Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Queerer Things ❯ Part Three ( Chapter 3 )

[I am well aware that they're in a Japanese high school and that Japanese high school students don't switch classrooms and they have the same classmates for every class and blah blah blah. Whatever. I'm writing the rest of this in an Americanized style, so it makes sense for the school to fit that model. And it's my story, shut up.]

 

 

QUEERER THINGS

Part Three

 

 

It's first period, a week later, and I'm trying my very hardest to ignore the stares and whispers and nervous giggles, I really am, but I don't think it's working.

 

When I first walked in this morning and saw people staring at me, just outright gaping, without any pretense or anything, a rush of panic jolted me to the core. I felt certain that Takeru had started some ugly rumor about me while I was gone. Or had he—and my stomach nearly imploded into itself at the thought—somehow found out that I… that I still… it was almost too much to bear. Especially after fainting in front of him last week—it's just like me to ruin the one occasion I've had to talk to him in nearly two years. And waking up curled up in the same stall of that same bathroom, with a huge bump on my head and a headache that made my vision throb—I don't know what horrified me more, the fact that Takeru had just left me there or the supremely physical evidence that I had more than enjoyed my latest dream about him. I couldn't imagine Takeru just leaving me there, as sick as I was; maybe he really had been trying to help me when I… when I started doing whatever people did when they were having sex dreams… or bizarrely lucid make-out handjob dreams, as it were. Maybe he was so revolted that he just ran out… and maybe he…

 

But no (as I heard a first-year girl tell her friends loudly while I was clearly in earshot), some moron just started a rumor about me leaving school to do some gay porno in America. Fucking retards. In any case, a week of alternately sleeping and lying in bed thinking drowsily about Takeru hasn't done wonders for my reputation—not that anything could, at this point. But it hasn't been this bad since—since last year, I guess, when all this shit about me came out into the open and… that Takeyama guy…

 

That was bad.

 

But this isn't like that, my head tells me, gently, like a fucking psychologist soothing a frazzled patient. I have become my own shrink. No, this isn't that kind of bad—the bad that breeds sudden silences in rooms you've just walked into, when the disbelief and mockery and utter disgust is so thick in the air that you can barely find room to breathe. This is, at its core, nothing more than an everyday, run-of-the-mill high school rumor gone awry. But it's fucking annoying, all right, head? I can be pissed if I want to. I owe myself that.

 

And these whispers aren't much better than the silence, if I have to compare. Silence is deafening in its own right—it cuts right into your chest when people abruptly stop communicating and you know it's because of you—but whispers are incessant, and the sound twists in and around itself until any semblance of language disappears and it becomes this hissing that just won't stop—

 

I barely feel a girl brush me as she chatters away to one of her friends, but I definitely hear her shrill gasp, and the scrape of metal against stone as she backs into the desk next to mine. I'm not really thinking, but I'm pissed, and before I know it the words spill out of my mouth like poison:

 

“What the fuck are you scared of?”

 

You couldn't have heard a pin drop—I won't give myself that much credit. But I can feel the eyes on me, and this dumb girl's standing there staring at me like I sprouted a second head and it spoke to her, and I swear I'm about to fucking snap and walk out or start screaming or something, until I hear the laugh.

 

It's faint—a barely audible smirk—but I hear it loud and clear, and I just freeze up. She must be one of dumb girl's friends, because she turns away from me to greet her, as does half the class—she's popular, of course. She always has been. Our eyes meet for a second—just enough to establish contact, not anything else—and then I turn away, disinterested and pretending I don't know the big brown eyes and deceptively gentle laugh better than anyone else in here.

 

I feel sick.

 

 

+

 

 

By lunchtime the whispering's eased off a bit, although I'm still seeing people staring at me out of the corners of my eyes, but by now I'm used to it and I don't give a fuck and there's only one thought really occupying my mind—that of where the hell Takeru is, and why I haven't so much as seen him all day.

 

I know he's at school. Their basketball finals are in… like… two days—even Takaishi Takeru would get his ass kicked out of the game if he didn't come to school the week of. And I know I only have one class with him aside from lunch, and that one class isn't until last period, but even in the vast expanse of the cafeteria he's nowhere to be found. And I would think I'm a little better than the average sorry bastard at locating him, even from some half-broken table in the very corner.

 

I'm probably pushing it a bit by looking for him right now. It's not like we're on better terms than we were a couple of weeks ago—in fact, he probably has even better reasons to pretend I don't exist. It's not like we can ever be friends again. But it's that stupid, stubborn side to me that wants… that aches to see him just once, to gauge his reaction to me. To see how we stand, when I should really just sever the connection between us altogether. I've always been like this, unable to give up on something even when everything would be so much easier if I could.

 

It was one of the things Takeru and I always fought about, right from the beginning.

 

He isn't fucking in here. I lower my head onto my arms, my eyelids drooping dangerously as I stare blankly at the corner of the cafeteria opposite. I'm so tired. It's hard to come back to school after being sick a week; it's hard to sit up and pay attention when you've been lying in bed for so long, and I almost forget Takeru as my eyes close and everything gets foggy…

 

“Hey.”

 

Fuck. I force my eyes open and look up at… at whoever the fuck's talking to me; I don't even know this kid. Kids. There are three of them, the two slightly shorter ones flanking the one who spoke to me like something out of a goddamn after-school special. I stare them down—straight guys have trouble looking gay guys in the eye. I don't remember where I read that, but it's true—the middle guy's eyes flicker briefly from side to side, then down, to rest on the school lunch I've been picking apart.

