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There is a satisfying crack as Arthur’s knuckles collide with the quarterback’s nose.
“If you’re gonna say that shit, you say it to my fucking face!” Arthur is shouting as Mr. Harper, the Chemistry teacher, pushes his way in between them. Arthur lunges again, but before he can get in another hit, Coach Marshall is hauling him back by the armpits, pulling him away.
Being sixteen sucks balls.
Arthur drags his feet on the familiar walk to the principal’s office, going as slowly as possible, making the coach wait on him and delighting in the squeak of his sneakers scuffing against the hallway floor.
*
The classroom is on the second storey, which makes the slow arc of the chair even more impressive as it shatters the window glass and bursts into the air outside. The crash of it hitting the concrete below echoes around the now-silent room as, one by one, the students lift their heads and turn to stare in awe at the new kid, who is standing chairless behind his desk.
Eames looks a little shocked himself and gapes at the smashed window. His cheeks flush pink under the weight of a roomful of stares.
“What?” he snaps, aggressively.
Miss Larson, still standing dumbstruck at the front of the room, draws in a steadying breath before she points him firmly to the door.
*
Cobb runs the anger management sessions. This is fine by Arthur, because Cobb is fucking soft.
“Alright. Now, we’ve all got a seat. Let’s just scoot our chairs a little closer, okay? Make this circle a little tighter,” Cobb says, smiling serenely. “Arthur, come on. What kind of circle can we have with you stuck out to one side like that?”
Arthur heaves a long-suffering sigh and hauls his chair closer, because he knows that Cobb will only stare and stare at him until he obeys.
“That’s great. Thank you, Arthur. Okay, gang. I want to start with a paired exercise today, so I’m going to get you to buddy up. Person closest to you is fine.”
The person closest to Arthur is Frankie Statham, personal friend and wingman of Stan the quarterback (who is currently sitting out championship games due to a broken nose). Slowly, they turn to look at one another.
“I’m gonna whip you til you’re jello,” Frankie sneers.
“Is that something sexual?” Arthur asks.
Frankie stamps one foot hard against the floor and jerks forwards in his chair, fist raised. It is an abrupt movement, intended to make Arthur jump.
It doesn’t work.
“Ah, no. That’s not- Let’s not do that,” Cobb says, suddenly standing in front of them, waving his hands. “Frankie, I want you to work with Tyler, please, today. Arthur, up you get. Come over here.”
At the side of the room sits the only person who has been allowed to remain exempt from Circle Time. It is the new kid, the British one. He is a grade above Arthur, but everyone – everyone - in school already knows his name. He kind of stole Arthur’s thunder on the day of Arthur’s last fight by smashing a classroom window with a chair. The guy has been here hardly two weeks and has already sat out a two-day suspension. He gets Arthur’s vote for that alone.
Cobb snatches the cigarette which Eames has just managed to light and stamps it out on the ground, looking stern. Eames smiles up at him wryly.
“Shit. I thought I might just get away with that.”
Cobb snaps his fingers in Arthur’s direction, then nods at Eames, who is rolling a thumb back and forth across the top of his lighter, making its little flame jump.
“This is your partner. No arguments.”
“Are you going to let him keep that?” Arthur says, pointing to the lighter.
“No. Eames, that goes away at once, or I confiscate it.”
“You’re the boss,” Eames says, with a mocking little salute, although he does slide the lighter into his pocket, and accepts the laminated sheet of instructions which Cobb hands to him.
As Cobb strides back to the circle, Arthur folds his arms and narrows his eyes at Eames in his best expression of challenge.
“I’m not fucking partnering you.”
Eames blinks. He drags his eyes up and down Arthur’s body and then smirks, leaning back in his chair and letting his thighs fall open.
“That’s too bad,” he says, “Cause I’d love to partner you.”
When Eames runs his tongue very slowly over his top lip, Arthur can literally feel the way that his own eyes go wide in surprise, like a character out of Loony Toons.
“Ew,” he says, ignoring the little electric thrill Eames’s gaze sends racing through his blood. He turns and hollers over his shoulder, “Cobb! This guy’s sexually harassing me!”
Cobb straightens up from where he has been bending over a laminated sheet and trying to further simplify the sheet’s already simple instructions for Frankie. He gives Arthur his attention for just long enough to say, “You are this close to permanent expulsion, Arthur. Why don’t you make things easy on yourself for a change? How about you drop it with the ‘sexual harassment’ cries every two seconds? Okay?”
“People harass you a lot, hey?” Eames asks, as Arthur thumps sulkily down into the chair beside him.
Arthur looks at Eames sideways, trying to gauge from his expression just how much Eames might have already heard about him. It’s not like he keeps things secret. He got caught blowing a senior in the locker rooms just last month by the assistant principal. People know.
