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Elliot had first noticed Leo Baskerville two weeks into class, about 15 minutes after the transfer student entered the high school and still a good 20 minutes before the teacher introduced him.
“You think he’s hot, don’t you?” Elliot said to his only real friend in the school (though he’d rather die than admit it), Oz Vessalius, who harbored a hopeless crush on Elliot’s much-older brother, Gilbert, and whose impression of the new student had begun and ended with wondering if he could get blackmail on him faster than the school counselor, Rufus Barma, would be able to.
“No I don’t,” Oz said quickly. “I don’t think about Gil much at all.”
Elliot ignored this incredibly suspicious answer in favor of continuing to stare at the new student, who had earbuds in and was hunched over some thick book or other.
“You can’t even see his eyes, his glasses are so thick,” Elliot continued, as though Oz had not spoken. “There’s no way anybody could think that’s hot!”
“Gilbert wears contacts,” Oz said loyally, “and his prescription isn’t that strong.”
“Yeah,” said Elliot, who was also quite fond of his older brother, “but this new kid’s glasses are on another level.”
Oz finally looked up from his textbook, eyeing the new kid’s rat nest of black hair and thick glasses.
“Yeah, he isn’t hot,” he agreed.
Elliot looked over at him, offended. “I don’t need to take this from someone whose favorite character is fucking Edgar,” he snapped.
“Edgar is the best, screw you—”
“No thank you, I’m not gay,” said Elliot.
“Then why are you so offended that I don’t think the new kid is hot?” asked Oz, who was well aware that Elliot was, in fact, gay, but that his biological brothers were all deeply homophobic, and so Elliot remained closeted.
“I’m not offended, you just have bad taste,” Elliot told him.
“I have the best taste,” Oz said, nettled.
The new boy twisted around to face them. “Would you two shut up?” he said. “I’m reading.”
Elliot’s face went bright red. Oz shot the new boy a winning smile. “We’re sorry,” he said, before pulling out his phone and typing out a message into a group chat titled Disaster Trio: elliot has a crush, he wrote, lmao.
Two months passed. Leo and Oz bonded over their shared love of studying like the world was about to end. Elliot and Leo bickered more often than not, and Oz and his best friend and younger sister Alice watched in the background and made bets. Alice was only a year and seven months younger than Oz, but a grade below him and Elliot, since Oz had skipped a grade when he was young and Alice was a solid C student in everything other than PE. She was the only other person who knew of Oz’s crush, though really she couldn’t care less, and Gilbert was regularly scammed into babysitting her and Oz both through losing bets, much like the ones currently being made over Elliot and Leo—over their fighting, flirting, and any other interactions between the two of them.
One such battlefield was the music elective. Elliot had been forcing Oz to learn violin for as long as they’d been friends, and, though Oz didn’t share his friend’s talent or passion for music, he enjoyed it enough that he took any music class that Elliot was also in. Leo, who loved music as much as Elliot did and was just as talented, was also in the class; it was the one time the two boys didn’t ever clash, both seemingly regarding the class as sacred ground.
So when they got the assignment to attempt to make their own songs—or (with a look at Oz and some of the other less industrious members of the class) make their own parodies of existing songs—Oz was not entirely surprised when Elliot cast Leo a surreptitious glance and and muttered to Oz, “I’m going to write my song for him.”
Oz glanced down at his own planning sheet, where he had scribbled Stacy’s Mom --> Elliot’s brother ? and said, “And you’re sure you don’t have a crush on him?”
Elliot, predictably, blushed. “I dont know what you’re talking about,” he said haughtily.
Oz shrugged. “Alright,” he said. He paused. “If you were Stacy,” he said, “and the song was not about your mother but rather your brother, what would you do?”
“I would cut your fucking dick off,” said Elliot.
Oz, wisely, scratched his idea out.
Elliot’s song came out beautifully. Oz didn’t hear it until he performed it for class, though Leo had shown him his own composition, Lacie. Despite the fact that it was named after Oz and Alice’s birth mom, it was a great song, and Oz didn’t hesitate to inform Elliot of the fact.
