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Junior Year, Marcus/Reis
“These things taste like shit,” the large wolfdog muttered, as he bit off another hunk of the unappetizing-looking, chalky protein bar. I grimaced at the mere sight of it, pulling my laptop from my locker and unzipping my bag to wedge it carefully between my AP History book and binder.
“Yeah, I've heard those things are nasty. Aren't they, like, really expensive, too?” I asked, sticking out my tongue.
Reis snorted, and smiled good-naturedly down at me. “Only the good ones. Coach gave me these. Pretty sure he got them off the back of a truck. . . in a landfill.”
I laughed. “That's disgusting. God, just eat a hamburger or something. Not many people get to enjoy gaining weight. Make the most of it.”
“I'm trying to make the most of my weight class. . . not get huge. I need protein. I get as much extra from the cafeteria with my lunch coupons as I can,” the wolfdog sighed, tossing the wrapper into a nearby trash can. “But I don't know if that really counts as food.”
“My mom's pretty good at bringing out my inner fat fox,” I offered with a smirk. “She's making lasagna with meat sauce tonight. Want to come over?”
“For real?” the wolfdog's ears perked. “Your mom's cooking tonight?”
“It's Friday. She doesn't work tomorrow,” I shrugged. “She always makes a big dinner on Fridays. Pretty sure she said tonight it'd be lasagna.”
My mother didn't work full-time, but she spent a few hours a day working at the Elementary School as a teacher's aid during the week. She used to counsel kids in the High School, then out of our house. I remembered being a young kit, my older sister ushering me into the play room when strange children, usually from other towns, would come by with their parents or someone from Childrens Services. I remembered the first time I'd caught the downward-facing gaze of one of the young boys, barely a year older than me, and felt that aura about him I'd never known another child could have. Confused, maybe scared. . . maybe angry. Always sad.
I'd never understood those kids, the ones my mom would see in her pastel-colored meeting room, the one with toys I wasn't allowed to play with in it. They didn't seem like normal kids to me. They certainly weren't like the ones I saw in kindergarten, or even first grade. They'd close the door whenever my mom was in there with them, and I wasn't supposed to bother them, but sometimes they were loud. Sometimes there'd be yelling, or crying, or both. Sometimes the adults with them would yell.
I couldn't imagine yelling at my parents. . . or being yelled at like that by them. It had never made much sense to me why anyone acted like that, or how my mother could help anyone like that.
But then I'd met Reis.
Well, to be specific, I'd noticed Reis first. Around the time I started realizing I liked looking at other boys, but before I knew why. I mean, I'd only been seven. It was more a fascination at the time, like how some boys really liked fire trucks, or dinosaurs. I really liked. . . other boys. Lots of different types of other boys. I wanted to have a lot of boy friends, but I'd never really been good at making friends. All the boys I wanted to meet had things in common, things they spent their time doing, that I was no good at. Baseball. Collecting monster cards. Climbing trees.
I liked to watch the music video channel and read, and sometimes play with my sisters. They had the sorts of toys I couldn't tell my mother I liked, because my older sister told me it was weird. She'd still let me play with hers, though, so. . . she was sort of my best friend.
Reis also didn't seem to have any friends. I'd seen him around in school since kindergarten, although he had a lot of long absences. I'll admit, I hadn't really taken much note of him for a long time. No one did. He wasn't just quiet, he was. . . invisible. The sort of kid you'd only realize in retrospect had always been there. He was like an afterthought.
I began to notice him at about the same time everyone else did, for an unfortunate reason. He started wearing the same clothes to school every day. The same thin blue t-shirt, the same pair of jean shorts that were too big for him. . . I'm not sure if his house had running water, but it wouldn't have mattered, because even if he was bathing, the clothes were still dirty. He wasn't popular. No one wanted to sit next to him.
I wasn't one of those kids who got anything out of being mean, so I wasn't. If it was just his dirty clothes that made him stand out, I probably wouldn't have even ever talked to him.
It was food. That's why I first worked up the courage to sit down next to him. To talk to him. I'd seen him sitting alone in the cafeteria a lot. . . not all that strange, no one even wanted to sit next to him in our crowded second grade classroom. . . but what stood out was that he never ate lunch. He just sort of sat there the whole time, and stared at the table or out the window. It became such a curiosity to me over time that I simply couldn't fight the fascination anymore. My seven-year-old mind couldn't figure out why it was another kid wouldn't eat their lunch every single day. Maybe now and then, he had an upset stomach. Maybe he'd had a big breakfast. But every day?
