down on one of the mattresses and started taking off his jacket. "What, you want a round two?" Lee scowled at me.
I scowled back. "No, that's my jacket. You stole it twenty minutes ago."
He blushed and made a silent 'oh' with his lips while I snapped another sentence begrudgingly. "Plus... don't even joke about that while you're... like this."
He gave me a strange look then, one I'd only seen when we were-
It looked like longing. Maybe it was affection. Either way, it made things complicated.
And then, his voice quiet, he said, "I think you broke my heart."
Oh. Oh. Something in me ached.
"You don't even know me," I breathed after a moment of heavy, stunned silence. My hands were on the hem of his sweatshirt, one he'd also stolen from me twenty minutes ago. Even after I decided he could keep it, I didn't move away.
"I wanted to."
I knew exactly what that meant. It meant, you didn't even give me a chance. You didn't let me try. Is it so impossible to believe that someone could care about you? The ache turned into a knife that butchered its way through my heart. It carved out a space there, just for him.
"...Get some sleep," I said gruffly, accidentally throwing the duvet in his face when I tried to cover his body.
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever, dick. Thanks for giving me a fractured spinal cord. And a sexuality crisis." With a few more dramatic mutters under his breath, the old woman known as Lee crawled under the covers, clearly blocking me out.
A sick and twisted part of me yearned to comfort him. Hell, I'd even take him insulting me. I hated how I'd left things, but there was no going back. 'I think you broke my heart.' He'd liked what we did. He'd liked me. Which is why I had no choice but to push him away.
"Goodnight, Lee," I said in a low voice before I left, even though he wasn't going to say it back. Usually, I didn't bother with trivial formalities like Hello! Goodbye! How are you? They were meaningless. But I discovered, with a twist of my gut, that Lee wasn't.
~~~
2 days earlier (the fateful night)
I didn't stop walking until I was out of the party, through the front door of my house, up the stairs and inside my bedroom. Only then did I lean against the closed door with wide eyes, letting my actions sink in. And in they sank. Like the fucking Titanic.
Oh god. Oh god.
For over a year, I'd held back. For over a year, I'd controlled myself. I'd been smart. I'd been strong. I'd been Eugene. Unfeeling and uncaring. And now, I was just un-fucking-believably stupid.
I slumped on my bed, staring up at the ceiling with the shock of someone who'd just returned from war. Why did I do that? There'd been no reason for me to lose my cool and go off the deep end, and yet... when I saw him, I just snapped, and he'd just been there. The same as always, all sweet and aloof and fucking irritating, like the way a puppy is when it does everything wrong and can't climb up the stairs by itself and follows you into the toilet. That was Lee. But the thing with pets was that no matter how much they bugged you, you loved them anyway. Lee had been bugging me since the first day I met him. Those light brown curls. Those even browner eyes. The slight freckles on his nose. They all bugged me more than anything. He was under my skin like an itch that never went away, and that alone was proof that at the end of everything I felt, it should've led to me hating him. It should've. But at the true end of everything, only three facts remained.
One. Lee Jackson was real.
Two. Lee Jackson was a pain in my ass. And three?
I was head over heels in love with him.
It's not like I planned to fall for him. Honestly, it was a gigantic fucking inconvenience. I was perfectly content on despising 99% of mankind for the rest of my life, and then he had to come along. What a motherfucker. A year ago I innocently went over to Jace's house, having completely tuned out of his warning about his idiot family like I often did when he or Corey started to get annoying. But the second I walked through the doorway, there was a strange, disturbingly happy white boy beaming up at me. In comparison to my height, the kid was tiny. And the first, horrible thought I had was, cute. This small thing is cute. Why the fuck is it cute.
"I'm Lee!" He said with a grin, holding out his hand like a weirdo (because who the fuck gives handshakes anymore?). A sweet, lovely weirdo who made my chest feel strange and tight every time he smiled. So, naturally, I decided to ignore him indefinitely. It was preferable that we went our separate ways, that Lee would eventually go off and get married and never ever think about me, while I remained a bachelor until death. A satisfying ending for all involved, surely. It was better for everyone if I pretended. But pretending didn't change the truth; somehow, he came along, and I softened.
Which, of course, I kept hidden for over a year.
"Marcy," I said quietly into my phone after dialing with numb fingers.
"C'mon, Kurosawa. I was just about to get laid. Man, you suck." With a dramatic groan and sigh, she finally caved. "What is it? I'm only entertaining this disgusting cock-block... or... pussy block? Ew. Anyway. I'm only entertaining your horrible, horrible timing 'cause you probably wouldn't even call me if there was an alien invasion, so this better be good. Wait, don't tell me! You've been kidnapped-"
"Marcella."
She paused, hearing the unusual vulnerability concealed within my serious tone. "What did you do?"
I swallowed, remembering Lee with his cheeks flushed, his mouth open, his legs around my waist, the beautiful way his back had arched into my hands.
"I lost my virginity."
AN- oh fuck oh god oh fuck uhhh uhmmm