Gift for Ninja_nutjob (reposted due to coding issues)
Title: Kickin' It Old School with Balfour
Author: persepolis130
Beta: younglizbeth
Pairings: Thom/Balfour, Rook/Ace
Summary: Bored and feeling abandoned by his jet-setting parents, Hilary invites his BFF Balfour over to play video games and geek out over his action figures. But when Hilary goes to chat with his brother (and his super hot fratboy friend), he stumbles upon something a whole lot more interesting than Nintendo.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~ 6000
Author's Notes: I poke fun at a lot of different fandoms and types of fanboys/girls/dorks, but it's all in good spirit, and no offense is meant. All my Hot Pockets are belong to homoexplosion. I only write crack on days of the week that end in a Y. The lovely "ugly face" idea is from dorkyhobbit and younglizbeth and their equally lovely friend Brandon. No Ewoks were harmed in the writing of this fanfic. All weblinks (open at your own risk; sorry if any have gone down!) belong to their respective owners. Thanks for the prompt, ninja_nutjob-- I hope I've done you proud!
I may not have been an orphan, but sometimes I felt like I was.
Mom was packing up for yet another trip to the Caribbean, the Alps, the French Riviera, wherever. I could never keep it straight. Her stuff was sitting by the door, designer suitcases filled with designer clothes, and she was descending the stairs in the season's latest style of Italian leather pumps.
"I may see you next weekend, sweetie," she was telling me, swinging her Coach purse onto her shoulder. She had a French manicure and new coral lipstick that made her dyed blonde hair look even brighter, and I couldn't help but think she looked as pretty as Fleur Delacour even without the Veela bits. "It all depends on Vivian's schedule. Be sure to keep up on your homework and eat your vegetables. Oh, and if you need anything, Hilary, don't hesitate to call your dad's assistant. He should be in San Francisco until the fourth."
"I know, Mom," I said, and reached out to hug her.
"No, hun," she said, waving me away, "you'll wrinkle my new dress. It's silk. Oh, is that the car?"
I sighed as I heard her ride pull up the drive to the front walk. "Bye, Mom," I said, but she was already out the door.
I watched the driver pile the suitcases into the back of the limo and did my best not to feel sorry for myself. After all, I lived in a house that most kids would kill for-- as big as the X-Mansion, and without any sociopathic evil mutants banging at the gates-- and I could basically do whatever the hell I wanted in it. Even if I completely trashed the place, the maids would have it cleaned up good as new and sparkling clean the next day.
But I didn't feel like trashing anything, and the foyer with its massive spiral staircase and crystal chandelier made me feel as lonely as if I were locked in Azkaban. It was depressing being all alone in a house this big. And I was basically always alone. I didn't belong in a place like this any more than Sirius belonged behind bars.
There was only one thing to do during times like these, when my underlying emo urges threatened to take over like a starship's sentient autopilot. I pulled out my phone and brought up the Twitter app.
@Bal_4_Ever Mom left again, the house is empty. Are you going to your aunt's, or can you hang out? We can play Guitar Hero if you feel like
@Bal_4_Ever getting your ass kicked.
I'd just made it up the stairs to my room when I got an answer:
@SirEdmund_H aunts cat has indigestion im all yours. You think you can kick my ass keep dreaming. Be over in ten minutes
I grinned. Balfour was the best, even if his grammar did burn my eyes. I should've know he wouldn't let me down.
Up in my room, I got my Wii hooked up-- I didn't have enough plugs on my TV for all the game systems I had, so I was always messing with them-- and cleared a spot on the floor where we could play and not worry about anything getting broken. My room was pretty big, but I had this bad habit of collecting everything. The guys at the comic book store could sense me from a mile away even without spider-senses.
Sure enough, not ten minutes after Balfour tweeted, there was a knock on the front door. He was almost fifteen minutes away by car, but he had all these shortcuts he took on his bike, so it was actually quicker. I bet he could make the Kessel Run in eleven parsecs. I bounced down the stairs and pulled open the door.
"Hey, kid," said John. "Forgot my key."
Suddenly my day got a whole lot brighter. Not only was my best friend coming over, but my brother was home!
My brother John was probably the coolest guy on the planet. Seriously, he was like, amazing. Not only was he six years older than me and in college, but he belonged to a fraternity. He and his frat brothers were always having keg parties and playing beer pong and turning their music up so loud, the cops had to come. And John was so popular, he could bring home a different girl pretty much every night. As a matter of fact, he usually did; sometimes he brought home more than one. Everyone called him Rook because of how good he was at sweet-talking his way into girls' pants.
I was so jealous of him!
But don't get me wrong, it wasn't about the girls. As a matter of fact, I could give a crap about that sort of thing. It was just a sign of how cool he was, and what you could do if you had that kind of power. It was the other guys in his fraternity that interested me. And standing before me, on my front step, was a prime example.
I'd met some of the guys before, but not this one. He was probably nineteen or twenty, and he had this dark red hair that managed to look messed up like he'd just gotten out of bed, but was somehow completely perfect at the same time. He was wearing a yellow polo shirt with the collar flipped up, baggy cargo shorts, and flip-flops. His hands were stuck in the pockets of his shorts, and his mouth opened in a bored yawn.
He was so gorgeous, I had a boner just looking at him.
"This is Ace," John said as they came in. "He's one of the boys. We're gonna hang out here 'til the game starts, then we're meeting Ghislain at Hooters. Ace, this is my little brother, Thom."
"Oh," I said, my face turning red. Thomas was my middle name, and John called me it because Hilary was too girly. "Nice to, um, meet you."
He shrugged and sauntered in like I wasn't any more important than a flowerpot or something. "Nice digs," he told John.
All of a sudden, I felt horrifically self-conscious. It wasn't like he'd ever look twice at me-- or even once, for that matter-- but I wished for about the millionth time that I had even an infinitesimal fraction of the good looks that my brother did. John had this incredible blond hair, blinding white smile, and muscles you could see right through his shirt. And what did I have? Mousy brown hair, braces, and scrawny arms in a Halo tee-shirt from Hot Topic.
I didn't even play Halo anymore.
God, my life was such an epic fail.
And of course Balfour chose just that moment to show up, still breathing hard from the bike ride over.
"Sorry I'm late, I couldn't find my shoes," he told me.
"Hey, Bal," John said, raising a hand to greet him. "How's your brother?"
"Oh, he's good," Balfour told him, nodding. "Crunching lots of numbers, you know? Always puts a smile on his face!"
Ace was already disappearing into the kitchen, and despite myself, I felt incredibly relieved. I loved him to death, but Balfour made even me look cool. And believe me, that was hard to do. Today he had on his Dragon Ball Z tee-shirt from seventh grade and a pair of too-short jeans.
John told him to say hi to his brother for him, and followed Ace to the kitchen. I could hear him say, "Amery's brother-- you fucking believe that?" which only made me feel like even more of a loser.
Amery was the guy who got John into his frat-- sponsored him, or whatever you call it. He graduated a few years ago, but back in the day, he was a football star and had gone to college on a full-ride scholarship. He was on the honor roll every semester and won the college-wide Drunken Olympics.
And he was super gorgeous.
"Your brother's cool," I told Balfour. It didn't really have anything to do with anything, but he was used to me saying stuff like that.
He snorted. "My brother is an accountant. He is not cool. You want to know what's cool? Your brother offering to sneak you into the strip club. That's cool!"
