Chapter One
It was Friday, and the weekend hung its promise in the air just out of reach, but well within shouting distance. Hope reflected in the smiling faces and bright eyes of the students of Eagle Lake High, banishing the oppressive miasma of academia to the unwelcome and inevitable Monday that lay on the other side; on the next line in the calendar. Combined with the crisp autumnal breeze preparing to turn cold with winter's bite, an alchemical transformation stirred the blood of teens and adults alike, for it was very likely that this would be the last weekend worth noting; the last opportunity to sport tee-shirts, or to visit the banks of the lake for one final get together around an unnecessary, but appreciated, bonfire. Everyone seemed to itch for day to hurry up and end.
Sitting in his usual spot on the second stair that connected the main floor to the next level down, Trey Parker sympathized with his peers. The weekend usually meant a couple of long shifts in the shop run by his Mother, but head asked for, and received, time off to celebrate. Why he was celebrating, he had not quite figured out yet. After all, as far as he could tell, there was very little difference between being seventeen and being eighteen; not at all like when he was sixteen, and got his driver's license. That was an occasion to celebrate.
In fact, eighteen felt like it was an obligation, something he had to do because it was what people did, and it was filled with a number of other duties and responsibilities that, really, were just annoying and anxiety inducing. Like the selective Service card that appeared in the mailbox, warning him to fill it out lest he be denied a number of benefits, such as student financial assistance for his future education. Then, there was the voter registration form and its ominious undertones of choosing the right people to represent his interests in the national circus that was modern day politics. Affixing his name to the dotted line at the bottom, he wondered how anyone so far removed from Eagle Lake could ever deign to say they were working for his interests. And it was even more ludicrous to put himself up for the unlikely event of a Draft: he hated guns, blanched at the sight of war, and blushed in the locker room everytime. The government would be insane to put him in any sort of combat situation, or stick him with a group of naked men. Still, he filled the damn card out, put away the cheap razor that came with it, and decided that turning eighteen was probably the stupidest decision he had ever made. He only hoped that actually being eighteen compensated for the bother of the transition and so, like his peers, wanted the day to just hurry up and end to see if it was so.
Squeezing himself against the wall so a group of Freshmen could pass by without stumbling over him, he pulled his bookbag onto his lap. Its contents were light today, the burden of lugging it around the school eased by a well-worked system every Senior eventually figured out, even those who, like Trey, maintained a full schedule. He noted the turtle like bulges sprouting on their backs and smiled inwardly at the sight. The days of carrying around his entire schedule like a pack mule being sheparded between distant points that never crossed paths with his locker were long gone. He knew the school well enough to navigate it in the dark, the twisting paths and alternate routes to every section burned like a grand in his gray-matter. A pair of dark skinned hands smelling of home made rose and hibiscus lotion covered his eyes, and the smile he had held back blossomed full and luxuriously, tugging the corners of his lips upward to form dimples in his cheeks.
"Guess who," the owner of the hands said, dropping her voice low, adding a British accent and throaty corak in an attempt to conceal what was an otherwise melodious, operatically trained timbre.
Thinking fast, he covered the hands with his own, holding them in place. "Please, oh God, please let it be my bestest best friend in the whole wide world!"
The hands quivered, pulling away and Trey turned, peering through the gap between his fingers. Misha Oonge was Brazillian by birth, though she had long since lost the last traces of her Portuguese accent. The mixture of African, European and Native american ancestory combined to make for a young woman of exotic and unsurpassable beauty. Warm mahogony eyes blinked behind a stylish pair of spectacles at him, her grinning lips daubed with a subtle shade of pink to bring out the rich fullness of their shape. A passing student, catching sight of her smile, almost skipped a step and recovered his footing at the last instant. He blushed, continuing on his way, though he did take a final peak over his shoulder to admire her from behind. That sort of thing happened a lot around Misha.
Trey drew his brows together, pulling a fake frown onto his face. "Hey! You're not Benedict Cumberbatch!" he accused playfully.
Misha rolled her eyes. "And you're not Martin Freeman," she quipped, settling alongside him. "I guess no one is getting who they want today, so we'll just have to settle for second best." She gave him an affectionate shove with one shoulder and plopped a gift-wrapped box into his lap. "Happy birthday!"
