Chapter Text
Your name is Dirk Strider, and you're freezing and tired. You turned fifteen in December, now starting another semester as a freshman in high school. You can't say that this is that exciting, especially with the January weather here. But you're boring as hell, so your opinion about what is “exciting” has to be taken with a grain (or a pound) of salt.
Depressingly, you are taking theatre. You only are taking this chance for the English credit and for your dad. He's worried about your social skills and the lack of friends you have. You do nothing after school, so when he heard about this class, he encouraged you to do it. You know you will not talk to anyone- you probably will end up just doing the basics of being a stand-in for someone. Maybe you'll get kicked out for arguing with someone, but that’s wishful thinking. It's cold and you have your arms crossed to your chest, hoping it makes you look indifferent rather than trying to keep warm. Why do the heaters have to break during winter? You could fix it faster than the repair guys that will take weeks, not to show off, of course. Oh, what the hell? You mean to brag; you are actually competent in mechanics. Chances are the heater’s filters just got too clogged. Or maybe the water pipes are overexposed so all the water in the sinks is cold.
As you are standing around and biting your tongue to keep from shivering, all because you wore a tank top and jeans in the middle of winter, you spot someone making their way towards you and your heart skips too many beats for it to be normal. Be social, oh God.
He makes his way over to you with one of the most amazing grins you have ever laid eyes on.
“Hello! I’m Jake, your name is?”
You blink and uncross your arms when he introduces himself.
Jake. That's easy to remember. You clear your throat and try to break your monotone voice a little as he looks at you. Why did he come over here? Is he just trying to be nice to you because you’re standing alone? Or are there ulterior motives to this introduction?
“I’m Dirk-” You cut yourself off because he smiles at you, trying to meet where he thinks your eyes are behind your shades.
God, that’s one beautiful smile. It crushes your heart more than you would like to admit.
“-it's nice to meet you,”
Jake sticks his hand out for you to shake. You almost freeze up there and then, but you take his hand. He takes both of his hands to shake your one enthusiastically.
“Nice to meet you too!” He chirps back enthusiastically.
He takes a seat down next to you, crossing his legs “criss-cross apple-sauce” style, and continues the conversation as you sit down and cross your arms back over your chest.
“So! What are you here for? There’s an awfully diverse crowd here this semester,” he hums.
You shrug, “English credit?” That’s a half-truth. You think he would realize you're a fucking loser if you admitted you have no friends, and this is just a sad attempt at socializing and appeasing your dad's worries.
“It's just so I can take robotics both semesters. What about you?” You continue with another truth. You need the English credit and the space for your favorite class.
He makes a few dramatic nods and then plants his hands behind him to lean back casually.
“Ah! I could tell,” he smiles a bit and sticks his tongue out at you for a moment, “did horribly last semester, but I’m not acting this time! I’m just a humble ol’ stagehand. I make everything work and my word is law!” He gives you a cat-like smile, like he’s up to something mischievous.
The smallest hint of a smile crosses your face as you nod along.
“That's too much power for one man, I think. I have to act, probably just going to end up as a stand-in or something if someone gets sick, which is preferable to everything else.”
“An understudy!” He corrects your terminology as kindly as he could, then returns to a forward sitting position and claps his hands together once, and holds them there in front of his chest.
“Delightful. However, I don’t think we’re doing understudies at all because we only have about twenty-four people... Leaving only about two for the chorus... So you’d be lucky if you even got one of those ensemble parts.”
Well, there goes the easy way out of everything. You don't know how well this will go. End up being an important character that has too many useless appearances? No, thank you. You would be happy with the prince. He only has what, three appearances in total?
“Well, I doubt I'll get any important roles. That'd just be hellish. I can't act for shit. Unless I drop the monotone somehow,” you finally uncross your arms as you get less tense.
He seems friendly enough that you can let your guard down a bit more. But there is always the chance this is just a ploy to humiliate you later. You could drop the monotone entirely and bring more life into your voice if you really tried. It just takes energy to sound alive, not robotic, full of emotion.
He shrugs and leans back in his hands.
“Every role is important! However, importance won’t stop you from making a fool of yourself.” He grimaces and looks down at his knees for a moment. You wonder what happened last semester to make him stop acting.
