Chapter Text
Logically, Andy knew he had no business pining like this. But logic had always been more Brian’s department not his. Andy had always felt like he was out of control of his own actions, like he was just steering his body in the direction it had to go, for the team, for his parents, for his reputation. He knew now that he had chosen to put his dad’s expectation and the team’s wants before his own sense of empathy. He knew that he had chosen to mistreat people for the sake of his own image. And he knew that he had to do better. To be be better. There was no way he could’ve walked out of that library on Saturday and not known that. Or if he had somehow managed to let that message fly over his head, he was dumber than Bender thought he was.
Now, though… this felt out of his control. The warmth rising in his chest, the smile that broke out on his face, so big it hurt. He wasn’t choosing to feel this way, wasn’t even choosing to go along with it. He was being swept up in… in whatever this was. And he knew, absolutely knew that he had no business pining.
Not when he had a cute, funny kind-of-girlfriend like Allison. He said “kind-of” in his head because this didn’t feel like dating the other girls he’d been with. Allison didn’t like holding his hand in the hallway, and didn’t hang off him like he was some status symbol. She came to his matches sometimes, but didn’t really watch, just sat on the end of the bleachers and read a book. She had no interest in coming over to meet his parents, or get into his pants. When the summer hit, they started spending a lot more time together. Whenever he wasn’t training, she wasn’t working on her art, and neither of them were hanging out with the rest of the Breakfast Club. Most of their “dates” consisted of driving somewhere no one would bother them and lying around talking.
Right now, they were sprawled inside the bed of Andy’s dad’s pickup—his privileges to borrow it had been reinstated after a great match—lying on a blanket and looking up at the sunset-colored sky. Well, Andy was looking at the sky. Allison was curled on her side drawing patterns across his arm in permanent marker. He knew he wouldn’t be able to compete until he scrubbed the design clean, but the sensation of the marker going across his skin was nice, and Allison hummed while she worked. It was relaxing, made him feel weirdly cared-for. Like he was precious. This was perfect. And that made him feel even worse about the not-going-to-admit-it-was-a-crush he was currently nursing.
Vaguely, he became aware of a heart-shape forming on his bicep. He looked down to see that Allison had switched from her favored black marker to a bright red. The heart was surrounded by wavy lines that reached down and connected with the patterns on his forearm. She was filling it in on one side with stripes and polka dots on the other.
“Are these supposed to be the heart beats?” He touched the wavy lines emanating from the heart, trusting it will have dried already.
Allison looked up at him, huge brown eyes peeking through the curtain of her bangs. “I really like you,” she said and added another stripe to the heart. “And that’s really scary.” Andy had been ready to say he really liked her too, because it was true. Instead, he paused, unsure of how to respond. Slowly, Allison capped her red marker and picked up the black one again. “The more you like something,” she drew a huge X over the heart. “The more it hurts when you lose it.”
“Allison,” Andy sat up, the metal of the truck bed digging into his knees as he moved to kneel beside her. “You’re not going lose me.” He took her free hand in hers. “I really like you too. I’m not going anywhere.”
She ran a thumb over his knuckles, shook her head. “Next month is senior year.” She wrote the letters C-L-A-S-S across his knuckles. “You’ll get a fancy wrestling scholarship, go to college,” she placed a tiny of on his middle finger. “And I’ll never see you again.” She finished by scrawling 1-9-8-5 on his fingers.
“You can come with me,” he said adamantly. “You’ve got the grades, you can get into college too—maybe you can go to art school.”
She shook her head. “My parents would never help me pay for it.”
“Well, maybe I can help. We can both get jobs, save up. Get an apartment off campus.” In the back of his head, he knew he’d never been able to balance school and a job and college-level wrestling, especially if he got into a D-1 school. But that was logic talking and logic was Brian’s thing. Andy’s thing was making promises he couldn’t keep.
“Brian’ll get into Harvard or Yale or wherever,” Allison continued. “And Claire’ll move somewhere for school or travel the world or something. Bender deserves to get away from his parents and this town. I’ll be stuck here.” She shrugged like what she was saying was an inevitability, already set in stone. “This time next year, I’ll be alone again.” And a part of Andy knew that she was right. Other parts, stronger parts, wanted to tell her that everything was going to be alright. That no one but the two of them could decide whether they would be together come next year. That her friends weren’t going to abandon her.
He leaned in and kissed her. She didn’t kiss him back, didn’t close her eyes. He pressed their foreheads together and told her she was going to be okay. He squeezed her hands and whispered that he wanted to be with her, that she wasn’t going to be alone ever again.
She pulled away from him and slid out of the truck bed. “Okay,” she said and collected her markers, using her black sweater as a basket. Andy wasn’t sure it she believed him, but he rolled up the blanket and tossed it in the back anyway. He slid into the driver’s seat and she scooched over across the bench seat to lean against his shoulder as he drove.
