Sitting with Amir at lunch in school that day was awkward. I thought it would be easier to just sit down and start shedding my skin in front of him but I immediately forgot what exactly I wanted to say or how I wanted to say it and instead of being productive we both ate our school lunch chicken and chips in silence.
Amir was busy picking his apart and glaring at the mash he was making with his fork. I stared at him, frowning I handed him a vinegar packet which he ignored.
I groaned inwardly. Since when did I care what he thought? He was a year below me, he should be worried what I thought of him.
We were sitting outside the football field in the shade of the stands with the sun blaring down and cooking everything that was green and skin coloured. The boys playing were sweating buckets and the white ones getting redder as the game went on. Technically it was only an in-team match so why they were trying so hard was beyond me.
"Since when do you play football anyway?" I asked Amir suddenly.
He had told me to meet him there because he was just finished going through a set of routine tests they did on the new football members to decide where they needed work and whether or not the team wanted them.
"I don't." He admitted.
I raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
"Trying to get Enna to look at me, it doesn't matter."
"Enna is into football?" Enna was the girl he was trying to impress by becoming class prefect.
"No, she's into the players." He said, looking irritated. I wanted to laugh at him. "Don't... I heard her friend say that. It doesn't matter, I should be the one asking you all the questions."
A short silence and then I replied, leaning back into my chair and stretching my legs out. "Yeah, alright." I surrendered.
"Alright, you'll answer?"
I shrugged. "What d'you wanna know..." Closing my eyes as I stretched.
"Explain." Amir demanded, no context needed.
I covered my eyes with me right hand and sighed loudly. "'Splain what. Let me know where to start at least..."
"Why did he kiss you?"
"Because he's an arsehole." I ground out. "Because he's not at all afraid of looking gay and he likes embarrassing the shit out of me."
"Okay." Amir replied, and I thought he was going to leave it there. "Then a better question would be why did you kiss him?"
I looked at him, startled. "I... What?"
"Akara, for shit's sake man, why kiss him at all? You could have made her think you guys were dating each other some other way..."
"I don't know... I couldn't think of another way off the top of my head."
"Just went straight to kissing him?"
That made me flush red. I put my restless hands in my pockets and focussed on the sweaty lads in the field who were seemingly beginning to accept the football as an autonomous person with it's own right to pave it's way in life without being interfered with.
"Have you kissed before?"
I jolted sideways a little, my heart raced at the question even though I sort of saw the question in his eyes before he asked it. Honest. Be honest. I told myself this but it went against every other urgent request in my head.
"Um..." I got stuck, I couldn't say it out loud.
I reel back, his hand pointing at me. "Whoa." He said simply.
"Just-"
"Whoa..."
"I mean..."
"Shit."
"It's not that bad-"
"Shut up."
"It's not!"
"You dickhead!" Amir glared at me incredulously. "You're dating a fucking bully, don't you get that? This is the bastard that chased me down. He told the kids in my year he saw me pissing outside the form room and the teacher went and told me off for it without even investigating. I tripped over his foot once and the pulled me back by the shirt and sent me flying. He's a bully you idiot!"
That made me feel genuinely bad. It wasn't easy to describe why. I felt like I'd been misjudging him and Amir was right, but the teddy he gave me still sat pressed on my pillow under the covers with Jacob's...
"I know..." I said quietly.
"So why are you dating him!"
"I'm not!" I yelled back angrily.
Amir stared at me like I was crazy. "How many times have you kissed?"
I blinked at him, then looked down at my hand, trying to remember how many times exactly. Wait, the deal had been to kiss him once a day for a week, so it must have been seven kisses, right? Was I missing any. The fact that I had to think about it as I counted with my fingers was enough for Amir to groan and look away.
"Why are you kissing him if you're not dating him?"
"Well, that's kind of complicated..." I was fully prepared to tell him the entire story, wanting to get it out there as quickly as possible more than ever before he interrupted.
"Have you kissed Jacob?" He asked all of a sudden.
I looked up in surprise "What the fuck, no!" Where did this come from??
"So you don't like him."
"No!" I replied indignantly. But the image of him sitting with me in that crowded storage room, the feeling when he turned around and ripped the button off of my shirt, the way his cold blue eyes caught the light when he moved, it flashed in my head and made my heart beat faster.
"And he doesn't like you?"
"Fucks sake no! If you only knew how much he-"
"Okay fine."
"You're bothered by the idea I might be dating someone you hate rather than me being... I mean..."
"You think I care if you're gay?"
"I don't know." I frowned, not sure what to say. It wasn't like homophobic slurs and jokes were uncommon to hear amongst kids my age, so it wasn't crazy to assume he might be on board with that. "But I'm also not gay." I could say that with confidence at least. "I just thought you'd find it weird."
"Weird you like guys? My little sister likes guys and I haven't shunned her yet." He changed subject. "Did you kiss Jacob on the cheek that time?"
He was asking questions so fast I almost felt compelled to answer them at a similar speed and it was hard to lie when I was talking that quickly. "Why are you asking this?"
"Because I'm trying to figure out why Jacob is texting to meet you, why he wrote on your chest that you belonged to him, why you let him order you around like he's got some kind of collar around your neck. I was proper convinced you guys was dating for a while there-"
I spoke over him but he never stopped speaking. "You what?!" I cried, disturbed.
"And then turns out you're going around kissing Atlas and that can't be right. But my eyes saw it and I'm not sure what to think anymore. Are you sure you aren't just turning the school into a big gay orgy or something?"
His wide eyes were watching me as I was stunned speechless by him for a good minute. "I'm not... I don't have anything with either, look..."