Trey picked the package up and held it to his ear, giving it a shake, trying to discern from the resulting rattle what was hidden within. A bolt of excitement zizzed through his stomach, recognizing the tell-tale sound of cologne. Painstakingly created by Misha's guardian, her Aunt Cara, from her stock of oils and scents, the woman was a Master maker of fine perfumes and body care products. But she only sold the really special stuff to adults. She'd promised him a personally crafted blend for his eighteenth years ago, and he had almost forgotten about it.
Fixing a neutral expression onto his face, he put his fingers to work opening the paper wrapping. "I don't know how you're supposed to fit the entire collection of Sherlock into such a little package."
Misha chuckled. "Magic, of course," she answered. "But this is from Aunt Carra, since you refuse to let us celebrate your birthday properly. You get my gift after school."
He ignored the guilt inducing admonishment. It was nice of Misha and her aunt to want to throw him a party, but the unfortunate truth of Trey's social life made for a lot of empty space at any gathering in his honor. Cake, icecream, and the obligatory round of Happy Birthday at home was more than enough for him. He had acceeded to Misha's demand for some time at the bowling alley, however.
With the wrapping a neat, only slightly torn pile on his lap, he slid off the lid. There, nestled in a bed of cotton, lay a black rectangular bottle. Applyed in gold lettering to the face was the name of the specially formulated blend.
"Fascinus?" he asked aloud, holding it up for Mesha's inspection.
His friend shrugged. "I speak Protuguese, not Latin," she said. "Let's see what it smells like!"
He tipped the bottle out of the box and into his palm. "Hopefully it doesn't smell like an ancient Roman," he said with a grin, then added, "I thought she let you test out all the stuff she makes."
"Just the stuff for woment," Misha replied, snatching the bottle out of his grasp and yanking the cap off.
Trey sighed, accustomed to her impatience. He turned on the stair to rest his back against the lacqured brick wall, watching as Misha lifted the nozzle to her nose.
She frowned. "I don't smell anything," she said. Pointing the sprayer into the cap, she gave it a squirt and then tried again. Her eyeslids drooped, a soft, dreamy smile creeping up her features as she inhaled deeply of the fragrance. Her shoulders drooped, the tension of the day's beginning draining away from her. "Atraente," she purred in her birth language.
"Oh good, that's just what I need," he said, taking cap and bottle back. "A cologne that makes girls speak in tongues." He lifted the device to his nose, sniffed. The world faded away beneath a vision of perfection. By means unknwon, Misha's Aunt had duplicated in scent the sensation of a warm hug from behind; of arms coiling around the middle, naked back pressing to bare chest, soft lips exploring the nape of the neck. It was bottled romance, and it was made just for him. Maybe turning eighteen wasn't such a bad idea after all.
"This has to be the best thing Aunt Cara has ever made," Misha said, pulling Trey from the arms of his imagined lover and back into reality.
He opened his eyes, his heart giving a dull thud at the sudden loss of the fragrance induced fantasy. It had felt so real that he wondered if Misha's aunt had mixed in an illicit substance into the batch. That would explain the sensation of being lighter than he had been before inhaling the cologne, and the silly grin that poured itself over his friend's features, but Cara was too good at what she did. The blend was too perfect, too balanced to pick out any single ingredient, and the physical effects it had, on him anyway, were mostly hidden by the way he sat and the wrapping paper over his crotch. To err on the side of caution, he pulled his book bag onto his lap as well.
Lifting his chin, he misted a modest amount onto his neck, pulled up his tee and added another spray to his chest. "Thank you," he said to Misha, capping the bottle and tucking it away in the bag's front compartment, there joining a stick of under-arm deodorant, a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush.
"Hm?" she replied in a dreamy voice. "Oh! You're welcome," she added an instant later, pulling herself together, her hand waving in front of her face while she fanned the last traces of the cologne from her area.
