All Around Me, a Romance fanfic

My hands are searching for you
My arms are outstretched towards you
I feel you on my fingertips
My tongue dances behind my lips for you—All Around Me (Flyleaf)

I am sipping a glass of cold water, trying to relieve the oppressive heat of fifty people packed together, when I see you. And you are looking at me, intent, searching—for what? What do you see as you gaze at me? What are you thinking? What kind of impression am I giving off, I wonder suddenly, sitting in a corner by myself, isolated from the rest of the mass who are busy drinking and dancing?

You are one of them, aren’t you? I’ve seen you: now dancing wildly, now leaning against the wall, smiling down at a girl as intoxicated as you. You are obviously enjoying yourself at this party while I sit here by myself and brood, wishing it was over. So why do you look at me? Why do you look at me with eyes so clear and focused, more sober than I would have thought possible after all the drinks you’ve consumed? Puzzled, unable to do anything else, I frown and meet your eyes squarely. Defiant. What are you looking at? I silently challenge.

All you do is smile, a grin that is only half innocent. It says to me, You. I’m looking at you. And then you saunter off, melting back into the crowd.

Later, you corner me on my way to the bathroom. You press me up against the wall, so close that I can feel your heart thumping against my chest. I am surprised to find that your head fits neatly under my chin.

“Tall, aren’t you?” Laughing, you slip a hand under my T-shirt and rub warm circles. Your hand travels upward, and you laugh again when it brushes across my nipples and I gasp.

“S-stop,” I order, gritting my teeth.

You pout, but let your hand fall to the waistband of my jeans. “Why?”

“Because, this is—”

“Fun?” You tug at my waistband, your fingers slipping underneath.

“No!” I shove you away, forcefully, and your head bangs against the opposite wall with a painful thwack.

You mutter, “Ow,” and glare at me. “What was that for?”

“For…touching me like that. I don’t even know who the hell you are.”

“Dude, I was just messing around.”

“Do you normally mess around with other guys like that?” I demand.

“Well, no,” you admit. And then you grin. “But I thought I’d try with you.”

“Why?” The word slips out of my mouth before I can stop it.

You pretend to make a big show of thinking about the question. “Hmmm, well…you’re pretty hot. Kind of like a girl, actually…” You step forward and I back up so far I am flattened against the wall. I’m trapped. Again. “You’ve got really nice hair—soft and silky.” Gently, you thread your hand through my hair. The tips of your fingers brush against my scalp. “Big eyes—” Bending your neck, you settle your mouth on my throat. I shiver at the contact, and feel the curve of your lips as you smile. “And such,” you whisper, your fingers ghosting up my neck to tangle in my hair, “such pale skin.”

I can’t stop the moan. It builds up in me as you continue to touch me, exploring the contours of my body, and it escapes from me when you flick your tongue across the skin at the base of my throat.

At first, you are gentle. But you apply more pressure as your mouth roams around my neck and throat; I jump when you bite.

“Relax,” you murmur, and soothe the pain with your tongue.

I remain tense, though, breathing shallowly while you continue to mark me with your teeth. I’m not even sure what’s going on anymore: your hands seem to be everywhere at once, feather-light touches that burn. There’s a sort of haze that’s clouding my head, and it makes it hard for me to tell if that’s my hand, me, clutching at you hair, urging you on. I can’t tell if that’s me, making those noises—high, thin, so unlike myself that I wonder if it’s me at all, or another person in my body, or if it’s another me that you’ve managed to bring out. I don’t know, I can’t tell. And then your tongue slides between my parted mouth, and you taste like alcohol and lime and mint toothpaste.

I don’t stop you this time when your fingers curl around my waistband.

The next morning the bite marks stand out clearly against my skin. I close my eyes to shut out the image of my face in the mirror. Yours floats up instead. I try to shut it out. It doesn’t work. I even hear you voice, almost, and I shake my head violently.

No, no, no. I don’t want to think about you. I don’t. It was nothing.

That night, I dream of you.

