Fritz coming over was the reason Rafael slept very poorly that Friday night. He tried to console himself by putting Amelie on, which was usually his last resort when he wanted to feel better, but even that was a weak distraction. Mostly, he tossed about in his sheets and tried to get the feeling of Fritz's fist punching through his gut out of his head, but nothing seemed to help.
It felt like he was 14 again, sitting in his darkened room and reading the comments of that stupid Facebook post over and over. His skin was crawling, he was sweaty and clammy, and it was the exact same fear.
As if things couldn't get worse, it only felt like he'd been asleep for a few hours when his mum opened the door and loudly asked, "Hi, what time's your friend coming over?"
Rafael had rolled over, swathed tightly in his own duvet, and opened his eyes to his alarm clock. The glowing green numbers informed him that, presuming he didn't show up any earlier, he had 13 minutes until a really hot guy strode through his living room with 20 bucks and an essay to finish. He fought his way out of the sheets, ran into his kitchen, and poured himself a full glass of orange juice that he immediately began downing.
"I have open homes half past 10 through until four," Rafael's mother said, wandering out from the hallway as she pulled her coat over her shoulders. "Oh, and a meeting at six. Who's coming over again? Tom?"
Rafael gulped for air, set his glass down, and told her, "Nope. Fritz."
"That's a new one," Constance pointed out, and when Rafael glanced over, she gave him a very obvious wink. Rafael felt the blood drain from his face. This wasn't going to plan, and he was no longer certain the lens would be worth it.
He made a bleary stumble down the hall and into the bathroom, where he kicked the door shut and had the most nervous piss he'd had in a long while. This was bad and getting worse fast, and for God's sake, when was his mum leaving?
He ran the tap so hard water shot back up at his chest, and he brushed his teeth like he was trying to strip paint. He spat into the sink. Rafael stared into the mirror, his eyes dry and his skin drier. He hated that his past self had agreed to this, he hated that lens, and he was really, really hoping Fritz got rear-ended on the drive over.
He ran back down the hall and into his bedroom, immediately shedding his pyjamas in favour of pulling on skinny jeans, frantically jumping around the room as he tried to get them past his thighs. He yanked open the curtains, ignored Sigourney as she bumbled around with her tail wagging around his legs, and swept everything on the floor very hastily under his bed.
The combination of exhaustion and anxiety not settling well, Rafael trudged back into the living room where his far more cohesive mum was piling folders into her arms. "Well," she said, picking up her sunglasses from the dining table, "say hi to our mystery guest for me, won't you?"
"At this rate," Rafael said glumly, "you'll meet him."
Rafael had been kidding, but it was at this moment that Sigourney's ears pricked up. Constance and Rafael both went still, and there it was, the distant crunching of gravel that was only getting louder. Constance's face grew a sick and twisted smile that only an overbearing mother could pull off.
"I'll get it," she said pleasantly, and started for the door.
While Rafael held onto Sigourney as she wriggled like an arthritic worm against her collar, he heard every word they exchanged, and every inch of his body was crawling. It was an uncharacteristically pleasant greeting from Fritz, a surprised hello from his mother who did not expect Fritz to look like that, shortly followed by the door closing with a hasty goodbye. That was it - Rafael was looking at Fritz beaming cheerfully from his living room rug.
He let go of Sigourney's collar and silently begged her to bite.
Of course, Sigourney did not. She bounded up to Fritz in a clumsy mass of yellow fur, and Fritz gasped like he'd never seen a dog before. He started talking to Sigourney as if she were an infant, not an 11-year-old canine, while Rafael just stared, wondering if this was how Fritz normally acted. He dug his hands deep into his hoodie pockets and started to question whether he had to say hello first.
Eventually, Fritz looked up from where he was sitting on the floor, Sigourney occasionally tapping her paw into the carpet. His face stuck in a smile, he said, "Didn't tell me about the dog."
"Sigourney," was all Rafael said. He really didn't have much else to say because he'd never seen Fritz outside of his school uniform and his legs looked different in jeans.
"Good girl," Fritz marvelled, while Rafael tried to slow his breathing. An impressive drip of drool starting coursing down from Sigourney's muzzle, and satisfied, Fritz pushed up from the floor. "Is your dad home?"
Rafael said, "He's at work."
"Oh," Fritz said, before giving Rafael a quick raise of his eyebrows. "So no witnesses." Rafael's blood ran cold, Fritz pushing past him with a gentle nudge of his shoulder. Was it too soon to pre-emptively call in his own murder?
