:: 25 ::
Luke walked through the school building with his gaze never lifting from his feet and a million curse words running through his mind but never making their way towards vocalization.
He felt dirty. So fucking dirty—he kissed two different people in one day. The only thing Luke had been happy about is that today wasn't the day he had class with Michael, and he had successfully avoided being confronted by him.
Luke should've known his luck would run out, with the way his life has been going lately. It wasn't until just before their last period of the day that he suddenly wished he was a turtle that could retreat into their own shell when threatened. Michael's presence would definitely be threatening.
Michael ran up to Luke as soon as he spotted him in the middle of the crowded school hallway. "Luke, I gotta talk to you—"
Luke turned towards him and shook his head, responding softly, "Not right now, Michael."
Desperately, the hockey player lowered his tone and begged, "Please, I—I just want to say something."
"I said—"
"I know what you said," Michael interrupted, desperation filling the eyes that Luke still hadn't looked into, "but I'm not going to listen."
"Of course you're not," Luke grumbled. Either Michael didn't hear him or he just wasn't going to acknowledge it, because the boy dragged them between empty and secluded locker banks.
"Now, are we going to have a conversation or not?" Nothing. "Luke..." Again. "Can you at least look at me, please?" Michael got agitated and turned Luke's head by the chin with his index finger and thumb. "Thanks," the older boy said, sarcastically.
"What do you want?" Luke gave in, albeit with unwillingness and hostility in his tone.
"For you to talk to me," Michael said with a raised eyebrow.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I just can't, okay, Mike? Leave me alone," Luke demanded. He went to pull away from Michael's grip but as they both heard dress shoes against tile flooring, Michael pulled him back until the sound was distant, and then gone.
"No," he whispered angrily. "Why won't you just talk to me? Because I fucking kissed you?—is that it, huh? Grow the fuck up, Luke." And Luke could not believe how, even for a second, Michael was never able to get over himself.
And as Michael was forcing them to look at each other, as he was yelling, Luke's mind raced until finally he squeezed his eyes shut and yelled back, "I kissed Penny that day, too, okay? So it hasn't exactly been good on my psyche the past 24 hours, you dickhead."
Michael froze, "You—you what?"
"Don't act like I wasn't going to do it eventually! We're talking, Michael, and people who talk eventually kiss and date and all that good shit, alright?"
"But—"
"You kissed me," Luke clarified before Michael could bring up the topic.
"You said you were doing chores yesterday," Michael said quietly, defeated. Luke was confused as to why that's what he brought up instead—surely it was a joke, he had to be more focused on Penelope.
"I didn't want you to know that I was with her before I hung out with you," Luke admitted openly, exhausted by this argument. "Why aren't you saying anything? I just told you I kissed—"
"I don't give a shit about who you kiss, okay, Luke? Tone down your ego a bit," Michael scoffed. "What matters is you fucking lied to me."
"It wasn't that big of a lie," Luke defended. And, okay, fuck you, Luke.
He just didn't understand, even after all Michael had told him about his mother and the constant lies and deception she put him through. He spent a good part of his life not knowing the truth and all he wanted for the rest of it was for the people closest to him to just tell him the truth. No matter the situation, no matter how they think he'll react. Beneath any reaction he'd possibly give would be a grateful feeling that Michael would appreciate in silence.
"It was still a lie," was all Michael said. He wasn't going to start getting irreversibly angry when they only had t-minus ten minutes until the last bell of the day rang throughout the halls and probably interrupted any progress in their argument they had been making.
"Look, I'm sorry—"
"Are you really, though?"
"Yes, why—"
"How do I know you're not lying again?"
"I'm not lying, Jesus fucking Christ, Michael!" Luke glared at the boy, who had managed to trap him between the lockers and his own body somehow in the past few minutes they'd been bickering.
Michael began shaking his head as he glanced down and back up to Luke. He let out a dry chuckle and said, "Let me ask you something; promise me you'll answer."
"Promise."
"Who kissed you better?"
Luke's eyes widened with the question and he stuttered out, "W–Well, you didn't...you didn't kiss me for very long."