By the time I could think clearly again, you were gone and I was by myself. I looked around for you, but you left already. I was standing in a corner alone, back where I started.

It’s strange, but I’ve never noticed you at school before. Of course, it might be because of the sheer size—there are so many people, and you are just one of the mass. You don’t have any distinguishing qualities; no awards, no scholarly recognition. You aren’t much of an athlete, either. I don’t remember ever hearing your name being announced for victories or games.

No, you aren’t remarkable in any of those ways. And yet—I can’t believe I never noticed you before. You are so enmeshed in my thoughts, in me, it’s hard to think of a time when you were just a nameless face in the crowd. How can you creep into me after only one night? How can you take over me so thoroughly when I can barely remember what happened? Everything is blurred in my memory, and the only thing I can bring to my mind is your touch, your breath hot against my skin.

The note flutters to the floor when I open my locker. I pick it up and scan the cramped, messy writing. My face flushes; my heart begins to thud. Crumpling up the piece of paper, I throw it away. For the rest of the day, as I move around from class to class in my everyday routine, I keep debating with myself: should I go, or not? The words, the written invitation, replay in my head over and over. Meet me in the parking lot after school.

Should I go to you?

I almost panic when I feel your hands wrap around my waist from behind. It’s been almost a week since the party by now, and we’re alone in the parking lot after school.

You whisper, “Guess who?”

“I know who you are. Now let me go.”

“Come to my car.”

“Your car? No way.”

“What, you’ve never made out in the back of a car before? It’s fun.”

“You think everything is fun—”

“Most things are, if you just know how to enjoy them.” You nibble at the sensitive spot beneath my ear. “C’mon,” you hiss, “c’mon, c’mon. Come with me.”

And somehow, someway, I find myself cramped in the backseat of your car. You unbutton my pants; my breathing becomes erratic and you smirk, but this time I notice something: this is affecting you as much as it is me. Your breathing is labored, as shallow and ragged as mine. Hesitantly, I reach up and pull your face down. Our lips crash together in a clumsy kiss, your teeth biting my lip hard enough to draw blood. As your tongue explores my mouth, eager, demanding, I press my hand against the front of your pants. Your draw in a sharp breath, mutter, “Fucking hell,” and yank my jeans off completely. You kick them away and they crumple into a heap on the floor, leaving me feeling as exposed as if I were completely naked. The way your eyes rake over my body aren’t helping.

You bend down to capture my mouth in another rough, sloppy kiss, and I know—I know where this is going, and I don’t protest or try to stop you. I want it.

“Stop it,” I mutter. I push you away, but you continue to kiss me. Your lips travel over every inch of exposed skin, lips that tease me as you nibble with your teeth or caress with only the tip of your tongue. “Stop,” I repeat, and you finally quit it.

You settle your head in the crook of my neck. “You never want to cuddle,” you complain.

“Cuddling? That’s not cuddling, that’s slobbering.”

“Well then, I guess you like slobbering.”

I growl. “No. I don’t.”

“But I do,” you whine. “It’s good to cuddle after sex.”

“It’s irritating, especially when I’m trying to sleep.”

“Please, you don’t sleep afterwards. You’re always too excited.”

I blush. Even after a month, I get embarrassed at the mention of sex. I still have trouble connecting the me who shudders beneath your every touch to the me I have always known: the one who keeps to himself, keeps tight control over his actions, well aware of his temper. The person I always thought I was, before you came along. Somehow, you have a way of bringing out different sides of me.

You, too, have different sides. You are flirtatious, teasing; you are gentle; you are fierce; you are brash and cruel; you are sensitive and caring. You are so many things, so many different things. The one thing about you that I am sure of is that you are the wind—fickle, ever-changing, always blowing away, always leaving behind.

I don’t understand you. I can’t. I only know your touch, your laughter; the one hundred and one pieces that make up the mosaic of who you are. But I can never see the whole picture. All I have are the fragments I can grasp at, while you—you have my heart.

You have my heart. You fill in the missing spaces in me. You don’t stop the ache they caused; if anything, you make it worse. Still, I stay. I hang around you because I know that for all the pain you bring, the emptiness that you would leave behind would gnaw at me ten times as much.

