"So, what'd you do all week?" Lev asked Alex. He dawdled around Alex's bedroom, exploring every corner and knick-knack he could see.

Alex partly watched him as he did, crossed-legged on his bed and halfway through a heated up slice of hot pie. "Just spending time with the group doing this and that. Yesterday we competed for a gift card to that bakery place in town. Water balloon fight, then digging through this tub of bugs."

"Never a dull moment with those guys..." Lev trailed off, his pensive gaze lingering on the row of cooking magazines organized on a short bookshelf.

"B-but, even while hanging with them all week, at the end of the day all I thought about was this awesome sleepover we're about to have."

Lev managed a grin. "Keep your sappy kiss-ass lines to yourself. Did you win then?"

"Y-yeah. We were in teams — me and Evan against Syn and Ziro. Evan really had it in the bug competition. I was elbow-deep inside that tub, seriously on the edge of freaking out. Evan moved like a pro, though. I've honestly never met a girl that brave before her."

Lev drifted over to a desk that accommodated a desktop computer along with a fourteen-inch monitor and keyboard, and an array of computer game cases lined up behind the monitor against the wall. In the very bottom drawer of the desk was where Alex kept all his letters posted in purple envelopes from Carsyn, neatly organized in stacks and with elastic bands. Lev seemed to gazing off in that general direction, which set off a warm twitch of agitation in Alex's chest.

"Hale's a special kind of ballsy..." Lev eventually remarked.

Alex set his plate of pie down, determined to place all of his attention on Lev. "We don't have to talk about any of that if you don't want to."

"You don't need to walk on eggshells around me. You can hang with those guys all you want. You're friends with them too, right?"

Alex's gaze fell back to the plate, and he began to swirl tiny air circles around the crumbs. "...well, yeah, but-"

"You any good?"

Alex looked up to see Lev standing before him spinning his worn black and golden-striped basketball on his middle finger.

It took Alex a moment to realize that Lev meant the sport of basketball and not just the act of spinning a ball on one finger. And he wasn't particularly good at the latter anyhow. "Oh, well...I shot the game-winning basket at the championships during my sophomore year at my old school."

The ball continued to rotate rapidly against Lev's skin. "Okay, hotshot."

Alex wondered for a split-second what Lev's relationship with Carsyn was, though he imagined it was something similar to the bond she and Ziro shared.

"Did you always brag that much to your friends back there?" Lev continued.

"Uhhm, w-well, I didn't really have any friends back home. I mean, a lot of people knew who I was, but only cuz of basketball. No one actually knew me outside of that, or really tried to, and didn't really have the guts to try and...'be myself' or whatever. I was just the...'Prior Pronghorn'."

Lev lost balance of the ball, but caught it just before it hit the ground as it tumbled away from his hold. "The what now?"

"Oh...uh, pronghorn antelopes. They're the second fastest animal in the world."

"An antelope? Those are like the cousins to goats or something, right? So that's almost as fast as a cheetah?"

"Actually pronghorns are the fastest land animals for longer distances. Cheetahs can only move so fast for a short distance — sprinters. So, they're both the fastest animals in a way. Peregrine falcons have got them both beat, though. Fastest in the sky and all of the animal kingdom."

Lev just stared at him, though a grin tugged at his lips. "Why do you know all that?"

Alex felt the faintest sensation of heat filling his cheeks. "My dad called me that so much that eventually I just looked it up. Found out a lot of other facts about certain animals while I was at it."

"Wait, back up. Your dad called you that? The 'Prior Pronghorn'? No one else? Just your dad called you that?"

Alex chuckled. "Yeah. Pronghorn also started with 'P', and my dad just thought it catchy and all. He was in a world of his own whenever he came to my games. Everyone else at school just called me 'Twenty-two Bolt'."

"Damn, that's the real catchy nickname." Lev joined Alex on bed, dropping onto the mattress right next to him and leaving a thin space between each other. His elbow had also knocked Alex's on the way down, and though it wasn't painful to him, it did send a tingle up his spine and briefly stirred the calm butterflies in his stomach. "What's it mean?"

When Alex failed to say anything, Lev nudged him with his elbow on purpose this time. The immediate return of the impact of their skin touching sent a flush of heat to his cheeks as he blinked back to reality.

"Huh? Uh, oh, the nickname. Yeah, so the twenty-two was my jersey number, and 'bolt' is because I'm kinda fast on the court. Twenty-two Bolt."

"Hm," Lev hummed. He sat the ball down on the bed in between his legs, and leaned his forearm over it as he observed Alex. "Kinda fast?"

Alex shrugged. "From other people's objectives, they tell me how fast I am whenever they see me run, but I can't really tell myself."

"Hm," Lev hummed again. Meanwhile inside his head, Alex was trying to figure out if he liked all this attention of Lev's eyes on him. It was certainly better than whenever Ziro looked at him; less scarier, more fonder. More agitation to the butterflies in his stomach. "So what were those ball-loving suck-ups like?"

"Huh?" Alex said again.

"People at your old school, tell me about 'em. I'm curious."