Elliot had responded by playing Für Elise on his piano and singing “fuck you” along with the notes, of course, because Elliot was a dick.
In class, on the presentation day, Elliot wore a surprisingly nice suit. Oz spent the entire day furiously texting Alice and Gilbert and collecting bets on whether or not Elliot was planning on confessing to Leo (Gilbert wasn’t sure if Elliot even liked Leo that way, Alice thought that Elliot would chicken out at the last minute, and Oz thought that Leo would definitely confess first, even if it was only by a fraction of a second). Xerxes Break had even skipped his own third period class that he was meant to be teaching in order to spectate for the larger betting pool he was running, and was sitting underneath Oz’s desk, whispering commentary into his Apple watch, presumably to Sharon Rainsworth on the other end. Everyone else politely ignored him, with the exception of Elliot, who kicked him whenever he got too loud, and Reim, who was currently attempting to teach and was looking incredibly disappointed in his partner.
Leo performed Lacie at the beginning of class, to thunderous applause.
“Elliot,” said Break into his Apple watch, “is looking thunderously horny. I didn’t expect him to get turned on by classical music, but I can’t say I’m surpri—OW MOTHERFUCK!”
Break’s hand came away from his mouth, bloody; Elliot, satisfied, returned his foot to beneath his own desk and high-fived Oz. Leo turned around in his own desk at the commotion, and grinned and winked at them both. Oz winked back as Elliot’s face went very, very red.
Leo pulled out a crisp folder, neat and beautiful for that, though not particularly fancy. “Oz,” he said, in the tone of someone who knew exactly what he was doing to Elliot’s poor heart and nether regions, “would you mind giving this sheet music to Elliot? He was rather helpful to me with the composition.”
Oz took the folder, and leaned over to Elliot’s desk to watch as the older boy opened it to reveal the sheet music to Lacie and what appeared to be a very short love letter that Elliot, face flaming, concealed back in the folder before Oz was able to memorize more than a few lines.
“I’m not reading this,” he hissed at Leo’s back. “I’m not reading this until after my performance.”
“You’re a damned coward,” Leo whispered back, a smirk stretching its way onto his lips like a lazy cat.
“Shut up, you jerk,” Elliot muttered, kicking the back of Leo’s seat.
Leo just kept smirking.
“Mr. Nightray,” said Reim, near the end of his rope. “Do I hear you volunteering to go next?”
The class tittered; Oz joined Leo in smirking at Elliot.
“You know what?” Elliot said. “Yeah, fuck it. I am.”
“Watch your language, Mr. Nightray,” Reim snapped, though they’d all heard worse from Elliot and everyone here knew it.
“Right, yeah, sorry.” Elliot grabbed his own sheet music and strode confidently to the front of the classroom. “This is Statice,” he said. “I wrote it for Leo Baskerville, because I am madly in love with him, and also the note doesn’t count, I confessed first, you fucker.”
Under Oz’s desk, Break started howling with laughter and Oz, wracked with his own giggles, frantically texted Alice and Gilbert the updates.
Elliot, ignoring the class’s reactions to his little speech, sat down and plunged into his song. His fingers chased each other up and down the keyboard, and Leo, from what Oz could see of the back of his head, was impressed and possibly aroused, and Oz mentally prepared himself to see no friends other than Alice and possibly Gilbert, if he was subbing again, until the end of the day.
Statice finished, and the class clapped uproariously, and Leo stood from his desk, strode over to where Elliot was clearing his music away, and waited until Elliot was standing before getting up on his tiptoes and kissing him in front of the entire class.
Oz cheered. Break wolf-whistled. Reim—to the majority of the class’s utter surprise—pulled out his wallet and began pulling out twenty dollar bills as Break surreptitiously began filming.
“I’ll give you $50 for exclusive rights to the video!” Oz called, and Elliot flipped him off, still kissing Leo. Oz sat back in his chair, laughing.
It was always a great feeling, winning a bet.