You have my heart. Do you even care?

The first time I see it, I am angry.

“How could you?” I shout as we stand in your room. Vaguely, I am relieved that your parents aren’t at home to hear me. “How?” The images come swirling back to me. They are crystal clear: you with that girl, you pressed up against her, you kissing her, touching her. You, you, you.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “It just—kind of happened.”

“Obviously,” I bite out. “Everybody at school saw it…happen.”

“Look, I said I’m sorry! What more do you want?” When I remain silent, you demand again, “What? It’s not like we’re going out or anything.”

There is no answer I can give to that. It’s true. We’re not dating. We’re not together. We never talked about any of those things. I was willing enough to just let it be. Let it be only the two of us, nothing more. Apparently, you think differently.

“Forget it,” I mutter finally. “Just…forget it.” I start walking away.

“Hey—hey! Where are you going?”

“Away. Leave me alone.”

You grab my arm. “No. Stay.”

“No! Let go of me.”

“Come on,” you coax, slipping your arms around my waist. “Stay with me. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry means nothing!” I yell. I shake your arms off, roughly. “Sorry doesn’t erase what you did. Sorry doesn’t fix anything.”

“What more do you want?” you whisper.

“I want—” I pause. I want us to be together. I want you to stay with me. I want to keep you by my side. I want you to need me as much as I need you. “Nothing,” I finish. “I don’t want anything.”

“You want me—right?” you ask, quietly.

“No.”

“Yes. You do.” I hate the certainty in your voice, the sureness of your arms as you pull me into another hug. “You want me…and you can have me.”

“No I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because…how long will it be before this happens again? Can you promise me you’ll only be with me and nobody else?” You remain silent. “Of course not,” I continue. “So don’t bother telling me I can have you. And don’t tell me you’re sorry, because you aren’t. Just…don’t say anything.”

It almost doesn’t surprise me when I see you with another girl. Or is she the same one? I can’t tell, and besides, it doesn’t matter. I know now that even those fragments of you I thought I had mean nothing. They will never amount to anything, to you. They are only a few of the many puzzle pieces that you are made of. If I want to see the whole picture, I have to fit them all together. But doing that entails too much of a headache, too much caring, and I don’t want either of those things.

You offer to drive me home with your hair rumpled and your shirt sloppily buttoned. The collar fails to conceal the angry red marks on your neck. There are several long scratches along your arms.

“I don’t have nails that long,” I say, almost conversationally, getting in the car.

“No, you don’t,” you agree. “But I think you would look good with them.”

“Hell no.”

“Maybe I should grow out my nails then. My hair, too.”

I look at your hair; it’s spiked today, held up sharply with gel. Or, at least, it was. By now, it’s a bit flattened “You shouldn’t. It’d look hideous.”

“Why don’t you do it then? I’ve told you before, long hair suits you.”

“Because it makes me look like a girl?” I don’t bother to disguise the acidity in my voice, and you don’t have the decency to look ashamed.

“Trust me, I’m well aware of the fact that you’re a boy. And I happen to like that.”

“You also happen to like breasts and—”

“Girls,” you interrupt smoothly. “Yes. I happen to like girls, too. Why not? Why restrict yourself to one gender when you can be flexible and have twice the fun?”

“It’s always about fun with you.”

“We can’t all be serious and intense like you. Then life would be boring.”

“Stop the car. I’m getting out.”

“I won’t, and you’re not going to.”

“Stop the car, you fucking asshole—”

“You’re pissed off,” you begin, with that grin I’ve seen so many times before. It’s still half innocent, but now the only way I can describe the other half is as predatory.

I try to sound angry, even while my eyes are fixated on your mouth, parted and pink-lipped. “Obviously I am, so stop the car and let me get out.”

“I think you should stay and work this anger out,” you suggest blandly, as if you aren’t implying anything more innocuous than a talk, a heart-to-heart.

“Where, in the back of your car?” I ask sarcastically.

