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.

Trevor's POV

My instinct had no choice but to work real quick.

I scanned the room in about two seconds flat and moved. The lockers along the far wall were arranged in a staggered layout, some pushed forward, some set back, leaving a narrow gap between two of the taller ones that was just wide enough for a person to press into if they weren't thinking too hard about comfort. I slipped in sideways, flattened my back against the wall, and pulled myself as far into the gap as I could go.

I made it just in time.

The door swung open and the noise of them filled the room immediately; which includes cleats on the floor, their bags dropping. It was all the kind of easy loud energy that a group of people carried when they owned whatever space they walked into. I held my breath and stayed completely still right there.

"The gay kid has got a crush on Trevor." That was Max's voice, as I didn't need to see his face to know. He had a specific pitch he used when he was running with something and thought it was funnier than it actually was.

Then, there was a beat of silence.

"Guys, let's just focus on the game for now, okay?" Sean's voice came flat and unbothered.

I almost laughed. You know, if I didn't know better, I would have taken that as Sean trying to defend me or something. But I did know better for a fact that; when it came to Sean and his passion for football, everything else got filed under 'deal with it later' including me, including Max's running commentary, including anything that wasn't directly related to the match they had in approximately - I checked the time in my head - less than ten minutes.

'Obsessed' was probably the word for it. But that was his thing to worry about, not mine.

What I was worried about was the paint. Specifically, the four colours of paint currently soaked into every single one of their match uniforms sitting in that basket not twelve feet from where I was hiding. You know, I had been so focused on getting in and getting out that I hadn't fully thought through the part where they would walk in directly after.

My heart was doing things that were medically concerning.

I pressed further into the gap and watched the narrow slice of the room I could see from the angle I was at. A few of them crossed into view, dropping their bags onto benches, and opening lockers. It was just the normal routine though. And then one of them got close to the basket.

The pause that followed wasn't normal and I noticed that at once.

It was the specific kind of pause that happened when someone's brain was processing something their eyes weren't ready to confirm yet. It all felt short, sharp, and then at the same time, very loud.

I think my heart skipped up to five hundred beats in that space of time. And trust me, that was no exaggeration or anything close to that.

*****

Sean's POV

We got back to the changing room to suit up for tonight's game and Max was already running his mouth about Trevor before we even got through the door. I let it go in one ear and kept moving. What we needed right now was focus. It was the first game of the season, and I needed every person in this room locked in and not distracted by whatever Trevor Matai had or hadn't done in AP Literature this morning.

I crossed to the basket where the uniforms were kept and stopped.

I stood there for a second and just looked at it.

All I could see was yellow, red, purple and blue colors, all over every single jersey in that basket like someone had gone at them with full cans of poster colors and zero hesitation. I could bet this wasn't accidental and there was nothing accidental about this. Whoever did it had come in here deliberately, with multiple colours, and taken their time to get this done.

I didn't say anything immediately, besides there was absolutely nothing to say as I was really thinking of what to do because as the captain, this was indeed my responsibility to sort this out.

I just looked and right there, something caught my eye on top of one of the jerseys, though it was small. Sitting right there in plain sight like it had been dropped without the person realising. It was a keychain and so, I picked it up and then turned it over in my hand. My brain made the connection before I had even fully processed what I was looking at - I had seen that keychain on Trevor's school bag, earlier today. In the classroom, when I had grabbed it off him and tossed it to the side of the classroom.

It must have come off then and landed in his bag, and then fallen out here when he...

I closed my fingers around it.

"Oh! What the hell?" Max's voice cut through the room as he reached into the basket and lifted one of the jerseys up by the shoulder, holding it out like some evidence. The rest of the team gathered around the basket and the noise level went from normal to loud in about three seconds.

I slipped the keychain into my back pocket before anyone looked my way.

"Someone sabotaged our uniform!" Max said it like he was announcing a national emergency.

"What do we do now?" Josh's head snapped toward me. "Kickoff is in 5 minutes."

I looked at the jersey in Max's hand, then at the basket, then back at the rest of them standing around waiting for me to either panic or fix it. But then, neither was going to happen.

"Guys." I reached in and picked up one of the jerseys, holding it up and turning it. "It's just paint." I kept my voice level and even. The way I kept it on the field when a play broke down and I needed everyone to stop spiralling and start moving. "Quit being a pussy and suit up." I handed the jersey across to Josh, who took it with the expression of someone who had more to say and knew better than to say it right now.

The room went still. All of them just stood there looking at me like I had suggested we play the game in our socks.

"Suit up! Let's go!" I said it louder this time, already moving toward my own locker. "The game is in five minutes and we need to head out right away."

That got them moving. Although not happily, but moving. The grumbling was background noise at this point but then, I had already mentally moved past the uniforms and was back on the game where my head needed to be. We grabbed our kits and split off to change and I did the same, pulling the jersey over my head and not thinking too hard about the blue streak running across the left side of it.

Abruptly, my mind went into thinking about the keychain in my back pocket.

I pressed my fingers against it once through the fabric, just to confirm it was still there.

Trevor had been in here. That wasn't a theory, but that was a fact I was now holding in my hand. He had come into our changing room before the first game of our season and gone at our uniforms with paint cans because of what had happened in that classroom. I guess, probably because I had cornered and pushed him with regards to the budget. And so I think this was his version of pushing back.

I almost wanted to respect it. I mean, almost.

But letting the team know what I had figured out wasn't going to do anything useful. Max would turn it into a whole thing before we even got to the field, and the last thing I needed was the team going into their first game of the season distracted and riled up about Trevor Matai when they should be thinking about their plays.

So the keychain stayed in my pocket and the team didn't need to know about it yet.

Trevor, on the other hand, had something coming. I just hadn't decided what shape it was going to take yet.

I would figure that out later after the match and he would regret in his lifetime ever having to think about this.