Just a little warning if the names in the description and the tags and the actual name of the story (seriously) didn't throw you off. This is a boyxboy, as in super gay love sort of story so if that ain't your cup of tea then I suggest you leave quietly without no drama. Appreciated!

Also contains swearing and the lark! Like a lot of swearing. Just a warning.

This is my first attempt at actually writing a story and trying to finish it so bear with me, please be kind and hopefully enjoy the story. Thanks :)

Also the so-called r-rated stuff (thank you Wattpad, not) doesn't happen till way into the story

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"Because it's much easier to humiliate, degrade, and just generally shit all over someone than it is to admit that you love them."

-Nathan Young (Misfits)

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Chapter One

Casper ran down the stairs taking two at a time and missing the last three entirely and landing with a satisfying thump on the wooden floor. He flipped his hair up and straightened his shirt slightly before turning to the mirror that took up half the wall to his right. Casper glanced at himself in the hall mirror, then again and smiled.

I look good, he thought, and justifiably so.

After all, Casper had spent the whole morning primping himself to a more perfect state than he was usually in, so of course he would feel good about himself as it had been a long, tiring process: He had woke himself up an entire hour and a half earlier; spent almost half an hour in the shower only to find there was no towels left and had to run, clutching his balls across the freezing hall to the safety of his room and making a trail of water behind him.

He then he had to hunt around the house for a clean shirt and iron it once found, singeing himself in the process and thanked God his mum had put out a pair of freshly washed and ironed trousers for him or he would have probably screamed, waking his dad up in the process. Then he had to search high and low for the grotesque thing called a tie which ended up being right in front of his eyes the whole time, hanging over his bed (he still blamed his mum for moving it though). Because his school was sadistic and didn't know a thing about individuality they had enforced the uniform policy which meant "smart shoes" that Casper wanted to burn, he sat a polished them until he could see his own reflection and getting it all over his hands and had to renew another kind of polish on his nails and wait on them drying to finally able to eat something; that being the glory that was Coco Pops heated in the microwave but was a failed dreamed as he opened the fridge to find there was no milk and gave a cry to the high heavens in frustration which his stomach growled in agreement and so had to settle with a tasteless, dry breakfast bar his mother insisted on buying.

Afterwards he messed with his hair for a while until he was satisfied and then went upstairs to brush his teeth and went to his last task of his eyeliner. Casper took his eyeliner very seriously and it was a slow process, although he had gotten a lot quicker from his early stages and a lot more skilled too. He carefully lined his blue eyes with black and repeated quite a few times until he was entirely satisfied, looking like a blue eyed racoon than anything else. A sexy racoon, mind you.

So after everything he had went through that morning, of course he was allowed to praise himself in the mirror, complimenting himself to a high because looking this good took fucking effort, damn it and like hell he wasn't going to appreciate it.

He was twiddling with his fringe, making sure the frosted blue tips on the bottom of his fringe framed his eyes in a way that made them brighter.

He was feeling very anxious and edging on self-doubt. The reason for this being a day that was most dreaded of all for most people around his age.

Picture day.

There was a sudden knock on the door that made Casper jump a little.

"Come on, Princess,"said a familiar, deep voice from behind the front door that got under Casper's skin faster than any bullet, making his blood boil and his eye twitch at himself in the mirror as the familiar, patronisingly daunting silhouette stood at the door. It was a normal reaction whenever James was near. Casper knew as soon as the door opened insults would fly as they usually did.

"I'm just coming, keep your lacy thong on," Casper grumbled, rummaging through the contents of his bag for his keys. He never quite understood why his bastard neighbour made a ritual of walking to school with him every morning, all they did was argue. It was unspoken, but painfully obvious, they hated each other, always had but still there he was every morning without fail, insulting him from the very first sentence he used to greet him with his disgusting smirk that, made Casper's skin crawl. Casper knew he went out of his way just to annoy him.

Finally, Casper felt something fuzzy at the bottom of his bag and yanked them out from under the hundreds of textbooks.

For a moment, he admired the huge collection of keyrings. He had collected a lot over the past year. His favourite was still one that held a picture of the gang going down on one of the water rides at M&D's amusement park when they had went with the school last year. He'd gotten the idea of collecting from his close friend Daisy. Her keys were much more colourful and heavier than his. Casper seemed to lose his keys on a regular basis. She told Casper that she hardly ever lost her keys because they were so noticeable and chunky.

How Casper still managed to lose his was beyond even him.

Casper opened the door and found James had, yet again, dyed his hair. This time it was blue. Suspiciously like the shade of his own fringe, but he shrugged that thought off before it irritated him too much and he lashed out for no reason and give James the satisfaction of riling him up because if anything he did it on purpose.

He couldn't even really remember what James' real hair colour was anymore from having it dyed so often and for so long, never really sticking to a colour for more than a month or two. Not that he thought about it a lot. Not that he cared either.

James was staring at him, as if startled.

"What?" Casper spat at him, feeling self-conscious.