The activity level around them picked up as more students arrived and teachers with travel mugs topped off with steaming coffee reported for duty. Clumping together in knots of four or five a piece, his peers became a slow moving stream of flesh in constant motion, occasionally disturbed by the solid and staid obstructions of larger groups gathering around door alcoves, lockers, or just against a wall at some predetermined meeting point. Familiar faces peaked out of the waves to greet Misha; some even deigned to toss out a friendly word or two to Trey. He would smile, nod and reply with generalized niceties, but he felt no genuine affection for any of them. They weren't strangers, though. In fact, the majority of them had intimate knowledge of Trey, and though the incident that brought it about lay several years in the past, he couldn't help but see curel laughter still dancing behind their eyes.
Beneath him, the stair grew harder, the constant need to move, to squeeze himself out of the way for flowing traffic making the position more uncomfortable with each passer-by. A massive clock built into one wall as a combined effort of the metal shop, art and physics classes ages ago, with cogs and gears visible behind a protective case, tolled the quarter-hour. Nearby, Misha carred on a conversation with an attractive youth and, at the gong, turned, tapping Trey's shoulder.
"You wanna hit the shop before first period?" she asked.
Trey cast a quick glance up at the guy she was chatting with. He was of average height, that is, shorter than Trey himself by a few inches, with a mop of dust colored hair that curled at interesting places. He gave Trey an uncomfortably tight smile that seemed to tug at a hidden string in his shoulders, making them tense up. His name came quickly to Trey's mind, as did the multiple occasions of Misha's longing to get the boy alone and ravish him. He could acknowledge that the guy, Brandon Meyer, was cute, but Trey found nothing about him that was worthy of ravishment.
He leaned to the side, peering down the corridoor in the direction of the school's student run show which sold the usual odds and ends, pens, pencils, paper, and included an assortment of caffienated beverages and quick breakfast foods as well. A small queue of people marked its location in the distance.
"You two go ahead. I have to get to my locker before the bell," he replied. It was a lie, and if Misha didn't know it, Brandon most certainly did. The youth gave him a thankful look and then, like a knight leading his lady to the King's Hall, extended his arm to Misha. Trey watched the two of them walk arm in arm away, swallowed up by the press of bodies. He grinned at the looks being directed their way. By the end of the day, the rumor mill would have done its fast work and carried the news of the Misha and Brandon sighting to every member of the Senior class. By the weekend, everyone in the town would know about it. The whispers started before Trey had rissen to his feet, and he felt a few of the onlooker's eyes pass in his direction.
In the usual run of the social world, Trey would be one of the last, if not the very bottom name on the list,t o go to for any sort of juicy gossip. But the sight of Misha and Brandon together, flirting with one another a they passed through the hallway, was the exception to the rule that could very likely propel Trey into a spotlight he had no interest in occupying. He had become a prey animal, and the Seniors turning their attention to him, probably deciding whether or not to ask him for the details of what everyone had just seen, became wolves. He cast his eyes around for a quick exit, used his knowledge of the school's passages to his advantage, and folded himself into a pack of mixed students wandering aimlessly in the last fifteen minutes before the start of school.
At a branching of hallways, he took the right corridoor that led to the front of the school building where the main doors, and the administration offices were housed. Here, the crush of bodies was almost unbearable to stand, and he had to hug close to wall to keep himself from falling behind random groups that decided, on unknown whims, to come to sudden stops, forming dense, oblong circles, uneven rectangles and lopsided triangles of conversation.
The energy level in the students around him was nearing frenetic, and the multiple voices all speaking at once created a loud cacophony of noise that hurt his ears, especially when the younger and overly dramatic personalities of any given group decided to yelp, scream, screetch or giggle maniacally. With his shoulders hunched close to his neck and the back pack an easy burden to carry behind him, he found himself longing for the modicum of peace he had back on the stairs.
He wouldn't let himself feel bad about not taking Misha up on her offer to visit the shop, though. Misha was a good friend, and a very attractive woman. She had been going on about Brandon meyer long enough, in Trey's opinion. Though Misha was more socially connected, and definitely a better conversationalist than Trey could ever hope to be, Brandon did something strange to her. Whenever she saw him walking down the halls, surrounded by his friends and aquantainces, Misha turned into a shy little girl. It was pretty funny, now that he thought about it. For someone as mature, intelligent and worldly as his best friend to be reduced to a blushing, bashful shadow of her true self, Brandon must have had some sort of magic about him that was just beyond Trey's understanding.