There’s a moment when Arthur considers playing this as dickheaded as he can manage, and making himself another enemy just for the hell of it. But the thought of that seems far too exhausting today and besides, Eames’s biceps look pretty fucking tasty. So Arthur goes with the truth instead.
“Dude led a session last month about harassment. You know, telling us what to do if we’re being stalked on the internet or groped by creepy men on buses. Shit like that. Cobb kicked me out halfway through for being ‘inappropriate’. Now I just use it to piss him off.” Arthur reaches for the sheet in Eames’s hand. “What do we have to do?”
Eames tightens his grip on the sheet and jerks it away, refusing to let Arthur take it. Arthur clicks his tongue in annoyance, but Eames just clears his throat dramatically and reads the instructions aloud.
“Think of a time when you felt angry about the actions of one of your peers. How did you choose to respond to their actions? Tell your partner about these events in as much detail as possible. Together, decide if your response was appropriate to the situation. Discuss whether there might have been a better course of action available to you.”
Eames’s accent is smooth and crisp. He sounds like James Bond. He grins at Arthur, shaking the instruction sheet back and forth, with a plasticky rippling. “Shall I?”
Arthur shrugs. “Go ahead.”
“Brace yourself. It’s messy.”
“I can take mess.”
Eames is already grinning as he leans forwards, his hands dangling between his knees.
“This one time, back home, while I was playing football, a peer of mine...took a shit in my shoe.”
Laughter comes exploding from between Arthur’s closed lips, snorting out of his nose, before he can stop it.
“No,” he says.
“A shit. In my shoe.”
“Why? Like as a dirty protest?”
“Opposing team, innit.”
“What did you do?”
“Beat the hell out of him”
“Good job.”
Eames has this fiery little smirk in his eyes as he leans even closer. Along his forearm, there is a curling design, tattoo-dark. It is drawn in marker pen, slightly smudged. Arthur is still staring at it when Eames lowers his voice to a stage whisper, speaking behind one hand.
“I think you’re supposed to tell me that was the wrong way to deal with the situation.”
Arthur shrugs. He kicks one ankle over the other, settling back in his seat with his legs stretched out. He pretends not to notice the way that Eames’s eyes trail along their length.
“But I think your response was totally appropriate, man. How else do they expect you to deal with those kinds of tools? People who do stuff like shit in your shoes got to learn. Might as well learn ‘em with your fists. Works for me.”
Eames’s teeth are not quite even. They catch against his bottom lip as he smiles. He shakes a finger in Arthur’s direction.
“I like you,” he says, which totally makes Arthur glow.
*
They reassemble in the middle of the room for trust exercises. Since this is Arthur’s third time taking these classes, Cobb tries to get him to participate in a demonstration, though gives up when Arthur asks loudly if said demonstration could be construed as a form of harassment. Instead, Lewis (the kid who started all those fires) gives them a beautiful show by lovingly catching Marco the Psycho (who’s quiet as fuck until you so much as mention his mom).
Then, Arthur and Eames are standing in their allotted space, sizing one another up, and Arthur can already predict how this is going to go.
“I can catch you,” Arthur says, already defiant, lifting his chin. He is taller than Eames by a whisper, but Arthur knows full well that a measly inch of extra height hardly counts when you’re whip-thin and willowy in a school full of beefcakes.
“I’m sure you can. Only...”
“Only what?” Arthur snaps, temper spiking.
“Well.” Eames steps one leg sideways against Arthur’s, causing their hips to knock. Arthur looks down at their thighs. Pressed together as they are, it is impossible to ignore the fact that Eames’s is practically double the width of Arthur’s.
“I’m tougher than I look, dude. Don’t judge a book by its thighs.”
“Oh. I get it. Is this the part where you break my nose?” Eames says, stepping back.
Arthur instantly misses the warmth of Eames’s muscle pressed against his own, but he folds his arms across his chest and narrows his eyes.
“Least I had a good reason. What did that chair do to you?”
There’s a moment where they stare at one another, unmoving. In his peripheral vision, Arthur can see Cobb hovering, ready to intervene. But Eames looks away, thrusting his hands into his pocket, kicking the toe of one sneaker against the scuffed floor.
“Man, you know what? I do trust you to catch me.”
“Why?”
This is not what Arthur was expecting. His arms fall down, to hang limply at his sides. Eames steps closer until Arthur can feel the warm rush of his breath as he exhales.
“Because I think you’ve come this close to throwing that chair out of that window a hundred times before. And I think you understand exactly why I did it.”