So one day I sat down next to him, and. . . I asked him why he wasn't eating. I remember thinking he was weird, when it took him nearly a minute to answer me. I'd eventually learn he was just painfully shy, but at the time I thought I was being rebuked. I'd almost panicked and left.
When he'd told me he just. . . didn't have any food, he'd said it with that same look I saw on all the kids' faces who came to see my mom. As I got older and, I guess, gained a better vocabulary and became capable of thinking in a deeper way about the world around me, I'd come to call it his 'hollow' look. It's the look he'd have throughout the years, whenever he'd been taken away from his home again to live with his aunt, or whenever one of his parents got arrested. . . or when his dad OD'd.
But at that moment, all it had meant to me was that he was sad because he was hungry. And even at seven, that made sense to me. I gave him the rest of my lunch, and I made a friend for life that day. Bringing him home a few times and introducing him to my mom as my new best friend probably didn't hurt, either. My mother. . . unsurprisingly. . . knew what could be done to help kids like Reis. She got him signed up for the program that got him the lunch coupons he was still using in the cafeteria to this day, she got him clothing from our church, and she encouraged me to bring him by for dinner and to play at our house whenever I wanted.
Reis has probably spent half of his life outside of school at my house ever since. Considering what little I'd seen of his mother and his own home the few times I visited, I honestly wish he'd come over more often than he already does.
Food always does the trick. Even now, even at sixteen, I see his tail vaguely swishing at the thought of my mom's meat sauce lasagna, and I know he's coming home with me today after school. He doesn't even need to confirm it.
“Great, so,” I smile, “bike rack after ninth period?”
“You had me at lasagna,” he says with that gorgeous, rare smile. I feign a cough and look away, because he doesn't need to see my ears flush. I mean it's not like he doesn't know I think he's gorgeous. I've actually tried to subdue my physical infatuation, or the appearance of it anyway, by making it overly obvious, by being overly flirtatious to the point of obnoxiousness. So far it seems to be working. He rolls his eyes at me, he shoves me off of him whenever I'm hanging all over him like a school girl, he laughs at me. . . it's all a big joke. He knows I'm gay. He knows I'm out. He knows I'm not shy about voicing what guys I find hot. So it's just more of that. He doesn't take it seriously, it doesn't creep him out or make him uncomfortable, because it's clear it's just my teasing him about the fact that he shot up from a kid who was once my size to this. . . towering Adonis with amazing blue eyes and a body I try really hard not to think about when I'm alone with my paw. Because that would be weird. Because we're friends. And I'm not being serious when I flirt with him.
Right.
Reis is straight. But he didn't let my coming out affect our friendship, and I'm grateful for that to this day, because even now, he's still my only male friend. I guess it helps that I realized I was gay at a relatively young age, compared to most people. I thought for awhile it just didn't bother him because he wasn't old enough to be freaked out by it yet. I figured we'd drift apart the older we got. But we never did. He stayed awesome. Shy, quiet, withdrawn, troubled. . . but awesome.
I guess at some point I know we have to part ways, at least somewhat. We can't be this close forever. I've been waiting for a girl to come between us. . . or I guess a boy, if I find someone I want to go steady with. But, unless you count screwing around with a guy in the bathroom at a concert a legit 'date', I haven't had much luck there. Probably won't until I get to college.
Hell, as soon as I leave this town, we're probably through. I mean I don't plan to come back, and Reis isn't planning on college. Or. . . graduating, at this rate. So it's pretty obvious these might be the last two years we have together. I just really don't want to think about it.
Shit. He's looking at me. It's not the overt stuff I have to worry about around him, it's the subtler times. Like now, when my mind is wandering, and my ears are pink, and I don't know if he's honestly sharp enough to catch on that I'm genuinely thinking about him in that way. If it ever goes past teasing, I feel like he's going to have to draw the line there. It doesn't matter how tight we are, straight guys get weirded out if they know you're into them. Like, you've seriously sat around and wondered if they'd get maybe even just a little gay when they're drunk.
God, that even sounds creepy to me.
Overcompensate. It's always worked in the past.
“I know that protein bar was shitty, Reis,” I say, putting false bravado into my voice, “but if you keep looking at me like I'm delicious, I'm gonna insist you put me in your muzzle.”
The wolfdog makes a face, and I've won. Just the right amount of raunchy to break the moment. Now I await the eye-roll.
