Trevor's POV

I found Max's words so insulting that something in me just snapped. And I knew better... I knew from experience that snapping back in this school never ended well for me. But backing down had never fetched me anything good either. Not for once and not in the entire time I had been a student at Hartwell.

So I didn't.

"Well, yours is so tiny that no one notices when you get hard." I retorted, holding up two fingers and pinching them together to show exactly how tiny I meant.

The half-second of silence that followed was the most satisfying thing that had happened to me all day.

"Oh shit!" Sean's head swung toward Max, and for just that one moment, something in his expression looked genuinely caught off guard. Which, coming from Sean Pierre, was basically a standing ovation.

Max's face had gone tight. Not the performative kind of tight he wore when he was playing to the class and when I seemed to him like something he could actually joke around with. This was the real kind. Or let's say, the kind that meant I had actually landed something and he hadn't seen it coming. He pushed up from his seat and crossed to mine in about three steps, and the classroom got very quiet very fast.

I held his gaze and I wasn't going to be the first one to look away.

"Look who has got a backbone now that he is student body president." His voice was controlled but his jaw wasn't. He pulled his fist back slightly... not all the way, just enough - and my body reacted before my brain could stop it. I flinched, although it was small yet fast but it happened, and the moment it did, I knew he had gotten exactly what he came for.

He hadn't even touched me.

The satisfied look that spread across his face made my stomach turn and I felt stupid instantly. I mean, genuinely and completely stupid, because I had fallen for the oldest move in the book and given him the reaction he had been fishing for the whole time.

"You are nothing more than the class fairy." He said it slowly, holding eye contact with me the whole time while the class laughed around us like background noise. Then he dropped his hand onto Sean's shoulder and squatted down slightly so they were at the same level. "Better watch your ass. 'GAY-den' here has the hots for you."

That one landed differently. I could feel it settle in my chest in a way I didn't want to examine too closely. And to make it worse, the laughter around it didn't help. I couldn't find a single word to throw back and that silence, right there was worse than anything Max had actually said.

"Is that true, Trevor?" Sean asked. His tone was light and rhetorical and he already knew I wasn't going to answer. I think that was exactly the point... which was to ask the question I couldn't respond to and let it sit in the air for everyone to enjoy. "You got the hots for me?"

I said nothing and then, I kept my face as straight as I could manage and stared at a fixed point just past his shoulder.

He didn't let it go. He shifted from his seat to the edge of mine, leaning in just enough to be in my space without fully crossing any line that a teacher could write him up for. His fingers brushed the edge of the bag I was still holding against myself - the bag I had not put down since the moment I grabbed it, which everyone in the room was absolutely aware of.

"You are trying to convert me to the dark side?" He tilted his head, eyes bright with the specific kind of amusement that meant he was having a genuinely good time at my expense. "Darth GAY-der?"

The class lost it, to the extent that someone actually wheezed.

"Don't flatter yourself." I snapped.

It came out sharper than I planned and I meant every syllable of it. But before I could follow it with anything and before I could pull any kind of composure back together, something cold and thick hit my lap.

I looked down.

Max had a small container in his hand that I hadn't even registered him picking up. He had tipped it forward and the contents, which was something kinda white or better still milk color and creamy, had landed directly on my trousers. Exactly the spot where I did not need anything landing right now- my crouch region. He shook the last of it out with zero hesitation and zero apology.

The room erupted.

"Oh my God!" Sean's laugh came out full and loud and completely unfiltered, and the rest of the class piled on immediately.

I sat there and could not move and I couldn't think either. I couldn't even begin to figure out what my next move was supposed to be because I genuinely had not seen that coming. I was just sitting there, dumbfounded, with what looked like a very specific kind of stain spreading across the front of my trousers while twenty people laughed hard enough to cry.

"GAY-den is coming for you, Sean." Max said it with pure sarcasm and not a single trace of guilt anywhere on his face.

Sean looked down at my lap, then back up at my face, still grinning. "Dude, it actually looks like... cum. For real."

I opened my mouth but couldn't say a word because of how terrible I already felt.

"That is enough."

Ms. Jenny Presto, our dean of students administration, walked through the door and the energy in the room shifted immediately as chairs scraped and phones disappeared. Max was back in his seat before I even processed that she had entered. I shifted in my seat as carefully and quickly as I could, angling myself so that the 'cum-like it was tagged' stain wasn't the first thing at eye level if she looked my way.

The room went from chaos to performance in about four seconds flat. Everyone sitting straight, everyone looking forward and everyone suddenly very interested in whatever was written on the board.

"Trevor." She didn't even fully settle at the front before she said my name. "You will be in detention."

"What? Why?" I couldn't keep the shock off my face. "I didn't do anything."