The gray light filtering through the glass front doors and accompanying windows touched his face as he passed by them. He turned a quick glance outside, noting the crowd beyond who were either standing still while they waited for the first bell to ring, or were making their way indoors. Hovering over the mountains nearby were a bank of ominous looking clouds, threatening rain if the winds didn't shift. That was one of the interesting things about living in Eagle Lake: the weather could change at the speed of thought; sunny one moment, dark and gloomy the next. Someone had once explained to him the meteorological causes for it, having something to do with the way the air over the lake interacted with the air coming off the mountains. He had been too busy at the time to recall much, and he'd never done any sort of research in following it up. It was just one of those neat facts that touched his life in only the smallest of ways.
Moving like a ghost through the knotted groups of his peers, he managed to leave the crush of the front hall and enter the more seculoded corridoor that housed the English department. A bank of lockers at the far end of the cooridoor, stacked against the two walls with a row pushed back to back in the middle, was a thoroughfare through which younger students passed. He, however, headed there with purpose. His locker, the same space he had been assigned since his Freshman year, lay in that direction. Hitching the bag into a more comfortable position on his shoulders, he made his way to the beige metal cubby-holes and stopped in front of 221-B. 221-A, his locker's neighbor directly to the left, belonged to Misha. It was the contrivance of their locker's numbering that first started their joint obsession with Sir Aurthor Conan Doyle and his famous detective.
Taking the textured knob between his forefinger and thumb, he dialed in the combination that would unlock the front of the locker, but then hesitated. In the past, Misha had been known to decorate people's locker's for their birthday, filling the space with baloons, confetti, and brightly colored papier mache strips that called attention to the event. He waited until the coast was clear and a couple of Juniors passed behind him before lifting the latch, pulling the door open, and peeking inside.
He breathed a sigh of relief, opening the door all the way. The locker was just as he had left it the day before at the end of school. His books were neatly stacked on the shelving units, his spare sweater remained undisturbed, and even the small, magnetic mirror he kept on the inside of the door, and moved up each year as he added inches to his height, was unmolested. He glanced at his reflection and brushed a stray bang off of his forehead, then shrugged out of the shoulder straps to open the main pocket of his bag.
But for a bit of detritus at the bottom of the bag and a notebook he used for scratch paper, it was nearly empty. His writing materials, organizing binder and text books were all kept in his locker. That way, in the event he lost his bag between classes, he wouldn't be as bothered by the loss. Paying the fine for a lost text book would be enough of a problem to deal with without having to wonder where the rest of his supplies would be coming from.
He hung his open back pack on a hook inside the locker, and then filled it with the materials he would need for his second period: a couple of pens, a three ring binder dedicated to that class filled with loose leaf notebook paper, and a thick tome with stately handwriting and images of novels adorning the cover. As the text book slipped into place, sliding along the smooth protective plastic covering the front of the binder, the sound of it triggered a deep sense of emptiness within him. It walked in caterpillar fashion over the vegetation that was his heart and started gnawing away in neat up and down bites that grew more painful with each pass.
Memories of other people's open lockers flashed in his mind's eye, visual curses that pointed out Trey's unusual bachelorhood. Their lockers were filled with memorabilia of relationships, of social connections and adventures had with one hand wrapped in the hand of another. Photographs of couples at the fair, at the lake at dusk, at any number of school dances; pictures of groups of couples hugging, stealing kisses and horsing around. Some even kept cute stuffed animals as reminders of their other half, shiny plastic eyes staring out of the shadowcast spaces, following Trey's passage in wonder and persecution. He was not the only Senior currently unattached, but he was the only one without a record of dates behind his name.
He closed the locker door harder than he needed to, the metallic bang of it echoing through the corridoor and slamming down a lid on the angst riddled emotions, the comparisson of his life to the lives of his classmates. Tragic outlined humor wafted up in the scent he wore, replacing the thoughts that berated his single status with that tantilizing preview of his imaginary lover. No one would blink were he to admit that the arms coiling around him in his fantasies belonged to a man; having been publically outed in middle school had given the whole town plenty of time to adjust to his presence. But if there were another gay youth that fell into his dating age range, he had to yet to make himself known, and time was growing short. With Misha making the preludes with Brandon, Senior year was looking like a lonely road ahead of him.
