xxxxx Coy’s POV xxxxx

There’s something seriously, mentally wrong with me. I’m staring at him. Why the hell should I stare at him? Well, you don’t know. Neither do I. Because there’s no possible reason why I should. There are only a few acceptable reasons for staring at someone: you’re trying to kill them with your eyes, they just did something stupid, or if you’re a stalker. Oh god, I’m the last one, aren’t I? I’m not stalking him, because if I was, I’d be in the bushes across the street with binoculars and a box of doughnuts, but I’m not. We’re in the same room, we’re just not talking. No one is. It’s unnerving beyond all reason. And I'm not staring.

“Uh … you’ve been out for about 45 minutes now by the way." Lauren looks at Keith and points that out from her seat on the floor.

“Fuck. Seriously?” he rubs the back of his head and yawns. “I’ll be right back then," he says before brushing past me and down the hall to the bathroom without looking up once.

As soon as we hear the bathroom door click, Lauren sighs over-dramatically.

“You’re in trouble now." she presses the un-pause button on my controller and the game flickers back to life, so I’m forced to play.

“Why? What did I do?” I ask.

She tosses her braid over her shoulder as a reflex and blows her bangs out of her face. “Everything," she replies simply, eyes almost unblinking as they’re focused on the screen.

“I don’t follow you …” I mumble, concentration slowly slipping off the game and turning into confusion.

“As I’ve said … well, a lot today, you want him."

“And as I’ve said a lot today, NO I DON’T," I growl at her, but she’s not threatened or scared. She never is. That's just how she rolls.

“Hmm … you see, I’m not believing you right now. You know why? You’re blushing again."

I hate it when my body gives me away. “Laur, I’m always blushing." I try to sway her.

“Aaaand, you’re always around him. What does that tell you?” she points out.

I kick her character off the level. “That you pay too much attention to us?"

She makes a ‘feh’ noise. “Yeah, well … you kissed his neck," she retorts.

“No I didn’t!" I feel my cheeks get hot again.

“Yes you diiiiid, you hugged him, then you kissed him. I saaaaw it with my own eyes!” she coos in a singsong voice. I get distracted, and she wins our game. I’m about to tell her to shut up, but she continues. “Buuut, I also saw him enjoy it verrrryyy muuuch …”

I stay silent for only a few seconds, but I have absolutely no willpower, and I end up looking over at her curiously, eyebrows raised. “You serious?”

“Yup!” she grins happily and nods. “He just doesn’t want to enjoy it, understand?”

No, I don’t understand, I’m about to say, but Keith shuffles in, and I shut up. He’s taken the bandages off (My mom is going to give him hell) and now the word ‘fag’ is glaring at us in deep red, sharp and jagged. Not surprisingly, he looks incredibly upset, on the verge of tears even, as Lauren stands up, her maternal instinct kicking in. She’s always been almost motherly to him at times, but I just sit silently and watch him. Things seem to go in slow motion; I can pinpoint the exact moment when his first tear falls, silvery and crystal looking, gliding down his cheek and across the gashes. In a split second he leaps forward into Lauren’s arms and she hugs him tightly, making comforting gestures and trying to calm him down as he sobs.

I don’t know if it’s just my maternal instinct kicking in, or if it’s something else, but I can’t help but wish I was in Laur’s place right now.

xxxxxxxxxx

After several tense hours consisting of Keith and I causing an awkward silence and Laur trying to break it, Laur’s mom calls and tells her to come home. Not soon after, my mom orders Keith and I to go to bed.

Now normally, whenever Keith sleeps over, we stay up until midnight eating all the sugary things we can find, then we either pass out on the floor or in my bed (It’s a double, so it’s not like we’re on top of each other.) This time … it was different. Maybe it was because of the kiss, or his beating, or what, but it’s awkward now. Before he goes to bed he always spends time in the bathroom brushing the spiking gel out of his hair (If he doesn’t, it goes nuts in the morning.) I was already sitting cross-legged in bed, wearing a black tank top and the Simpsons boxers I’d been wearing that day. The door slowly opened and he walked in; normally he just slept shirtless because he said it was easier, but tonight he had kept the tee I gave him on. He’d brushed his hair out and now it was fluffy and flat at the back. A little longer too. He glanced at me momentarily before sitting on the edge of my bed to pull off his socks … he never really slept in them, most were at least knee high.