The lights were off at her place when they pulled up. He kissed her hard and slow and deliberate. She kissed him back this time and whispered okay into his mouth. Okay he whispered back against her cheek.
“Okay.” She nodded before pushing the door open.
He waited until she was inside safe before driving away. He didn’t notice until he was in his own driveway that one of Allison’s markers had fallen into the seat beside him. He picked up the red marker and turned it over in his hands. He wouldn’t leave Allison alone. He wouldn’t.
*
There was a noise like something moving outside his door and then John Bender’s face suddenly filled his own window. “Nice evening, huh Clark?”
“Jesus, Bender.” Andy jumped.
Bender smiled and leaned up against the door, cradling his chin against his arms. “Did we have fun on our date?” He batted his eyelashes at him. Sometimes Andy thought Bender must’ve known about—about the feelings Andy wasn’t acknowledging right now. Otherwise, why would he act the way he did around him?
“Yeah, actually, we did.” Andy huffed and tried to open the door. He pushed it out about an inch before Bender leaned forward and shut it again. “Bender, come on.”
“Scoot over, we’re having beers with Brian.”
“What?”
“He’s ACT cramming or whatever and it’s driving him nuts.” Bender reached into the car and grabbed the keys. “We gotta calm him down before he explodes.” He opened the door again and pushed Andy to the other side.
“Okay, okay.” Andy moved over to the passenger side. Distantly, he was aware that the lights were on in his place, that his parents had probably heard the car pull in, that his curfew was soon. Even more distantly, he was aware that possibly getting drunk around Bender was probably a bad idea. Bender started up the car. “Should we pick up the girls?” If Allison was there he’d be staggeringly less likely to
“No, no, no.” He gestured in the air. “This is guy’s night.” He backed out of the driveway without looking. “We’ll hang out with the girls some other time. Right now Bri just needs the two of us.”
Andy nodded. He wanted to argue, suggest they go grab Allison at least. He wanted to tell Bender what she’d said, what she was afraid of. Instead, he sat back in his seat and watched the street lights go by. Bender turned on the radio and it murmured quietly in the background. Some 60s bullshit; this must’ve been his dad’s station.
“Hey, Bender,” Andy said after a while. Bender hummed in response. “You think you’ll apply to college?”
Bender scoffed and glanced over at him, incredulous. “What for?”
“I donno—it’d give you an excuse to get outta this town.”
“Maybe I like this town.”
“I have it on good authority that you hate it here.”
Bender was quiet for a long time. “I can’t leave my mom.” He pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in park.
Andy looked at him. “You never talk about your mom.”
Bender looked at him for a second. It was dark out now, and the street lights outside barely illuminated the inside of the car. He saw it, though, the way Bender’s gaze raked over him. The way his eyes lingered on his lips. He was probably imagining that last part, though. And he needed to stop doing that.
*
Eventually they were sat in the truck bed with a case of cheap beer and a pack of cigarettes. Brian and Andy didn’t smoke—Andy for his health and Brian because the first time he’d bummed a cig off Bender he’d coughed up half a lung. Bender and Andy sat on one side of the truck bed and Brian on the other, their legs tangling comfortably in the middle.
“Thanks for this, you guys.” Brian said, toasting his beer a little. He was nursing his second one. Andy’d opened a second but he wasn’t really drinking it. Bender was on his fourth. Andy wondered if going out drinking was as much for his benefit as it was for Brian’s.
“Don’t mention it.” Bender nodded, his head lolling a little too much, like it was too heavy.
Andy smiled and shook his head. Drunk Bender was fun to watch. “Yeah, no problem, Bri.” He watched the other boy for a moment. He was looking out at the night sky kind of wistfully, like he was thinking too hard about something.
Bender must’ve agreed because he reached his foot up and poked Brian in the shoulder. “Penny for your thoughts, Brain-man?”
“It’s nothing.” Brian shook his head.
“The wrestling team’s not still getting you a hard time, are they?” Andy asked pointedly. He’d asked each of those dunderheads fucking individually to lay off guys like Brian and Larry Lester.
“No, nah.” Brian shook his head. “They don’t even look my way anymore.”
“Oh.” Andy nodded. “Good. That’s good.”
“So what’s wrong then?” Bender asked and tipped his head back to finish off his beer.
Brian shook his head and sighed. “You guys know Jenny MacNamara?”
“Glasses, right?” Andy asked. “Curly hair and dimples. I had homeroom with her last year.”
Bender cracked open his fifth beer. “Drewbie, our boy’s growin’ up.” Brian smiled, face flushed from embarrassment now in addition to alcohol. “You’ve got a crush, Bri-Bri?”
“I asked her out.” He shrugged.