"It's only because he was sleeping with nine of the strippers," I reminded him. "And I think they would've noticed a twelve year old hanging around and kicked me out in about thirty seconds, anyway."
He shrugged. "Still cool. Come on, let's go to your room. It smells like frat boy down here, my asthma's going to start acting up."
Up in my room, Balfour marveled at my new bust of Yoda. "Wow, the craftsmanship on this thing is wicked. You can almost hear him saying, Mmm, yes, Yoda I am! Why don't I have cool stuff like this?"
"Because you waste all your money on crap?" I offered.
"Hey," he said, setting Yoda down next to Gandalf and my scale model of a Romulan Warbird. " Cosplay is not crap!"
"Calm down, I didn't mean--"
"Here, where's your laptop, let me show you what I'm working on now," he said, and started rooting through a pile of Final Fantasy plushies at the foot of my bed. Of course the thing was sitting on my desk about six inches from his nose. Why would it be under my stuffed chocobo, anyway?
On second thought, it was probably a good thing that Balfour could never find anything. If he could, he would've stumbled upon my collection of questionable fanfiction a long time ago. I picked the laptop up and handed it to him.
"Everyone is super into Hetalia right now, so I'm going to be this guy," he said, after typing a few things in. "His name's North Italy. The whole anime is this allegory for World War II, and there's sexual innuendos galore. The girls love it."
The thing about Balfour-- besides how he spent every penny he had at Jo-Ann Fabric-- was that he was obsessed with girls. It was really too bad because once you got beyond his total lack of fashion sense, he was kind of cute.
Well, okay, really cute. Like, completely freaking adorable.
Of course to me, every guy was cute. Unless he was as fat as Jabba the Hutt or had acne so bad his face looked like raw hamburger, I would totally give it up for any guy under the age of, like, 30. But I wasn't some kind of slut or something-- in fact, I was the opposite.
I was a total and complete virgin.
It was shameful, I know, but I blamed it on my options. I mean, suburban Indiana wasn't exactly a hotbed of gay loving. There was only one guy who had ever come out at our high school, and that was Caius Greylace. Of course it's kind of hard to hide the fact that you're queer when you wear matching sweater sets and women's hosiery, but I digress. He was literally my only choice, or had been before he was expelled.
Now all I was left with my was right hand. It sometimes made me want to cry in dark corners. Or in men's toilets like Draco Malfoy in sixth year, but unfortunately without some hot Potter kid stalking me.
"He looks cool," I told Balfour, gesturing toward the monitor at his heta-whatever character. "I like his uniform thing. Military-style always looks good, and you could do it up kind of steampunk. But are you sure that's the best way to get girls?"
Balfour rolled his eyes and shut the laptop. "Um, duh! North Italy's totally kawaii, and all the chicks dig yaoi nowadays. They practically tear their tops off when guys pose together at cons. You remember Acen, right?"
"Yeah, I remember," I said nodding. "But it's not like I was watching for stuff like that. How would I know?"
We'd both gone to Anime Central last year, but I spent most of my time in the gaming rooms and hadn't seen any live-action yaoi from the cosplayers. Now I kind of regretted missing all the boys in costume. I wasn't all that into anime, though; when it came to Japanese stuff, video games were much more my style.
Balfour, on the other hand, was crazy for it. He had this thing for Mecha that I'd never get, and he went on wild Gundam Wing watching marathons. He was holed up in the Mecha Viewing Room for half the con. He loved Fullmetal Alchemist too, especially the kid Al, whose soul was stuck in a suit of armor. He did a pretty good cosplay of him once, though girls didn't drop at his feet like he thought they would. I kept telling him metal hands wouldn't get him dates, but did he listen?
"Anyway, having a super sweet costume would totally put Josie in her place," Balfour continued. His jaw got the set to it that it always got when he talked about her. "She'll come crawling back to me one of these days, mark my words."
"Isn't she with that Asian kid?" I asked. "The one on the wrestling team?"
Balfour snorted. "His name's Temur. Stupid name. I don't know why she's so obsessed with him-- I know she's kind of this weeaboo and everything now, so anything from Asia is cool to her, but he's not really Asian. He's fake asian. I mean, I guess he's Korean or something, but he was born in Indianapolis. He's about as Asian as I am."
"He's okay though," I said. When Balfour gave me the Look of Death, I added, "I mean, he's not a total jerk or anything. He talked to me once and didn't spit on me afterward."
"Yeah, well," said Balfour, glowering. "If he'd had his hands on your property, you wouldn't be talking like that."
I sighed, yet again resisting the urge to remind Balfour that Josette wasn't his anymore. They'd only gone out for a month, and it was only because she was going through a Star Trek kick, and she thought Balfour looked like Wesley Crusher. But one night they were at her place watching The Wrath of Kahn, and she let him take off her bra. Balfour hadn't been the same since. It was like his brain was overloaded or short-circuited or something.
"Look, I understand how nice her boobs are," I told him, even though I didn't. "You’ve told me a dozen times. But why don't you try to forget about her? She's only holding you back. I mean, what about… what about Marcy? She has that Inu-Yasha bookbag and those hair ties with Hello Kitty on them. And I'm sure she didn't mean to hit you with her tuba that time."
Balfour gaped at me. "Marcy? As in, Marcelline Marcy? She's a total dyke!"
"She is not!" I insisted. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Lesbo!" Balfour announced with a dismissive wave of his hand.
I rolled my eyes. "Stop being stupid. She went to the Christmas Formal with that big guy from Glendarrow-- the Greek, you remember him?"
Because damn, I sure did! I was only at the dance to help check coats-- it was volunteer work for National Honor Society-- but that guy in particular made it a really nice night. Seriously, he was built like the Incredible freaking Hulk. How did you get muscles that big, anyway? Steroids?
"Wow, is this the third edition gold print?" Balfour asked, holding up my copy of Wolverine: Origin #1.
"Yes," I told him, recognizing a let's-change-the-subject non sequitur when I heard one. "And no, you can't have it."
"Aw!" he said, and tossed it back onto my desk.
With the preliminaries out of the way, we settled in for some gaming, but Balfour decided he didn't feel like Guitar Hero. He said he was bored with it, but I knew it was because he was afraid I'd wipe the floor with him. I could shred mad riffs.
"Let's kick it old school," he said. So I broke out the Atari.
We played Blasteroids for a while, and then a little Pong, but I wasn't really feeling it. My brother was hardly ever here, and I'd barely even gotten to talk to him. I didn't want to ditch Balfour like Ron did Harry during the Triwizard Tournament or anything, but it wasn't like John came home every day, or even every month. Whatever game he and his super delicious friends were going to watch-- I didn't even know what sport was being played right now-- would probably be on soon.
"Hey, are you hungry?" I asked Balfour after I let him beat me. "I'm going down to the kitchen. Want me to get you something?"
"Yeah," he said, because Balfour was always hungry. "How about a Hot Pocket? Ham and cheese, if you've got any. Oh, and some Mountain Dew! That stuff is like crack, I can't believe my mom won't let me drink it anymore."
"Sure," I told him, not blaming his mom at all. Balfour on a caffeine buzz was like one of those volcanoes you make as a kid where you add vinegar, and it foams all over the carpet. "Kind of like you can't believe she cancelled your subscription to WoW."