It never comes, and panic creeps back in. Because now his eyes are flicking down the empty hallway, towards the open doors into the gymnasium, the nearest room that might have any people in it at all. We're technically on our lunch period now, but no one cares if you come out to the hallway behind the lunchroom, since you'd have to go past the big double doors to split off into the rest of the school, anyway, and they have monitors there. So we're alone. And he's checking that, for some reason. And I'm panicking. Because why is he checking?
He glances back down at me again, and he's got that look on his face. The one where he's got something to say, and it's always something he should have said like two years ago. Reis has this horrible habit of not talking about important shit. . . or lying about it. And I never find out what's going on his life, or in his head, until it's literally been pushed to the last possible ounce of time in which I can do anything about. . . whatever it is.
Is he finally going to tell me he knows I've got this enormous crush on him? Was today the final straw? I mean, he's a nice guy, but if he even so much as says 'this is making me uncomfortable', it will shatter me. Because no matter how much I know it's impossible, I think there's a part of me that's always hoped. . . and having him tell me, even in the politest of ways, that I'm freaking him out, would just snuff that out forever.
Yeah, I'm not ready for this. Like not at all.
“. . . or are you getting all hot and bothered over the thought of the lasagna?” I continue on, babbling like a moron, because I don't want there to be silence between us now. I don't want there to be any blank spaces for him to fill. It's not hard to convince Reis not to talk. And right now, I really don't think I want to hear what he has to say.
“Marc. . . .” he murmurs, and I know by the tilt of his ears that none of my defenses are working. His voice is kind of shaky, but he's pretty set on saying something serious right now. My own ears tip back.
I don't want to hear it. Let's just go back to being friends, and I'll keep my friendship-wrecking crush to myself, like I have been all along. It's been working out so far.
At some point while all that fucking silence was sitting between us, making this awkward, making it more and more tempting for him to finally say what's on his mind. . . I noted that in my almost prey-like state of panic, I'd entirely missed the fact that we'd gotten really close. Like really close. I have no idea how it happened, how it is our muzzles are less than a foot apart now, I hadn't thought I'd been leaning towards him. . . .
But no, actually, he's the one leaning down, stooping almost. And even if Reis doesn't always have the best posture, even if he shrinks his shoulders back sometimes when he doesn't want to be noticed, this had to have been intentional. His hand's on my shoulder. . . we touch sometimes, but, it's like he's urging me towards him. . . .
Oh God.
I'm dancing on the edge of elation and terror here, because I sort of think I recognize what's going on. . . what's about to happen. . . but the cynic in me feels it's unreal. I'm telling myself I'm imagining it, and telling myself I was right, all these years, at the same time.
Can't be happening. That's the main thought, the one I feel safe in, because the other, the tinge of excitement and giddy hope, would be too devastating to endure if it was wrong.
As it turns out, I don't get to be disappointed or elated. Because what actually happens is. . . my bag strap suddenly gives way, something on it snapping, and my shoulder bag falls to the ground, spilling its contents across the floor. Including my laptop. My new laptop.
“Shit!” I swear, twisting my muzzle up in real, genuine anger. And I'm not even really certain I'm angry about the fact that my laptop might've just broken a hinge.
I lean down, sighing and scooping up the scattered books, and looking over the fragile, fifteen hundred dollar piece of equipment. I inspect it for a few moments, but nothing really looks broken. The case is scuffed on the corner, but. . . .
Reis kneels down next to me, and holds out a hand for my bag. “Strap break?” he asks.
I grumble, pushing the bag at him. “I don't know. . . I guess.”
While I'm piling up my books, he murmurs, distracted, “Looks like. . . it's the metal ring here. The one with the small gap there? Must've widened over time.”
I blow out a breath through my nose, watching him clasp the ring between both palms and bend it back together, like he's a fucking power tool or something. I watch his biceps tense and his arms shake a moment as he pushed it entirely back into the right shape, and I am using every bit of profanity I know, in my head, because whatever was just happening. . . I know it's not going to happen now, if ever again. And I still have no idea if it was entirely in my head. I'm not even suspicious enough to call him on it, because that would also mean I run the risk of being denied. And like I was telling myself before. . . I don't want that.
No, the only way to have known for sure would have been to live through the last few seconds of that moment without my bag breaking to interrupt it. Damn it all.
