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.

Trevor's POV

"What are you doing?" I asked, finally cutting through the wild thoughts going through my mind. I moved closer and grabbed his hand to stop whatever madness this was supposed to be.

He burst out laughing. Just threw his head back and laughed like I had said something genuinely hilarious. "Dude, it's a joke. Okay?" He pulled his hand back in an easy and unbothered manner, like he hadn't just had me standing there with my brain completely offline for three seconds. Then he straightened up and came closer, dropping his voice as he leaned toward my ear. "But I, uh - I mean, I did see you dream about me in class. You were literally yelling my name and others saw that too."

"I did dream about you, but it's called a nightmare." I shifted him slightly away from me, putting enough space between us to breathe properly again. Because if this wasn't teasing from him, then I genuinely didn't know what to call it, and then either way I was done being the subject of it.

He wasn't letting it go that easily though. "Okay then, explain your boner, Trevor." The facial expression that came with it was something else. I mean his eyes steady and his head tilted, like he was a lawyer presenting his closing argument and he already knew the verdict. Then he reached out and touched my collar, casual as anything.

I pushed his hand off immediately and I wasn't giving him any reaction with regards to that. I knew exactly what he was doing; which was poking and prodding until something slipped out that he could use. I could bet that was the whole point of all of this.

But my mind was already running its own commentary. He's probably got the football team hiding just out of sight, ready to humiliate me the moment I fall for any of this.

"Am I a joke to you?" I finally said it straight up. Looked him dead in the eye and asked it plainly. "Just because you all think that I am a gay doesn't mean that I am desperate."

Something shifted in his face then. The easy amusement pulled back slightly and what replaced it was harder and also more direct. He pointed one finger at my chest and held it there. "Don't take my football team to fly your rainbow flag, okay?"

His tone had changed. Whatever lightness was in it before was gone now and what was left was the version of Sean that actually meant what he was saying. "Just change the budget back." He paused for a beat, letting the silence do its own work before he added, "or else..."

He didn't finish the sentence and I didn't care about all of that anyway. He just turned around, crossed to the door, unlocked it, and walked out without another word. The door slammed shut behind him and I was standing alone in an empty classroom with the echo of it still in the air.

I stayed there for a second or two.

"Do you think that I am making the football team fly my rainbow flag?" I asked myself out loud, to nobody. Just me and four walls and the specific kind of anger that builds up when someone gets the last word and you only think of the perfect response after they've already left.

The worst part was that he had come in here with the budget as his whole point and somehow still managed to make me feel like the unreasonable one. Like I was the problem, or better still, like redressing a ninety-ten funding split that had existed long before I ever ran for student body president was some kind of personal attack on Sean Pierre and his entire existence.

I picked up my bag and left.

*****

After I stepped out of that classroom, not long after Sean did, the anger didn't go anywhere...it just settled differently. Let's say, it moved from my chest into the back of my head where it sat and quietly started looking for options.

Sean had cornered me. He has also dragged me back into that classroom like I owed him something, stood there and tried to rattle me with the budget and the boner and whatever that zip thing was about, and then walked out with an "or else" hanging in the air like I was supposed to just sit with that.

But then, I wasn't sitting with that.

Since I couldn't get at him physically...and I was fully aware of the reality of that situation. The fact was that Sean Pierre had about four inches and sixty pounds of pure football muscle on me and also happened to be best friends with every person in this school who would willingly make my life difficult. So, I needed something smarter and probably something that would land without putting me directly in his line of sight.

Then it hit me.

I knew the football team had their first game of the season that evening. For sure, I knew they would be heading to the changing room to suit up before it. And I knew exactly where that changing room was.

I made it there fast, slipping in while the corridor was still clear. Having two paint spray containers in each hand which were four in total

These were colours I had grabbed from the art supply room down the hall - yellow, red, purple and blue.

I pushed the door open slowly, scanned the room, and confirmed it was empty. As it were just the benches, the lockers, the smell of old kit, and kind of deodorant fragrance here and there. And also a large basket near the far wall stacked with the team's freshly laundered match uniforms.

I crossed the room in ten steps.

"Let's see how you like this." I thought to myself, shaking the first can.

I went in on those uniforms without holding back. Yellow across the shoulders. Red down the front. Purple and blue cutting across in every direction like something that belonged in an art gallery and absolutely nowhere near a football field. By the time I stepped back to look at what I had done, it was a full 'colour riot.' It was bright, chaotic and completely unwearable for anything that was supposed to be taken seriously.

I almost smiled

I mean, I almost did, for real.

"Good job." I whispered to myself, capping the last can.

Then I heard footsteps not far away from here. I could sense that the footsteps were getting closer here. Let's say, it was coming down the corridor in the direction of this exact room and moving with the kind of easy and unhurried confidence that only came from people who belonged and owned the space.

The cans were still in my hands though.

"Oh shit." The words came out under my breath before I could stop them and my whole body went cold.

My mind jumped to every possible outcome simultaneously and none of them were good. If they walked in right now, I was finished. This wasn't just a detention situation. This was the team's first game kit, destroyed a few minutes before tip off. This was an expulsion and you know, this was every door I had worked to open at Hartwell slamming shut in one go. Which means, this was my Cambridge dream going from a plan to a fantasy. At this point, I was beginning to regret ever thinking of getting back at Sean in the first place.

My heart was going at a rate that had nothing to do with the running I hadn't even done yet.

I pressed myself back against the far wall and scanned the room for anything - a back exit, a bathroom stall, a gap between the lockers, anything at all. I had done this to get back at Sean for cornering me and dragging me around like my feelings were something he could just toy with whenever the mood hit him. And now I was standing in the middle of it with paint on my hands and footsteps closing in from the other side of that door.

What the hell had I gotten myself into.