Now I’m watching his socks as his feet slip out of them, and he drops them on my floor next to his bloodied shirts. Now … the next thing I do is irrational and idiotic and I know I shouldn’t, but … I just … do it. I'd take it back if I could. I scootch across the bed and raise my left hand to twine my fingers in his hair at the nape of his neck. Normally it’s spiky with gel, but now it’s soft and feathery as I run strands between my fingers. Even though I’m barely touching him, I can feel a heavy shiver run though him. I drop my hand to rub my thumb back and forth across his neck, and I think I hear him sigh, so I laugh quietly, and again, do something completely stupid beyond all reason.

“D’you like this?” I ask in an amused tone. He shuffles back towards me and forces my fingers against his skull, where I rub my fingertips over and back. I can hear him as he exhales deeply out his nose and I smile again, not totally sure of what’s going on, but knowing that I don’t completely want to stop. So I don't. I keep massaging his scalp, I suppose you'd call it.

“… Yeah …” he whispers quietly in response to my earlier question; it’s so quiet I’m not sure that he said it at all. I massage his neck and head gently for only a few more seconds before his muscles tense beneath my fingers and he jumps up. He’s blushing (something I’ve only seen him do a few times) and he looks absolutely horrified. “… No." he seems to correct himself.

I look down at my knees. “Sorry," I mumble. He runs a hand through his hair, not meeting my gaze, but failing to calm his blush. The remainder of the night had to be the most awkward moments in my entire life; we wordlessly agreed that he’d sleep on the floor of my room. I have a bedroll stuffed into my closet and he pulls it out, settling it near my door. We barely speak two words as he flicks off the light, dousing us in pitch black. I’m lying alone in my bed and I realize how much I’ve fucked things up. What the hell did I do? I’ve seen his hair all … fluffy … a million times, did I ever need to fucking touch it? What if he never comes near me again? I couldn't live without a friend like him.

God I really hate myself. Lauren’s voice filters though my head:

‘He just doesn’t want to enjoy it, understand?’

And for some reason, I think I’m beginning to. I still can’t understand what’s going on with me! Maybe it’s love, like Laur said … I listen to his steady breathing though the darkness … Well … if it is … and I’m not saying it is! … I wouldn’t even know, because I’ve never been in love before. Is this what it’s like? I haven’t read many romance novels before, and I can’t remember what they called love. I squint at my clock through the dimness, and I think it’s eleven-something. I roll over onto my side to face the wall and scrunch my sheets in my hands as a haze slowly fills my mind and I fall asleep.

xxxxxxxxxx

Next thing I know, I’m on a hill, a slight sloping grassy hill, and I’m at the bottom of it. The sky is a cobalt blue and a few cottony clouds dot the horizon, but nothing to stop the sun from beaming down.

Is this a dream?

That’s odd. Rarely in a dream do I realize it’s a dream ... What a surreal experiance.

At the top of the hill is an oak tree with winding branches full of emerald leaves that are rustling in the cool breeze. Under the tree is … someone, I think. It’s a person, because all I can see is a leg, and they’re leaning against the trunk. I walk slowly up the hill, taking in the poetic qualities of all this, because it’s really quite pretty. As I get closer, I realize that the person under the tree (who I was sure was a woman a moment ago) is in fact Keith. I stand a little diagonal from him about seven feet away, staring with a highly curious questioning glance as he looks up at me with a cheery smile that he normally reserves for times I make cookies. My stare drifts from his unusually bright eyes and it hits me that he’s wearing a white dress, that’s bunched up at about mid thigh. I blush and look lower, down his neck and chest to the acres of exposed leg (which seems to be shaved quite nicely for some reason). Is this my subconscious? It’s creepy, to be honest. Laur always tells us that our dreams know more than we do, so does that mean I want Keith to cross-dress?

He smiles exuberantly (I note his lip ring is blue now) and pats the grass next to him; the silver bangles on his wrist makes a tingling bell-like sound.

“Come sit with me!” he states happily, and after a short period of consideration, I sit next to him, staring out at what seems to be farmland in front of us. The landscape is perfect, it reminds me of movies and Ireland. Emerald feilds and bright skies. After a few moments of comfortable silence, Keith taps my shoulder. “What are you thinking about, Coy?” he asks.