"That was totally unfair!" he exclaimed. "I can't believe you're still taking her side in this!"
"You were failing first year Spanish," I reminded him. "You brought it on yourself."
"Spanish is hard!" he insisted. "A lot of people fail Spanish, Hilary! A lot!"
"Balfour, you speak fluent Klingon," I said.
"bIjatlh 'e' yImev," he snapped. "Hab SoSlI' Quch!"
"Don't talk that way about my mom just because you're mad at yours," I told him.
He sighed, a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. "Sorry. I just miss my midnight raiding parties. Such good times! World of Warcraft pwned me. Are you getting that food?"
"Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew, dinner of champions," I assured him. "Oh, and pick a different game, if you want. I suck at Pong today worse than Perkins sucks at Dungeons and Dragons."
"Perkins eats paste," Balfour said, already rooting through one of my bins of games.
"Yeah, that's my point," I said, and headed down to chat with John for a while. It'd be a half an hour at least before Balfour realized I was taking too long. Once he got into a game, he lost all track of time. It was practically like having a Time-Turner. I stopped off in the bathroom to brush my hair and make sure I didn't have anything in my teeth, just in case Ace happened to look at me.
Of course he wouldn't. I looked like an anemic Frodo, and I don't mean Elijah Wood. I was short, unassuming, and I had hair on my feet.
John wasn't in the kitchen anymore, and I grabbed a two-liter of Mountain Dew to prove I wasn't just there to bug him. He never acted like he got annoyed with me, but if I were him, I would. Having me with him was like Qui-Gon carting around Jar Jar Binks.
The TV was on in the family room-- though I don't know why we called it that because there was never a family here to be in it-- and I wondered if they were watching a movie or something. But it was an infomercial for Snuggies, and the room was empty.
Around the corner, there was this little room, a closet sort of thing with shelves of DVDs in it, and I heard John's voice inside. I figured they were trying to pick one out, and maybe they could use my help. You know, ask me which one I liked best, and then go with the other one. The door was half shut, so I pushed it open.
John was leaned up against the horror movies with Ace on his knees in front of him. He had his pants unbelted and his zipper pulled down, his fingers twisted into Ace's hair. Ace's head was blocking my view, but my brother was moaning things that did not bear repeating, and it was obvious Ace was--
Oh God, I thought. Oh god oh god oh god…
I darted out of the closet, through the kitchen and up the stairs in this sort of terrorized daze, clutching the two-liter to my chest like a lifebuoy. When I reached my room, I slammed the door shut, locked it, and dropped down onto the bed.
"Hey," said Balfour, "where's my Hot Pocket?"
I couldn't even answer. I just stared blindly across my room, for once not comforted by his presence, or the soothing Super Mario Brothers theme music coming from the TV, or even my prize vintage Ewok action figures I got off ebay. Was my first true gay experience really watching my brother get blown in our DVD closet? I mean, really?
I felt so dirty. Why did it have to be John, of all people? It was like when I first found out Luke and Leia were brother and sister after watching them kiss in The Empire Strikes Back. It was like… canon incest!
"Are you okay?" Balfour asked, sitting down next to me. "That friend of your brother's didn't try to give you a swirlie, did he? Because that's not a very nice thing to do in your own house."
I blinked a couple of times, trying to get the image of Ace's broad shoulders out of my mind. "No," I said, shaking my head. "Nobody tried to give me a swirlie."
"Okay. Well, your hair didn't look wet, but you never know," he said.
I sighed and realized I was still holding onto the Mountain Dew, and I handed it over to Balfour. "Don't open it yet, I ran up the stairs."
He frowned and took it. "Seriously, what's wrong? Your face is as grey as Gollum."
"It's nothing. Just my brother. He…" I trailed off. This was not something I wanted to explain, but I knew I had to. Balfour wouldn't shut up until he had it out of me. He was like human Veritaserum. "You have to promise not to tell anyone."
"About what?" he asked, eyes going wide. "What happened?"
So I explained it to him-- leaving out the part where I was ditching him, of course-- but I didn't know quite what to say about what I'd seen the two guys doing. If I was too graphic about it, I'd gross him out, but I didn't want him thinking I was too much of a virgin to talk about sex stuff. Also, I think I might have been developing post-traumatic stress disorder because I was seriously traumatized.
I settled for telling Balfour I'd seen John and Ace "doing something, like, sort of… sexual," and hoped he'd figure it out.
"Like kissing?" he asked, gaping at me.
Close enough, I decided. "Sort of like that, yeah."
Balfour shrugged. "It was probably just an Accidental Kiss."
"A… what?" I asked.
"It happens all the time in anime," he told me, and motioned toward the soda bottle. "Think it's safe to open yet?"
"No, don't," I said quickly, because I didn't want it all over my bed. "Now wait a minute here-- an Accidental Kiss? How do you accidentally kiss someone?"
He shrugged, setting the Mountain Dew on the ground between his feet. "You do it on accident, duh! Like when Naruto is on Sasuke's desk glaring at him, and somebody bumps him, and he flies forward, and their lips just--"
"Look, it was not accidental, okay," I corrected. "I guarantee you."
"Then maybe they were practicing," Balfour suggested.
"Practicing," I repeated, wishing I'd lied about the whole thing and said Ace had tried to flush my head down the toilet.
"Yeah. You have to keep your skills up, you know. Okay, I'm opening this now," he told me.
I just watched as the Mountain Dew fizzed all over his hands, pants, shoes, and my floor, trying to imagine why my brother would need practice getting head, and why Ace would need practice giving it. It was a bad choice. But suddenly that theater major-- the one with the astronaut name, what was it again? God, he was sexy-- who John had brought around last summer made sense.
I felt sick.
But also ridiculously turned on.
"You don't practice stuff like that," I told Balfour, ready to flush my own head down the toilet. If only I weren't the most repressed sixteen year old this side of the closet door, shit like this wouldn't happen to me. "It's not like honing Jedi skills."
"Actually, it sort of is. I mean, how else do you learn? People aren't born knowing how to kiss, you know. It's not like a mutation," he said. "Believe me, I know."
"Yeah, you've told me about it a hundred times," I snapped, really not wanting to hear about the things Josie could do with her tongue right now.
"Hey," Balfour said, nudging me with his elbow as he licked the drips of soda off the bottom of the bottle. "We could do it if you want."
I stared at him.
He shrugged, looking strangely smug. "You need knowledge, and I happen to be in possession of it. It's not a big deal-- you'll be like my Padawan, and I'll be the master. It's perfect."
Balfour was crazy. I'd known it ever since first grade when he came to school with his underwear outside his pants because he thought it gave him Superman powers, but I hadn't known the extent of his mental dysfunction. But now I did, and he was batshit insane, and I was sitting on a bed with a boy who just offered to kiss me and oh my god what was I supposed to do I wanted to so much…
"Look, it's simple," Balfour was saying. "You keep your lips together--don't pucker them though, that looks stupid-- until you touch them to the other person's, and then you open them just enough to slip your tongue out. See, like this. Don't open your mouth too far because then you'll slobber all over, and nobody wants that. And you can close your eyes if you want because being that close to somebody else's face, you can really see how ugly they are. It's kind of scary. And…"
Oh god, I couldn't take this. He was setting the two-liter on the ground and making some sort of motion with his hands while he talked, and all I could do was think about how much I wanted my lips against his and what a Bad Thing it would be if he knew.
