All art by me

TW: SWEARING!

Nerves were tangled in my stomach and I tried my hardest to shake them away. I was going to see Holly now. I should be feeling better, not worse. But what Brian and the guys had said just reminded me of what had been going through my head for a while now.

What if I don't like her anymore? What happens to us?

But I forgot my worries, and Brian, as I saw Holly waiting by the snake tree.

We call it that because it's the only tree planted on the school grounds that isn't an oak. Instead, it's tall, and thin, and it twists around like the Ellis logo. There are even knots in the tree right where the eyes should be.

Holly was resting back on the tree, and she hadn't seen me yet. I snuck around from the back of the tree and appeared in front of Holly, leaning over her, with all my weight supported by my hand, which was placed on the bark of the tree above her head.

"Heyyy," I said, trying to sound cool, but it just came off as creepy. She blinked her massive Disney-princess brown eyes before reaching up and moving my hand to the side. I lost my balance, stumbling forward, and she jumped out of the way.

"Sorry!" She cried, and I patted down my shirt, trying to get dust off, as she tried to pick the leaves out of my hair.

"Thanks." I said, and she did a little curtsey.

"You are so very welcome,"

I don't know why I'm being so tense and awkward. I guess it's because Brian and Leon and Kyle expect us to do couple stuff? And all me and Holly do is hang out and talk. Like friends.

I grabbed my morning tea out of my bag and started eating because I was stuck for words. I'm not usually quiet, and I always have something to say.

Holly sat down beside me so I fished out my water bottle and started drinking.

"Your remember in year 9 when you said you could drink through your nose and then spit it out of your mouth?" Holly said casually, and I snorted, gagged, then started choking because I'd inhaled half my water.

I looked up and the moment I met Holly's eyes we both burst out laughing. Holly fell backwards onto the grass and curled up, kicking her feet around. In all honesty it wasn't even that funny, but at the time it definitely was. That was the longest I'd laughed in a long time, and I had to help Holly up afterwards because both of us probably had bruised ribs or something, our stomachs hurt so much from laughing.

We had to avoid eye contact for up to a few minutes after, because we couldn't look at each other without breaking out in a laughing fit again.

After that we kept relaying more and more old memories, and break passed fast, because the bell was ringing all too soon.

I hugged Holly, and as she walked off to maths I realized just how far away my social studies class was. 

Picking up my bag, I slung it over my shoulder and sprinted over in the direction of the library, because B5, my social studies class is right beside it. 

I was so focused on not being late that I nearly crashed into the kid in front of me. I stopped before I fell into him, and sidled around to stand beside him. I looked to the side and smiled when I saw it was Vega that I was standing next to, and I wanted to say hi to him, but the teacher started talking. And he turned his head to look away from me anyway. 

I guess he still doesn't like me very much.

The teacher introduced herself as Mrs Lopez, and I thanked my lucky stars that I didn't have the same nightmare of a teacher that I had last year. I could immediately tell she was going to be a nice teacher. 

Mrs Lopez had large gold hoop earrings hanging amongst her dark curly hair, and she was wearing a floral blouse with wide sleeves, and loose-almost-flared pink pants, so every time she turned around everything swayed in some way. It only enhanced her happy, welcoming aura that she had about her.

We were put in a seating plan organized by last name so I was somewhere near the back of the class, with a few girls I might've talked to once before. 

It was a bit awkward at the start, with the two girls on either side of me leaning back and just talking around me, so I sat forward and just stared around the room. Vega kept glancing at me and I waved to him at some point. He waved back before turning his head again. 

Honestly, I've got no fucking clue what he's thinking about.

Just like English, today was mostly spent labelling our books and getting all our accounts and stuff set up on our computers, but after about 20 minutes Miss got us all to pack our stuff away and go outside.

Mrs Lopez got us into a circle outside, and she made us go around and say our name, and something else about ourselves - it did make me feel like a 5 year old but I enjoyed it. Then she let us do what we wanted. Some people ran off to play tag, some people just stood around and gossiped. I still wasn't in any mood to talk to Brian and the guys so instead I shuffled over to Vega and bumped his shoulder with mine. He gave me a sort of jarred-shocked look, which barely softened when I smiled at him.