I sigh and lean back against the tree. “You, I suppose." because it’s the truth. Well, half him, half Ireland.

“Me?” he repeats, sounding shocked. “Why?”

I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “I have these weird feelings." I say, not sure how to word it, so I end up sounding as too nonchalant and too cliche.

“Love?” he ventures.

“I dunno. Maybe."

“Well, how do you know?” he asks.

I sigh again. “I don’t know. But …” I turn to him. “When I’m around you, I get nervous, and I feel like I don’t control myself anymore …” I say, getting that nervous feeling I was just talking about. "... and I think I think you're pretty."

The wind blows a lock of hair across his face and he reaches up and brushes it away, smiling still. He grabs one of my hands in two of his tiny ones. His nails are navy blue.

“Does this feel right?” he asks and rubs his thumbs across the back of my hand. He's just so small and having him hold me like this makes me feel like someone's taken a jackhammer to my glass insides and broken them and is just leaving them to sit in the bottom of my chest. It's odd, needless to say.

Just when my blush was fading, he makes me blush again. I nod. He takes my hand and places it on his own jaw, forcing me to touch him, forcing me to slide my hand down his neck. He's burning hot. “Does this?”

I move my fingers back and forth over his skin … was it always this soft? It feels so human. It's skin stretched tightly over bones and feels hollow underneath, like a very delicate tarp.

“... Maybe ..." I answer tentatively. He smiles and releases my hand, but I don’t move it like I thought I would. He moves closer (his dress rides up a little) and cuddles himself against my side; he fits perfectly.

“How about this?” he asks, so innocent. I move my arm around his shoulders and fight the urge to play with the strap of his dress, but I’m still blushing more than ever. When he's this close and I can feel his heart beating against mine, quick and short beats like a rabbit's, I feel like I have to protect him. Like he's mine to protect. I suddenly feel a rush of anger for letting him get attacked today, blaming myself for the whole thing, for not being there to save him.

“Y-yeah …” I respond weakly. He moves even closer, standing up to kneel and straddling my hips, which makes him taller than me. He threads his hands in my hair and leans so close that I can see myself in his emerald eyes.

“How about … this?” he whispers and kisses me very, very gently, moving his lips along mine. I’m frozen in shock as I feel his hands move down my neck to my shoulders where he takes them off and pulls away.

He smiles at me, and I stare at him for only a split-second before yanking the front of his dress, lurching him towards me. My mouth brushes his as I talk.

“YES," I blurt out and crush my lips crudely against his. I feel him smile and he kisses me back. We share five or six short feverish kisses like that. He lets me touch him with my tongue again and it makes my adrenaline spike through my body, heart heaving and beating way too hard.

This doesn't last long enough. His dress gives way in my fists, his lips fade away. I feel his blue nails scrape softly across my cheek as the grass beneath us floats off with the oak tree, hill and farmland into a black abyss.

In a flash, my eyes open and I’m back in my bed with musty rays of morning light shining though my curtains. There’s no azure sky, no grassy hill, no clandestine kisses, only soft snores from across the room. I roll over again, only left with wisps of the moment left in my tired mind.


xxxxxxxxxx

After restless minutes, I got back to sleep and woke up several hours later. I’m at the kitchen table now and am staring at a lone piece of brown toast on my plate but I hate wheat toast and I refuse to eat it. Luckily, our puppy that my sister has named Trixie pads up next to my chair and stares up at me with her large, shiny eyes. She’s a Lhasa Apso and Collie cross (Odd, I know) and she’s pretty small, which is the only reason my mom has let us keep her. I groan and throw her my toast, pissed because everything is reminding me of him, even a friggin dog's eyes, which is a bit of an insult to him, but to be honest, Trixie has nice eyes. I carefully look up at Keith. He’s sitting across of me staring down at a pop tart - he hates brown toast too, but he got a choice, being a house guest - and he's poking at it with his index finger … I notice his nails are painted blue, and I blush. Dammit, I was trying not to today … it’d gone well for a few minutes.

“Coy? D’you want your -- Hey, you ate it!” My younger sister Sasha waltzes into the kitchen; she’s used to me not eating my toast. She also has a gigantic crush on Keith, so she, predictably, sits down next to him.