Be strong, I told myself. When he kisses you, do not throw him back on the bed, rip off all his clothes, and lick every inch of his body. You can do this. Think of Harry going up against Voldemort. Think of Frodo on his quest to destroy the One Ring. Think of…
"Turn your head-- here, look at me," Balfour was saying. And then he was leaning toward me, his lips closing in on mine, so close I could feel the heat of his skin. He smelled a little like soap and a little like sweat and a lot like every wet dream I'd ever had. His breath puffed against my lips, warm and sweet and enticing, his mouth drawing closer, and then, and then--
Oh god! my mind screamed. USE THE FORCE!!
--he kissed me.
I didn't lose my mind. I didn't moan or grab him, or do anything else to embarrass myself. I kept my hands in my lap and only gasped a little when his lips first touched mine. There was no way he could know how hard my heart was beating, or how my head was reeling, or how much I wanted to run my fingers through his hair.
His lips were soft and warm and something else I didn't have a word for but wished I did. I could've sat there all night like that, with his lips moving gently against mine, lost in the sensation. Before I knew it, my lips were parting, and the tip of his tongue was darting between them, sending little chills through me. I brought my own tongue out to meet it.
Balfour's mouth tasted like Mountain Dew. It suited him. It suited me too, and I had to hold myself back from exploring every inch of it. It felt so good, and so much more intimate and intense than I expected, with his tongue curling, sliding, stroking against mine.
Kissing was like sex with tongues, it occurred to me.
It must've occurred to Balfour too, or at least something did, because his hand was wrapping around my neck. My eyes had drifted shut, but I could feel him turning toward me, his shoulder pressing against mine, and then an arm wrapping around my back. He made a soft little noise in the back of his throat, opened his mouth wider, and coaxed my tongue further in. God, it felt incredible, like the captain had left the bridge and left me in charge of the whole starship. I wouldn't let him down. I would… I would…
Balfour's hands were pulling me toward him, fingers digging sharply but sweetly into the back of my neck. Without me telling it to, my own hand went to his side, bunching up the faded fabric of his shirt to get underneath. My fingers slid against the bare skin of his stomach, and Balfour gasped.
Then he was shoving me away. He stared at me with his mouth hanging open, his arms up in front of him as though he needed protection. His eyes were wide with horror.
"Oh no," he murmured. "Oh no."
"I'm sorry," I said, my stomach clenching into a knot of regret at what I'd done. Oh god, how stupid! "I didn't mean to--"
"Oh, this can't be happening!" he exclaimed, working his fingers through his hair like he was going to pull it out. "You kiss way better than Josette! Your tongue is like the most amazing thing on the planet!"
"Um," I said.
"I could kiss you all day and never get tired of it!" he lamented. "And I don't even care that you don't have boobs! Oh! And Josie's were never that great to begin with-- they were really squishy-- I just said they were so you'd be impressed!"
"Balfour," I started.
"Oh! Oh no," he moaned. "I'm one of those yaoi boys after all! My life is over!"
"Balfour, it's going to be fine," I said, trying to sound comforting through the crazy mix of emotions running through me. "It's not the end of the--"
"Oh, I can't take it, I can't! I'm some kind of homo, and I never even knew it! And I almost molested you on your own bed! Oh, I'm going to hyperventilate," he panted. "I can't breathe! I can't--"
I swore and ran to the window, throwing it open while he dug into his pocket. He came back up with his asthma inhaler and puffed on it as he stumbled toward me, hanging his head out into the courtyard for fresh air. His face was beet red.
"I feel so stupid," he said after a few minutes had passed. "I bet you hate me now."
I sighed. "I don't hate you."
He frowned, puckering up his bottom lip the way he did when an upperclassman had dumped his lunch in his lap for the fifth time this week and he was trying his best not to cry. "Well, I bet you hated kissing me."
I slid to the floor beside him and reached over and patted his knee. "I really didn't."
I wished I could say more than that, but I was afraid of what might happen if I did. This whole thing was brand new to him, and he might freak. I really liked kissing him, and I wanted more than anything to tell him about the time I got caught trying to steal a back issue of Alpha Flight #106 because I wanted to read about Northstar coming out but was too ashamed to put the comic on the counter, but I didn't want to mess up our friendship.
"Anyway," Balfour said, stuffing his inhaler back into his pocket and looking glum, "I guess I should go." He walked over to the TV and turned off the Nintendo. The silence was deafening; the world was never a better place without Mario.
"You don't have to leave," I told him, feeling a little desperate. "If you want to go back to arcade games and just forget this whole thing ever happened…"
"But I don't," he said. "That's the thing. It would be a lie. Pretending it never happened would be like Harry throwing away his wand or Jean Grey not coming back from the dead or Samwise not following Frodo on his quest or, or…"
"Being gay isn't some sort of fantastic voyage," I said, as tactfully as I could. "Trust me, I know. Take the blue pill, Neo."
"But I don't want the blue pill," he told me, his face screwed up again like he was going to cry. "I want to make out!"
I blinked. "Um."
"A man cannot live on internet porn alone, Hilary!" he asserted. " Hentai is not a balanced diet! He needs physical-- wait a minute. Did you just, like, come out to me?"
I shrugged and fussed with a loose thread on my tee-shirt.
"Jeez, what the hell? How long have you known? Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded. "Because if you had, I probably would've realized about myself, and this whole mess could've been avoided. You know what? This whole thing is your fault."
I gaped. "Hey! It was your brilliant idea to teach me how to kiss! I wasn't going to say anything until college! If anything, it's your fault!"
"No way!" he declared. He had his hands on his hips and his eyes narrowed. The faded image of Super Saiyan Vegeta glared at me from his tee-shirt. "I just came here for the video games! It's your fault for making stuff up about your brother, and you need to make it up to me!"
"What? I didn't make anything up! I saw the two of them--"
"And do you know how you're going to do that? Make out with me!" he exclaimed.
I stared.
"And don't say 'um,'" he warned, waving a finger at me, "because I am in serious need of some loving right now. Serious need, Hilary!"
"Oh," I said blankly. "Okay."
A smile broke out across his face. "Hahaha!" he cackled. "I knew I was irresistible! This is going to be so cool. Can we turn on The Two Towers for ambiance?"
"Sure," I managed, and stumbled over to the bed. I was in such a daze. Was this really happening? Were Balfour and I going to have a makeout session on my bed under the auspices of J.R.R. Tolkien's finest?
Something heavy bounced onto the bed beside me, and it took me a minute to realize it was Balfour. The movie was starting, Gandalf about to be wrecked by the Balrog, and Balfour was beaming at me, looking way cuter than Wesley Crusher ever had. I wrapped an arm around his back and pulled him close. He slid his hand behind my neck and pressed his lips to mine.
I wasn't convinced Balfour was gay-- he was probably just horny and desperate, that was sort of his M.O.-- but that was okay for now. I didn't think my brother was gay either, but he sure seemed to enjoy acting like he was. Maybe, in the end, that was all it took.
In any case, that was all it took for me to get Balfour tipped back onto my mattress and making some really enjoyable noises. And beyond that… well, who cared? In the words of that creepy bald kid from The Matrix, "Do not try to bend the spoon-- that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: there is no spoon."