“Anyway-” He shakes his head as if to shake himself of his thoughts, “-I’m sure you’ll do wonderfully, Dirk,”
Maybe that makes you blush a little. You don't think you do that wonderfully, but that makes you feel believed in. The heat in your cheeks is uncomfortable and unnatural. You try to will it to fade.
“I don't think so, but- thank you. We'll see-” you cut yourself off from finishing yet again.
Someone being nice to you is a pleasant change of things. But you don't want to get too comfortable. This can change. This will change.
“As long as you aren’t a klutz and don’t forget all your lines, you’ll do at least decent!” He gives you a little cheerful smile and looks over at the teacher, setting up things with the other students. He pushes himself into a standing position and offers his hand out to you to help you stand.
“It looks like we’ll be starting-”
You nod, watching as he stands up and offers his hand to you- you don't really need the help up, but you guess you'll take it. No reason. You take his hand and let him help you stand up.
You clear your throat to mask a disappointed sigh. “Guess we'll talk after all this?”
He doesn’t let go of your hand when he pulls you up.
“Eh, since it’s the first day, there will be a looooooot of chances to talk. First few days are auditions, so we pretty much just sit around and wait for them to call you into the side room,” he pauses for a moment, “you brought the monolog they emailed out, right?”
Now that is a new emotion. He's not letting go of your hand. You don't know if you should let go or if you should hold his hand through all this- and you are going to work yourself into an anxiety attack if you keep thinking about it. You wish you wore your gloves today to mask the fact your hands were sweating.
“Got it- and uh, yeah. I printed it out before class last minute,” you try to clear your throat to disguise any horrible voice cracks that might be brewing.
He must feel your hands getting sweaty. He gives your hand a little squeeze before letting go finally.
“That's better than nothing! Most people forget to bring it at all, so you’re already ahead of the game!” He gives you a friendly elbow to the arm and continues, “Technically, they want it memorized before the first day… but nobody actually does that. So you’ll be fine! Just remember to breathe.”
You try to look nonchalant as you wipe your hand on your jeans and get hold of the paper from your pocket, unfolding it in your hands.
"Well, I can memorize things pretty fast- and my name is low on the list alphabetically. I think I can remember to breathe. Or I'd die,” that was a poor attempt at a joke.
He doesn’t laugh, and that makes you cringe. You have different senses of humor. You need to learn his.
“Oh, they never do it alphabetically. It’s always random.” He gives you a little pat. Said pat catches you off guard and you might tense up a little, but you elect to ignore it the best you can as he leads you to where everyone is grouping up together.
“That's anxiety-inducing. They could have made it easier that way-” you cut yourself off so he can keep explaining.
“Just hope and pray you aren’t up first! Cause first we have some improv games to warm up before we get into the hot and heavy.”
You.
You don’t think he knows what “hot and heavy” means.
You try not to choke on a laugh as you speak up again. "I don't think you used that right- but I get what you mean."
“Oh no,” his voice gets quiet and small fast, erupting head to toe in blush.
“Sorry-” He cuts himself off and changes the subject with a voice crack and a clear of his throat, trying to play it all off by tugging at his collar and laughing, “-so! The games are usually fun... Some are just group horseshit, but others you have to talk to people and make whole scenes... Though I don’t know if they’d do those on the first day,”
You temporarily change the subject back.
“You're fine, it's not that bad-” Then you cut yourself off because, hey, you're not great at comforting people and you don't even know if this is the right situation to offer comfort in, so you switch back to the theatre.
“So it's just, mostly improv? I could probably tolerate that, but no guarantees I'm any good at it.”
“Mhm... Mostly improv or a bunch of silly noises with eye contact!” It feels sudden when he reaches over to pat his finger on the edge of your shades. “I don’t know if they’ll let you wear those for the eye contact games,”
Fuck this.
You clear your throat and try not to mumble. “... They're prescription-”
You are so fucked if they won't let you wear them right now. Not only are they prescription but they are there so you don't have to make eye contact. You had to go through all this bullshit with the school counselor and principal and your dad to even have them allowed in school.
“-But I guess that it’s fair?” You finish.
“Yeah... they say it makes more “bonding” between the cast or somethin’ if you can look at each other's eyes with intent. ” He punctuates his sentence by staring right at you, you assume into your shades to attempt eye contact.
Time to make another subject change. You don’t want to think about the eye contact you just made and hid from him with your oh-so-lovely shades. You just have to shake off the anxiety for now.
