Chapter Fifteen.
AFTER he admits that he skipped school to see him, Abasi assures Sullivan that this will be the last time that he hears about him skipping school. He tells him that he won't have people on his payroll that aren't willing to put education before anything. It's a very ironic rule, considering that Abasi is the leader of an elaborate drug ring, but he'll point that out for another time. So for the next week and a half, he goes to and from class without incident or the urge to skip out because he's actually got something to look forward to in the day. In fact, he only has one class left for the day before he can go to the warehouse and finally have a blast. To him, class will be as boring and uneventful as it usually is.
Or, so he thinks.
He's walking to eighth period, rounding the corner before he feels a hand reach out and grab a fistful of his jacket from behind. "What the hel—" He doesn't even have a chance to spew out profanities before a hand is thrown over his mouth and the stranger is leading them away from his classroom. He struggles uselessly, curses falling from his lips left and right as he's shoved into a dark room. Automatically, he recognizes the smell of lemon Pine Sol and cleaning supplies. Briefly after that, the light flickers on and the first thing that he sees are angry blue eyes. Even when he's angry with Arthur, the sight of his handsome face and messy blonde hair has him swooning; his heart skips several beats and continues erratically. Still, he remembers the reason why he is mad at the young man to begin with, and his annoyance comes back in waves.
The first thing Arthur asks is, "Did you get arrested after prom?"
"Shouldn't you be Tom Bradyin' it up on the football field, or sucking face with your little fucking girlfriend?" Sully is aware that he sounds terribly bitter, but he is terribly bitter, so he doesn't care how the hell he sounds.
Arthur doesn't pay attention to anything that Sullivan asks and instead keeps interrogating him with his own questions. "Seriously, Sully. Assault? Underage drinking? What the hell has gotten into you? You can go to fucking prison for that shit."
"Wow, you think so," he deadpans with a humorless snort, punctuating his sentence with a famous eye-roll. "Never woulda guessed. Thank you for that outstanding observation."
"Sully." Arthur's voice has the same annoyance to it that Sullivan holds, but he doesn't care. As far as he's concerned, the blonde hardly has the right to be as furious with him. "You've been avoiding me for almost a fucking week now ..."
"Watch your language—"
"Now is not the time to be a smart-ass." Sullivan is taken aback at how sharp and intense his tone is with him. Artie has always kept his voice with his best friend soft, cushioned in comparison to other people, and at worst held an annoyed tone to it. The young man has always been on the other side of Arthur's malicious barks, never on the receiving end. Still, he isn't going to waver underneath, even if his blue eyes made him want to kiss him until they both needing to come up for air and his voice makes him want to cower.
Sullivan throws his hands up, obviously containing no answer for Arthur. "Even if I've been avoidin' you, this was your master plan in gettin' me to talk? Shoving me into a fucking supply closet like I'm a broomstick?"
"I acted on impulse," Arthur confesses. "Because I knew the moment you saw me, you'd jet off. You know, the kind of shit that you've been pulling all week long."
"I have not been avoiding you all week long ..."
Artie quips sharply, "Yeah you fucking have. It's been eleven days since you looked me in the eye with the worst look you've ever given me."
Sullivan scoffs. "I guess I have been avoiding you. So what? I don't get why it matters to you, anyways."
"What are you talking about? Of course it matters to me, you're my best friend!"
Sullivan blurts out, "Stop calling me that!" At this point, he's angry — no, angry is a word he'd use to describe how he felt when Sadie would sell yet another one of his grams of weed to one of her classmates for twice the price and not share profits. With Artie yelling at him, he's reached a point much higher than anger. Right now, Sully is livid. When he gets out of his ways like this, he gets reckless with his words.
"You wanna know why I'm questioning our 'friendship?' Let me tell you why," He barks back, and Arthur opens his mouth to say something but it snaps shut when Sully says, "No, shut the hell up and listen to me for once!"
Watching as Arthur clamps his jaw shut and gives him the floor, he sighs, raking his fingers through his hair and looking around at everything but the male in front of him. "You see, best friends tell each other about each other's girlfriends, abundance or lack thereof. Best friends don't try to force prom dates on the other and say that they're just trying to help! A best friend doesn't get angry at that, and isn't supposed to feel the way that I feel about you, or get mad whenever they see their best friend with their girlfriend!"
By the time all these words have escaped his lips, Artie's anger has been replaced with a fusion of confusion and shock. Sullivan knows that he's not even walking on thin ice anymore; the whole damn surface has broken and he's now swimming in frozen waters, but he doesn't care. The feeling has been crawling at his chest, building up inside of him, and he's tired of letting his demon swallow him whole. Damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. He didn't know where this sense of bravado has come from, but he will ride this high for as long as he can. If he drowns in the water, it'll be nobody's fault but his.
"And I know that you probably think that it's a crock-load of shit, and it is, I agree with you! But it's how I feel-it's how I've felt for a really fucking long time! I-I dunno if it's jealousy, or the fact that I just missed you, but that day at the pool, we were going to kiss — at least, I thought we were going to kiss, and ... I wanted to so goddamn bad," he admits, his voice no longer holding the fierce venom that it once did. He's not as angry as he once was, just tired, but he still talks.
"It's ... fucked up, I know. I know that you have a girlfriend and you probably love her like she's your moon, stars, and sky, but I just couldn't last another fuckin' day without saying somethi—"
Arthur grabs Sullivan's face and presses his lips against his — hard. As if he's kissed his best friend in a different life, he doesn't have to think twice before kissing him back, and with just as much fervor.
Suddenly it's like the world around them has melted away until nothing else but Artie and Sully exists. The force the blonde has on him is so damn powerful that it's snaked up his spine, seeped into his brain and taken it over — the only thing he can or will think about is Arthur Brooks Lancaster.