She looked at me the way teachers look at students they have already made a decision about. "Of course, you did many things. First of all, for causing so much nuisance. I noticed the way everyone had their eyes on you when I walked in, and I didn't need anyone to tell me that the chaos was centered around you." She paused just long enough to make it feel deliberate. "Again, for harassing our star quarterback. Boys like him don't need that kind of attention from other boys like you."

I sat with that for a second.

'Boys like him.' Like Sean Pierre came with some kind of protected status that I was too beneath to understand. Like the guy who had just called me Darth GAY-der to a laughing audience needed protection from me.

This was the most textbook injustice I had ever sat through and it was happening in broad daylight in front of a classroom full of witnesses, none of whom were going to say a word because not one of them had anything to gain by defending me.

This was how it always went. The moment I opened my mouth back...the moment I stopped absorbing it quietly, I became the problem. They got to throw whatever they wanted and I had to just take it, because the second I threw anything back, I was the one harassing people. I was the nuisance and I was the one sitting in detention.

I pressed my lips together and said nothing else.

But the thing that sat heaviest wasn't even the detention. It was the fact that this was the part that never changed...and I had a feeling, deep down in the part of me that was still rational underneath all of this that today was only the beginning of something much worse.

Trevor's POV

"Bye, Trevor." One of the students said it on their way out. I didn't even bother to look up to know who exactly that was because it was either Sean or any of his friends in my class, and I already understood it wasn't some sort of pleasantries. It was sarcasm... the kind with a smile behind it that they never bothered to hide.

I kept my head down and let them all file out.

The classroom emptied slowly, the way classrooms do at the end of a school day when everyone has somewhere better to be. Chairs scraping, bags zipping, voices trailing off down the hallway. I stayed exactly where I was and counted the seconds. I had gotten used to doing that...you know, just sitting still and waiting until the room was clear before I moved. It was easier than walking out in the middle of them and giving anyone a reason to start something fresh.

When the last set of footsteps disappeared and the noise finally died down, I let out a slow breath.

"I don't know what is worse." I muttered to myself, staring down at my lap. "Getting a boner in front of the class, or that the most hoo-rah hetero quarterback we've got gave it to me in just a mere dream."

Neither answer was doing anything good for my dignity.

I reached into my bag and pulled out a wipe, then went to work on the stain Max had left on my trousers. It didn't come out clean as the stuff had already settled into the fabric and there was still a faint sticky feeling no matter how many times I went over the same spot. But I got it to a manageable enough state that I could walk out of the building without it being the headline. That was the best I was going to get.

I gathered my things, swung my bag over my shoulder, and pushed the chair in. Detention was still waiting for me somewhere down the hall and I needed to think through exactly how I was going to handle that without it turning into something bigger. The principal didn't need Ms. Presto's version of today reaching her desk before mine did. I was student body president and I had worked too hard and too long to let one bad afternoon become the thing that defined how people in this school saw me.

I crossed the classroom and stepped out into the hallway.

I had taken maybe two steps when a hand shot out from the corner beside the door and grabbed my chest.

"Your ass is mine!"

"What!" It came out loud and sharp before I could catch it, and my whole body locked up on instinct.

Then I saw who it was.

'Sean.' Of course it was Sean.

He had his palm flat against my chest and his eyes were already on mine, steady and deliberate, like he had been standing in that exact spot waiting for me specifically. Before I could get a single word together again, he pressed his other hand over my mouth, cutting off whatever I was about to say. Then he grabbed my bag off my shoulder, pulled me back through the classroom door...with my back going in first and tossed the bag somewhere near the wall. And then, he slammed the door shut behind us.

He let go of me, pushing me slightly in and I staggered back a step, catching myself against the edge of a desk. I straightened up and found my footing but my heart was going faster than I was willing to admit.

"Sean, what exactly are you doing?" I blurted.

He stood right in front of me with his arms loose at his sides, looking like he had all the time in the world. That smirk was already on his face - the one that meant he thought he had something on me and wanted me to know it.

"You thought you could hide it." He said it slowly, like he was enjoying the weight of each word. "But I caught you."

I knew exactly what he was pointing to. There was no version of playing dumb that was going to work here and we both understood that.

I held his gaze and said nothing. My brain was already running through options, pulling apart angles, trying to find the one response that would shut this down cleanly without giving him anything new to work with. Because that was the thing about Sean, which was the moment you handed him a reaction, he ran with it every single time.

The classroom was empty and the door was closed. Again, from the way he was standing, relaxed and unbothered with zero intention of letting me leave here till he was done with whatever this was all about, it was very clear that he was not unlocking that door until he got what he came for.

