t h i r t e e n

"Man, I'm sorry." Jake sighed apologetically, swinging an arm around his shoulder to where he was slumped at the table.

"If we knew he was going to react like that we would have never have let you go with Ellen," Mia said across from him, hands placed on top of his.

"Excuse me," Ellen quipped up at the end of the table, head raised from the hand where her elbow was resting on the wood with an annoyed look," this is not my fault. Felix is just freaking stupid and deserves to be punched repeatedly. In the throat."

"He's your best friend," Jake supplied."You do something."

"Yeah, well, I'm beginning to rethink that privilege of his," she huffed, dark lips puffing out,"and I already double punched him in the jugular for being a douche."

Jake blinked."That's... awesome! Did you really?"

Ellen just grinned, looking at her nails.

"Guys, I don't really think you're helping with the situation." Mia glared at them both.

"He's fine, Mia." Ellen rolled her eyes. "He's just being a little baby because his true love in black was a little mean to him in front of his friends."

"You suck, Ellen!" Sam shot pathetically, still sprawled across the table feeling sorry for himself.

"Shut up, you are desperately fond of me."Ellen smacked him over the head, making him yelp and catch his baseball cap before it went flying. "Get over yourself. You knew he was a dick to start off with."

Sam groaned into his arms again, encasing himself in the smell of old wood from the table. She was right, Felix had always been cocky and mean, had always scared everyone off with his scary exterior and even more terrifying interior.

"I think what we learned from everything here is that Felix is better with Sam when they are on their own." Ellen said after a while of silence. Sam whipped his head up.

"Are you insane!?" He cried.

She grinned wide, eyes bright. "Just a little."

"There's no way I'm seeing him alone again. I can't handle it. He'll kill me."

"He didn't kill you before," Mia supplied most helpfully. And when Sam said helpfully he meant not at all. She knew it too, giving him a puppy-eyed look that Sam was 90% sure was what made him go out with her in the first place. He was weak for it. "Maybe he was just trying to be big in front of his friends."

Ellen snorted. "There's no 'maybe' about it. Felix is a massive softie underneath everything. He's just a massive jerk around everyone else. I can't tell you how many times I have had to call him out for his shit."

Sam didn't care if Felix was a softie underneath, he had quite enough of his outsides to make him feel as if he wanted to run for the hills and find a cave in to hide in forever. Felix had played around Sam's feeling more than he could count and he hadn't even had a proper conversation with the boy with the bright eyes and the dark clothes other than threats and apologies.

He was done.

"I'm done," he told Ellen. And that was that.

~☠~

Turns out, he really didn't need to confront Felix or let Ellen pull him into some elaborate plan to get him and Felix alone (Ellen preferably wanted to lock them in a broom closet because she was a sadist and unoriginal) as he was there, standing with his head down low and looking at his crossed legs and fingers playing nervously with his lip rings just as Sam opened the art room door the next morning.

He froze for a second, drinking in the sight like a parched man like he usually did before shaking his head an considering running away like hell on fire. He would have to, if it wasn't for Felix lifting his head and striking Sam down on the spot, penetrating his very soul with a glance of silver.

Damn, Sam was pathetic.

"Sam..." And fuck, he wasn't done at all. Felix moved forward as Sam moved into the classroom, giving up any idea of running away when Felix was right in front of him. "Look, man, I'm sorry about yesterday."

Sam gave a bitter laugh as he put down his board with a clatter and slide of his bagpack. "Yeah... me too- I'm sorry for ever thinking going down there was a good idea."

If Sam knew Felix any better- which he definitely would want to- he'd say Felix looked a little embarrassed, shuffling about from foot to foot after gaping a few seconds at Sam as if he had something to say. After that moment passed Sam was moving about the class, ignoring the boy that filled every part of his brain with no exclamation of why he ever started being there in the first place. He started with washing out a water pot and picking out a few brushes that lay at the side of the sink that had been forgotten from the day before.

He was coming back, both water and brushes and water in his hands to the table to start on a painting when Felix spoke up again.

"Why were you back there?" He asked, his voice light and curious.

Sam hesitated for a moment, water in the pot jostling from the stop before he placed that and the brushes down on the table, not looking at Felix at all as he zipped open his bag and started rifling through his bag uselessly for something to do. "Em... I was- you know- just stopping by, introducing myself."

"Yeah but why?" Felix was suddenly beside him, arm brushing his.