And NOW I get my wish. Because when he looks up at me, that intense look in his eyes is gone, replaced with a mild, friendly smile. He's either lost his nerve or there was nothing there to begin with, and I was imagining it. And now I'll never fucking know.
“Bike rack, after ninth period,” he says with a soft smile. “I'll see you there, Marc.”
“Yeah. . . .” I murmur, my eyes following him as he stands, and begins to head off.
I shove my things back into my bag, and watch him until the bell rings a few seconds later, and the throngs of emerging students from the lunchroom obscure even the tall wolfdog from view.
Maybe it is weird for me to hold out hope like this. I'm setting myself up for a hell of a fall.
But. . . shit. Sometimes I really think he's looking back at me, the way I look at him.
Part 2 of a series. Part 3 coming soon. . . and then the whole project together, hopefully in time for AC :)
And I know this is old news, but just in case you're a new reader who's never heard of these two and you'd like to read their actual story, you can do so here - http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3704554
And here - http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5878641
I know the art is bad. . . it's super old : P Take it as it is.
“These things taste like shit,” the large wolfdog muttered, as he bit off another hunk of the unappetizing-looking, chalky protein bar. I grimaced at the mere sight of it, pulling my laptop from my locker and unzipping my bag to wedge it carefully between my AP History book and binder.
“Yeah, I've heard those things are nasty. Aren't they, like, really expensive, too?” I asked, sticking out my tongue.
Reis snorted, and smiled good-naturedly down at me. “Only the good ones. Coach gave me these. Pretty sure he got them off the back of a truck. . . in a landfill.”
I laughed. “That's disgusting. God, just eat a hamburger or something. Not many people get to enjoy gaining weight. Make the most of it.”
“I'm trying to make the most of my weight class. . . not get huge. I need protein. I get as much extra from the cafeteria with my lunch coupons as I can,” the wolfdog sighed, tossing the wrapper into a nearby trash can. “But I don't know if that really counts as food.”
“My mom's pretty good at bringing out my inner fat fox,” I offered with a smirk. “She's making lasagna with meat sauce tonight. Want to come over?”
“For real?” the wolfdog's ears perked. “Your mom's cooking tonight?”
“It's Friday. She doesn't work tomorrow,” I shrugged. “She always makes a big dinner on Fridays. Pretty sure she said tonight it'd be lasagna.”
My mother didn't work full-time, but she spent a few hours a day working at the Elementary School as a teacher's aid during the week. She used to counsel kids in the High School, then out of our house. I remembered being a young kit, my older sister ushering me into the play room when strange children, usually from other towns, would come by with their parents or someone from Childrens Services. I remembered the first time I'd caught the downward-facing gaze of one of the young boys, barely a year older than me, and felt that aura about him I'd never known another child could have. Confused, maybe scared. . . maybe angry. Always sad.
I'd never understood those kids, the ones my mom would see in her pastel-colored meeting room, the one with toys I wasn't allowed to play with in it. They didn't seem like normal kids to me. They certainly weren't like the ones I saw in kindergarten, or even first grade. They'd close the door whenever my mom was in there with them, and I wasn't supposed to bother them, but sometimes they were loud. Sometimes there'd be yelling, or crying, or both. Sometimes the adults with them would yell.
I couldn't imagine yelling at my parents. . . or being yelled at like that by them. It had never made much sense to me why anyone acted like that, or how my mother could help anyone like that.
But then I'd met Reis.
Well, to be specific, I'd noticed Reis first. Around the time I started realizing I liked looking at other boys, but before I knew why. I mean, I'd only been seven. It was more a fascination at the time, like how some boys really liked fire trucks, or dinosaurs. I really liked. . . other boys. Lots of different types of other boys. I wanted to have a lot of boy friends, but I'd never really been good at making friends. All the boys I wanted to meet had things in common, things they spent their time doing, that I was no good at. Baseball. Collecting monster cards. Climbing trees.
I liked to watch the music video channel and read, and sometimes play with my sisters. They had the sorts of toys I couldn't tell my mother I liked, because my older sister told me it was weird. She'd still let me play with hers, though, so. . . she was sort of my best friend.
Reis also didn't seem to have any friends. I'd seen him around in school since kindergarten, although he had a lot of long absences. I'll admit, I hadn't really taken much note of him for a long time. No one did. He wasn't just quiet, he was. . . invisible. The sort of kid you'd only realize in retrospect had always been there. He was like an afterthought.