There is a strange, tight feeling building in Arthur’s throat. He is busy trying to swallow around it when Eames reaches up and pinches one of Arthur’s baby-smooth cheeks between a thumb and a crooked finger. “Also, this face,” he coos.
Arthur jerks away from Eames’s hand, although he finds himself trying not to smile.
For the first time in months, Arthur does not feel like he is being judged. He feels like he is being gotten. And that makes it seem safe enough for him to land a playful shove against Eames’s shoulder.
“I’m definitely gonna drop you for that.” Arthur holds out his arms, as Eames moves to stand in front of him.
“On my nose?”
“Right on it, yeah,” Arthur says, bracing himself to catch Eames’s weight.
*
An hour into the session, everything is beginning to fray at the seams. Cobb’s temper is shorter, the backchat is more heartfelt. Marco the Psycho looks sort of twitchy, like he’s just moments away from another episode. They’ve all been split into new pairs, except for Arthur and Eames. When Cobb approached them about it, Eames called him a racist for trying to separate him from the only friend he’d made so far in this “godforsaken country.”
Cobb’s soft, but he’s not stupid. He knows when to cut his losses.
For Arthur’s part, he’s just glad that Eames seems so keen to hang onto him.
They are both sitting backwards in their chairs, facing one another. An A3 sheet of construction paper is drooping sadly against Arthur’s chair leg; their half-finished brainstorm of ‘words that hurt us’ is now entirely forgotten. Arthur has one arm resting along the back of his chair and is watching closely as Eames doodles across his skin. If he’s honest, Arthur is kind of turned on by the gentle tickle of the pen nib and the way that the tip of Eames’s tongue is poking out from between his plump lips.
“I hate...” Eames says thoughtfully, “When you’re walking somewhere and people in front of you are fucking slow, and they don’t even move.”
“Dude. Yes. I hate that,” Arthur says.
“Or like, they just stop right there and then you’re practically fucking bumming them by accident...”
“Okay, well, I hate when people serve you in a store and act like they’re so much better than you, and it’s like, hello, you work in a store. You’re nobody special.”
“Fuck that, man.”
“Right?”
“Seriously. Everyone in the world is a fucking knob-end.”
“Except you and me.”
“Innit, though?”
Eames’s gaze flicks up from his drawing long enough to catch Arthur’s in a shared grin.
“Being productive?” Cobb says, as he strides over and picks their discarded construction paper up off the floor. He peers down at the scribbles on Arthur’s arm. “This is part of your brainstorm, is it?”
“Yes,” Arthur and Eames say in unison.
“Is that so?” Cobb does not look impressed.
“It’s a very important part,” Eames says, still drawing.
Arthur shakes his hair out of his eyes, so that he can twist his head to look up at Cobb without moving his arm.
“You know what? I am so chilled right now,” Arthur says. He gestures to the slow working of Eames’s pen. “My anger is totally being managed by this activity.”
“Mine too,” Eames adds, raising his free hand.
“Congrats, Cobb. Looks like you’re doing a fine job.”
Arthur thinks that he says this pleasantly enough, but Cobb’s face is like thunder.
“It’s Mister Cobb, Arthur. And I’m sick of your attitude.”
Behind Cobb, a paper airplane soars through the air and strikes the whiteboard at the front of the room. Frankie is jabbing Marco with a pencil, trying to coax out the crazy. Lewis is tearing construction paper into strips and dropping them into the trashcan – perfect kindling. Compared to this, Arthur and Eames are positively angelic.
“What attitude? I don’t have an attitude,” Arthur says, incredulous. “I’m fucking calm, alright? What else do you want from me?”
Cobb thrusts another laminated sheet towards them, just as an infuriated wail erupts from Marco’s direction.
“Next task. Get on with it. And watch your mouth,” Cobb says.
Arthur is livid.
“Jesus Christ,” he says. His hand curls into a tight fist, crumpling the task sheet. Cobb is shouting at Frankie now and holding Marco at bay with one arm.
“This shit takes the piss, man,” Eames mutters as Arthur is squeezing the sheet harder, feeling the plastic edges biting into his palm
“Right? You can’t win. It’s total fucking bullshit.”
Eames twirls the marker pen between his fingers. Then, he pushes his face close to Arthur’s, nearer and nearer, until he goes cross-eyed and Arthur has to quit gnashing his teeth in order to crack a smile.
*
The next task is to dramatise a real incident where they let their anger get out of control. Arthur’s problems with anger have deep roots. He tells Eames the story of the time he smashed out one of the headlights of his dad’s car with a baseball bat because he had been banned from Little League until he cleaned up his room.