"You look lonely," I said, sitting down beside him and waiting until he reluctantly did the same.

"You have shit friends so you're reduced to talking to the boring quiet kid." Vega had a hint of amusement in his voice.

"I don't think you're qui- you aren't boring!" He raised his eyebrows and leaned back so he was resting on his elbows.

"You aren't boring." I said sincerely. I unfolded my legs and lay down on my back. Vega was just looking at me with skepticism.

I looked at the sky, which was bright and cloudless now. "So far you said absolutely nothing to me, then talked to me, then threw stuff at me, then tried to ignore me for some reason."

Vega opened his mouth.

"I don't care if you say that's bad, at least you're interesting."

Vega smiled slightly and rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. "That's one word for it,"

He combed his hand through his hair and I was tempted to point out that now he was the one touching his hair all the time. I rolled over to my side and silence settled over us. So I said possibly the weirdest thing I could've.

"Paint me like one of your French girls," I remarked dramatically, flaring out my arms and fake-swooning. I glanced to the side to see Vega's reaction.

He just stared at me.

Heh, oops.

"Yeaaahh, not gonna happen." Vega sat up straight and shook his head violently. "I can't draw." He stated.

"Can't or won't?" I smirked.

Vega gave me a look before throwing clods of grass at me.

"Connor NO!" He yelped, laughing nervously and tearing up more grass.

"Okay I'm sorry! Stop killing all the flowers!" Vega reached for another patch of daisies and clovers, so I tackled him to the ground. He struggled, but I was easily stronger than him, and I ended up sitting on his stomach.

"Get off." Vega hissed, red-faced and annoyed. He tried to push me off of him but I was too heavy.

I shook my head. "Nope."

Vega laid back on the ground in defeat. "What the fuck do you expect me to do?" He yelled, throwing his hands at the sky. "Apologize? They're already dead!" I continued shaking my head even though I knew he was right.

I moved off of him and picked up the torn flowers.

"We could make daisy chains?" I suggested.

"No."

"C'mon," I coaxed.

"No." I tried to find any hint of amusement in his face, but it was completely bare of any emotion. It was amazing how he could go from happy, to pissed, to nothing in a split second.

"I'll sit on you again." I said with a grin, knowing I had him cornered.

"Fine." Vega said nonchalantly, picking up a handful of the already wilting flowers. 

Despite complaining a lot, Vega seemed to be enjoying himself, and his daisy chain was so much neater and intricate than my lopsided mess of stems and petals. I was struggling to thread my fifth daisy on and Vega already had a chain about the length of my forearm.

I just stared at him with confusion riddled across my face. "Uh-" I started and he looked up from his hands. "How!?"

Vega shrugged, looping yet another daisy through before setting the chain to the side. "It's... not that hard?"

"No, it definitely is." I interrupted.

Vega sighed, and reached forward. I jerked my hand outta the way and he just looked at me.

"Bro, do you want my help or not?" I opened my hand to let him take the now-crumpled flowers. His hand froze for a second, then he took the daisies from me.

I lay down again and started humming to myself, tapping my fingers on the sides of my legs. The sun was bright and annoying in my eyes, but I didn't mind. I just lay there for a while.

A few minutes later I looked across again and Vega was just sitting cross-legged and rocking gently, looking down at me.

He had a flower crown sitting just above his brows, and somewhere in there was my disaster-of-a-daisy-chain, tangled around his dark hair.

I sat up immediately.

"HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?"

He was a bit taken aback by my sudden outburst and I winced in a way that I hoped said 'sorry'.

Vega put one of his hands up to shield his eyes from the sun. "Umm... I don't know. I just sort of.. can?" I looked at him incredulously.

"My only friends in primary school were girls and they never wanted to do anything but make daisy chains, loom band crap and friendship bracelets?"

A strand of hair fell in front of my eyes.

"That explains it," I said, moving my hand off the ground.

"If you touch your hair one more time-" Vega started, and I just looked at him with startled eyes.

"Okay, okay sorry. It just keeps getting in my face."

