CHAPTER ONE

some big fish

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“So you know what she says, after I make my point and ‘open myself up’, and everything she wanted me to do?”

“What?”

“‘Go fuck yourself’. Not kidding you.”

“Psssht.”

“I know. Whadda bitch.”

Farmer nursed his pop casually, avoiding Lloyd’s eyes because those were just as scary as his life. However, fear just so happens to be married to curiosity, so Farmer asked, “What did you do next?” and instantly regretted it.

“Smacked her,” laughed Lloyd. Farmer gulped down the final little slurps of his Coke while imagining Lloyd’s tiny little girlfriend getting ‘smacked’ by his giant, calloused paw. Farmer didn’t dare ask why Lloyd hit her instead of just reasoning things out because Lloyd just might turn and ‘smack’ him, and partly because he knew the girlfriend. She definitely deserved a good smack, but...

Some poor dork meandered by the lunch table Lloyd and Farmer were sitting at, destroying Farmer’s train of thought. ‘Run while you have the chance!’ he thought, empathetic eyes following the target, who was wearing a button down plaid shirt tucked into khaki pants. Lloyd’s smile widened. He opened up his milk carton, and although the nerd didn’t dare raise his head to look over at them, he must have heard the sound of cardboard tearing, and quickened his pace in desperation.

Too late. The milk carton hit right on mark. The nerd’s head was wet with one percent. The white dripped off of his bangs onto his plaid shirt and down his arms. Damp blotches began to dot his shoulders and back.

“Omigod!” a girl squealed from a table, laughing as she did so; Farmer wasn’t sure if this girl, who was never identified, had ever met Lloyd, but he was sure that the two of them would have gotten along nicely. Everyone else in the lunchroom seemed to pity that poor soul covered in milk, but like Farmer, everyone else would rather succumb to that one, squealing girl and carton-throwing Lloyd than stand against injustice.

So the half of the cafeteria that had actually seen the event take place started to whisper and giggle to each other, and the other half of the cafeteria that hadn’t seen anything started to laugh, too, because everyone else was laughing and ask “What? What?” to which someone on the other side of the room would yell back and point at the boy standing by Lloyd and Farmer’s table. Both Farmer and that boy were trembling.

Farmer couldn’t remember the boy’s name. It was something like Paul or Peter, something biblical like that. Paul/Peter raised his hands from his sides, which were now dripping with white, and held them in front of him, and clenched them into fists.

“Oooh, gettin’ aggressive!” hooted Lloyd, but Paul/Peter refused to look at him. Farmer was annoyed at this, because Lloyd didn’t understand that, to this boy, he was simply another voice laughing at him in the lunchroom and not the clever, impressionable hard-ass that he thought he was. A teacher came and guided Paul/Peter away.

Farmer found that he could easily pretend to find this event funny.

In fact, he found that he really did find it funny. Humiliation was funny to him, he was cruel, just like Lloyd. ‘Dammit,’ thought Farmer. But he kept on laughing. Teachers didn’t see Lloyd throw the milk carton, and nobody was going to rat him out. Girls, who were laughing hardest of all, would say to each other “Lloyd is so embarrassing!” but they were all in love with him.

Even teachers loved Lloyd sometimes. He was a great punching bag, Farmer observed; it was as if Lloyd could feel no pain. When he did feel pain, like when his girlfriend told him to fuck off, the feeling was subdued and destroyed before he could let it out and humiliate (as in ‘humanize’, not embarrass) himself, which was why he hit her. Lloyd was afraid of being a human, so he became a power freak.

In reality, Lloyd, who was the one most recognizable person in school who never shirked in taking the initiative to do the vilest, most shocking, disrespectful deeds (he once smeared his own shit on the walls near the school office), was living in a state of fear.

In this idea did Farmer find some smug comfort. Although Lloyd would always appear to be stronger than he, and there wasn’t a future that he could imagine that put himself in a higher position than being a sidekick, Farmer would always come out being the stronger of the two.

Even while they all laughed, Farmer could see the self doubt. The terrible, fluorescent lighting (like that of the hospital that Farmer would frequent in the future) that shone down on Lloyd’s yellow, although charming smile that proclaimed ‘I just got away with something!’ also revealed something else in Lloyd’s mouth: a question.

‘Am I being loved?’