They spend more time chewing gum and laughing over Arthur’s childhood rage blackouts than they do devising their drama presentation, so when they are called back to the centre to share their work, Arthur is already mentally planning excuses. Cobb isn’t looking so hot. His eyes are a little wild, his tie is askew and there is a lock of hair at the back of his head sticking straight up, as though someone has spunked it, like in There’s Something About Mary. Eames is very appreciative of Arthur pointing this out. But then, Eames seems to be pretty appreciative of Arthur in general, which makes him fucking awesome in Arthur’s book.
In fact, it begins to seem that Eames’s awesome has completely no bounds when Cobb asks them to give their presentation. Before Arthur has the chance to trot out one of his carefully rehearsed excuses, Eames is opening his mouth and saying, totally deadpan, “We would like to feedback to the group through the method of interpretative dance.”
Cobb most definitely knows better than to agree to such a ridiculous suggestion, but perhaps he is just itching to get rid of them, because not five minutes later, Arthur and Eames are both on their way to the principal on charges of being lewd and provocative.
Arthur’s dick is still half-hard from being ground against Eames’s strong thigh.
The secretary looks up from her computer as they enter the office. She frowns at Arthur and gives a melodramatic sigh.
“Again?” she asks, reaching for the phone.
“I was set up. It wasn’t my fault,” Arthur says, as he throws himself down into his favourite chair – the one nearest the fish tank.
“It never is.” The secretary is trying to look stern, but she likes Arthur and always does a bad job of hiding it.
“They should have some kind of air mile system for coming here,” Eames says, sliding into the next seat. “You could get us a flight to Hawaii with what you’ve clocked up.”
“What makes you think I’d want to take you? And waste my hard-earned miles?”
“I’d make it worth your while, mate.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Arthur cracks his gum, watching the way that Eames’s attention follows the movement of his tongue.
“You want to go?” Eames says, nodding towards the door.
“Those air miles are only in your mind, dude.”
“No. Do you want to get out of school, I mean. Just bunk the rest of the day.”
Arthur looks at him sceptically.
“What? Cut?”
“Yeah.”
“You want to cut when the principal already knows we’re waiting out here.”
One of Eames’s square hands running up Arthur’s thigh is all the encouragement that is needed. Arthur’s response is instant.
“Sure. Let’s cut.”
As they stand up, the secretary tilts her glasses down to peer over the top of them.
“Arthur,” she says, the phone receiver already back in her hand. “I’ll have to tell the principal you’ve walked out.”
“It’s an emergency,” Arthur says, squirming free of Eames’s fingers, which are already roaming over his waist from behind. “I got to help the new kid out with something. I’m just being a Good Samaritan. And this is a problem bigger than me, bigger than you...bigger than all of us.”
The secretary regards him, poker-faced, and then she presses one manicured nail down on the speed-dial.
“I’m calling through now.”
By the time the line connects, Arthur and Eames are already long gone.
*
They only get two blocks away before they are distracted by the delights of a convenience store. Outside, in the midday sun, Eames presses Arthur back against the secluded side wall of the 7-Eleven and peels the shirt slowly up over his heated skin.
The slushie they bought to share, with the combined change in their pockets, is now a sticky mess on the floor at their feet. They make out, in a puddle of electric blue, fingertips tickling over patches of exposed skin, until Eames pulls back enough to say, “You’ve done this, right?”
Arthur licks his lips, which already feel hot and swollen.
“Bet you I’ve done it more than you.”
“Really?” Eames rolls his hips upwards, making Arthur’s breath catch. Arthur is hard as hell and he knows that Eames can feel it. “All the way?”
Arthur’s first instinct is to lie, but he disregards it. There is something about Eames which makes this seem important.
“Not all the way,” Arthur mumbles, feeling the blush in his cheeks. “I can blow you, though. If you want. I can do that real good.”
Eames pushes a finger between Arthur’s lips, where Arthur can suck it deeper into his mouth and curl his tongue around it. Eames’s mouth is coloured from the slushie. Arthur imagines that his must look the same, stained blue, cold and sweet.
“I’ve never gone that far either,” Eames says, lashes lowered.
“Oh.”
Eames pulls his finger away from Arthur’s mouth. They look in different directions, both a little awkward.
After a moment, Eames says, “Do you want to come back to mine? My little brother...he’s got this pet tarantula. It sounds stupid...but it’s actually kind of sick. I’ll show you.”
This is a lame suggestion. They both know that, but Arthur says, “Tarantula, huh? What does it eat?”
“You,” Eames says. He still has one hand on Arthur’s hip, where Arthur’s shirt has been pushed up, and he rubs his thumb back and forth against the bump of Arthur’s hipbone.
“This is totally harassment,” Arthur says.
He is grinning though, and lets Eames curl warm fingers around his wrist and take him home. To see the tarantula.
Today, there is nothing to be angry about.