What that had to do with anything I had no freaking clue, but Balfour was totally taking my shirt off holy dsgsdfsg!!!!!!1
Author: persepolis130
Beta: younglizbeth
Pairings: Thom/Balfour, Rook/Ace
Summary: Bored and feeling abandoned by his jet-setting parents, Hilary invites his BFF Balfour over to play video games and geek out over his action figures. But when Hilary goes to chat with his brother (and his super hot fratboy friend), he stumbles upon something a whole lot more interesting than Nintendo.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~ 6000
Author's Notes: I poke fun at a lot of different fandoms and types of fanboys/girls/dorks, but it's all in good spirit, and no offense is meant. All my Hot Pockets are belong to homoexplosion. I only write crack on days of the week that end in a Y. The lovely "ugly face" idea is from dorkyhobbit and younglizbeth and their equally lovely friend Brandon. No Ewoks were harmed in the writing of this fanfic. All weblinks (open at your own risk; sorry if any have gone down!) belong to their respective owners. Thanks for the prompt, ninja_nutjob-- I hope I've done you proud!
I may not have been an orphan, but sometimes I felt like I was.
Mom was packing up for yet another trip to the Caribbean, the Alps, the French Riviera, wherever. I could never keep it straight. Her stuff was sitting by the door, designer suitcases filled with designer clothes, and she was descending the stairs in the season's latest style of Italian leather pumps.
"I may see you next weekend, sweetie," she was telling me, swinging her Coach purse onto her shoulder. She had a French manicure and new coral lipstick that made her dyed blonde hair look even brighter, and I couldn't help but think she looked as pretty as Fleur Delacour even without the Veela bits. "It all depends on Vivian's schedule. Be sure to keep up on your homework and eat your vegetables. Oh, and if you need anything, Hilary, don't hesitate to call your dad's assistant. He should be in San Francisco until the fourth."
"I know, Mom," I said, and reached out to hug her.
"No, hun," she said, waving me away, "you'll wrinkle my new dress. It's silk. Oh, is that the car?"
I sighed as I heard her ride pull up the drive to the front walk. "Bye, Mom," I said, but she was already out the door.
I watched the driver pile the suitcases into the back of the limo and did my best not to feel sorry for myself. After all, I lived in a house that most kids would kill for-- as big as the X-Mansion, and without any sociopathic evil mutants banging at the gates-- and I could basically do whatever the hell I wanted in it. Even if I completely trashed the place, the maids would have it cleaned up good as new and sparkling clean the next day.
But I didn't feel like trashing anything, and the foyer with its massive spiral staircase and crystal chandelier made me feel as lonely as if I were locked in Azkaban. It was depressing being all alone in a house this big. And I was basically always alone. I didn't belong in a place like this any more than Sirius belonged behind bars.
There was only one thing to do during times like these, when my underlying emo urges threatened to take over like a starship's sentient autopilot. I pulled out my phone and brought up the Twitter app.
@Bal_4_Ever Mom left again, the house is empty. Are you going to your aunt's, or can you hang out? We can play Guitar Hero if you feel like
@Bal_4_Ever getting your ass kicked.
I'd just made it up the stairs to my room when I got an answer:
@SirEdmund_H aunts cat has indigestion im all yours. You think you can kick my ass keep dreaming. Be over in ten minutes
I grinned. Balfour was the best, even if his grammar did burn my eyes. I should've know he wouldn't let me down.
Up in my room, I got my Wii hooked up-- I didn't have enough plugs on my TV for all the game systems I had, so I was always messing with them-- and cleared a spot on the floor where we could play and not worry about anything getting broken. My room was pretty big, but I had this bad habit of collecting everything. The guys at the comic book store could sense me from a mile away even without spider-senses.
Sure enough, not ten minutes after Balfour tweeted, there was a knock on the front door. He was almost fifteen minutes away by car, but he had all these shortcuts he took on his bike, so it was actually quicker. I bet he could make the Kessel Run in eleven parsecs. I bounced down the stairs and pulled open the door.
"Hey, kid," said John. "Forgot my key."
Suddenly my day got a whole lot brighter. Not only was my best friend coming over, but my brother was home!
My brother John was probably the coolest guy on the planet. Seriously, he was like, amazing. Not only was he six years older than me and in college, but he belonged to a fraternity. He and his frat brothers were always having keg parties and playing beer pong and turning their music up so loud, the cops had to come. And John was so popular, he could bring home a different girl pretty much every night. As a matter of fact, he usually did; sometimes he brought home more than one. Everyone called him Rook because of how good he was at sweet-talking his way into girls' pants.
I was so jealous of him!
But don't get me wrong, it wasn't about the girls. As a matter of fact, I could give a crap about that sort of thing. It was just a sign of how cool he was, and what you could do if you had that kind of power. It was the other guys in his fraternity that interested me. And standing before me, on my front step, was a prime example.
I'd met some of the guys before, but not this one. He was probably nineteen or twenty, and he had this dark red hair that managed to look messed up like he'd just gotten out of bed, but was somehow completely perfect at the same time. He was wearing a yellow polo shirt with the collar flipped up, baggy cargo shorts, and flip-flops. His hands were stuck in the pockets of his shorts, and his mouth opened in a bored yawn.
He was so gorgeous, I had a boner just looking at him.
"This is Ace," John said as they came in. "He's one of the boys. We're gonna hang out here 'til the game starts, then we're meeting Ghislain at Hooters. Ace, this is my little brother, Thom."
"Oh," I said, my face turning red. Thomas was my middle name, and John called me it because Hilary was too girly. "Nice to, um, meet you."
He shrugged and sauntered in like I wasn't any more important than a flowerpot or something. "Nice digs," he told John.
All of a sudden, I felt horrifically self-conscious. It wasn't like he'd ever look twice at me-- or even once, for that matter-- but I wished for about the millionth time that I had even an infinitesimal fraction of the good looks that my brother did. John had this incredible blond hair, blinding white smile, and muscles you could see right through his shirt. And what did I have? Mousy brown hair, braces, and scrawny arms in a Halo tee-shirt from Hot Topic.
I didn't even play Halo anymore.
God, my life was such an epic fail.
And of course Balfour chose just that moment to show up, still breathing hard from the bike ride over.
"Sorry I'm late, I couldn't find my shoes," he told me.
"Hey, Bal," John said, raising a hand to greet him. "How's your brother?"
"Oh, he's good," Balfour told him, nodding. "Crunching lots of numbers, you know? Always puts a smile on his face!"
Ace was already disappearing into the kitchen, and despite myself, I felt incredibly relieved. I loved him to death, but Balfour made even me look cool. And believe me, that was hard to do. Today he had on his Dragon Ball Z tee-shirt from seventh grade and a pair of too-short jeans.
John told him to say hi to his brother for him, and followed Ace to the kitchen. I could hear him say, "Amery's brother-- you fucking believe that?" which only made me feel like even more of a loser.
Amery was the guy who got John into his frat-- sponsored him, or whatever you call it. He graduated a few years ago, but back in the day, he was a football star and had gone to college on a full-ride scholarship. He was on the honor roll every semester and won the college-wide Drunken Olympics.
And he was super gorgeous.
"Your brother's cool," I told Balfour. It didn't really have anything to do with anything, but he was used to me saying stuff like that.
He snorted. "My brother is an accountant. He is not cool. You want to know what's cool? Your brother offering to sneak you into the strip club. That's cool!"
