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Chris gets caught the very first time he tries to sneak a gift into Darren’s locker.
“Chris! Were you waiting for me?” Darren seems cautiously pleased.
“No,” Chris says, because it’s the truth, and he wasn’t. But Darren’s face falls so abruptly that Chris quickly adds, “I mean, yeah. I was. I just - thought you weren’t here. I was going to leave.”
“Oh. Well, cool.” It doesn’t make much sense, but Darren doesn’t seem to care. He’s smiling again, soft and small. “Well, I’m around now. What did you need?”
It’s a strange state, for him to be holding back his natural enthusiasm. Did Chris really do that? Why did Chris do that? He knows all the reasons he was cold to Darren before, but suddenly they just seem petty and small.
“I thought maybe we could work on a story together,” Chris says. “For the writer’s club.”
“Together?” Darren seems shocked. “Me and you?”
“Yeah.” Chris laughs a little. He’s nervous. Does he sound nervous? Probably. “If you want to.”
*
Chris also gets caught the second time he tries to sneak a gift into it.
This time it’s Joey, one of Darren’s lackeys.
(Friends, Chris corrects himself mentally. Darren has friends. Not lackeys.
Okay, they’re lackeys.
But they’re probably friendly lackeys.
Anyway.)
“Oh, you’re Colfer, right?” Joey asks. “You waiting on Darren?”
In sixth grade, Joey stole Chris’s tater tots, because he was hungry and Chris had been saving them for last. Joey decided Chris must not want them and then just grabbed them off Chris’s plate. Chris has held a grudge since then.
“Yeah. We’re working on something for writer’s club.” Chris swings his backpack around and slides the present back in between his textbooks before Joey can see what it was. It’s not embarrassing, really - at least not in theory. What is embarrassing is how many hours Chris spent the night before hand crafting a book of obscure Disney song chords and lyrics and then printing them out and making a special cover.
“And you had to try and guess his locker combo for that?” Joey is smirking.
Chris wants to punch his tater-tot stealing face just a little bit.
He refrains, mostly because Joey might be kind of scrawny but he has other friends that aren’t. Also, Darren might stop liking him if Chris went around hitting Darren’s friends.
And Chris actually kind of wants Darren to keep liking him. He kind of wants that a lot.
“Don’t worry, man,” Joey says, slapping him on the shoulder. “I got your back.”
*
The third time it’s a teacher, which only matters because it’s actually between classes. Chris pretends to have a bathroom emergency (as embarrassing as that is to say in front of the classroom) and gets a hall pass. He immediately heads to his locker, where he finds a chocolate bar with a note about warding off dementors that makes him grin stupidly for two whole minutes, staring down at the handwriting that he definitely recognizes as Darren’s by now.
He leaves the candy bar where it is and retrieves Darren’s present from where he’d tucked it away between two textbooks just in case of this happenstance.
He’s halfway to Darren’s locker when he gets caught by a teacher on an off period. “Colfer, do you have a pass?” The teacher asks.
Chris hands it over. His hall pass had the time marked as fourteen minutes ago, and the originating classroom is on an entirely different floor.
The teacher who checks it gives him a terrible glare and sends him on his way, watching to make sure he doesn’t stray until he’s at the stairs.
*
It’s Darren again, the fourth time.
He thinks Chris is just waiting for him at his locker again, and he looks just - so damn happy about it. Chris thinks about the chocolate bar and how he’s meeting Darren after class to work on the writing club project they’re doing together and he can’t even bring himself to be upset he’s been caught.
*
The fifth time, Chris gives up.
“Here,” he says, thrusting the gift-wrapped book into Darren’s hands. “This is for you.”
“What?” Darren seems floored.
“I know you’ve been leaving me presents. I don’t know why, but I know it’s you.” Chris pauses. Darren doesn’t disagree with him. “And I wanted to leave you one, but on top of apparently spending three-fourths of your school day at your locker you are also the most popular guy in school which means every other student also seems to spend three-fourths of their day at your locker. So I concede, I admit defeat. Here is your present, I think you’re cute, and if this is your way of asking me out then I am saying yes.”
“Fuck.” Darren stares down at the box in his hand, then up at Chris. Before Chris can actually process what’s happening Darren is stepping into his space. He stops just short of Chris’s mouth touching his and says, “This is okay, right?”
Chris mashes their lips together. He doesn’t have much experience with this, but he figures Darren must know that.
He’s dazed by the time Darren pulls back. “I like you so fucking much,” Darren says. “I have for years.”
“Oh.” Chris is now dazed and confused, no cheesy reference intended. “Okay.”
That just makes Darren laugh. He reaches down and grabs Chris’s hand. “So you liked the stuff?”
“Yeah.” Chris’s smile goes soft. Darren’s holding his hand. Darren, a boy, a boy Chris likes, is holding hands with him. “Okay, the first cookies were pretty crappy.”
Darren's face does that weird smiling-kinda-beaming thing. "Maybe you can come over and we can try to make better ones together."
Chris's heart beats fast in his chest and they start to walk. "Yeah. Maybe so."