“Sounds homoerotic to me.”
“A bit what?” He looks confused. You must have really fucked up.
You can already feel the anxiety pooling in the pit of your stomach. "... Homoerotic? I mean, by definition, it's the arousing desire centered on a person of the same sex-"
His face turns red as he brings a hand up to tug at his collar again- that’s a nervous habit you already picked up on, “apologies- I w-wasn’t trying to,” he clears his throat and looks away from you.
You really fucked up. Why would you say that out loud and ruin this so fast? You were finally getting your hopes up. You are such a fucking idiot. You're ruining your one potential friendship.
“No- I just call things homoerotic. It's fine. I’m just making fun of “eye contact with intent. ” It's just my humor-”
“-boner humor?”
Well, you can’t deny that boner humor is hilarious under the right circumstances. That’s not what you’re aiming for.
You shake your head, “not boner humor just- jokes about things being gay? Just ignore this conversation. It's fine-” your attempts at shutting down this topic are hilariously failing. The universe is laughing at you.
A silence falls between you for a moment.
“... Being gay?”
Shit, you guess you’re going to start comically failing at info-dumping for this him.
“Uh- liking people of the same gender. "Straight" is the opposite of that and is what people consider normal.”
You don't mind explaining this to him, but you feel like someone is going to overhear you and absolutely slaughter you on sight. As if half the girls in your gym class don’t want to already.
More questions arise from him. Was he just isolated as a kid or are you just over-informed?
“Gender...? Why do people consider that normal? Can’t you just like anybody?”
At least he doesn’t seem upset with you just yet.
You fumble to find an appropriate answer before settling on one to sigh out, “because they're stupid- you can like anyone people just, suck,”
“But what’s a gender?”
You aren’t actually upset he’s asking so much- he seems genuinely curious, but the anxiety you feel in every inch of your body is making you quietly sick. Like you’re a can of shaken-up soda, waiting to be opened to explode over some unfortunate soul.
You hush yourself so people don't overhear you and give you weird looks. “The stupid people just define it as your assigned sex at birth, which is male or female- but gender itself is complex and people don't always fit into male or female? I don't know how to describe it exactly.”
“... What does M sex mean-? That was on my card thing, and... Where does the gender go? Like...” He trails off on his sentence, so you just take to answer the ones you think you can.
"It stands for male- on legal stuff, it's always your sex unless you change it on the card, it's either M, F, or sometimes X if the state is cool and you don't identify as either male or female."
“How do you know which one you are? Everybody seems to make such a big deal of it, but I don’t understand what all the poppycock is and it’s honestly getting ridiculous,” he huffs.
Poppycock. Holy shit, you are never going to tire of his vocabulary. He talks right out of an old classics movie.
You give him an awkward shrug. You’re not sure you can use yourself as an example just yet. Maybe in the future.
“You just have to think about what you feel, I guess. It's different for everyone. Most people seem to identify with what they were assigned at birth,”
Hey, at least he doesn’t seem to care? So it might be safe to talk to him about it more often.
Jake pauses for a moment, thinking. “I don’t think I really care for either, then. It’s just fun to act like I am! I like (some obscure old classics character that’s extremely gay and has gender energy). They feel nice.”
You give him a little smile and nod along, “yeah, I get you,”
He smiles- no; he fucking beams at you. You could melt. But you don’t. You won’t. You shouldn’t. God, whatever, you’ll just ignore the feelings bubbling up in your chest.
He interrupts your thoughts. “Which one are you?”
"Oh. I'm a guy- male- yeah-" you stumble over your words, he surprised you with the question.
You stutter so fucking bad.
What the fuck is wrong with you Dirk? Nice one, you’re really convincing. He could probably see straight through you. He just started attending school here. It's not like all the people who already know you’re trans.
He doesn’t seem to notice you stumbling at all. It’s almost a pleasant surprise. “What’s that like? How did you figure that one out?”
There is something so nice about how excited he is to learn more about this, at least from your perspective. You’re not the best educator, but you’re happy to talk about this when it’s not a transphobe trying to prove you wrong.
"I didn't like any other option I guess and this just fit me the most-? I- uh, I can explain it later,"
He nods enthusiastically. “That’s fascinating. My nana doesn’t tell me much about this...” He trails off before he continues, “I don’t even know if she knows!”