Evidently bored, Fritz kept on moving toward the opposite end of the house, scanning the walls like he was making a mental map of the building, which he undoubtedly was. Planning his escape route, Rafael figured.
He felt so viscerally uncomfortable, like he'd suddenly developed gastric ulcers in the past 30 seconds. As Fritz wandered inside his bedroom, Rafael's fists clenched.
"Jesus Christ," Fritz exclaimed from inside the room, "reckon you could use a few more posters?"
He followed him in to find Fritz glancing around, obviously struggling to take in everything from the clearly slept in bed to the wall of DVDs. If he was smart, he'd take advantage of the situation to spin Fritz around and beat the crap out of him, but no, some sick part of Rafael was still holding out for the $20 that was supposedly coming his way.
"Not to interrupt," Rafael said, "but I don't think you came here to scope out my interior decorating."
"I sure did," Fritz said, looking back over his shoulder, his eyes bright.
Rafael's eyes widened a fraction, and against all his attempts at relaxing, his breathing got faster. "What?"
"I definitely didn't come here to get you to write an essay for me," Fritz said, wandering over to Rafael's desk. "Finished it last week. Obviously. Did you actually believe that I would come to you for help in school?"
This wasn't a rhetorical question, and Fritz looked back again in hopes of getting some response out of Rafael. He searched through Fritz's expression and desperately tried to find anything that would make what he was doing malicious, mocking, cold. Oddly, Fritz was smiling, his brown eyes warm and his movements soft. Fritz sat down in Rafael's desk chair, swivelled to face him, and waited.
Unfortunately, now that he thought about it, the answer to Fritz's question was no. Fritz had never been slow at school, and even if he was suddenly falling behind, why would he go to the boy he hated who only ever scraped a pass?
"This is just you being a dick," Rafael finally concluded.
"It usually is," Fritz agreed. "Hey, can I get my 10 bucks back?"
Rafael glared. Fritz grinned.
"Well, I'm having fun," Fritz said to himself, turning back around in the chair to face Rafael's desktop monitor. He moved the mouse, and the idling computer lit back up to Premiere Pro, right where Rafael had left it the night before.
In any other situation, Rafael would've run over and swatted Fritz's hands away from the keyboard, he'd have pinned him to his desk chair and slapped him so hard you'd see a handprint on his cheek. Now, he stayed still and leaned his back into his doorframe, staring up to the ceiling.
Fritz would get bored. It would be over soon.
He repeated the last two phrases as a sort of mantra, but Fritz made an interested oooh noise and hit the spacebar. Madonna started playing, Fritz leaned in, and Rafael fought the urge to begin slamming his head against the wall in an attempt to make it stop.
"Hey," Fritz said suddenly, and hit the spacebar again so the room went quiet. "Rafael, is this a trip?"
"Yeah," Rafael said, and admittedly, he perked up marginally at this. His life might be spiralling, but at least his music video was making sense.
"You should make the walls move," Fritz said. "Eyes on the moon are cool, so's the rest of what you have, but walls definitely move, curtains go in circles, stuff like that. Posters talk to you, you know. I think that'd be so cool." Fritz smiled again. Rafael looked over.
"You don't know anything about filmmaking," Rafael said dryly.
"I know about being on LSD," Fritz offered. "Man, you're totally screwed, but that's awesome."
"So you're the one doing LSD but I'm totally screwed?" Fritz turned back on the chair, his head leaning against the backrest with his neck so exposed that Rafael was briefly convinced he should jump at it like a vampire.
But the more he looked, the more his head started hurting like he was huffing Sharpies. The room was so quiet and Fritz was just sitting there, sprawled out in a way that was erotically poised, his legs spread with his feet flat on the ground.
Not yet ruling the Twilight roleplay out, Rafael cautiously walked over to his bed and sat on his unmade bed. Fritz kept looking around the room for a while, and Rafael didn't speak, mostly because he didn't want Fritz to remember he was there. Fritz eventually pushed himself up and wandered over to Rafael's cabinet of films, and though he was on the opposite side of the room, Rafael winced.
"I think we give a bad name to bullying," Fritz said to the wall, his hands in his pockets. "I always thought we fit under bullying as an umbrella term until you agreed to this. Unless you'd have let Chris Reynolds come over if he asked?"
"If he was paying, I might consider it," Rafael said, but it was all quickly growing more and more agonising. He wasn't sure he had the energy for many more witty quips.
"Right," Fritz said, though it was evident in his tone he didn't believe it. "It never feels like I hate you enough for this to be bullying." Fritz looked back at Rafael, whose eyes immediately plummeted to the floor, and Fritz added, "I actually think you're alright most of the time."