A sudden confidence rushed over Michael as he leaned forward with Luke against the lockers behind them. "Would you like me to?"
"I...don't know..."
For the second time, Michael kissed Luke. And for the first time, Luke was reciprocating—laced with hesitation and uncertainty, but surely still kissing. Michael's arm was leaning against the locker next to Luke's head and his hand still gripping the blonde's chin, Luke moving a hand to the back of Michael's neck to keep him exactly where he was and Michael couldn't believe it: Luke didn't want to stop, he wanted them to keep going.
A familiar, loud ringing sounds throughout the hallway, signifying the end of the day. And with it, Luke snapped out of whatever trance Michael's lips had put him in and didn't even look at him when scurrying away like a frightened bunny.
"Fuck," Michael groaned. He hit his head against the lockers in front of him too many times to count before a hand came up to block his forehead from any further, potential damage.
"We can't have our star player out with a concussion not even caused in the rink," he heard the smart-ass voice of his best friend say.
"Shut the fuck up, Calum," Michael sighed, but stopped any movement and let his head rest on Calum's hand against the lockers. "I'm stressed."
"Why's that, buddy ol' pal?" his best friend chirped.
"Luke, sadly," Michael admitted. They began walking towards the front entrance when Michael nodded his head that he was done being self-destructive.
"Is he done ignoring you for the day?"
Michael groaned, "Only after force." He should be happy that Luke finally talked to him, should be fucking ecstatic that he got to kiss him again. But he's not. Because Luke ran away. Again.
They stayed relatively silent the walk home—or, the walk to Calum's house. Michael wasn't meant to be going to Calum's today, but he'd been so preoccupied in his thoughts (however self-deprecating they may be at the moment) and didn't realize he really needed to be with his best friend right now. It'd been a while and Calum seemed to sense that Michael needed some company.
"So what's up?" Calum asked curiously, caringly as he unlocked his front door and let his troubled friend in the house first.
"He hung out with Penelope before he hung out with me, but he told me he was doing chores," Michael explained, putting his book bag on the living room coffee table, "then he just told me they kissed."
"Didn't you kiss him, too?"
Rolling his eyes, Michael shook his head. "It was pathetic and I'd barely call it anything except an opportunity."
Calum raised an eyebrow from the kitchen. "Opportunity...?"
"To show how fucking gay he makes me," Michael crashed face first into Calum's couch with a groan of displeasure.
"Well I'll be darned, Michael Clifford has caught himself a feelin'!" Calum joked in an accent. He moved their book bags from their place on the coffee table to near the front door when he came back from the kitchen and replaced them with two cans of soda.
"Please stop," the distressed boy begged. "I kissed him today, too, and then the bell rand and he ran away. That's why I was denting the lockers with my massive head."
"He ran away?" Calum stifled a laugh, stopping when he saw the glare his best friend wore.
"Don't make fun of him," Michael snapped. "He had reason to. He's never even thought about boys romantically, let alone kissed one—twice in the past 36 hours, actually."
"Have you asked if he's thought about boys romantically?"
"Very briefly."
"And?"
Michael shrugged. "Wouldn't matter even if he did; he's got a girl now." The sound of Legend of Zelda's 'secret chest' noise interrupted the conversation, and Michael's heart began beating incredibly fast when he registered the sound of Luke's personal text tone.
Yes, he gave Luke his own text tone. And his own ringtone: Song of Storms. No one else has one—not even Calum—but Michael doesn't want to talk about it.
Calum looked at him in question as he pulled out his phone and opened the message without fully looking at it.
FROM: YUNG STROMBOLI
— what did you wanna say earlier at school?
FROM: MICHAEL
— it's not important anymore.
FROM: YUNG STROMBOLI
— of course it is.
— are you going to tell me?
FROM: MICHAEL
— you know I change your name in my phone every time you text me
— today it's yung stromboli
FROM: YUNG STROMBOLI
— what?
— stop changing the subject
FROM: MICHAEL
— I'm not, I'm just changing your contact name
FROM: YUNG STROMBOLI
— fuck's sake
— mikey please
Michael frowned, seeing the last message and visualizing in his head exactly how Luke's face would've looked if he said that in person. His eyes would be widened and his lips would be slightly down-turned, jutting out the bottom lip in a small pout that Michael had only seen Luke do.