You nod a little and stuff your hands into your pockets. "A lot of the internet will give you your answers, just use Google."
“Oh, that little thing! I will!”
The teacher calls everybody up and your attention immediately perks over to her.
Jake turns his attention to her. “Oh! Looks like we’re starting-“
You hold back a sigh. The anxieties that were melting away come right back when the teacher calls everyone over. You turn your attention to her, "-guess we are,"
You go through a fucking dumb age, name, fun fact game with the group. You just said that you like robotics. No one batted an eye. Then you do “warm-ups” that you just pretend to take part in.
You’re fine. This is only for the semester.
Then they call people back just like Jake said they would, but to your surprise, they do not call you first. Thank God.
Jake, patting you firmly on the back, snaps you out of your thoughts. “Looks like you’re in luck! You’ve got some time to work on that memorization-“
You sigh a little after recovering from the pat, "-yeah, I better get on that." You unfold your packet and just start glancing over it. "This shouldn't be the worst,"
“Just about a paragraph or two! Shouldn’t be that hard, and if you remember the flow, you can improvise words on the spot.” He gives you a little smile and sits down against a nearby wall and pats the space next to him.
That’s an invitation to sit with each other. Oh, what the hell, it's better than being alone. "I think I can handle that."
You take a minute, but you sit down next to him and continue going over the paragraphs.
Eventually, you two get to where you can start saying little bits of it back to you without the paper.
“Okay and noooow-” he takes the paper from your hands and looks at it, “-you say whatever you can remember, and if you get stuck, I’ll prompt you!”
There is something kinda sweet about that, but that's just basic human decency and you're lonely as hell.
“Got it-” you let him take the paper before you try to repeat everything back to him, not exactly acting it all out in front of him. You'd rather die than embarrass yourself in front of a potential friend like this.
He gives you little encouraging looks and helps you with the words when you mess up, until you finally get all the way through with no help, which needing help in the first place is fucking embarrassing-
“-Amazing!” He claps for you and sets the sheet down.
Maybe you're blushing by the end, but acknowledging that would take more emotional transparency than you'll ever give to anyone or yourself. “Thank you-”
“Of course! Y-”
-His words get cut off as the director calls for you to come into the side room for auditions.
“That's your cue-” Jake (definitely too loud) stage whispers and hands the papers back to you, “-right on time!” He gives a little giggle and makes one of the cutest faces you have ever seen in your life.
You take the papers back from him and stand back up, giving him a tiny smile again out of plain anxiety, and awkwardly just follow the director to the side room to try not to utterly embarrass yourself.
That fucking fails.
You make a poor attempt at acting in front of the directors, it will be forever engraved in your mind. At least they didn’t ask you to take off your shades for it. You just hate how they stared at you so much. Could they have at least taken their eyes off you for a minute? Jesus.
TLDR: You end up doing your audition poorly (at least to you).
You leave the room as quickly as you can and look for Jake again. Once you find him sitting in the same spot, you plop back down next to him and pretend like you're not having a heart attack.
Which probably fails too because he gives you a few pats on the shoulder.
“That bad, huh? Don’t worry! Everybody comes out looking like that, but now the second worst part of the semester is over! Now you get to spend the next three days just sitting around cause you got to go so early,”
The pats make you tense again, but you shrug it off the best you can. "I'll worry about it for ages- but it's whatever. It's not going to kill me. I think it was bad. At least I didn't have to look them in the eyes,"
He chuckles a bit, “oh boy, all I did was eye contact and I think I freaked them out- so you did good! How did the monolog go?”
"The shades counter that." You shrug again. Then you notice that you're shrugging too much. You are making this awkward, "I think I did shitty,"
Jake sees right through you. You don’t know how to feel about that.
“Did you mess up or just, you think? ”
"Why does that matter-" You don't intend that to come out as cold as it did.
His voice drops as he opens his mouth to speak again. “I don’t know. I’m just curious,”
"Oh- sorry," you sound too mean and cold. Saying sorry probably won't make a difference, "I guess I just think."
He nods a little and looks at the space between the two of you. “... So it couldn’t have gone too terribly?”
"I hope not. I guess I won't know until they tell me."
“That’ll be at least a week- at most, a month or two, knowing how this stuff goes. They’re not very time efficient-“
You frown a little just out of annoyance, "I assumed so,"
“Yeaaaah,” his face pops back into its normal sunny disposition as he looks back up to you with another question.