“Morning Kei -- Ohmigod, What happened?” she asks and tosses her hair over his shoulder. It’s the same as my natural color, light brown, and it flips at the ends just as mine does. I guess people would call her pretty, but I don’t see it, though she does look a lot like me. She’s only thirteen, but she’s been crushing on Keith for a few months now, and she’s pretty obvious about it. The question she just asked is in reference to the gauze he’s put back on his cheeks to hid the marks that haven’t faded at all.

“This?” he asks, motioning to the left one. “I slipped with a pen, it hurt like hell." he takes his fork and makes a ‘shrrk” motion on his cheek. Sasha’s eyes widen almost dramatically.

“That’s awful!” Are you alright?” she coos and puts a hand on his shoulder. He grins at her and neither of them are looking at me, so I glare.

“It hurts a little, but I’m fine. Thanks for worrying Sash." he tells her and smiles. A pink blush tints her pale, nearly white cheeks (We’re both genetically pale and sunburn easy, but our mom doesn’t, so we assume it came from our dad‘s side of the family) and she gets that glazed look in her eyes. Smitten bitch … I look at the embarrassing cow-print clock above the sink. We’re a little late.

“Come on, we’ve gotta go," I tell Keith, standing and putting my plate at the sink. He nods and stuffs the remainder of his pop tart in his mouth before saying goodbye to my sister and following me into the hallway. He grabs his backpack from next to the coat closet. I asked earlier and he said he didn’t want to go home to get his coat and stuff, so he borrows one of my scarves to keep him warm. It’s getting late in the year now and it’s getting colder day by day, grey clouds hanging perpetually low. He’s walking a little in front of me down the street, not beside me, which is my first indication that something is off. We’re not talking either, which is just as troubling, because normally we never shut up. It takes me a little while to realize I’m watching his shoulder blades shift as he walks and the almost uneven clunk of his sneakers against the asphalt … Something runs through my system … a feeling I’m definitely not used to. I think I know what it is. I hope I’m wrong.


xxx Keith’s POV xxx

I’m not fucking gay, I’m not, I’m not, I like girls, I’m not fucking gay, not boys.

My brain is stuck in a record loop and I’m thinking so hard I’m getting a headache. I don’t concentrate on anything, not on him, not on school, NOT on him. I watch the tips of my toes crunch through leaves in the forest path and I listen to the painful thump of my pulse in my head. I feel physically sick, and I wonder if I can make it through today …

Not gay, not fucking gay, filthy faggot, disgusting queer, not fucking gay, fucking gay.

I’m beginning to think I can’t, my heartbeat is beginning to hurt, and the wisps of hair that are in my view jerk when it beats because it’s so hard. My throat feels dry no matter how many times I swallow. I watch the dark purple and golden leaves get massacred beneath the soles of my converse, and I begin turning my heel when I step just to make sure they’re ‘hurt‘.


xxx Coy’s POV xxx

I don’t see Keith for the rest of the day and even in the morning he barely gave me more than a weak smile and a mumbled parting. After school I scribble through my homework to go on the computer to see if he’s online. My laptop’s old and covered in dust, despite frequent use, and it’s beginning to lag a little, but it’s not like I have a choice. As soon as everything loads, MSN starts, making the ‘bong’ noise of a new email … I check it and it’s just a shitty forward from someone I don’t know, so I delete it without reading. It’s one of those useless things that say you’ll have a horrible love life forever if you don’t send this stupid email to fifteen people within blah, blah, blah. That kind of thing. I check to see who’s online … Lauren, along with a few other people that are basically acquaintances of mine; I don’t have many close friends. Near the bottom of the window, I see a screen name I recognize: it’s him. I can’t help but smile. Christ, it hasn’t even been a day and I miss him a little.

hey. I type.

hullo.

where were you after school? you didn’t walk home …

i know. i was with lux.

lux LOCKWOOD?

Lux Lockwood is, quite easily, the biggest skank in ninth grade. Despite being younger than us, we’ve heard stories of her drunken escapades with equally whorish boys, always older than her. She’s a whore of incredible proportions and I hate her even more now. She’s so … stupid. You can tell she hasn’t read a book in her life; that pisses me off. People that don’t read end up working at 7-11 when they’re thirty-eight.

yeah, we were at orange julius.