With a sigh, he clicked out on Luke's contact and pressed the call button. After only a few moments of the generic ring-back tone, the blond boy answered. "Why'd you call?"
"You've ignored me all day," Michael reminded, then let out a sigh. "Besides the arguing, I haven't heard your voice and I missed it."
"I—uh, okay..."
"Sorry, sorry," he shook off. "I wanted to say I'm sorry."
Luke chuckled on the opposite end and Michael just about exploded from the feeling in his chest. "You just did."
"Not for that, you fucking asshole," Michael rolled his eyes. "For kissing you earlier at school."
"It's—I mean, I guess it's okay..."
"I don't think it is."
"It's just...I'm confused," Luke admitted.
"About?" Michael wondered.
"Myself."
Luke's voice was sheepish, quiet and Michael frowned. "I need specifics, Luke."
"I like Penny," Luke said slowly, "but you kissed me."
"Yes, that's a thing that happened," Michael laughed. Not in a mean, malicious way. There was a fondness to it that even Calum shook his head at, with a knowing smile that Michael mouthed 'shut up,' to him for.
"Do you want to know or not?" Luke threatened.
"Sorry. Continue."
There was a pause for a few seconds and Michael began wondering if he had to repeat himself before Luke, again quietly, admitted, "I don't know what I am."
"A human being?"
"Michael," Luke groaned. "I know what you're doing."
"I just wanna hear you say it," Michael said. "It's the first step to get to the first step."
"...I don't know if I'm, like, gay."
"Just because we've kissed doesn't make you gay. There are other things out there." Surely Luke knew that, but Michael loved messing with him too much to not continue his relentless sarcasm.
"Well I don't know if I just like girls, then," Luke clarified with a roll of his eyes. Michael didn't have to be such a dick right now.
"How did you feel when I kissed you?" It was for Luke's own benefit, Michael promises, but the little glimmer in his heart that hoped the answer was 'fucking amazing,' was an added encouragement. He was sure Luke would yell at him for asking, for being stupid and sarcastic again, but he didn't.
"Well, I guess...good?" Luke said, unsure. "I wanted to keep doing it. I was kind of upset when the bell rang, even though I ran away—I'm sorry about that, Mikey."
Fuck. Michael wanted to kiss him right now, all the time, forever if that's what it made Luke feel. He was more than happy to keep kissing Luke.
He took a brave step, a pressure deep in his gut that he wasn't sure was nerves or happiness, or both. But, still, he asked, "Do you want me to keep kissing you?"
At this point, Calum was sitting on the loveseat next to Michael and looking on with such curiosity that he knew he'd have to answer a list of questions once this conversation was over.
"I...I think so."
"I need to know for sure, Luke," Michael told him.
"Yeah," Luke said after a while. "Yeah, I do. Only when I like, ask, though." Michael's smile was beginning to hurt the muscles in his face. "It would help me figure out a lot," he added.
"I'm more than willing to help you, Luke," Michael assured softly. "I'm hanging out with Calum, but I'll talk to you later, okay?" After hearing a quiet, 'okay, tell him I said hi,' Michael agreed and hung up, staring ahead of him with the same smile and disbelief playing on his face.
It twisted into confusion, though, after he reviewed the conversation. Shifting his gaze to Calum, he shook his head.
"I think I just agreed to help Luke find out if he was gay."
+ + +
sup cj welcome back how were u???? so good I was havin such a fun time coolin n boolin
I've been through 3 relationships since I last updated oh yikes
happy summer!!!!!! senior year I have half schedules so the amount of writing I'll be able to get done is fuckin great my buddy ol pals + the amount I'm hopin I'll start getting done during these last month and a half of summer time
hope you enjoyed, can we pls get the reads back up I'm so sad last few chapters didn't even break 500 :// it's no one's fault but my own for being so inconsistent and I'm sorry I'm gone so frequently I still lov u
feedback is appreciated v much as this is one of the big turning points and I wanna know how you feel