At least he had his stories, he reminded himself. His dreams of becoming a famous, wealthy and unparalleled author may never come to ruition, but with all the characters running around their individual worlds inside his head, he could never really claim to be completely alone. It would be nice, though, to have someone give him a reason to put down the pen and live a little.
Spinning the dial to secure the lock, he turned from the wall, heading in the direction he had just come from to report for his first period. He'd be early, but he would avoid the rush to change into gym clothes that came with the warning bell and left him feeling awkward. The usual banter of the boy's locker room tended to avoid his participation out of hand and, for the peace of mind of his classmates, he never tired inserting himself into it. Subtle though it was, a homophobic current oozed from the locker room's walls, laying thick in the musty air and humid mists shed by the shower privacy stalls.
He made his way through the press of students, nodding in greeting to the principal as he passed. The man did a double take, and then reached out a hand, halting Trey's progress. Trey chewed at his cheek, following him to a clear space against the wall. At home, he might just be his dad, but here at school, he was Dr. Parker, and like every other student, Trey avoided too much contact with him at school.
"Where's Misha?" he asked, dropping into that intimate tone used between parents and children, not quite condescending but lacking the respect of addressing one's equals.
"She stopped by the shop," Trey replied, crossing his arms. He left out the part about her going with Brandon; his dad was as plugged into the school's gossip machine as any student and would find out about it in due course.
Dr. Parker turned his gaze to a group of passing students and nodded. "Send her my way when you see her," he said, and then pointed to the group. "You know the rules," he said to them, holding out his hand. "You can have it back at the end of the day."
A girl with a cell phone gave Trey's father a pleading look. "But it's from my parents," she replied, holding up the device and displaying a text message to the man.
Trey turned away from the scene, melting back into the crowd as his father's answer came, "They know the rules too. Hand it over."
Once safely out of view of his dad, he brushed a hand against his pocket, feeling keys and his own cell phone answer to his touch. Use of the devices were forbidden in the school building, but that didn't stop anyone from using them. The girl was almost certainly a Freshman and hand not yet figured out which staff members it was safe to pull a cell phone out around. When he was certain he had left Dr. Parker behind, Trey sent off a quick text to Misha, relaying his father's request.
He returned the device to the safety of his pocket, and that was when he heard it. Without warning, the conversation levels dropped, a sudden lull rolling over the crowd that drew his attention away from the phone and back to the front doors. The silence was a blip, and it was filled again within a microsecond, but anyone not in the process of carrying on, or listening to someone carry on, were all looking at the same place.
The oxygen around Trey seemed to vanish the instant he laid eyes on the young man that had just pushed open the doors to set foot in the school for the first time. With a motorcycle helmet tucked beneath one arm, the youth dragged his fingers through short, chestnut hair, either nervously or out of some vain awareness that doing so was exactly the action to take at that moment, Trey could not be sure. He looked around himself for an instant, sweeping the crowd with the most dazzling pair of green eyes that Trey had ever seen, and then took a deep breath, blowing it out again in a steadying sigh. His gaze landed on Trey, actually picked him out as he peaked around the corner, like he had been searching for Trey's face among the sea of faces, and then he smiled.
Smirked, Trey corrected himself, but it was the sort of smirk anyone would be honored to have pointed in their direction, holding playful, naughty promises and a potential for the best kisses ever known to mankind. The faceless lover conjured by the scent of Trey's cologne filled out to proportions matching the stranger's tight physique, his exquisitely etched countenance, even the leather jacket that clung to his figure like a second skin too ashamed to exist on its own.
A young woman standing as part of a group nearby traced the youth's line of sight, landed on Trey, and then shouldered one of her companions. Realizing that he was about to become more fodder for the gossip mill, Trey darted out of view, his shoulders hunched and his steps rapid as he made his way toward the sheltering calm of the boy's locker room. Eagle Lake High had a new student and for reasons unfathomable to Trey, the guy had smiled at him.
Smirked, he corrected himself again as he changed into his gym clothes. It was a smirk that would follow him throught the day, an infected memory that battled for his attention in each class and left him feeling feverish every time his distraction was called out.