 

He regrets walking up to me. I hold back a grin and try to look as bored as possible—not hard, as tired as I am. “Yeah?”

 

“Hey… um…” He rubs the back of his head. It occurs to me that these are pretty tough-looking kids. Not dangerous loner types or potential gang members, not quite, but enough to cause a good amount of shit without getting back what's coming to them. The fact that I make a kid like this feel uncomfortable… that makes me a feel a little better. Not much, but a little. “We were just wondering… you know… how you got out.”

 

I stare at him. What the fuck is he talking about? “`How I got out'?”

 

“Yeah!” One of the kids bursts out—the one on the left. He's not quite as hardboiled as the kid in the center—probably a freshman. “We got this friend, see—“

 

“I don't know what the hell you're talking about,” I say, cutting him off. I can't deal with this shit right now. I'm so tired… so tired I can't stand it…

 

“Listen, asshole,” the kid in the middle says brusquely. He seems to have gained back some of his confidence. “We don't like the idea of asking a queer like you for help, either, but you could at least—“

 

“He's not gonna help you with anything.” The voice is cool and hard and sends a current of ice through me that I'm not quite expecting. Although he's in my plain sight I can't quite bring myself to look at him. He isn't the kind of person the rule seems to work on. He slides casually through a gap between the kid in the middle and the one who hasn't yet spoken and leans against my table with his hands in his pockets, smirking maliciously at me. My gaze, still unable to meet his, slides down to my knees, where my hands grasp helplessly at my pant legs. Fuck.

 

“Mitarashi,” the central kid says. The surprise is tangible in his voice, and I don't blame him; Mitarashi Hokuto is not the kind of guy that just comes waltzing up to guys like them or a loser like me. He doesn't need to. Vice-captain of the basketball team and one of the most sought-after guys at this school—it's hard to find a girl here he hasn't done something to—he's one of those few people here who seem to float on air. You know the type—he's untouchable.

 

And I've been undeniably attracted to him ever since I first laid eyes on him.

 

It's not something I'm proud of. Actually, I try to crush it into oblivion every time I happen to see him and it rears its ugly head—he's not a kid someone like me needs to get mixed up with. He scares the shit out of me, if I'm going to be honest with myself. Despite his popularity, there's something genuinely dangerous about him that I can't quite put my finger on.

 

And as similar as my reactions are to the two of them, this is completely separate from what I feel for Takeru—if Takeru is sunshine and light, Mitarashi is dark and sensual. I'm not in love with him. I know I'm not, but it's unnerving how much I'm drawn to him—even more so since I've never so much as spoken to him, and he's quite outspoken in his contempt for me. But always to other people, and always in large crowds when I've just happened to be close enough to hear.

 

What game is he playing…?

 

“Isn't that right, faggot?” he says softly, and I barely flinch at the slur. “I don't think your advice is going to help their friend very much. Unless he wants to sleep his way out of whatever shit he's gotten himself into—“

 

“Hey,” the middle kid says, as a warning—not that it really means anything. There's no one who would bet Mitarashi couldn't beat him up if he wanted to. And it's clear whose side they're on—they all look abashed and sick to their stomachs, as if they deeply regret ever coming over here. Of course that was how I did it. Whatever the fuck `it' is. Slowly, they slink away with their hands shoved into their pockets—acting extra, extra tough to make up for the discrepancy. Morons. Although I kind of admire the courage it must have taken to come up and talk to me.

 

I'm fucking pathetic, aren't I? It's almost funny.

 

Mitarashi, though, has no intention of just walking away, and it's not until he sits nonchalantly next to me that I realize, incredibly, that no one is watching; no one in this whole goddamn cafeteria is seeing history in the making here: this Adonis talking to the gay kid. In public. Will wonders never cease.

 

I've never been this close to him before.

 

He leans in conspiratorially, and if it weren't for the fact that I'm frozen solid or for the horrifying smirk on his face I would almost be excited. I'm getting a whiff of something, something that's on him—whether it's a cologne or just good old-fashioned pheromones, I can't tell. It's intoxicating.

 

“Motomiya Daisuke,” he says, and my stomach clenches with desire. And fear. “That's your name, isn't it?”

 

I practically have to force my jaw open to answer him. “So what if it is?”

 

My voice comes out shaky and high-pitched—and he laughs, his pretty mouth splitting into a feral grin. Whatever he wants with me is going just the way he planned it. “Oooh. Sassy, aren't you?”

 

My face burns and I clutch even more tightly at my pant legs. I'm beginning to sweat. “What do you want?”

 

“Not much.” He drums his fingers nonchalantly on the table. “There's just something that's been bothering me, and I thought you might be able to help me out.”

 

Of course it's something about those goddamn rumors. The whole fucking school's been talking about me enough; it makes sense that someone would want to get his story straight. I bet his whole lunch table elected him to waltz over here and pump me for answers; sure, no one's watching us, but it's not like he couldn't get them all to ignore what's going on so I'd open up more. He probably thinks that I'm starved for attention (which is bullshit); that he's just so attractive that I'd be a good little faggot and tell him whatever he wanted to know (which isn't so far from the truth, fine, but I'm not so pathetic that I'd set myself up for my own destruction). Fuck that. Fuck all of this. My exhaustion has vanished without a trace; my veins are coursing with what could only be adrenaline fueled by anger and frustration and desire, and it's continuing to build, as it has been, quietly, all day. I feel like I'm about to snap. “… Yeah? What?”

 

“Well, I was just wondering,” he murmurs, leaning his chin on one of his fists. His eyes are sparkling. “But how many times do you think you've sucked Takaishi's cock?”