In his quest to destroy his own humanity by hiding his pain, in a journey to get affection from the same people that professed to hate, Lloyd had subconsciously pounded that one question into his brain. With every disgusting, dirty, black deed that he did, that question would arise. When Paul/Peter was being led away to the office and everyone laughed at his milk-sodden clothes and pitiful, dorkish greasiness, Lloyd felt what he thought was love. After all, their laughter and joy were produced by him, right? He was too drunk with his manufactured happiness to really think the situation through; they weren’t really laughing with him.

Despite the circumstances, it was a rare moment when Lloyd felt accepted by the people that he was terrified of.

“Did you see that poor fucker?” he asked, laughing a few loud final laughs as the riot in the cafeteria died down. “I saw a real fucker, right there,” replied Farmer. ‘I see fuckers all the time,’ he thought while Lloyd smashed his chicken patty with a spork. ‘I’m a fucker too.’

Without going any deeper in conversation, the two of them got up from the lunch table at the same time, leaving their trays there for the janitors to clean up. Farmer wondered if Lloyd was aware of how pitiable he was.

“Hey Sam,” Lloyd said, pulling his girlfriend into a suggestive embrace. She was nearly as tall as he was, but thin as a stick; no breasts. Farmer frowned a little. Sam had flinched when Lloyd touched her, and had glanced away with her eyes open when Lloyd kissed her. She seemed to attempt to circumvent herself from him as he ran his hand over her titless chest.

“So how’s classes, baby?” Lloyd asked her on parting his lips from hers, and he ran his hands through her long, blond hair as she smiled her barbie smile. Not that Sam was fake. Lloyd just had that effect on people.

“Good, tough, but nice, just stayin’ in school?” she said, her voice elevating at the end of the sentence and making a question out of everything that she said. “I’m gettin’ better grades cuz o’ you?” she tried. Lloyd’s smile was pathetically genuine. Actually, that smile was one of the reasons that Sam stayed with him. She figured that his smile was simply too beautiful to be anything but kindness, so she constantly went to great lengths in order to ‘keep hold of her man’, like adopting a very city-girl speech pattern that she knew turned Lloyd on...or he said that it turned him on, but really, it was only for his tough-guy image. What self-respecting delinquent didn’t have a crack whore talking girlfriend?

“Yeah, that’s my girl,” Lloyd mumbled to himself.

Farmer didn’t dare say anything.

“So what’s happenin’ with you, hon?” said Sam, indicating Farmer with the word ‘hon’ (used in the most neutral sense, of course). Farmer shrugged as an answer.

The other two continued conversation. Farmer gazed around at the scenery, a playground in the distance at the base of the hill, the school to his back with trees shading it. Sun was filtering down on the ground and on his hands. Soon the smacking sounds of their lips came, and the shuffling of dirt. Sam was gone when Farmer turned around. “Like watchin’ little kids? You pedo or something?” said Lloyd, smirking.

‘Pedo’ was a buzz word going around, made by Lloyd himself, that described a pedophile. Farmer had to admit that this new coinage had been a stroke of commercializing genius; it had caught on fast. Kind of like ‘dry’ and ‘embarrassment’, and ‘yuck’ when they were in fifth grade.

“If anyone’s pedo, it’s you,” joked Farmer.

Lloyd smiled. Again, his grin was real, like he was actually having a good time. That was probably why girls loved him so much; each smile shone gold in the afternoon sun. Farmer knew better than to be entranced by those somewhat awkward, yellow-ish and yet still brilliant teeth. He knew that the place to look was above, at Lloyd’s eyes, where sadness and fear mixed into a dark pool of anger.

“We should go,” said Farmer, breaking his gaze away from Lloyd’s, who nodded in agreement. It felt like it had been such a long day.

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A/N: I've lost the plot, you see. This is slowly becoming a story where, since no one reads it, I can just express some of the views I've collected and twisted up over the years and write about them without regret. I know that since this story has nothing to do with vampires/werewolves/magic/hotties/gay sex, it's not gonna get looked at in Supernatural. But of course, I said that in the other chapter's A/N, didn't I?

And you're just the sort of person who scrolls down and reads the A/N's, aren't you?

That's fine. It's not my fault you'll be a poor, knowledge-deprived bastard as you grow older. Who knows, maybe the stories that you simply skip over contain great pieces of information and philosophy THAT YOU NEVER BOTHERED TO FIND OUT. Why? Because most people who review without reading are assholes. Including me.

Pardon all the swearing. Have a nice day:)