YOU WITH LUX LOCKWOOD?

no, i meant with tom cruise. of course her goddammit, she asked me out.

hasn’t she asked you out before?

yeah. your point?

you said yes this time?

yeah. she’s hot.

My chest lurches in the most unpleasant of ways as I blink at the screen several times. He actually just said that? He never says that about anyone, it’s odd to see him say it now. He's never been the girl type, just like me. Or is he the girl type? Maybe he's been quiet about it for my benefit, and now that he's mad, he's being honest.

yeah …

what, you don’t think so?

i’ve seen better.

what the fuck? who?

I work my jaw as my fingers hesitate above the keyboard. I decide not to answer that.

nevermind.

alright … well, we’re going out again tomorrow, so i’m not walking home again.

why? I say stupidly.

I JUST TOLD YOU.

seriously though? lux lockwood?

YES coy. lux lockwood.

tomorrow? i miss you.

I type the last part readably slowly and my thumb hangs over the enter button, but I end up pressing it anyways. I figure it’ll take him a while to reply. It doesn’t.

okay. bye.

[‘keith’ has signed out at 5:23:02pm.]

My eyes narrow. He can be such a little bastard sometimes. I feel almost sick. I click the power button with my thumb, not even bothering to shut it down properly before I flop onto my bed, giving a strangled cry into my pillow. I hate him, and I don’t know why. He should be able to date a useless, idiotic, beige, whorish bitch if he wants to, right? Argh. I hate her too, but it’s more easy to hate her now. Lux Lockwood is someone we’ve known since we started high school and she’s never liked me, but she openly flirts with Keith whenever she passes him. Normally Keith would either blow her off or curl against my chest to give her the wrong impression, and she’d leave in a fit. She’s definitely one of the believers in the gigantic rumour going around school that we’re an item. Wait … if they’re going out now, he must have told her that we aren’t together.

And we’re not. We’re not! He’s obviously not interested in, and I’m not sure I am either. My hormones are just acting up, it happens when you’re sixteen. I've heard of a lot of guys doing this kind of thing, re-thinking stuff, experimenting. But they never ARE ... that way ... it's just a phase. They always end up getting married to wives. Keith’s just my friend and we'll grow old together and he'll marry Lux and I'll marry some girl and our kids'll be friends too …

I roll over and slam my pillow over my face.

He's just my idiotic friend.


xxxxxxxxxx

The next morning, I call Lauren. She lives several blocks down from us, so it’s a longer walk for me to get to school, but it’s better than walking with Keith. I called him too, and I told him I had things to do and that I was driving to school. I think he knew that I was lying, because I never drive anywhere, even though I have my new drivers lisence. (I’m convinced that I’ll run into something and kill myself or someone else. I practically cried during the drivers test.) He just said ‘alright’ with no hesitation or disappointment.

It sucked.


xxx Keith’s POV xxx

I never realized how cold it’s gotten lately … walking to school alone blows.

I can tell in his voice exactly what I’ve done to him; Coy’s an open book to me after knowing him this long. I know how much he hates Lux. She’s very, as he puts it, beige and icky, and I can’t help but agree, I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was at morning break, and I was thinking about him. Again. His eyes … the way he tries to hide behind his fringe when he’s nervous … his nearly ivory skin … his lithe hips … I paused in my train of thought, completely disgusted with myself. I slammed a fist hard into the bench I was sitting on, but only succeeded in cracking my knuckles; I hated being weak. I hated being mentally weak, emotionally weak for feeling like this. I hated how much he affected me and I couldn't fucking be like this. I started blaming everything bad in my life on the fact that I was thinking these things about Coy. It was god making payback.

I stood up from the bench and charged nowhere in particular, just wanting to clear my head. I ran straight into someone and had I been taller, it might have hurt them. It was Lux. Lux, with her fake blonde hair and cheap perfume, she was like the anti-Coy. I don’t want to have to relay the entire conversation, it was meaningless, but halfway through I began thinking about Coy's mouth, and I just asked her out. She faked surprise, pretending to think about it, and off we went. If you have a girlfriend, you’re not gay, of course.

So now, because of my insecurities, I’m walking to school alone. I miss him. I miss him like crazy. I pull the scarf I’m wearing down over my nose, the one I borrowed from him yesterday. It smells like his house, like him; spicy but sweet. I groan and whip it off, shoving it into my messenger bag.

This is going to be a loooooong day.





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