Sully's brows furrow as he squeezes his eyes shut even tighter than before, throwing his arms around his best friend's neck and through his hair as he chases his mouth back. Arthur groans and kisses him almost indecently, blindly reaching out and shoving the brunette against the cabinet behind him. Products crash down around them and toiletries litter the ground, but neither of them give a shit. Grabbing underneath the buckles of his knees, Arthur picks him and Sullivan immediately wraps his legs around his waist, desperate to have him as close as possible.
The brunette knows that time has passed; he just doesn't know how much. At the moment, he has no concept of time and it could be minutes or even hours that pass that he cannot hold accountable. He feels as if he's never known much, but right now the only thing he has to know is that this is everything that he's wanted — Arthur is everything that he's ever wanted — and the moment their lips are apart from each other is a moment too fucking soon. Although, when Artie grabs his hair and yanks his head back so he can kiss down the arch of his throat and give it a rough bite, Sully moans and wonders if maybe the blonde has been waiting for this moment too.
He's too dazed to comprehend what's going on when Artie suddenly breaks away and looks at Sully heatedly. His hair's messy from Sullivan's fingers carding through it, and his lips are cherry red and swollen from the kisses. The breath has been stolen right out of the Maxwell boy's lungs, but he isn't having an asthma attack. This is something more passionate, more overwhelmingly tense in the air that is indescribable.
I just kissed Artie, Sully thinks, and it's that thought alone that sends electricity through his body. I just kissed Artie, and he just kissed me back.
Arthur is the first that slices the air between them with words. "When I saw that look in your eye at prom, like I was just like every other asshole that's crossed your path, I think that's the most heartbroken I've ever been before." His words hang over Sully's head like bait, and he takes it like the sap that he is. There will never be a time where Arthur's words don't make his knees buckle — he's lucky to have his legs wrapped around his waist.
"I wanted to make it right. God, I would've done anything to just chase after you that night and tell you how fucking sorry I was for making you feel like that." It feels as if Sully is in a dream, and if he wakes up then he might just fly off of his rocker. But it doesn't feel like one — the forming bruise he knows that's on his neck will be evidence of his reality.
He knows he should say something, anything would have been good to say.
"I ..." He trails off, green eyes searching into pools of blue that look more vulnerable than he's ever seen them. Sully swallows and finally coughs up a response. "I gotta get to eighth period."
Yikes.
"Yeah. I gotta, uh, get to football. Coach is probably going to kick my ass for being late..."
They both speak, but neither move away from each other's embrace. Finally, after maybe moments or hours pass by, the two of them both reluctantly step away from each other. Arthur loosens Sully's legs from around his waist, and he gets down, his legs holding a little wobble but working just fine.
"You good?" Arthur asks timidly, awkwardly even, as he attempts to fix his hair from the nest that Sullivan helped create.
Sullivan says, "Yep." He adjusts the collar of his shirt and jacket to hide the discoloration now quickly appearing on his neck — he's now found out that Arthur has a mouth like a fucking vampire — before slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
He doesn't know how to act after they've done what they've done. Because just a moment ago, Sully had Arthur's name on his tongue the same way a lover would, and now he can hardly look the guy in the eye. Maybe it's because he knows that if he looks at Arthur again, he'd just pull him back down for more.
For now, they must depart.
Giving each other a once-over to make sure that nothing seems out of the ordinary or will reveal what they had just done, they finally deem it okay to step outside.
They quickly wish they hadn't.
As soon as they both step out of the janitor's closet and into the vacant hallway, they find that it isn't really empty. Chandler Ray stands not too far away from where the two of them stand. The black young man is staring at the two of them with his hands shoved into his pockets. The three of them stand still, frozen and stuck on the spots where they stand.
"SJ and Arthur ...?" Chandler Ray doesn't speak often. When he does, however, he's either got questions or he has something to say. Either are something you want to be caught under fire for.
Sullivan has no idea what to say; his mind is still mush. It's Artie who pretends as if everything is perfectly fine. "Chan, my man!" He greets with a lopsided smile. (It shouldn't be so fucking easy for someone to fake a smile, Sullivan screams in his mind.) "Why aren't you at practice?"
"Coach and the guys told me to come looking for you; they were worried ... Did you two just come out of the closet?"
Sullivan chokes on air.
Spluttering for oxygen, Arthur begins to pat his friend on the back so that the coughing spell can dissipate. "Yeah, Mr. Carisle stopped us on our way out and asked us to carry his old lab equipment to the supply closet. Ain't that right, Sully?"
SJ nods as he covers his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, trying to conjure a statement through chokes. "Yep ... us ... carry lab ... equipment."
Chandler Ray nods, a small hmph leaving his lips as he allows his gaze to linger on SJ for a little while longer before deciding he isn't worth the time anymore. He came to catch Arthur, he didn't care what was going on. At least, not right now. "Well, Arthur, we better get a move on before Coach blows his top."
"Yeah," he sighs, patting SJ on the back twice before moving his hand away. "I gotta go." He looks over at Sullivan and gives a small smile, one that he has never seen before in the light of day. It's one that's more vulnerable, one that shows just how fucking much Arthur feels for him, after all. "I'll see you later, Sully." And with that, he departs from his friend and walks away with Chandler-Ray without another glance over his shoulder.
The brunette just stands there and watches Arthur leave until he can't see him anymore, and it's only then when he can't see him anymore is when Sully allows himself to smile. He gives a dopey, love-struck smile to nobody but himself. He then remembers what they did, and when he remembers what they did, he also remembers how they got there and why he was pissed to begin with.
His smile melts away into a look of realization, and the only thing he can say is, "Shit."
He just helped his best friend cheat on his girlfriend, and he doesn't feel one fucking drop of remorse for it.