James blinked a little before frowning. "Took you long enough," he snapped as Casper rolled his eyes at the usual remark and turned to lock the door. "What did you do this time? Did the make out session with your mirror go on longer that planned?"

Casper balled his fists," well, at least it's more action than you'll ever have."

"No, my little friend, that's the only action you're ever going to get," he smirked and Casper seethed.

Casper brought his right hand up to his mouth and bit into his black polished nail, out of habit, and hissed. James always had to have last word as usual. He was sick of it.

Even if that was how Casper felt he never really acted upon turning the tables because it had always been like this ever since he could remember. Casper swore his earliest memory of he and James were beating the shit out of each other. It also didn't help that fate was particularly twisted and cruel and managed to throw them together in every possible way, like it wanted Casper to eventually snap under the complete asshole that James was and finally kill the cocky bastard before he knew what hit him. Sure, there were those few blissful years between his birth and the beginning of primary. After that time he and James seemed to always stick together whether they wanted to or not - and Casper definitely did not.

It also didn't help that they'd been somehow cursed to live next to one another, share the same classes since nursery, the same house group, the same street, and share the same interests which resulted in picking the same subjects for third year through to fourth and now fifth. It was a never ending curse of fate.

They rounded a corner. Casper made sure to keep a fair distance between them. Sometimes the bastard would like to be a purposeful pain and edge closer just to piss him off and made Casper react to get him the fuck away. Their street was only ten minutes away from the school but every time Casper felt he'd walked for miles, trudging through the thick tension that hung in the air around them. He almost sighed in happiness as he saw a distinct hair style of both colours and height.

"Hoggy!" Casper sang delightfully. What a joy it was to have an excuse to skip away from him, and sudden rush of disappointment as he remembered that they also shared the same friends and would still be stuck in his presence, listening to the shit he spouted out of his mouth for the rest of the journey. Again, it was the never ending curse of fate. It was ridiculous.

Hedgehog turned too late as the small boy tackled her into a hug. She wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, Cas, don't call me that. It's fucking horrible."

Casper only gave out a breathy laugh in reply, snuggling into her arms and patting the top of her spikes that had earned her the nickname

"Don't mess up my do either!" She shoved him away, almost into James but he regained his footing and swerved round the smirking bastard before he touched him and was infected by asshole. Hedgehog brought a hand to try and feel for the nonexistent damage Casper had created. When she was sure her gelled-to-perfection spikes hadn't suffered any fatal injuries, she hooked her right arm through Casper's and the other through James' who smiled. "All right lads, you ready?"

"Let's run this shit!" Casper declared, making a few heads turn but he didn't care. He saw Hedgehog give him an amused glance before leading them off. They both knew this was just as important for her as it was for the rest of them. It had been programmed into them; they had no choice but to care.

All around them, mostly every student walking up to school was freshly painted or slicked up with gel. It got worse as they edged closer to the school, a heavy scent of nervousness and panic as the bell neared mixed with the suffocating stench of girl's piling on the perfume and boys slapping on the cologne, as if spraying so much could create a shield of protection, a reassurance that smelling that good was somehow going to leak through and ensure a good picture. Stupid.

Casper hated how it made students, even himself. The world had turned shallow; the media had made it so that everything was about outward appearance. It didn't matter what camera was pointed at you, whether it be an actual photographer, a friend ready with their phone or a family member at Christmas time. You wanted to look your best in every one of them. School photos were just ten times as worse because it wasn't just going to be seen by you friends or your family members, it would be seen by the whole year, some that you hated or disliked, and their families and their friends.

It was yet another sickening form of peer pressure and school stress disguised with something seemingly harmless; a thing that just came around once a year like clockwork since you entered the education system had always been corrupt. Even at the age of four going on five did Casper remember - or what he saw when he looked back in old photo albums - all his classmates suddenly showing up with a shirt in tie, their usual wild hair or those that usually just came in with a pony tail now had two at the side of their heads with great fluffy bobbles hanging from them, or long plaits. Even the boys came in with different hair styles and all of them had been changed in some way more than usual because of their parents. And they had passed that onto us. We weren't supposed to be ourselves in these pictures but something fake and made up

Also the fear - that creeping shadow that whispered in your ear, that even though you did your best you still looked horrible, and that everyone was laughing at you from the moment those pictures were pressed and sent to the school, handed out around the classroom, finally revealed. Even jumping into the distant future when someone found it a good idea to bring out those dusty boxes of old memories printed on glossy paper. You would have a laugh to hide the flashbacks of those old torturous high school feelings that never truly went away.

It shouldn't have been a big deal, it really shouldn't. There shouldn't be girl crying in the bathroom as they looked at the state of themselves from forgetting what day it was; there shouldn't be a thick blanket of fear hovering around the students. But, yet there was and it was so stupid. It was the way society had made us to be; paranoid and insecure all the damn time.

But then still, this was the norm now and they just had to live with it.

So this time, Casper was determined to have the perfect picture.