I began to notice him at about the same time everyone else did, for an unfortunate reason. He started wearing the same clothes to school every day. The same thin blue t-shirt, the same pair of jean shorts that were too big for him. . . I'm not sure if his house had running water, but it wouldn't have mattered, because even if he was bathing, the clothes were still dirty. He wasn't popular. No one wanted to sit next to him.
I wasn't one of those kids who got anything out of being mean, so I wasn't. If it was just his dirty clothes that made him stand out, I probably wouldn't have even ever talked to him.
It was food. That's why I first worked up the courage to sit down next to him. To talk to him. I'd seen him sitting alone in the cafeteria a lot. . . not all that strange, no one even wanted to sit next to him in our crowded second grade classroom. . . but what stood out was that he never ate lunch. He just sort of sat there the whole time, and stared at the table or out the window. It became such a curiosity to me over time that I simply couldn't fight the fascination anymore. My seven-year-old mind couldn't figure out why it was another kid wouldn't eat their lunch every single day. Maybe now and then, he had an upset stomach. Maybe he'd had a big breakfast. But every day?
So one day I sat down next to him, and. . . I asked him why he wasn't eating. I remember thinking he was weird, when it took him nearly a minute to answer me. I'd eventually learn he was just painfully shy, but at the time I thought I was being rebuked. I'd almost panicked and left.
When he'd told me he just. . . didn't have any food, he'd said it with that same look I saw on all the kids' faces who came to see my mom. As I got older and, I guess, gained a better vocabulary and became capable of thinking in a deeper way about the world around me, I'd come to call it his 'hollow' look. It's the look he'd have throughout the years, whenever he'd been taken away from his home again to live with his aunt, or whenever one of his parents got arrested. . . or when his dad OD'd.
But at that moment, all it had meant to me was that he was sad because he was hungry. And even at seven, that made sense to me. I gave him the rest of my lunch, and I made a friend for life that day. Bringing him home a few times and introducing him to my mom as my new best friend probably didn't hurt, either. My mother. . . unsurprisingly. . . knew what could be done to help kids like Reis. She got him signed up for the program that got him the lunch coupons he was still using in the cafeteria to this day, she got him clothing from our church, and she encouraged me to bring him by for dinner and to play at our house whenever I wanted.
Reis has probably spent half of his life outside of school at my house ever since. Considering what little I'd seen of his mother and his own home the few times I visited, I honestly wish he'd come over more often than he already does.
Food always does the trick. Even now, even at sixteen, I see his tail vaguely swishing at the thought of my mom's meat sauce lasagna, and I know he's coming home with me today after school. He doesn't even need to confirm it.
“Great, so,” I smile, “bike rack after ninth period?”
“You had me at lasagna,” he says with that gorgeous, rare smile. I feign a cough and look away, because he doesn't need to see my ears flush. I mean it's not like he doesn't know I think he's gorgeous. I've actually tried to subdue my physical infatuation, or the appearance of it anyway, by making it overly obvious, by being overly flirtatious to the point of obnoxiousness. So far it seems to be working. He rolls his eyes at me, he shoves me off of him whenever I'm hanging all over him like a school girl, he laughs at me. . . it's all a big joke. He knows I'm gay. He knows I'm out. He knows I'm not shy about voicing what guys I find hot. So it's just more of that. He doesn't take it seriously, it doesn't creep him out or make him uncomfortable, because it's clear it's just my teasing him about the fact that he shot up from a kid who was once my size to this. . . towering Adonis with amazing blue eyes and a body I try really hard not to think about when I'm alone with my paw. Because that would be weird. Because we're friends. And I'm not being serious when I flirt with him.
Right.
Reis is straight. But he didn't let my coming out affect our friendship, and I'm grateful for that to this day, because even now, he's still my only male friend. I guess it helps that I realized I was gay at a relatively young age, compared to most people. I thought for awhile it just didn't bother him because he wasn't old enough to be freaked out by it yet. I figured we'd drift apart the older we got. But we never did. He stayed awesome. Shy, quiet, withdrawn, troubled. . . but awesome.
I guess at some point I know we have to part ways, at least somewhat. We can't be this close forever. I've been waiting for a girl to come between us. . . or I guess a boy, if I find someone I want to go steady with. But, unless you count screwing around with a guy in the bathroom at a concert a legit 'date', I haven't had much luck there. Probably won't until I get to college.
