Dare
Back Story No. Three
In Kevin’s Shoes

“What the fuck do you see in him?”

Evan leaned his head against sun-warmed brick, and he flicked idly at a stray ivy leaf hanging in front of his face. He and Kevin were sitting on top of Evan’s low brick wall after school, binders of almost-finished homework sitting neatly between them.

A few seconds ago, Evan’s attention had been caught by something in the middle of a calc problem, and Kevin had turned just to take a glimpse of familiar blond hair before looking back to see his friend’s eyes following Darien Hunter’s movement. It might have been discreet to anyone standing more than a couple meters away, but—for fuck’s sake—Kevin was sitting right there with an interrupted math question hanging in the air between them.

Evan’s mouth twisted slightly in lieu of an explanation.

“For one, he’s a—a manslut. A fucking player who’s probably going to contract a dozen STDs before he’s done with high school.” Kevin knew that conjured up not-so-appealing images in his friend’s head, but that was the point.

“I’m sure he takes lots of precautions. And that’s completely irrelevant.”

“Tch. Because your infatuation is oh-so-chaste?” Kevin snickered, twirling the pencil in his hand.

Evan raised an exasperated eyebrow. “I don’t want to have sex with him.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure, with your self-proclaimed ‘suppressed libido’ and crap. Fucking hell, why are you such a girl when it comes to shit like this? Wanting all that romantic chick-flick drivel…”

“What? You’re the guy who knows how to ‘treat girls right’, complete with chivalrous romantic gestures. You like going through the ‘drivel’. Even if you’ve never let yourself get past second base. Scared of a few STDs?”

“Hey, you’re the virgin here. I’d have pegged you as asexual if it wasn’t for your weird-ass attraction to that blond slut.”

“Stop calling him that.”

“Pfft. Acting as his knight in shining armor?”

“No, I just don’t want to picture your little airhead-whore every time you say that word.”

“Hey! She was a perfectly nice girl!”

“Only because she wanted to use your brain to help her floundering grades. How far did you get?”

“I actually got to third—”

“Before you called it off in a panic with some lame excuse. But I understand perfectly—everyone knows how easy she is. Still, no wonder she dumped your ass.”

“…I can’t believe I’m discussing this with you.” Even though eavesdroppers wouldn’t understand what exactly the two were talking about, what with random English only sprinkled throughout their largely Korean-language conversation. “At least I try…” Kevin thought for a moment. “You know…you ought to meet more people, try some new things that actually requires communication with your peers. Come to prom, why don’t you?”

“I’ll pass.”

“Maybe then you can get a chance at your blondie.”

“Ah, fuck you.” It was said playfully, casually, but Kevin could see that he’d hit a bit of a chord with Evan. Still, they never really liked heading into melancholy crap if they could help it, so he settled for some more lightheartedness.

“No thanks. I already have one too many lunkhead who wants to get in my pants.”

Evan’s gaze drifted to a point behind Kevin’s shoulder, and then he smirked. “Huh. Speak of the devil…”

“Kevin! Just the man I wanted to see!”

Kevin didn’t look at the source of the enthusiastic words, or do anything that acknowledged the intruder’s presence, except very patiently say, “Colucci.” Evan snorted in amusement.

Soren grinned brightly, undeterred, and straddled the wall, right behind Kevin, leaning his arms against a tense back. “Can I talk to you?”

“Are you socially retarded?” Kevin asked in response. “I’m in the middle of a fucking conversation.” His tone was calm and completely at odds with his words.

“Sorry,” Soren said breezily.

“Stop saying shit you don’t mean. And get off me.”

“Sorr—”

“Shut up.”

“Well then,” Evan managed to interrupt, gathering his stuff. “I guess I’ll go—”

“No.” Then Kevin switched gears, back to Korean: “You’re going to suffer with me. But you’re welcome to replace me with you and this lump with your slutty basketball player.”

Evan snickered, shaking his head. “Nope, that’s fine,” he replied in Korean, and then back to English… “Have fun with him, Colucci. And be careful—he’s pretty fragile.”

Kevin cursed as he fell off the wall in his attempt to punch his rapidly retreating friend. Or, he would have fallen off, if Soren hadn’t caught him by the collar of his shirt. Without a word of thanks—because all that the ‘help’ had done was almost strangle him—Kevin swatted Soren’s hand away and uncrossed his legs to get off the wall. “I thought we agreed to stay the hell away from each other outside of tutoring.”

“Yeah, well, I need your help…”

“You’re paying me extra for this.”

“Of course.”

A little into second semester, Kevin had volunteered as a Math Lab tutor, mostly for kicks in between his soccer practice, but also because his calc teacher had kept on advertising and he’d felt a bit embarrassed for her. And then he’d gotten stuck with Soren Colucci, who didn’t seem like the type of guy to go for legit help. Kevin had learned that stereotyping was dumb and inapplicable to most situations, but Soren had always been breathing the rarified air of football jock world whenever he came close enough to blip on Kevin’s radar—which wasn’t very often…though now, of course, that was shot to hell…

He had been surprised when Soren kept coming back for him. Then he’d been annoyed when, a couple weeks after their first meeting, Soren invited him over to his mansion when he said he needed extensive tutoring (Soren started paying him out of gold-lined pockets, though, so Kevin supposed it wasn’t a complete waste of time).

And then he’d had a heart attack when the flirting started.

But he wrote it off as Soren just messing with his head—plus, he didn’t want to lose his rather hefty allowance—so he put up with the rich bastard’s shit, which never really got so bad that it could set off all the alarm bells in Kevin’s head, anyway. It would’ve been nice if all that gay energy were transferred to Hunter so Evan could enjoy it. He kind of needed to do something about that puppy-love-crush thing of his.

When Evan finally told him over the phone—and since Evan hated using his cell, it was pretty serious—a few weeks later that Hunter and he were ‘together’…Kevin went into shock. And then he recovered, brain immediately going into red alert.

That explained the weird moment during the project discussion at lunch.

The second time the guy interrupted their lunch, Kevin had some kind of clue to what he was looking at—and he was beyond suspicious. Oh, Evan showed plenty of disbelief for the both of them, and for Jon and Chris, too. But Hunter was good at whatever game he was playing. Over the week, Evan resisted less and less against the hook he’d been caught in.

Six Flags made it a lot more ambiguous…and then the Sunday after? Kevin’s image of Hunter became really fucking muddy. “Don’t fuck it up,” he’d warned the guy.

And then Kevin and Evan exchanged a few sentences on AIM about Hunter that night.

E. Moon (22:10:47): D. asked me to prom…

KJ (22:12:11): so thats what the cuddly thing on goldrusher was

KJ (22:12:58): well go for it! ill be there too you know so if you wanna ditch him…

E. Moon (22:16:42): Yeah…

E. Moon (22:16:59): Yeah, I’ll go.

E. Moon (22:17:24): It’ll be interesting…at least.

KJ (22:19:00): give me a moment to recover from the shock

The end.

Yeah, Kevin had urged his friend to go to prom. But, with Hunter? He vaguely thought that he should have listened to his misgivings, but what was done was done. And, Evan needed to reach out. Though at what expense…that was to be determined.

Still…

Goddamnit was Evan completely ensnared.