“What do you do for fun?”
"Oh. I just do robotics stuff and read. Nothing really that cool." At least he seems happy still, so you're doing something right.
"What about you?"
“That’s so cool! You must be brilliant.” He looks at you like you have just hung every star in the sky. Bright eyed and intrigued it makes your heart skip a beat. “Uh... honestly, I mostly read, too!”
Brilliant.
Without Jane to keep your ego in check, you would let these compliments go to your head.
“Maybe I am a little- reading is nice, I just read a lot of stuff about history,” you say it as nonchalantly as possible.
“I like everything! However nana won’t let me read her wife’s erotica books,”
You hold back a choked laugh again. "Yeah- no, those are books with sex in it. That's what erotica really is- sexual stuff-"
His face turns a bright red just as you finish your sentence, “oh.”
“Yeah,”
There is an awkward beat of silence that almost makes you cringe.
“Well then,”
You clear your throat and just pretend that didn’t happen.
He tugs at his collar for maybe the hundredth time since you’ve met him. That’s obviously exaggerated, but that seems to be a big nervous habit for him. You might pick up on that eventually, mirroring is hard to not do.
“Sorry ‘bout that-“
Why is he even apologizing to you? It’s a little funny at the least.
“No- no, you’re fine-”
“-Anyway!” He claps his hands together to punctuate his sentence.
Silence settles between you two again. You realized you don’t have another topic to discuss. You can’t even think of anything. Your thoughts are too fuzzy and prominent. Also, you’re boring as hell.
You try to start something, “so…"
“So,”
Fuck, you guess you’re bringing up the obligatory friend topic.
“Do you have any friends around here-?”
“Nope- you?”
That makes you a little concerned. He seems so friendly and sweet and yet he’s resorted to making friends with you? You already know that people are fucked up, but to pass up his friendship seems like a mistake on their part.
“No, I’m just the “weird kid” with the shades to everyone here- if they haven’t already warned you,”
He shakes his head. “Nobody’s ‘warned me,’ are you dangerous?”
“No- I’m not. They just don’t like me,”
“Oh,” he pauses, “I don’t think people like me that much either. Maybe we have that in common.”
He smiles, and your heart sinks- in a good way? In a good way, you think.
“... Yeah. Maybe that's a good thing. Something to bond over-” Why are you suggesting this? He'll find you weird later and just ditch you.
“Mhm! Maybe we can be misfits together!”
You can’t hold back the soft laugh that was bubbling in your throat. “Sounds good to me,”
There is a pleasant silence between you for a moment. It’s just a smiley sweet one- until he breaks it again with a tone that worries you.
“Er, ...Dirk?”
Another tug to his collar.
You try not to shift too much, hoping to conceal your own nervousness. “Yeah?”
“Are... Are we friends now?”
Your heart no longer has the soft sink-y feeling but is pounding out of your chest. He’s considering you a friend? Already? He hasn’t thought this over, has he?
“Do you want to be friends?"
He pauses for a moment, looking directly into your shades where he thinks he’s making eye contact with you.
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more-"
You blink.
He’s serious, isn’t he?
“Then it’s settled-”
He gives you one of the giddiest smiles you’ve seen from him all day. “It is!”
You give him the bare minimum of a smile; you aren’t used to it. But if he’s going to keep showing off his grin like that, you might just have to learn how to smile.
After breaking what eye contact he thought he was making with you, he brings up another topic as he settles back against the wall. “Oh- what classes are you in?”
You snap out of it and lean back against the wall next to him.
"Oh- uh, the base classes like math and English, then robotics and computers, your classes?"
”Uh… First-period geometry… Second period English… Third-period biology… Then fourth-period lunch, fifth-period history… then this!”
That’s a pleasant surprise. "I think I have biology with you?"
“Do you?”
“I sit in the back and I talk little, so-”
“Oooohhh, that’s why I haven’t noticed you,”
“Probably, I’ve seen you around, I think, but I just haven’t spoken to you until today,”
“Really?-” he cuts off his question with another, “... have you heard them say the rude stuff about me yet?”
You pause.
You have. You’ve heard all the slurs and insults. It makes you so fucking angry. You don’t care if they call you those things, but Jake hasn’t done shit to deserve it.