“You’ve read my mind.” You pull into the vacant area behind an old, abandoned 7-Eleven. The place is familiar to me, although I never get to see much of it; you’re always so eager, already fumbling at my belt before you’ve even parked the car properly. After the first few minutes, I’m also too absorbed to pay attention to anything except your hands and mouth.

Now, you reach over and place your hand on my leg. You inch your way up my thigh, stroking, caressing, deliberately slow and enjoying my mounting impatience. It only takes a few minutes, and then I find that we have somehow managed to crawl and tumble into the backseat. For some reason, today I find myself straddling you, find myself leaning over you as I unbutton your shirt; it’s probably the second time today that you’ve had it torn open by eager hands, but I’m enjoying my new vantage point too much to care.

“This is new,” you say. The words are airy, but your fingers shake as they tangle into my hair, giving you away. “I can’t say I’m not enjoying it, though.” You keep on talking, chatter that hums against my ear. I can’t distinguish the words, and it doesn’t matter. Then my knee slides between your legs; you breathe in sharply, the words trailing away into a moan. I shove my knee upwards, and you whisper my name.

Gently, I trace the scratches on your arm. Down, down, until I reach the tips of your fingers. Then the ones that criss-cross your chest, and all the while you are muttering, urgent and fevered now, no longer trying to disguise the tremble in your voice. I have never seen you so open, so vulnerable. It’s new, exciting; I want to explore this side of you, want to see how you would respond if I touched you like this, or right here. Every gasp, every moan, every time you say my name—it intoxicates me. Is this how you felt, all those times?

As I bend over you, some of your words catch my ear. “Fuck me,” you whisper. “Please—god, please. Fuck me.”

For answer, I haul you onto your knees. It’s an uncomfortable and cramped position, but I see your smile; I can still feel it, even as I push into you too soon, too fast, even as you bite your lips against the pain, and urge me on.

I’m not sure how long it’s been going on, but it must have been a while, because the sense of being watched is familiar. I’ve felt it before, only I always brushed it off, attributing it to paranoia. Being with you, it always feels like you’re just over my shoulder, following my every movement with your eyes, waiting for me to turn around so you can smile that smile, press your body against mine, close enough to hear my heart thump, and whisper, “I bet you were thinking about me, right?”

Today I feel those eyes on me again as I’m changing in the boys’ locker room. Sixth period soccer is over, and all the other boys have already left; the room echoes the sound of my locker as I slam it shut, whipping around, ready to berate you for spying on me.

But it isn’t you.

It isn’t your eyes I meet, it isn’t your smirk I see, it isn’t your voice I hear say, “Hey,” and it certainly isn’t your hands pushing me against the locker.

It’s some boy from my class, the kind of boy who I would have expected to be gone with his friends by now, laughing and flirting with girls. But instead he’s here, pinning me against the lockers, and the only thing I can remember about him is what you once said: “That idiot. He’s always talking about queers and fags, but you know he probably jacks off while thinking about you.” I don’t know why you would assume he’s gay, let alone that he likes me. Although I am starting to get a good idea, especially now that he’s busy applying his mouth to my neck.

Too late, I realize that my shirt is still clutched in my hand. I wasn’t expecting to keep it on long, but it was your hands I imagined on my skin, not this other boy’s. The cold metal of the lockers bites into my back; I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, leave me alone. What comes out instead is a groan.

“What—what are you doing?” I demand.

“Fucking you,” he replies, matter-of-factly, before pulling my jeans down.

I should tell him to stop. I should, I should—this should be you, not him. But I can’t seem to make my voice work, and somehow it doesn’t matter.

Your eyes are cool when you see the bruises you didn’t leave, the swollen lips you didn’t kiss, but your grip is iron-hard as you pin my hands against the wooden edge of the kitchen table. My wrists ache from the pressure. You don’t care.

“How was it?” you ask, calm and even.

“Good,” I reply, and I meet your eyes squarely. “It was fun.”

You say, “I’m glad,” and lean in to start tugging off my shirt.