Bender gasped theatrically and threw an arm around Andy. “Did you hear that, Andy? Brian asked a girl on a date.”
Andy made a big show of leaning away from him, but even with rancid beer breath, having Bender so close to him was sending a thrill up his spine. “What’d she say?” He asked.
Brian was laughing at the two of them. After a little while, though, he stopped and his face fell slowly. “She wanted me to kiss her,” he said quietly.
Bender clutched his chest and threw his head back, sloshing beer onto the blanket. “My heart can’t take much more of this.”
“So?” Andy raised his brows. “Did you?”
Brian looked down at his half-drunk beer. He bit his lip and shook his head. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t?” Andy furrowed his brow.
“Did your lips stop working?” Bender asked slowly. He was staring at Brian intensely, like he was trying to figure him out. Brian shook his head again. He didn’t look up at them and mumbled something under his breath.
Bender leaned toward him and bent his ear forward. “What was that?”
Andy put a hand on Bender’s shoulder. “Hey, lay off him.”
“I just wanna know what the boy said, Clark.” Bender scooched over to sit on the other side of the truck bed, a little more of his beer spilling onto the blanket. Andy was going to have to wash it before he put it back in the truck, or the whole thing would stink of beer. Bender leaned against Brian’s shoulder. “Once more with feeling, please.”
Brian took a long, shaky breath. “I said I’m gay.”
Bender leaned back slowly, keeping his arm around Brian. He toasted his beer. “Okay then.”
Andy stared. He didn’t know what to say. What was he supposed to say? Congratulations? Good for you? Can you tell that I’m queer too?
He shook his head to clear it. He couldn’t think like that right now. Couldn’t go down that road. Couldn’t make this about him. He felt a nudge against his thigh and looked up to see Bender glaring at him. He nodded toward Brian, trying to prompt Andy to say something supportive. Andy gave him a hapless look, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. Bender rolled his eyes.
“Well,” Andy started to say.
“So I’ll probably never have my first kiss,” Brian murmured. He chuckled, kind of broken sounding, and sipping his beer.
Bender looked at him like he was offended. “And why not?”
Brian shrugged. “Not unless I can make myself be normal. No one’s ever gonna want me, and I’m never gonna have the guts to ask out a guy.” He laughed again. “My parents’d flip.”
“You don’t know that,” Andy found himself saying. “We’re graduating this year. You’re gonna get into whatever college you want, and then who knows? You’ll meet a nice guy, settle down.” He shrugged. “Maybe you’ll go to New York, or San Francisco. Chicago.” Boston, Philadelphia, DuPont Circle in DC. Andy was listing these places and hoping neither of them would ask why he knew about them.
“You know a lot about where the gays live, Andrew.” Damn it, Bender.
Andy shrugged. “I read the paper.”
Brian looked up, his eyes watery under his lashes. “You guys don’t mind, right?”
“Your oral virginity?” Bender asked like that was genuinely the first thing he’d thought of.
Andy made a face. “Can you please not call it that?”
“No, that I’m,” Brian paused and gestured vaguely with his beer can.
“No,” Andy shook his head. “No, I don’t care that you’re into guys.”
“Oh.” Brian nodded, though he looked like he might start crying again. “Okay.”
Bender looked at Andy for a long time, then turned his head toward Brian. His gaze stayed on Andy until he started speaking. “People who have a problem with gay people have nothing going on their lives,” he said, his tone serious. “They have to fill the void in their hearts by making others feel bad about themselves.” He crushed his beer can and tossed it out of the truck.
*
On the way home, after they’d dropped Brian off, Bender was still driving. About five minute away from Andy’s place, he pulled over to the side of the road. Andy couldn’t stop himself from getting excited. After all, how many times had he pulled off to the shoulder so he and Allison could make out a little before he dropped her off? He tried to think about Allison and not the way the faint light from outside landed on Bender’s jawline.
“Andrew,” he said.
“Hm?” Andy tried to be casual.
“When someone tells you a secret about themselves, you are not supposed to say ‘I don’t care’.” He looked at him for a long time. Andy opened his mouth to say something, to apologize, but Bender pressed a finger to his lips. Bender smelled like cigarettes, and his fingertips tasted like beer. “Shut up. I am uninterested in your excuses. The next time you see our boy, I want you to apologize, got it? Say you were shocked into stupidity. And then say that you support him.” He took his hand away from Andy’s face. “Understood?”
Andy nodded. “Yeah.” He licked his lips. Salt and beer and cigarettes. “Yeah, I understand.”
“Good.” Bender put the car back in drive and pulled off. Andy watched him. He watched him the rest of the short drive to his place. And he watched him turn the car off and climb out of the car. He watched him walk away down the street until the night obscured him too much to see. Then he leaned his forehead against the dash and tried not to feel ashamed of himself.