"Oh, sure. Okay, Well-Ridge Preparatory Academy is the name of the school, in New Orleans. A lot of rich kids go there. They wear these plaid uniforms, and the mascot is a rhino."

"A bunch of upmarket, prep-school rhinos from the Big Easy? And you're the fastest rhino," Lev teased.

"Yeah, basically," Alex laughed. "And, I don't know, everybody was just...the same. Repetitive, normal."

"Normal?"

Alex shrugged once more. "Yeah, like, they always worry about how many followers they have, and they gossip about whoever's on they're radar, and most kids only had two piercings — one on each ear."

"Seriously?" Lev chortled.

"It's true! I've literally never met anyone with as many piercings as you have."

Lev chuckled again as he shook his head. "You know that reminds me, I plan to get another one on my tongue one day. Couple years maybe."

Alex's eyes went wide. "What? A tongue piercing? As in a hole right through your tongue? Seriously?"

"Yup."

"...wow. Why in a couple years though? You can get a piercing as long as you're with a parent, right? And your mom already let you get so many."

"Yeah, but she's putting her foot down for this one. I've tried showing her some pics online, but that only freaked her out. I'll probably have to wait till I move out to get it, then I can go alone no problem."

"...I see..." Alex nodded to himself. He peeked his tongue out, just barely pushing it through past his lips, and poked it with his index finger. For a moment he wondered what it would feel like to have a needle impaled through the sensitive skin of his pink-coloured organ.

Lev cracked up yet again while watching him. "Nah, I was thinking I would get it a little more down the line." He opened his mouth and stuck out the whole length of his own tongue, then pointed to a midpoint spot a bit further past its tip.

Alex gawped at it as Lev waggled it all around like a caterpillar. Lev's tongue was longer than most others he knew, but then again he realized he had never truly observed another person's tongue before, especially for as long as he had Lev's. A breathy chuckle escaped Lev and he closed his mouth, and then Alex couldn't help his eyes from latching onto the supple sight of Lev's lips.

He glanced up for just a second, and Lev's face was suddenly closer to his. Alex wasn't sure when it happened, or if he was the one that had unconsciously leaned in, or if it was Lev, but what he was sure of was that Lev was making no moves to pull back. Something skipped in his stomach, then his chest. He and Lev had locked eyes now, both staring at each other expressionless yet somehow expectant. Lev's lips twitched as if he wanted to say something, but instead he continued to close the gap between him and Alex, leaning his head closer and closer, until his nose brushed Alex's as he tilted it sideways, then pressed his lips onto his.

It was Alex's first kiss, and though it felt stiff, it was still warm and gentle. The butterflies camping in his stomach had gone unhinged; fluttering all about his insides, rousing his heart and dampening his palms. The very space surrounding him felt like it had fallen into slow motion and was tugging him along with it at the same speed. He wasn't sure what a good kiss was supposed to feel like, but this felt more than good enough to him.

He hadn't noticed until now that his eyes were shut. He wondered if Lev's eyes were still open. Even in his head it sounded like a stupid question. He had never seen a t.v. show or movie where a couple kissed with open eyes.

But whether Lev's eyes were open or not, Alex didn't want him doing all the work. That's probably why it feels stiff, he thought, because I'm not putting in any effort. The second he tried shifting his lips though, Lev pulled away. The withdrawal of his lips left Alex's cold, abandoned. Alex let his eyes slowly drift open, fearful that he might've ruined the moment. And his fear might've been right. Lev looked...disturbed. His arms hovered between them like a blockade, and his lips twitched again trying to find words.

"Sorry," Alex blurted before Lev could get a sentence out.

"For...what?" Lev lowered his arms, looking more confused than upset.

Alex gestured feebly to his lips. "That, um...the kiss..."

"You know I was the one that kissed you."

"Y-yeah, but, if I was bad or anything-"

"You weren't bad, Prior. And anyway, I should actually be the sorry one."

"You? But, w-why?"

"...I should've asked before I did that." Now Alex was the confused one. Lev elaborated, "the kiss. I should've asked you if you wanted to...with me — with a guy-"

"I wanted to," Alex cut in. With Lev's arm barrier lowered, he was free to scoot closer until his elbow brushed against Lev's and left only a whisper of space between them. "With you. I never really wanted to do that with anyone else before, except for you, right now."

The two locked eyes again, both silent and blank-faced yet at the same time earnest and urging each other to pick up each other's heart that they had both left bare on the floor right at their feet, and caress it.

"So...I didn't just totally read the room wrong there?" Lev asked. Alex shook his head. "Because, I've kind of done something like that before, and it really fucked things up..." Alex shook his head once more, so at a loss for his own words that only his actions could better display his feelings.

He closed the tiny leftover space between him and Lev, and scooped up Lev's hand, entwining it with his. He did worry for a second that his damp hands might make the act uncomfortable, but Lev's grip almost immediately tightened within his. As Lev began to lean in again closer to Alex's face, his lips, everything started to slow down again and even feel weightless somehow: the walls of his bedroom, the floor, even the meager rays of sunlight coming through the window behind Lev that managed to hit both the boys and shower them with a fragment of summer heat.

Everything was slow. Wordless. Warm. Gentle. Perfect.