Hell, as soon as I leave this town, we're probably through. I mean I don't plan to come back, and Reis isn't planning on college. Or. . . graduating, at this rate. So it's pretty obvious these might be the last two years we have together. I just really don't want to think about it.
Shit. He's looking at me. It's not the overt stuff I have to worry about around him, it's the subtler times. Like now, when my mind is wandering, and my ears are pink, and I don't know if he's honestly sharp enough to catch on that I'm genuinely thinking about him in that way. If it ever goes past teasing, I feel like he's going to have to draw the line there. It doesn't matter how tight we are, straight guys get weirded out if they know you're into them. Like, you've seriously sat around and wondered if they'd get maybe even just a little gay when they're drunk.
God, that even sounds creepy to me.
Overcompensate. It's always worked in the past.
“I know that protein bar was shitty, Reis,” I say, putting false bravado into my voice, “but if you keep looking at me like I'm delicious, I'm gonna insist you put me in your muzzle.”
The wolfdog makes a face, and I've won. Just the right amount of raunchy to break the moment. Now I await the eye-roll.
It never comes, and panic creeps back in. Because now his eyes are flicking down the empty hallway, towards the open doors into the gymnasium, the nearest room that might have any people in it at all. We're technically on our lunch period now, but no one cares if you come out to the hallway behind the lunchroom, since you'd have to go past the big double doors to split off into the rest of the school, anyway, and they have monitors there. So we're alone. And he's checking that, for some reason. And I'm panicking. Because why is he checking?
He glances back down at me again, and he's got that look on his face. The one where he's got something to say, and it's always something he should have said like two years ago. Reis has this horrible habit of not talking about important shit. . . or lying about it. And I never find out what's going on his life, or in his head, until it's literally been pushed to the last possible ounce of time in which I can do anything about. . . whatever it is.
Is he finally going to tell me he knows I've got this enormous crush on him? Was today the final straw? I mean, he's a nice guy, but if he even so much as says 'this is making me uncomfortable', it will shatter me. Because no matter how much I know it's impossible, I think there's a part of me that's always hoped. . . and having him tell me, even in the politest of ways, that I'm freaking him out, would just snuff that out forever.
Yeah, I'm not ready for this. Like not at all.
“. . . or are you getting all hot and bothered over the thought of the lasagna?” I continue on, babbling like a moron, because I don't want there to be silence between us now. I don't want there to be any blank spaces for him to fill. It's not hard to convince Reis not to talk. And right now, I really don't think I want to hear what he has to say.
“Marc. . . .” he murmurs, and I know by the tilt of his ears that none of my defenses are working. His voice is kind of shaky, but he's pretty set on saying something serious right now. My own ears tip back.
I don't want to hear it. Let's just go back to being friends, and I'll keep my friendship-wrecking crush to myself, like I have been all along. It's been working out so far.
At some point while all that fucking silence was sitting between us, making this awkward, making it more and more tempting for him to finally say what's on his mind. . . I noted that in my almost prey-like state of panic, I'd entirely missed the fact that we'd gotten really close. Like really close. I have no idea how it happened, how it is our muzzles are less than a foot apart now, I hadn't thought I'd been leaning towards him. . . .
But no, actually, he's the one leaning down, stooping almost. And even if Reis doesn't always have the best posture, even if he shrinks his shoulders back sometimes when he doesn't want to be noticed, this had to have been intentional. His hand's on my shoulder. . . we touch sometimes, but, it's like he's urging me towards him. . . .
Oh God.
I'm dancing on the edge of elation and terror here, because I sort of think I recognize what's going on. . . what's about to happen. . . but the cynic in me feels it's unreal. I'm telling myself I'm imagining it, and telling myself I was right, all these years, at the same time.
Can't be happening. That's the main thought, the one I feel safe in, because the other, the tinge of excitement and giddy hope, would be too devastating to endure if it was wrong.
As it turns out, I don't get to be disappointed or elated. Because what actually happens is. . . my bag strap suddenly gives way, something on it snapping, and my shoulder bag falls to the ground, spilling its contents across the floor. Including my laptop. My new laptop.
“Shit!” I swear, twisting my muzzle up in real, genuine anger. And I'm not even really certain I'm angry about the fact that my laptop might've just broken a hinge.
I lean down, sighing and scooping up the scattered books, and looking over the fragile, fifteen hundred dollar piece of equipment. I inspect it for a few moments, but nothing really looks broken. The case is scuffed on the corner, but. . . .