"Could've fooled me," Rafael told the carpet.
Fritz pulled something out of the cabinet, studied it for a moment, and then turned back to Rafael. He held it up, presenting him with the cover of the first Scott Pilgrim book. "The movie for this is coming out soon. We should go see it together, eh, Rafael?"
"You can't stop yourself from being a dick," Rafael countered. "Piss off. Seriously. Go home."
"That was the wrong thing to say," Fritz said back, slotting the comic book back in and wandering over to the bed. Rafael froze and averted his eyes anywhere else. "You were supposed to ask, 'As a date?', then I'd say, 'Yeah!', and you'd go, 'I hate you, dumbass, you're screwing me over'." Fritz's weight made the mattress dip. "That's how it went in my mind."
Rafael was convinced Fritz was having a psychotic episode. He edged further along the bed, and Fritz took it as an invitation to pull his legs up and cross them. There was an awkward silence for a while, and Rafael could feel Fritz staring at him and it made him want to cry. Somehow, Fritz not trying to punch him was making the ordeal 10 times worse.
But Fritz inched forward, and Rafael tensed up even more, every muscle in his body tight. He cringed for the millionth time as Fritz's index finger started running along the edge of his ankle sock, but the pressure was so light, unlike anything Rafael had felt before. He eased up, his body starting to unwind, but it wasn't because he was chilling, it was because he was so confused. And the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if-
"This kind of feels like the start to softcore porn," Fritz said quietly, and Rafael's head snapped up.
His brain flashed back to the post Fritz Liked on Facebook, the calculator in the chemistry test, the pencil peace offering, how was currently sitting a few inches too close and touching his sock. Rafael looked over to Fritz's teasing expression and he stared, no longer worried about the eye contact.
"Fritz," Rafael managed, "why did you want to come over?"
Grinning, Fritz gave him a cheeky raise of his eyebrows. Rafael's heart rate was picking up.
"Fritz," Rafael repeated. "Tell me or I'll hit you."
"That's a bad threat because I'm not scared of you touching me," Fritz said, but it came out so playfully Rafael was going to scream.
But Fritz already hated him, so Rafael had nothing to lose. He asked, "Dude, are you trying to hook up with me?"
Fritz faux gasped. "It's almost like I've been pinning you to the ground every week for the past three years! What gave it away?"
Rafael didn't want to stop and think. He slapped Fritz's calf hard, then again, and again. He grabbed his pillow in both hands and started smacking Fritz over the head with it, and protesting, Fritz tried to grab it.
Rafael hurled curses at him until Fritz finally managed to tear the pillow from his grasp and throw it on the floor. Furious, Rafael put his hands behind him on the bed and attempted to shove his foot through Fritz's stomach, but Fritz intercepted and grabbed Rafael's ankle.
The boys stilled, and Fritz breathed in deep before saying, "This isn't the bed-based activity I was going for."
"If you're gay too," Rafael said, his foot still in the air, "why have you spent the past three and a half years making fun of me?" Fritz looked at him like the answer was written in permanent marker across his forehead.
"Why do you think, idiot?"
Rafael's jaw dropped. "You're antisemitic!"
"No," Fritz said back, "I just think you're annoying." He paused for a moment, before loosening his grip on Rafael's ankle. "Honestly, I had no idea you were Jewish. Where was my invite to the bar mitzvah?"
Rafael yanked his foot back and pulled his knees up to his chest. Weirdly, Fritz wasn't leaving, even though Fritz could realistically find a hook up anywhere without even asking. If this was another game, Rafael seriously couldn't figure out what on Earth was in it for Fritz.
Sex was all he could come up with, but Fritz could get that from anybody, and it wasn't like Rafael was all that special. More specifically, it was sex with a boy, but Fritz was so persuasive and that Calum he was mates with did seem awfully open minded. It would certainly make more sense.
Of course, Rafael was not an idiot. It all pointed to one thing.
"Fritz," Rafael asked, watching his hands carefully for the first sign of movement, ready to dodge incoming fists. "Have you already hooked up with Calum Fraser?"
"Sure have," Fritz replied, his response immediate and casual. "Don't tell anyone. You aren't supposed to know that." Fritz squinted at him. "Hey, how did you know that?"
"Lucky guess," Rafael said. With the sex accusation and now this, Rafael dared to say he was getting the hang of how Fritz operated.
But the more Rafael thought about it, the entire scenario came with a safety net that he'd never had in any other situation. There was so much that could've gone wrong with Fritz showing up to his house, just like there was when he accepted his friend request, Rafael knew that. With hooking up, though, that was different – instead of Rafael being in danger, for once it would be Fritz's life on the line.