"I don't listen to them, I hate these people's fuckin' guts dude- They've been saying similar shit about me for years- don't take it to heart, okay?"
“You’re too wonderful for them to say those things about-”
That makes your heart sink. You really aren’t that wonderful, but it feels nice to hear it, you guess.
You try to shrug it off, "it's cool, I'm just mad that they're talking shit about you when you've done nothing to deserve it-”
”I don’t even know why they do it! I know I’m not the brightest but it feels uncalled for,”
"It is uncalled for- it's stupid," you frown a little and you hesitantly reach to pat his shoulder, "I'd just ignore it,”
“It’s kinda hard to ignore when they paint your locker with it,” he looks almost embarrassed to say it.
At least you can offer some sort of tip for it? Google is your best friend.
"Hand sanitizer gets sharpie off of everything, mostly for walls and lockers but-"
“-Thank you,“
He sounds so genuine when he says it; it throws you off.
"Yeah- don't worry about it,”
Again, he looks at you like you’ve hung the stars, the moon, hell, even the planets, and the sky.
“... You’re very pretty,”
It feels sudden and almost like an unnecessary compliment, or, in simple terms, it catches you off guard. All because you don’t get compliments.
You don’t know what to say, you just freeze up before you can stumble out a stupid little “thank you,” and then when you gather yourself what little confidence you can muster, “you are too,”
A grin appears across his face and you think your heart stops beating long enough for it to be fatal, “thank you!”
“Just the truth,”
“Well, my nana also says that, so it must be! I don’t think she can lie-”
“-I’m as truthful as I can be,”
“Wonderful!”
A smile tugs at your lips while you mutter a little “yeah,” in agreement.
The teacher suddenly calls for the end of class and you grimace.
Why does it have to be over so soon? Why now? You were finally enjoying your time here. Well, the cute boy part. Not the theatre being a bitch part, that’s for sure. The two of you just listen to her say how you all did good jobs today and they would do more auditions tomorrow.
“Well I guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow-” You cut your sigh off with one of the worst ideas ever, it’s spontaneous and you cringe at yourself before the words even get out of your mouth.
“-Unless I could have your phone number?”
Way to go, you’re getting impulsive and too comfortable with him. You can stand to fix that slipping mask a little, honestly.
He flushes a pleasant shade of pink as he fumbles through his pockets, “of course!”
Jake hands his phone over to you, and you carefully take it to add your contact to his phone, trying to play off the interaction as cool as possible.
“-Cool, I’ll see you later then?”
“Yes!”
Jake stands up and runs to get his bag before coming right back over to you to give you his hand for help standing.
This time you think little about it and take his hand to get some help up, grabbing your bag off the floor. You pause for a moment before speaking up.
“... Thank you for talking to me,”
“Of course! That’s what friends are for,” he gives you a smile and lifts your hand to press a quick kiss to the back of it, then let's go with a big wave as he hops on away, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dirk!”
That is a LOT of emotions to unpack and you will have to toss the entire suitcase into the ocean, drop the key down the sewer drain and forget about it. Which will not happen. This will keep you up for weeks on end. You just know it. Like a murder you got away with in the eighties that you feel guilty for until you reach your deathbed to make a confession.
"See you later-" You wave back and watch him leave.
Man, you wish you had more classes together already.
***
You have a lot to unpack, a lot to think about. But you don't want to exactly.
When you set foot in the apartment again, you text your dad to let him know that you're home; you don't have homework, and your chores for the week are already finished. He just sends you a thumbs-up emoji and you leave that conversation at that. Not an uncommon occurrence, but you would prefer a full-on response, even if it's just a quick thank you. You leave your phone on your desk and just get on your computer for a couple of hours to waste your time until you need to make dinner. Your dad let you get some 3D printing programs and might buy you a 3D printer later on. You hope he gets you one because even though designing parts for robots is fun, you'd prefer to be able to print them and actually build something outside of school.
After playing with your 3D programs, you zone out during some animatronic video about the functions of the creepy-ass Chucky Cheese animatronics that got decommissioned. You'll have to re-watch it later because all you can think about is Jake.
He really consumed all your thoughts, huh? You don't want to admit that you think you could really be friends with him; he deserves someone much nicer. He's friendly, you, not so much. But you guess you're nice to him. It's hard not to be when he's just bursting with positive energy. It's contagious, and frankly, you like that. It's a break from how much fighting you do with yourself in your head on a daily basis. Even if right now you are fighting with yourself over him, his energy almost fully trumps the negativities you have.