“Your parents.” I try to keep my voice steady. Surprisingly, it is. “What if your parents come home?”

“Then we’ll go to my room,” you smirk. “But whether they do or don’t…” You press your fingers against one of my bruises, hard enough to make me wince, “We’re going to finish this.”

“Let’s go to your room then.”

“Why?”

“Because this is uncomfortable. It’s a goddamn kitchen table.”

“I don’t know, you seem to like being fucked in uncomfortable places. The back of my car, for example.”

“That was your idea.”

“It wasn’t my idea for you to let that jackass screw you in front of the lockers.”

“How did you—”

“So it was him. You were late coming from sixth period and—” You gaze almost dispassionately at the marks he left, “I just put two and two together.”

“Does it matter who it was?”

“Not at all,” and you turn me around, pressing me against the table, ignoring my grunt of pain.

It’s rough, painful; your hands leave new bruises and press into old ones, your teeth rake my skin. Sometimes I cry out, and always, always, you ask, “Do you want me to stop?”

And always, always I pant, “No. Don’t stop—harder, oh fuck, harder, please.”

You whisper into my ear, words that expel against my skin as hot gusts of breath, fragments that speak of heat and want and need, until I come with your name spilling from my lips.

When it is over, I collapse against the table, your forehead leaning against my back.

“God,” I mutter, too drained to say anything else.

Only the sound of your parents coming home rouses us, and we both work hurriedly, cleaning up. I feel like a naughty child covering up a broken glass or plate, but we manage to look respectable by the time your parents walk in. You lie, tell them that you and I are going out on a double-date, and you drag me to the car. We drive to the abandoned 7-Eleven, and for once I don’t think about what will happen next. I don’t think about which girl I’ll see you with tomorrow, or which boy, or about anything except your voice next to me in the darkness, the weight of your arm across my chest, the rise and fall of your breath. I don’t think at all. It’s enough to just be, here in this moment.

The next time I see him, I’m not surprised. I let him tug my sweat-stained shirt off, let him curl his fingers around the elastic waistband of my shorts. But it’s your name I say; it escapes from me, unbidden at first. I keep repeating it, over and over in short gasps and he thrusts harder and faster. Still, I say your name.

Sometimes I say his name; whisper it as I trail my hands down his pants, under his boxers, and watch his eyes widen and his cheeks flush a shade of pink that makes me lean in and kiss him. His lips always part eagerly, inviting me in. He always says my name, soft and airy.

You never say anything about it when I come out of the locker room late. I never offer an explanation.

Afterwards, he always sits on the bench and watches me dress.

“Quit staring at me,” I snap finally, unnerved at the way his eyes are focused on every place my finger brushes against bare skin. I am aroused by it, too, but I don’t let it show.

“Why? I’ve already seen you naked, and anyway, you like it.”

“It’s creepy. I don’t even know how this started. It wasn’t supposed to.”

“What, you’ve got a boyfriend? The one whose name you say all the time?” he jeers. When I don’t answer, he hisses, “Fag.”

I glare at him. “You’re the only one who’s got a problem with that, and if you do, don’t even bother with me anymore.”

I watch him struggle with himself. Deliberately, I let my hands drag along my leg as I pull my jeans on, let my fingers trail across every inch of skin. His breathing quickens, and I press my mouth against his, swiftly, drawing away before he can deepen it. He clutches at my arm but I shake myself free, kiss him on the neck, refuse to be held down. He half growls, trying to pull me back. I only twist away, shouldering my backpack, and walk out of the room with a cool confidence that surprises even me.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, it’s how to keep someone waiting, impatient, wanting. I know that tomorrow, he’ll be there again.

I look forward to it.

There are some fragments of you that I know. They are small pieces of you, pieces I thought could fill the empty spaces in me. But of course they couldn’t. You can’t take the pieces from one puzzle and try to complete another with them.

Your touch, your laughter. These are only a few of the one hundred and one pieces that you are made of. I will never hold all of them in my hands; you will never give yourself over completely.

Your weight next to me, your warmth. They don’t complete me; they can’t.

I don’t need them to.