Sam rifled harder, doing nothing but really slapping his sketch pads against each other. "Uh... you know? Just being friendly and..." Felix leaned, catching his eyesight and making him falter. His lips quirked into a knowing smile, eye bright. "...and, uh... and b-being friendly- stop doing that?"

"Doing what?" Felix cocked his head innocently.

Sam waved his hands about.

"You just gestured to the all of me," Felix laughed a little, ducking his head in a way that had Sam's head reeling more than it already was whenever Felix was around him.

Sam let out a laugh of his own, strangled and weak. "Yeah, well, it's all of you that needs to stop."

"Alright, alright," Felix grinned, hands up and backing away, "I'll bite."

Oh how Sam wish he would. All over him.

"I just- I don't understand you!" Sam suddenly burst out with, slamming his bag on the table, making Felix jump in surprise, silver eyes wide as he looked down as Sam turned to him. "One minute you're apologising, complimenting my art and the next you're threatening me and calling me names to my face. I can't keep up with you."

Felix breathed for a moment, processing Sam's outburst until he was blinking and stepping forward, eyes blazing furiously. "Well, then, that makes two of us. First you're sneaking around, staring at Ellen, creeping about the auditorium to hear us play and then you have a boyfriend!? You're a damn freak, Sam!"

"I'm the freak?" Sam demanded of Felix, locking gazes but making sure his hands told Felix exactly what he was referring to. "You're the one slamming me into walls and getting in my face about liking Ellen! Talk about possessive! And not looking at things when they are right in front of you, god dammit! Looking into the wrong freaking pad and not looking into the others! You stupid, dumb idiot!"

Felix eyes blazed. "Yeah! Well... Well... Wait what do you mean wrong pad?"

Sam opened his mouth and snapped it shut again in an instant. "Uh... never mind," he squeaked, panicking as he started to gather things to get the hell out of there. "Doesn't matter."

He was moving towards the door when he was stopped with a hand wrapping around his wrist and pulling him back with a surprisingly gentle force. Sam turned to Felix, blinking up at silver eyes that were wide. "Are you- uh... sometimes I feel like you..."

Sam's throat went dry as he tried to swallow, daring not look anywhere as Felix still held onto him, daring him to see it, to say it.

Felix searched him one more, tracking every movement on Sam's face with a bewilderment Sam had never seen appear on Felix's face before. Sam let his eyes drop towards that mouth, those glinting snakebites poking out beneath his red inviting lips, always freshly bitten with Felix's habit of dragging his teeth across his bottom lip.

He became transfixed, not being able to keep his eyes off them now that they were so close, now that Felix was seeming to let him without interrupting with a punch to the face or a blow to the stomach. It actually seemed as though they were getting closer to his the longer he stared, Felix's breath caressing his skin and his hand scorching around his wrist, pulling him closer, gripping him tighter until-

He fell away, grabbing Sam's bag from his arm and making his away across the classroom and leaving Sam to fall forward a little.

"I looked in the wrong pad, eh?" Felix said, zipping open the bag and pulling out all of his books.

It took al of second for Sam to take in the situation, the bag in Felix's hand and the sight of his sketch books being pulled out before he reacted, flying across the classroom at an amazing speed. If there was one thing Sam was good at that wasn't boarding and drawing, it was speed. He had always been quick on his feet, it was just the actual reacting that was slow.

Which is how Felix had already had the books out and open when he got to him, tackling him to the ground, scattering all but one but from his hand.

"Give them back!" Sam desperately starting to climb the length of Felix, reaching for the remaining book.

"Are you fucking insane!? Let go of me!" Felix struggled, stretching away so Sam couldn't reach but still letting him flick through the book.

"Give them to me!" Sam tried to reach towards them, angling his body to push in strength forward and past the hand Felix was putting out to stop him and failing.

"What's the big fucking deal? It's not like..." Felix's struggling came to a stop, becoming plaint as he looked up to the book in hand. Taking advantage of that, Sam surged forward, grabbing the book and slapping them closed. Sam scrambled away from the goth beauty sprawled across the floor, still frozen with his arm out stretched.

He moved until his back hit the metal leg of a chair and hugged the book close and breathing heavily with the adrenaline and fear quaking through his body before he got up, grabbing the remaining books, his bag and then his board and got the fuck out of there.

a/n: Sam is a right idiot. why did i write him?? also i'm back bitches and also going away for two weeks on friday again, haha.

also if one of you get the reference I not-so-sneakily put in here I will love you forever.