"It's only because he was sleeping with nine of the strippers," I reminded him. "And I think they would've noticed a twelve year old hanging around and kicked me out in about thirty seconds, anyway."
He shrugged. "Still cool. Come on, let's go to your room. It smells like frat boy down here, my asthma's going to start acting up."
Up in my room, Balfour marveled at my new bust of Yoda. "Wow, the craftsmanship on this thing is wicked. You can almost hear him saying, Mmm, yes, Yoda I am! Why don't I have cool stuff like this?"
"Because you waste all your money on crap?" I offered.
"Hey," he said, setting Yoda down next to Gandalf and my scale model of a Romulan Warbird. " Cosplay is not crap!"
"Calm down, I didn't mean--"
"Here, where's your laptop, let me show you what I'm working on now," he said, and started rooting through a pile of Final Fantasy plushies at the foot of my bed. Of course the thing was sitting on my desk about six inches from his nose. Why would it be under my stuffed chocobo, anyway?
On second thought, it was probably a good thing that Balfour could never find anything. If he could, he would've stumbled upon my collection of questionable fanfiction a long time ago. I picked the laptop up and handed it to him.
"Everyone is super into Hetalia right now, so I'm going to be this guy," he said, after typing a few things in. "His name's North Italy. The whole anime is this allegory for World War II, and there's sexual innuendos galore. The girls love it."
The thing about Balfour-- besides how he spent every penny he had at Jo-Ann Fabric-- was that he was obsessed with girls. It was really too bad because once you got beyond his total lack of fashion sense, he was kind of cute.
Well, okay, really cute. Like, completely freaking adorable.
Of course to me, every guy was cute. Unless he was as fat as Jabba the Hutt or had acne so bad his face looked like raw hamburger, I would totally give it up for any guy under the age of, like, 30. But I wasn't some kind of slut or something-- in fact, I was the opposite.
I was a total and complete virgin.
It was shameful, I know, but I blamed it on my options. I mean, suburban Indiana wasn't exactly a hotbed of gay loving. There was only one guy who had ever come out at our high school, and that was Caius Greylace. Of course it's kind of hard to hide the fact that you're queer when you wear matching sweater sets and women's hosiery, but I digress. He was literally my only choice, or had been before he was expelled.
Now all I was left with my was right hand. It sometimes made me want to cry in dark corners. Or in men's toilets like Draco Malfoy in sixth year, but unfortunately without some hot Potter kid stalking me.
"He looks cool," I told Balfour, gesturing toward the monitor at his heta-whatever character. "I like his uniform thing. Military-style always looks good, and you could do it up kind of steampunk. But are you sure that's the best way to get girls?"
Balfour rolled his eyes and shut the laptop. "Um, duh! North Italy's totally kawaii, and all the chicks dig yaoi nowadays. They practically tear their tops off when guys pose together at cons. You remember Acen, right?"
"Yeah, I remember," I said nodding. "But it's not like I was watching for stuff like that. How would I know?"
We'd both gone to Anime Central last year, but I spent most of my time in the gaming rooms and hadn't seen any live-action yaoi from the cosplayers. Now I kind of regretted missing all the boys in costume. I wasn't all that into anime, though; when it came to Japanese stuff, video games were much more my style.
Balfour, on the other hand, was crazy for it. He had this thing for Mecha that I'd never get, and he went on wild Gundam Wing watching marathons. He was holed up in the Mecha Viewing Room for half the con. He loved Fullmetal Alchemist too, especially the kid Al, whose soul was stuck in a suit of armor. He did a pretty good cosplay of him once, though girls didn't drop at his feet like he thought they would. I kept telling him metal hands wouldn't get him dates, but did he listen?
"Anyway, having a super sweet costume would totally put Josie in her place," Balfour continued. His jaw got the set to it that it always got when he talked about her. "She'll come crawling back to me one of these days, mark my words."
"Isn't she with that Asian kid?" I asked. "The one on the wrestling team?"
Balfour snorted. "His name's Temur. Stupid name. I don't know why she's so obsessed with him-- I know she's kind of this weeaboo and everything now, so anything from Asia is cool to her, but he's not really Asian. He's fake asian. I mean, I guess he's Korean or something, but he was born in Indianapolis. He's about as Asian as I am."
"He's okay though," I said. When Balfour gave me the Look of Death, I added, "I mean, he's not a total jerk or anything. He talked to me once and didn't spit on me afterward."
"Yeah, well," said Balfour, glowering. "If he'd had his hands on your property, you wouldn't be talking like that."
I sighed, yet again resisting the urge to remind Balfour that Josette wasn't his anymore. They'd only gone out for a month, and it was only because she was going through a Star Trek kick, and she thought Balfour looked like Wesley Crusher. But one night they were at her place watching The Wrath of Kahn, and she let him take off her bra. Balfour hadn't been the same since. It was like his brain was overloaded or short-circuited or something.
"Look, I understand how nice her boobs are," I told him, even though I didn't. "You’ve told me a dozen times. But why don't you try to forget about her? She's only holding you back. I mean, what about… what about Marcy? She has that Inu-Yasha bookbag and those hair ties with Hello Kitty on them. And I'm sure she didn't mean to hit you with her tuba that time."
Balfour gaped at me. "Marcy? As in, Marcelline Marcy? She's a total dyke!"
"She is not!" I insisted. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Lesbo!" Balfour announced with a dismissive wave of his hand.
I rolled my eyes. "Stop being stupid. She went to the Christmas Formal with that big guy from Glendarrow-- the Greek, you remember him?"
Because damn, I sure did! I was only at the dance to help check coats-- it was volunteer work for National Honor Society-- but that guy in particular made it a really nice night. Seriously, he was built like the Incredible freaking Hulk. How did you get muscles that big, anyway? Steroids?
"Wow, is this the third edition gold print?" Balfour asked, holding up my copy of Wolverine: Origin #1.
"Yes," I told him, recognizing a let's-change-the-subject non sequitur when I heard one. "And no, you can't have it."
"Aw!" he said, and tossed it back onto my desk.
With the preliminaries out of the way, we settled in for some gaming, but Balfour decided he didn't feel like Guitar Hero. He said he was bored with it, but I knew it was because he was afraid I'd wipe the floor with him. I could shred mad riffs.
"Let's kick it old school," he said. So I broke out the Atari.
We played Blasteroids for a while, and then a little Pong, but I wasn't really feeling it. My brother was hardly ever here, and I'd barely even gotten to talk to him. I didn't want to ditch Balfour like Ron did Harry during the Triwizard Tournament or anything, but it wasn't like John came home every day, or even every month. Whatever game he and his super delicious friends were going to watch-- I didn't even know what sport was being played right now-- would probably be on soon.
"Hey, are you hungry?" I asked Balfour after I let him beat me. "I'm going down to the kitchen. Want me to get you something?"
"Yeah," he said, because Balfour was always hungry. "How about a Hot Pocket? Ham and cheese, if you've got any. Oh, and some Mountain Dew! That stuff is like crack, I can't believe my mom won't let me drink it anymore."
"Sure," I told him, not blaming his mom at all. Balfour on a caffeine buzz was like one of those volcanoes you make as a kid where you add vinegar, and it foams all over the carpet. "Kind of like you can't believe she cancelled your subscription to WoW."
"That was totally unfair!" he exclaimed. "I can't believe you're still taking her side in this!"