Reis kneels down next to me, and holds out a hand for my bag. “Strap break?” he asks.
I grumble, pushing the bag at him. “I don't know. . . I guess.”
While I'm piling up my books, he murmurs, distracted, “Looks like. . . it's the metal ring here. The one with the small gap there? Must've widened over time.”
I blow out a breath through my nose, watching him clasp the ring between both palms and bend it back together, like he's a fucking power tool or something. I watch his biceps tense and his arms shake a moment as he pushed it entirely back into the right shape, and I am using every bit of profanity I know, in my head, because whatever was just happening. . . I know it's not going to happen now, if ever again. And I still have no idea if it was entirely in my head. I'm not even suspicious enough to call him on it, because that would also mean I run the risk of being denied. And like I was telling myself before. . . I don't want that.
No, the only way to have known for sure would have been to live through the last few seconds of that moment without my bag breaking to interrupt it. Damn it all.
And NOW I get my wish. Because when he looks up at me, that intense look in his eyes is gone, replaced with a mild, friendly smile. He's either lost his nerve or there was nothing there to begin with, and I was imagining it. And now I'll never fucking know.
“Bike rack, after ninth period,” he says with a soft smile. “I'll see you there, Marc.”
“Yeah. . . .” I murmur, my eyes following him as he stands, and begins to head off.
I shove my things back into my bag, and watch him until the bell rings a few seconds later, and the throngs of emerging students from the lunchroom obscure even the tall wolfdog from view.
Maybe it is weird for me to hold out hope like this. I'm setting myself up for a hell of a fall.
But. . . shit. Sometimes I really think he's looking back at me, the way I look at him.
Part 2 of a series. Part 3 coming soon. . . and then the whole project together, hopefully in time for AC :)
And I know this is old news, but just in case you're a new reader who's never heard of these two and you'd like to read their actual story, you can do so here - http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3704554
And here - http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5878641
I know the art is bad. . . it's super old : P Take it as it is.
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 662 x 793px
File Size 281.3 kB
I found you and started watching you from way back when you posted the very first page of Cruelty. And I'm still here years latter. Never once have I ever felt the art is bad, always remember everything great things have to start somewhere! :) And Cruelty still faninates me after all these years. Honesty, my only problem with that story was the choose your direction thing. Thank you for not doing that again! ;)
Also reading back on how poor Reis was is well.... Sad! :( Everyone can say what they want about Marcus but he's always been there for Reis. And for the time he wa self centered, he's always had a heart and been extremely generous. If that does not prove what kind of person he really is I'm not sure what ever will.
This brings me back too...gives me a sort of nostalgic feeling. I started watching after 'Unconditional' was already a few pages in, and I've been addicted since :P. I've always liked the Reis/Marcus pairing...it just fits really well.
And the art is totally fine~ Great, even! Now that I think about it, Rukis has improved quite a bit since 'Cruelty', and her art was awesome to begin with!
Thanks for sharing, Rukis~
And the art is totally fine~ Great, even! Now that I think about it, Rukis has improved quite a bit since 'Cruelty', and her art was awesome to begin with!
Thanks for sharing, Rukis~
I nearly cried, for once again you've created a piece relatable enough to stoke those associated emotions till they nearly burn through... Nearly all of your work (especially your work involving Marcus and Reis, being a mated, gay male myself, who has also had drug problems, and had friends with drug problems) has done that for me, whether the theme be drug abuse, love, friendship, or in this case, someone who, rationally speaking, will never have that soft spot for you to touch as you do for them, and yet someone to whom you cling for all that you're worth in blind hope that your most unrealistic desires may be realized... Shit, think I may cry now... Papa Roach and Rukis' fiction are not a good combo in public
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13676273/
Just went looking myself, no story beyond what's in the picture, though. :c
Just went looking myself, no story beyond what's in the picture, though. :c
Oh my god I know the feeling!! I have a friend who was my first guy crush and that's exactly the kind of shit that would go on inside my head. And one night he really did get drunk enough that he started groping me while we were about to go to sleep, but it turns out that he was mainly just curious.
Id say "poor Marc" if I didn't already know the awesome story they eventually have together.
Id say "poor Marc" if I didn't already know the awesome story they eventually have together.
Like I say every time, I shall reiterate myself. Marcus and Reis have a love that I wish I had. Also that this all very sweet in the fact how Reis felt toward Marcus, it would only make sense due to their elongated past, with Marcus already having these emotions locked up inside as well.
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