I took a deep breath and for the most part explained what had happened between me and Atlas. Amir stared at me like he didn't believe me every word I said and at some point I had to cover his mouth to quit him interrupting.
"Why..." He asked again. "If you don't like him... I don't get that. I wouldn't do that."
"Well you're not me!" I cried exasperated. "You're not a lot of people."
"You're into him!" He accused me.
And I really wanted to deny it, but for a moment my lips just froze and I looked at him and it was too late but I still tried to deny it after the pause. "I don't-"
"Do you like Jacob too? Are you dating him? If he found out about Atlas kissing you in front of everyone would he be pissed?"
"No!" I glared at him.
"Really?" His gaze as he pushed up his glasses pissed me off and I shoved him. He almost laughed as he continued. "You're not in love with Jacob? Not kissing him every chance you get? Does he take you on dates to the library to look at Edgar Allen Poe and Statistics Through the Ages?"
"Oh for the love of fuck." I shoved him and he shoved back and we wrestled for a moment, I couldn't hide my relief that the note of the conversation was starting to take on a more relaxed tone.
I pushed him back against the chair and straggled him, holding his arms down so he couldn't shove me off and I stared at him. "Amir, I fucking promise you. I'm not dating Atlas, I wasn't ever. And I am not, and will never be in a relationship with Mr Ice Cold Prefect who probably wanks off to algebraic equations."
Amir tugged on my shirt but I continued, not really taking in that he was trying to get me to shut up or that he wasn't looking directly at me.
"Yes, he's attractive. So is Atlas. I won't lie about that, I'm not petty. But would I date either of them? I'm not an idiot, I know Atlas is messing with me. And Jacob isn't into me at all, at all. At all, at all, at all. He fucking hates my-"
"I think I can speak for myself there." Came the cold voice of Jacob just a foot away from me, I turned so fast I saw his hand reach out and grab my shirt all of a sudden, yanking me off of Amir. My heart was beating so loud in my chest I stumbled ungracefully onto my feet and ended up looking up at him with wide eyes, completely speechless.
"Oh..." Was all I managed.
"You guys seem chummy." He smiled thinly at the two of us and a rather grey looked Amir sort of shrank back into his seat.
"Uh..." Came from Amir.
"Very friendly." He turned his gaze on me and I realised there was a hard edge in his eyes that could only be seen when they were focussed on you and it made a tingle run down my back, delicious nervousness. It flashed an image of him suddenly pinning me down against the floor in the middle of the stands and I had to manually scrub my mind clean of the image.
"We were just playing." I said, but I wasn't even sure why I was making excuses for myself.
"How enjoyable." He said thinly, enclosing a hand around my wrist. "A word?"
I looked between them nervously and felt the grip on my wrist tighten, which in turn sent a spark down to my cock that made me even more nervous and on edge. I looked up at him, not sure if he had any idea what he was doing.
"Mr Ice Cold Prefect needs a break from waking off to algebraic equations to talk to you, alone." He gave a pointed look to Amir who shrank back into his seat.
I didn't hear anything that came after 'equations' my mind went blank with embarrassment, I wanted to hide under seven layers of sand like a fucking ant.
"During lunch?" A part of me answered on autopilot.
"Akara..." I heard Amir say quietly, like he was warning me to say no.
"I believe-" Jacob started.
Then my phone went off, not ringing, but my text notification sound was pretty long.
I grabbed it without thinking and checked the lockscreen.
[ G I F T ] I'm on the 10/06/2021 at 16:10. Flight arrives in Durenwick Airport.
Oh damn. Oh damn...
Jacob started pulling me away from the seats into the pathway and Amir got up, looking worried, maybe he thought Jacob was like Atlas and was going to beat the shit out of me or... I don't know, get me suspended.
Either way, Jacob looked really pissed off and Amir looked worried as hell and all of a sudden I remembered the vague one line text I'd gotten from my mom a month ago that was suddenly a real thing, I couldn't believe it.
"Wait, wait, wait." I tried to stall, digging my heels in the ground even though it did nothing.
Amir grabbed my arm all of a sudden and pulled me back and I was stuck between the two of them.
"Stop!" I told him. "Wait!" I told Jacob. "Shit." I told my phone.
I didn't go to Thailand often and therefor didn't really get to know my Thai relatives but the only person I did, to some extent, get to know, was my cousin Gift. He was studying medicine and a year older than me but they'd vaguely mentioned that he might do a half year at our school to get some English speaking experience. They said exchange student but it didn't sound like he was going to be exchanged with anyone else.
The few occasions we did hang out, and during family occasions we had to as we were the only boys around the same age at the time. I found out that he spoke good English, without meaning to be a dick that said something about him because the level of English most Thai people spoke, at least in our family, pretty much matched the level of Thai most people spoke in England.
He was really smart, he was like what my dad and my mom would have dreamed of as a kid. It felt like ages since I'd met him. He had unextractable older brother energy that I'd never known what to do with.
The last thing I remembered of him was him telling me off for jumping into the pool with my shorts and vest on and making me spend an hour drying them in the sun before I was allowed to wear them again.
They were all pretty conservative though, gay stuff, that wouldn't fly with him. Apparently they kept asking if I had a girlfriend and if I had trouble finding one and I was only sixteen. Not that it would need to, because I wasn't gay enough for it to matter. But then again when relatives of ours come to stay they... they really make themselves at home.
I shook my arms, staring at the two of them like they were crazy.
This was going to be a disaster, I could feel it.
Then Jacob yanked me forwards and Amir lost control and almost fell backwards as I stumbled forwards, into his warm shoulder, having to rush to keep up with his long steps as he started a striding away.
[A/N] Thank you to my patient patrons, please enjoy this table, copy and pasted by hand.
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