Honestly, I wasn't ready for this conversation. Not today...at least, not after everything that had already played out in the last few hours. I had survived the boner, survived Max's little stunt, survived detention being handed to me for something I didn't start and now I was standing in an empty classroom after school with the one person I least wanted to be alone with, who was looking at me like he already knew things I hadn't said out loud.

The best I could do was find something solid to stand on before he got there first.

Trevor's POV

"You thought I could hide what and what exactly did you catch?

Point of correction... that boner wasn't about you. It's not like I can control it." I defended myself real quick.

It came out more confident than I felt but I held the energy behind it. It was the cleanest exit I had and I needed him to just take it and drop the whole thing so I could walk out of here with whatever was left of my dignity today.

But he interjected right away, reaching into his school bag and pulling out a thick booklet that he'd apparently had on him this whole time. "This isn't about your boner, Trevor." He placed the booklet on the desk, flipped it open to the printed A4 sheet inside and pointed at it. "It's about your activities budget."

I seized the booklet immediately. "How did you get this?"

He looked at me like that was the most pointless question I could have asked. "Please." He scoffed, waving it off. Then he folded his arms and stared at me with that expression he wore when he thought he had already won something. "Two weeks as the 'student body president' and you are already abusing your power."

I set the booklet down flat on the desk and met his eyes. "Well, equitable distribution of resources isn't abuse."

"It's just a fancy way of saying that you hate football and you want to kill the budget." He snapped back, and I had already seen that one coming from the moment he pulled the booklet out. It was exactly the narrative he had walked in here with and I had a very clean answer for it.

"Football gets 90 percent of activity funds." I kept my voice steady. "That is not fair to the rest of us and other activities in school who got only scraps."

He scoffed loudly at that, almost tipping into a laugh like I had said something genuinely amusing. "Dude, come on. You don't really think that your LGBTQIA whatever committee needs as much money as we do?"

I looked at him for a second. Just a second. "Why do you care? Besides, it's not like you are paying for any of this."

I could bet that landed as I could see it in the way his jaw shifted. He stepped forward, closing the space between us with that particular brand of boldness that came from years of being the person every room adjusted itself around.

"We need that money to go to Nationals." His voice had dropped that it has less performance in it now and more pressure. I mean, real pressure. "That's my only chance to get scouted. To get away from my dad, this town and..." He stopped himself right there, with his jaw tightening around whatever the rest of that sentence was supposed to be.

The pause sat between us for a moment.

But I caught it in the way he had cut himself off and the way his shoulders were carrying something heavier than football logistics. "...to get away from this town and my dad too," had slipped out before he could pull it back and there was clearly a lot more road behind those words that he hadn't planned on showing me. But part of me 'clocked it' and filed it somewhere.

But I couldn't let it move me. The moment I started making room for exceptions based on how someone looked when they were desperate, I was going to be making them every single time. That was not how I had gotten to where I was to be the 'student body president' and it was not how I was staying there.

"You know what?" My tone came out final, the kind that wasn't an invitation to keep going. "I have dreams too, Sean. Cambridge only takes students that made an impact. This budget is the way to prove that I can." I closed the booklet and placed it flat against his chest.

He took it without dropping his eyes from mine. "Well, the football team isn't going to take it lying down." He pushed the booklet back at me, harder than necessary.

I didn't even flinch. "You may call the shots on the field." I pushed it straight back to his chest. "But I call the shots inside the school. So my budget proposal stays."

Something moved behind his eyes. Not quite anger though, but it was more like he was switching gears in real time and deciding that whatever plan A was as it wasn't working and he needed a different angle.

He smirked. "Change the budget back, or I will make you do that." Then he shoved me - not enough to put me down but enough that I had to catch my footing and reset myself.

I straightened up and rolled my shoulders back. Then I moved toward him, one step at a time, closing the distance he had just tried to put between us. "How are you going to do that?"

He tilted his head slightly, that smirk still sitting on his face like he had been holding onto the next line for a while. "By giving you what you really want."

Then his hand went to his waistband.

I kept my eyes on his face and I was very deliberate about that. But then he unbuttoned his trousers, slow and easy, and I heard the zip come down and my brain just... stopped producing useful thoughts for about three full seconds.

I didn't look down as I told myself very firmly that I was not going to look down.

I couldn't work out what exactly he was trying to pull here. Either he had completely lost it, or today's classroom incident had handed him a card he felt comfortable enough to play now that there was no audience. Like he had filed it away the moment it happened and had been waiting for exactly this - an empty room, a closed door, and me with nowhere to go.

The worst part wasn't even what he was doing. It was the fact that I couldn't fully decide if I wanted him to stop because I might end up liking what he was about to show me or better still, what I was eventually about to see.