You probably would have gotten removed from the class if you had to talk to someone else. They all know that you're just a huge asshole who can't keep his critiques to himself enough to be a likable person. Hell, you could have gotten into a physical fight with someone, especially if it's one of those girls that everyone tolerates because they are pretty and play sports or do other extracurriculars. Or their parents are rich. Or both.
Your angry train of thought stops, and goes right back to Jake. But it doesn’t stop for long enough to fucking hating yourself for a few minutes.
The hand kiss is what's consuming your thoughts. That and him holding onto your hand, telling you how well you were going to do for an audition. It was so sweet and you don't think you could ever handle that kind of praise again without crying. You have to do something nice for him sometime. You think you can bake cookies? You've made them before. The ones on the edges were only a little burnt. You wonder if he even likes cookies. You could just ask him, maybe get him stuff from the vending machine at school, or just man up and make him the fucking cookies. You know if you don’t, you’ll just end up not making them or forgetting your money at home.
You want to do something nice for him, since your friendship isn’t worth much. You could probably sell your friendship to Satan and only get a corn chip for it. Which can be worth it depending on the context (wow, a tumblr reference). Maybe you’d sell your friendship to him, so no one has to deal with the clinginess that’ll come with it. Sure you have Jane, but she lives across town and doesn’t go to school with you, so you have no time to hang out and only text each other when you aren’t ghosting her. Maybe she can teach you to make cookies for him this weekend? You’ll just invite her over and she can help you. You don’t know what you'd do without her.
Oh, you would never hear the end of it if she knew you were baking these for another person. Especially someone like Jake. You would rather die than have her pester you about a crush. You’re friends and he’s pretty. Simple. You think Jane is pretty but you don’t have a crush on her, but that makes perfect sense when you don't like women and she's a lesbian. Perfect match for some best friends.
Whatever, you’ll ignore it if she thinks you have a crush. You’re being shown basic human decency, so of course, you’re going to return it. Even if you met just today. Maybe your dad would be proud of you to know that you’ve made a friend so fast, but there is no time to talk about Jake to him. As if you care. You understand that work is hard and time-consuming. At least he’s around on the weekends sometimes. Unless they need him for something and he’s called back in for work. You wish his boss flopped his schedule, more than you’d like to admit. But we’ll pretend that it doesn’t matter to you.
Eventually, the video ends and you take off your headphones, saving the video to your watch-later list since you just use it to zone out and think for a while. You leave your bedroom to eat dinner once you’re done; you do the dishes so your dad doesn’t have to tomorrow morning. Once you finish them, you find yourself zoning out again. You wish you had a more “no thoughts, head empty” kind of brain, but God has cursed you to be an overthinker. Jokes on him, you’ll make him pay for that one. Instead of plotting to kill God, you end up getting your tools from your room, the toaster oven (that rarely gets used) from the cabinet, and crawl up onto the kitchen island, sitting cross-legged and dismantling it. You don’t mean to brag, but it’s easy for you to take it apart and put it back together within an hour or two. It feels even quicker when you space out on it.
You don’t want Jake to hate you. His first impression of you seems to be that you’re nice and helpful. Which you try to be helpful, honestly. You just aren’t nice. You like to help. It makes you feel good and the other person is getting more out of it than your selfish ass will. You’re just selfish and mean. Which everyone else has already figured out. You just don’t want to lie to Jake about how you act. Unless you keep up a pretty convincing façade. Or maybe he just brings out the best in you with his positivity. Or maybe you subconsciously try to match his energy and you’re just lying more to him and yourself. You’re stupid and selfish. That’s it. End of discussion. Shut up.
Shut up.
You don’t know if this is one of the many freak outs that is over a potential friend or just something else entirely. You’ll just go with the freak out because you’re barely hanging on with this toaster-oven-disassembly just so you don’t go have a panic attack because-
He might actually like you. You don’t know what to do about it. You decide to shut up your thoughts by focusing on the disassembling again. It's a relaxer. It's a controlled process that has to be done step by step and done properly , which makes it a good repetitive process to do. Especially since your dad doesn't know about it. He'd get concerned that you'll burn yourself or cut yourself on some sharp edge.
You can continue to freak out later. You are really exhausted from thinking.