"You were failing first year Spanish," I reminded him. "You brought it on yourself."
"Spanish is hard!" he insisted. "A lot of people fail Spanish, Hilary! A lot!"
"Balfour, you speak fluent Klingon," I said.
"bIjatlh 'e' yImev," he snapped. "Hab SoSlI' Quch!"
"Don't talk that way about my mom just because you're mad at yours," I told him.
He sighed, a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. "Sorry. I just miss my midnight raiding parties. Such good times! World of Warcraft pwned me. Are you getting that food?"
"Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew, dinner of champions," I assured him. "Oh, and pick a different game, if you want. I suck at Pong today worse than Perkins sucks at Dungeons and Dragons."
"Perkins eats paste," Balfour said, already rooting through one of my bins of games.
"Yeah, that's my point," I said, and headed down to chat with John for a while. It'd be a half an hour at least before Balfour realized I was taking too long. Once he got into a game, he lost all track of time. It was practically like having a Time-Turner. I stopped off in the bathroom to brush my hair and make sure I didn't have anything in my teeth, just in case Ace happened to look at me.
Of course he wouldn't. I looked like an anemic Frodo, and I don't mean Elijah Wood. I was short, unassuming, and I had hair on my feet.
John wasn't in the kitchen anymore, and I grabbed a two-liter of Mountain Dew to prove I wasn't just there to bug him. He never acted like he got annoyed with me, but if I were him, I would. Having me with him was like Qui-Gon carting around Jar Jar Binks.
The TV was on in the family room-- though I don't know why we called it that because there was never a family here to be in it-- and I wondered if they were watching a movie or something. But it was an infomercial for Snuggies, and the room was empty.
Around the corner, there was this little room, a closet sort of thing with shelves of DVDs in it, and I heard John's voice inside. I figured they were trying to pick one out, and maybe they could use my help. You know, ask me which one I liked best, and then go with the other one. The door was half shut, so I pushed it open.
John was leaned up against the horror movies with Ace on his knees in front of him. He had his pants unbelted and his zipper pulled down, his fingers twisted into Ace's hair. Ace's head was blocking my view, but my brother was moaning things that did not bear repeating, and it was obvious Ace was--
Oh God, I thought. Oh god oh god oh god…
I darted out of the closet, through the kitchen and up the stairs in this sort of terrorized daze, clutching the two-liter to my chest like a lifebuoy. When I reached my room, I slammed the door shut, locked it, and dropped down onto the bed.
"Hey," said Balfour, "where's my Hot Pocket?"
I couldn't even answer. I just stared blindly across my room, for once not comforted by his presence, or the soothing Super Mario Brothers theme music coming from the TV, or even my prize vintage Ewok action figures I got off ebay. Was my first true gay experience really watching my brother get blown in our DVD closet? I mean, really?
I felt so dirty. Why did it have to be John, of all people? It was like when I first found out Luke and Leia were brother and sister after watching them kiss in The Empire Strikes Back. It was like… canon incest!
"Are you okay?" Balfour asked, sitting down next to me. "That friend of your brother's didn't try to give you a swirlie, did he? Because that's not a very nice thing to do in your own house."
I blinked a couple of times, trying to get the image of Ace's broad shoulders out of my mind. "No," I said, shaking my head. "Nobody tried to give me a swirlie."
"Okay. Well, your hair didn't look wet, but you never know," he said.
I sighed and realized I was still holding onto the Mountain Dew, and I handed it over to Balfour. "Don't open it yet, I ran up the stairs."
He frowned and took it. "Seriously, what's wrong? Your face is as grey as Gollum."
"It's nothing. Just my brother. He…" I trailed off. This was not something I wanted to explain, but I knew I had to. Balfour wouldn't shut up until he had it out of me. He was like human Veritaserum. "You have to promise not to tell anyone."
"About what?" he asked, eyes going wide. "What happened?"
So I explained it to him-- leaving out the part where I was ditching him, of course-- but I didn't know quite what to say about what I'd seen the two guys doing. If I was too graphic about it, I'd gross him out, but I didn't want him thinking I was too much of a virgin to talk about sex stuff. Also, I think I might have been developing post-traumatic stress disorder because I was seriously traumatized.
I settled for telling Balfour I'd seen John and Ace "doing something, like, sort of… sexual," and hoped he'd figure it out.
"Like kissing?" he asked, gaping at me.
Close enough, I decided. "Sort of like that, yeah."
Balfour shrugged. "It was probably just an Accidental Kiss."
"A… what?" I asked.
"It happens all the time in anime," he told me, and motioned toward the soda bottle. "Think it's safe to open yet?"
"No, don't," I said quickly, because I didn't want it all over my bed. "Now wait a minute here-- an Accidental Kiss? How do you accidentally kiss someone?"
He shrugged, setting the Mountain Dew on the ground between his feet. "You do it on accident, duh! Like when Naruto is on Sasuke's desk glaring at him, and somebody bumps him, and he flies forward, and their lips just--"
"Look, it was not accidental, okay," I corrected. "I guarantee you."
"Then maybe they were practicing," Balfour suggested.
"Practicing," I repeated, wishing I'd lied about the whole thing and said Ace had tried to flush my head down the toilet.
"Yeah. You have to keep your skills up, you know. Okay, I'm opening this now," he told me.
I just watched as the Mountain Dew fizzed all over his hands, pants, shoes, and my floor, trying to imagine why my brother would need practice getting head, and why Ace would need practice giving it. It was a bad choice. But suddenly that theater major-- the one with the astronaut name, what was it again? God, he was sexy-- who John had brought around last summer made sense.
I felt sick.
But also ridiculously turned on.
"You don't practice stuff like that," I told Balfour, ready to flush my own head down the toilet. If only I weren't the most repressed sixteen year old this side of the closet door, shit like this wouldn't happen to me. "It's not like honing Jedi skills."
"Actually, it sort of is. I mean, how else do you learn? People aren't born knowing how to kiss, you know. It's not like a mutation," he said. "Believe me, I know."
"Yeah, you've told me about it a hundred times," I snapped, really not wanting to hear about the things Josie could do with her tongue right now.
"Hey," Balfour said, nudging me with his elbow as he licked the drips of soda off the bottom of the bottle. "We could do it if you want."
I stared at him.
He shrugged, looking strangely smug. "You need knowledge, and I happen to be in possession of it. It's not a big deal-- you'll be like my Padawan, and I'll be the master. It's perfect."
Balfour was crazy. I'd known it ever since first grade when he came to school with his underwear outside his pants because he thought it gave him Superman powers, but I hadn't known the extent of his mental dysfunction. But now I did, and he was batshit insane, and I was sitting on a bed with a boy who just offered to kiss me and oh my god what was I supposed to do I wanted to so much…
"Look, it's simple," Balfour was saying. "You keep your lips together--don't pucker them though, that looks stupid-- until you touch them to the other person's, and then you open them just enough to slip your tongue out. See, like this. Don't open your mouth too far because then you'll slobber all over, and nobody wants that. And you can close your eyes if you want because being that close to somebody else's face, you can really see how ugly they are. It's kind of scary. And…"
Oh god, I couldn't take this. He was setting the two-liter on the ground and making some sort of motion with his hands while he talked, and all I could do was think about how much I wanted my lips against his and what a Bad Thing it would be if he knew.