Whereas the entire school knew Rafael was gay as all hell, there weren't even vague rumours about Fritz. If there were, Fritz's popularity within his friend group and even within the school as a whole would plummet. Everyone would resent him for leading them to believe he was someone he wasn't.
So, even if Rafael said yes, it wouldn't exist beyond his bedroom. Except for maybe his wank bank.
In the same vein, he wasn't entirely sold just yet. "Give me your phone," Rafael said.
Fritz squinted at him. "Why? Are you calling 111? I'm not going to do anything with you unless you sa-"
"I want to turn it off so naked pictures of me don't end up on the Internet," he interrupted, and Fritz started laughing. Rafael wasn't joking, and he leaned forward to pull the edge of Fritz's phone out of his pocket.
But he was leaning over too far, with one hand in front of him to steady himself, and Fritz's hand reached over to touch his forearm, gently wrapping around him and squeezing. Rafael wasn't exactly inundated with human contact, and the pressure made his breath hitch in his throat.
"Did you just gasp?" Fritz asked, his tone incredulous.
"No," Rafael lied.
Almost the entire time Fritz had been in his house, Rafael had avoided locking eyes at all costs because it made him feel nauseous. Now, with Fritz's face mere inches from his own, Rafael finally mustered the courage to turn his head and meet Fritz's gaze. Fritz had one hell of a face, all cheekbones and big eyes and that straight but gently upturned nose. Rafael had never been so close to it when it wasn't either bloody or sweaty or, in one case, spat on.
Fritz's free hand reached up to Rafael's shoulder and pushed him back onto the bed. He squeezed his shoulder, before leaning in to start kissing a hot, wet trail up Rafael's neck. The weight on his chest combined with Fritz's low mmm had Rafael unsure if now was the right time to start moaning.
Better to be safe than mortified, he lay perfectly still underneath Fritz, staring at the same ceiling he'd been looking at for the past 17 years. Now, the smooth cream plaster looked different. His jeans also felt different.
Tighter. Much tighter.
Uh oh.
"Do something with your hands," Fritz said into his neck, before pushing Rafael's legs apart with his knee.
That was the last thing he expected to be hearing when he woke up, but nonetheless, Rafael awkwardly set a hand on the upper half of Fritz's back. Fritz swore under his breath, grabbed his other hand, and set it firmly a lot lower on his backside than Rafael figured he was allowed to go. Rafael's brain, which wasn't doing a lot at present, suddenly began wondering if Fritz worked out.
He stopped thinking about anything as soon as Fritz started kissing him, and his mouth was so warm and unexpectedly nice that Rafael clumsily, desperately, hooked a leg around the back of Fritz's calves and tried to pull him closer. Fritz let him have it and pressed into him harder.
Fritz's hand that wasn't holding him up was pushing its way under Rafael's hoodie. Rafael was quickly losing any last shred of composure because Fritz's hips were grinding down into his, all the friction summing up quickly.
But partway through pushing his hoodie up his chest, the pressure of Fritz's fingers dug too hard into his ribs, and Rafael gasped, jolting like a fish flinging itself out of the water. Fritz jerked back, and the two boys stared at each other with most of Rafael's midriff exposed and his leg still clutched around him.
"Rafael," Fritz said, his voice low, "do not tell me you just-"
"No," Rafael squeaked, before clearing his throat. "No. Ribs. Ow."
Fritz squinted, his cheeks still flushed. In between heavy exhales, Fritz asked, "What's wrong with your ribs?" Rafael stared because it should've been obvious. "No, seriously, what?"
"From where you kicked me," Rafael said quietly, and immediately, Fritz's mouth dropped open.
"That actually hurt?" Fritz asked, and Rafael awkwardly looked down his front, before pulling up the jersey a fraction more to reveal the residual faint green-yellow in his side that had been there for a while. Fritz's eyes widened, and he said, "But I've been going so easy on you!"
"You're taking the piss," Rafael countered. Fritz didn't falter.
"You must be so fragile," Fritz pointed out. "How are we going to hook up if you're so delicate?"
"I'll be really brave about it," Rafael got out, just desperate to kiss him again. Fritz's eyes were dark, his face quietly pleased. For once in his life, among the usual fear and loathing, Rafael felt one more emotion -
Horny.
If you can relate to being sexually frustrated, morally challenged, or you're just enjoying the story, please give the story a vote! Better yet, give me an irrational boost in my own self confidence by leaving a comment. My ego will thank you for it.