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Sometimes, Paul Prentice struggled to sleep at nights. Really, it all came down to this: Paul's friends from home took the piss out of him for ending up at grammar school.
"Bet you're all queers," James snickered, when the conversation got around to school again. "Bet you can't even walk into the changing-rooms without seeing two lads at it."
Paul had, just the once, walked in on one boy buggering another. The first boy had said, "Fuck off," like Paul was the one breaking the law in the middle of a school changing room, and Paul had simply turned around and walked out again.
"Fuck off," Paul echoed as the incident was brought to mind. "It's not boarding-school."
"Still," another friend, Marky, chipped in. "I's not right, not having girls around."
"Well, I think it's easier," Paul retorted. "Not ending up with a hard-on all the time. 'Cause those girls at your school don't actually do anything, do they?"
James needed to protest.
"Janie Collins let me stick a whole hand up her!" he boasted, hand gesture included.
"Did she fuck," Marky shook his head.
"Swear on my life."
"Yeah, but what did she do for you?" Paul asked pointedly.
"She didn't have to," Marky sniggered. "Jamie has to change his undies twice a day."
"Fuck off," James frowned at Marky. But he had no response to Paul.
It wasn't strictly speaking true that Paul never got a hard-on at school. He was fifteen, of course he bloody well did. It wasn't as bad as it used to be, when almost anything could trigger an upsettingly evident erection, but there were still definite moments.
Fuck "moments". There was a definite cause.
Paul knew he wasn't gay. He just wasn't. He'd never been interested in blokes, ever. Not in the plural, anyway. He knew what gay blokes looked like, and they didn't look like him.
They looked like Foyle.
Paul only called him Foyle in his head; day-to-day he was Karl. Yet, Karl still called him Prentice. Everyone at school called him Prentice.
That was just fine with him. He liked his surname, even if it did belong to a woman who had signed him over at the hospital without even giving him a first name. It was his. He was a family of one, who had gone from foster home to foster home without shedding a single tear for any of the temporary parents he left behind.
He'd miss Karl, though.
He was fucked. Paul was completely fucked. Other lads had said that school would turn him into an arse bandit, and he wasn't exactly in a position to prove them wrong.
Of course he got chances to meet girls- every school disco was in conjunction with the girls' grammar school across the road. Karl, being the friend he was, had introduced him to his sister's friends, and he'd managed to convince one of them to go out with him for a bit. Sex was initially catastrophic, but improved with time.
But Karl still occasionally grinned at him and gave him a hard-on.
He'd dumped her- Jenny, her name was- which had hardly warmed Jean, Karl's sister, to him. But he couldn't handle it. The fact of the matter was, fifteen was a very confusing age, and her brother, with his long eyelashes and his seeming entirely unlike a boy sometimes, confused the matter further.
Karl never said he was gay, but other boys all thought he was, Paul included. Karl hated Games, and did everything in his power to avoid it. Mostly, he hated changing around other boys, and would skulk around until everyone else had left before changing and showering himself.
There were little things, too. He was fastidiously clean, constantly picking invisible specks of dirt from suspiciously neat nails. Paul thought he probably filed them, but never said anything about it. He occasionally carried strawberry chapstick in winter, and Paul became horrified to find himself noticing how soft Karl's lips were compared to other boys'.
He'd shivered in disgust at the thought of kissing Karl. Because Karl, despite occasional deviations from type, was still a boy.
Karl was great. Paul would do anything if he thought it'd get a laugh out of Karl, because Karl only laughed if he really meant it. It counted. Karl liked the right music, always knew exactly what to say, and had a better eye for fun than most other boys gave him credit for. If anyone else had said they were gay, he'd have probably given them stick. But not Karl. Karl was...
...almost perfect.
"Shit," Paul closed his eyes as he felt arousal creep up on him.
If only he wasn't a boy. Paul knew he wasn't gay, because Karl's being a boy was pretty much the only thing he didn't like about him. His cleverness, the swing of his hips, his mischievous smirk, would all have been perfect on a girl.
Paul might have been safe in bed, but he couldn't help but feel that he was about to do something very wrong.
"Oh fuck," he whispered, putting a hand to his cock.