Be strong, I told myself. When he kisses you, do not throw him back on the bed, rip off all his clothes, and lick every inch of his body. You can do this. Think of Harry going up against Voldemort. Think of Frodo on his quest to destroy the One Ring. Think of…
"Turn your head-- here, look at me," Balfour was saying. And then he was leaning toward me, his lips closing in on mine, so close I could feel the heat of his skin. He smelled a little like soap and a little like sweat and a lot like every wet dream I'd ever had. His breath puffed against my lips, warm and sweet and enticing, his mouth drawing closer, and then, and then--
Oh god! my mind screamed. USE THE FORCE!!
--he kissed me.
I didn't lose my mind. I didn't moan or grab him, or do anything else to embarrass myself. I kept my hands in my lap and only gasped a little when his lips first touched mine. There was no way he could know how hard my heart was beating, or how my head was reeling, or how much I wanted to run my fingers through his hair.
His lips were soft and warm and something else I didn't have a word for but wished I did. I could've sat there all night like that, with his lips moving gently against mine, lost in the sensation. Before I knew it, my lips were parting, and the tip of his tongue was darting between them, sending little chills through me. I brought my own tongue out to meet it.
Balfour's mouth tasted like Mountain Dew. It suited him. It suited me too, and I had to hold myself back from exploring every inch of it. It felt so good, and so much more intimate and intense than I expected, with his tongue curling, sliding, stroking against mine.
Kissing was like sex with tongues, it occurred to me.
It must've occurred to Balfour too, or at least something did, because his hand was wrapping around my neck. My eyes had drifted shut, but I could feel him turning toward me, his shoulder pressing against mine, and then an arm wrapping around my back. He made a soft little noise in the back of his throat, opened his mouth wider, and coaxed my tongue further in. God, it felt incredible, like the captain had left the bridge and left me in charge of the whole starship. I wouldn't let him down. I would… I would…
Balfour's hands were pulling me toward him, fingers digging sharply but sweetly into the back of my neck. Without me telling it to, my own hand went to his side, bunching up the faded fabric of his shirt to get underneath. My fingers slid against the bare skin of his stomach, and Balfour gasped.
Then he was shoving me away. He stared at me with his mouth hanging open, his arms up in front of him as though he needed protection. His eyes were wide with horror.
"Oh no," he murmured. "Oh no."
"I'm sorry," I said, my stomach clenching into a knot of regret at what I'd done. Oh god, how stupid! "I didn't mean to--"
"Oh, this can't be happening!" he exclaimed, working his fingers through his hair like he was going to pull it out. "You kiss way better than Josette! Your tongue is like the most amazing thing on the planet!"
"Um," I said.
"I could kiss you all day and never get tired of it!" he lamented. "And I don't even care that you don't have boobs! Oh! And Josie's were never that great to begin with-- they were really squishy-- I just said they were so you'd be impressed!"
"Balfour," I started.
"Oh! Oh no," he moaned. "I'm one of those yaoi boys after all! My life is over!"
"Balfour, it's going to be fine," I said, trying to sound comforting through the crazy mix of emotions running through me. "It's not the end of the--"
"Oh, I can't take it, I can't! I'm some kind of homo, and I never even knew it! And I almost molested you on your own bed! Oh, I'm going to hyperventilate," he panted. "I can't breathe! I can't--"
I swore and ran to the window, throwing it open while he dug into his pocket. He came back up with his asthma inhaler and puffed on it as he stumbled toward me, hanging his head out into the courtyard for fresh air. His face was beet red.
"I feel so stupid," he said after a few minutes had passed. "I bet you hate me now."
I sighed. "I don't hate you."
He frowned, puckering up his bottom lip the way he did when an upperclassman had dumped his lunch in his lap for the fifth time this week and he was trying his best not to cry. "Well, I bet you hated kissing me."
I slid to the floor beside him and reached over and patted his knee. "I really didn't."
I wished I could say more than that, but I was afraid of what might happen if I did. This whole thing was brand new to him, and he might freak. I really liked kissing him, and I wanted more than anything to tell him about the time I got caught trying to steal a back issue of Alpha Flight #106 because I wanted to read about Northstar coming out but was too ashamed to put the comic on the counter, but I didn't want to mess up our friendship.
"Anyway," Balfour said, stuffing his inhaler back into his pocket and looking glum, "I guess I should go." He walked over to the TV and turned off the Nintendo. The silence was deafening; the world was never a better place without Mario.
"You don't have to leave," I told him, feeling a little desperate. "If you want to go back to arcade games and just forget this whole thing ever happened…"
"But I don't," he said. "That's the thing. It would be a lie. Pretending it never happened would be like Harry throwing away his wand or Jean Grey not coming back from the dead or Samwise not following Frodo on his quest or, or…"
"Being gay isn't some sort of fantastic voyage," I said, as tactfully as I could. "Trust me, I know. Take the blue pill, Neo."
"But I don't want the blue pill," he told me, his face screwed up again like he was going to cry. "I want to make out!"
I blinked. "Um."
"A man cannot live on internet porn alone, Hilary!" he asserted. " Hentai is not a balanced diet! He needs physical-- wait a minute. Did you just, like, come out to me?"
I shrugged and fussed with a loose thread on my tee-shirt.
"Jeez, what the hell? How long have you known? Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded. "Because if you had, I probably would've realized about myself, and this whole mess could've been avoided. You know what? This whole thing is your fault."
I gaped. "Hey! It was your brilliant idea to teach me how to kiss! I wasn't going to say anything until college! If anything, it's your fault!"
"No way!" he declared. He had his hands on his hips and his eyes narrowed. The faded image of Super Saiyan Vegeta glared at me from his tee-shirt. "I just came here for the video games! It's your fault for making stuff up about your brother, and you need to make it up to me!"
"What? I didn't make anything up! I saw the two of them--"
"And do you know how you're going to do that? Make out with me!" he exclaimed.
I stared.
"And don't say 'um,'" he warned, waving a finger at me, "because I am in serious need of some loving right now. Serious need, Hilary!"
"Oh," I said blankly. "Okay."
A smile broke out across his face. "Hahaha!" he cackled. "I knew I was irresistible! This is going to be so cool. Can we turn on The Two Towers for ambiance?"
"Sure," I managed, and stumbled over to the bed. I was in such a daze. Was this really happening? Were Balfour and I going to have a makeout session on my bed under the auspices of J.R.R. Tolkien's finest?
Something heavy bounced onto the bed beside me, and it took me a minute to realize it was Balfour. The movie was starting, Gandalf about to be wrecked by the Balrog, and Balfour was beaming at me, looking way cuter than Wesley Crusher ever had. I wrapped an arm around his back and pulled him close. He slid his hand behind my neck and pressed his lips to mine.
I wasn't convinced Balfour was gay-- he was probably just horny and desperate, that was sort of his M.O.-- but that was okay for now. I didn't think my brother was gay either, but he sure seemed to enjoy acting like he was. Maybe, in the end, that was all it took.
In any case, that was all it took for me to get Balfour tipped back onto my mattress and making some really enjoyable noises. And beyond that… well, who cared? In the words of that creepy bald kid from The Matrix, "Do not try to bend the spoon-- that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: there is no spoon."
What that had to do with anything I had no freaking clue, but Balfour was totally taking my shirt off holy dsgsdfsg!!!!!!1