Vega dug through one of his pockets and chucked something at me. I caught it in my right hand and turned it over.

"What the heck are these?" I asked, squinting at the pink and purple plastic triangles in my palm.

Vega grinned. Well, it was more of a smirk. It still amazed me how someone as quiet and shy as Vega could still be cocky, and a bit of a dick.

"Hair clips." 

I stared at him flatly.

He just raised his eyebrows. 

I screwed up my face, groaned, then sighed. "Fine." I used the hair clips to pin back the hair at the front of my face. "Happy? Now we both look like seven year old girls."

"Very," He laughed.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. "Now we've gotta take a photo with one of the cat-face filters," I said.

"Oh, no I really don't think that's necessary," Vega held his hands up in front of him and shook his head, but I leaned in front of him and took a selfie anyway.

I looked at him, grinning, and he was so pissed it was actually kind of funny. He looked like grumpy cat.

"CONNOR-" Vega started but the teacher called us in. I looked at him smugly and he gave me a death glare so I decided not to keep antagonizing him and instead sprinted back to class because Vega had already thrown too much shit at me today.

The bell rang not long after I got back to class, and Vega had already... stalked off? (I couldn't really tell if he was grumpy or not) so I didn't have a chance to say bye. 

I looked around a bit but couldn't see him - vanishing was another of his talents - so I gave up and wandered off to meet Holly by the snake tree.

"Dude." Was the first thing she said, placing her phone and cord headphones to the side of her. We'd already gotten into multiple arguments about whether cord headphones or over-the-head headphones are better. It's tragic, really, she still refuses to see sense. Doesn't really bother me, she can continue living in ignorance, sticking fuckin peanut-shaped blobs on a string into her ears.

She rose and pointed at my hair. "You've got a forehead!" 

I stood there in confusion for a bit, then remembered the hair clips. Where did Vega even get them?

"Oh yeah, you like it?" I said sarcastically, shouldering my bag off and resting it against the smooth bark of the tree.

"The hairclips are nice," She said, unexpectantly, "but it looks bad like that. You pinned it the wrong way."

"Wow okay, no need to sugar coat it." I crossed my arms.

Holly frowned at me.

"You get offended too easily," she scoffed, "besides, do you want to walk around looking like a 6 foot blonde egg for the rest of the day?" I fell silent and she did that matter-of-fact face she always does. "Exactly."

"Sit down so I can fix it." She kicked my foot and I rolled my eyes, sitting in front of her.

Immediately she tugged at my hair and I whipped around to face her.

"You're pulling!" 

Holly just stuck out her tongue at me. "You're a baby."

"You're mean," I mumbled, wincing again as she continued to roughly yank my hair.

Although I swear she ripped half my hair out, as she promised I did look much less like an egg afterward.

"Thanks," I managed to choke out. 

She punched me on the shoulder, "That's nothing! I have to brush this everyday," she said flicking her dark hair into my face.

I just grumbled. If she was anyone else I would've sworn at her, but Holly has a thing about curse words. She's always been sensitive about that, and I never really asked why. Some dicks used to tease her about it. In my opinion it doesn't really seem like a big deal, but then again I used to get teased about my eyes. I think people are just getting bored.

Me and Holly sat together and just ate and talked for the rest of lunch. Thank fucking god, there was no more hair pulling.

Vega's hair clips actually really helped with the whole hair issue. Although I still felt an impulse to touch my hair, so I don't know what that's about.

I kinda wonder what Vega's doing now.

Chapter 3!!! I just wanna thank you guys so much for your support on my story! I've been very, very bad with uploading, yet you're still interested in it, and it's been added to multiple people's reading lists... I honestly can't express how happy and grateful I am about this <33
I'm obsessed with my little gay idiots and my little gay story and I love that you guys like it too!

I just wanna say to all my artist followers/readers, if you ever want to draw the picture for the chapter, I can give you a (hopefully not too spoiler-ridden) scene from it for you to do! And I'll credit ofc :]

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Published October 1, 2022

Other art I did for ze chapter:

VEGA WITH THE DAISIES

OKI BAIII