In P.E., he ran an extra lap, reflecting on the way the guy's lips pulled up at just the right angle to mimic a sunrise, and completely missed the coach's whistle that called them all back to the building, requiring the man to call out to him at the top of his lungs and bringing about a laughter that rippled through the rest of Trey's peers all the way through to the locker rooms. In his Creative Writing course, he wondered at the softness of those lips, and whether they preferred submitting to a kiss or taking it, and upon deciding they would be equally good at either job, he had to be called back to the task of finishing his short story, which needed to be handed in at the conclusion of the hour. His participation in the conversation at lunch with Misha was out of step with any of the topics she raised, and she caught him losing the thread altogether when the new student walked past the cafeteria doors. In social studies, he missed an important date that had to be parroted back at him, and in Sudy Hall, he got no studying done at all. When the last bell of the day sang out its sharp tone, announcing the start of the weekend, he twice lost track of which day it was and had to repack his bookbag for the homework assignments needing completion by the next week.
Flushed, considering bailing out on the birthday activities altogether, he leaned against his locker to await Misha's arrival. It didn't take a lot of brain power to conclude that he was in the process of developing a crush. He could only hope that it didn't turn out like Misha's crush on Brandon, becoming a real pain to deal with the closer she came to actually starting something with him. Then again, he had never been that open about his attraction to anyone with misha, a worm of guilt wriggling around his stomach anytime he thought about discussing boys with his best friend. It was all academic anyway. Whoever the guy was, he looked too good to remain single for long, and there were enough unescorted girls roaming around Eagle Lake High to draw his attention, his smirk, away from Trey and onto them.
Just as the full effect of that depressing thought burrowed through to the core of his dreams, Trey lifted his head in search of Misha. Using the sound level as a gague, it was well past time for her to be arriving. He looked to the left, down the row of lockers toward the back route around the auditorium, the direction from which she was most likely to come, and saw no sign of her. He looked to the right, and the junction that turned toward the school's face. Again, no Misha, but the new guy was there, wishing a pretty blonde girl with a school blazer covering her ample bosom farewell.
Trey scoffed at the sight. "That didn't take long," he added to himself under his breath, the words and their implication leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
The girl simpered, pouting red stained lips and thrusting out her chest, her hand coiling around the youth's upper arm. She gave her head a toss, golden tresses shifting over her shoulder. Even at a distance, he could read the hunger in her eyes. The youth, however, seemed immune to her advances, shrugging her off with a soft smile and a turned back.
"good for you," Trey continued his whispered monologue. "She would have been disappointing anyway." He had no first had knowledge, of course, but while he might not participate in the locker room banter, he did listen to it. That particular girl, one Rebecca Duffy, had a reputation: she made promises of great times, but always left the boys with less than stellar reviews of her techniques. She had to be doing something right, though, if they kept coming back to her for more. Sex, he guessed, really was like chocolate: good or bad, it was better have some than none at all.
Rebecca stood there, dazed, watching as the youth left her. A number of emotions commpeted for the prized position on her face, and it was surprise that won out at the end of the battle. And, like a living organism, that surprise jumped from Rebecca into Trey as they both concluded, at the same time, that the newest student to Eagle Lake High had set his feet on an intentional course that would end at Trey's locker.
For what felt like a full minute, Trey's heart forgot its natural rhythm, thumping when it should have been thudding. Then, it decided it would lose control altogether and started fluttering, a wild bird suddenly caged behind his breast bone trying to escape.
"Hi," he youth said, coming to a stop directly in front of Trey. "I'm Lane."
With a deep, rich and musical voice like that, his name could have been Bleeborp from Omicron Perseii VIII for all Trey cared, as long as he continued speaking. It was the kind of voice a young gay boy could fall into and wrap himself up in like a fuzzy, cozy blanket, and then wear it like a super hero's cape while the real super hero, out of love and compassion, let him. And that super hero was there, talking to him!
Lane was a living statue, the epitome of masculine beauty. He was the sort of guy that could be an underwear model on one page of a magazine and a successful business man in a full suit and tie twenty pages later. He dripped with the sort of sexy confidence that could convine a Tyranosaurus Rex into vegetarianism, only he wasn't selling the herbivore lifestyle, and Trey was certainly no T. Rex.
Trey gulped, pulled a quivering smile onto his face and tried, but failed, not to see Rebecca start typing away at her cell phone. "H... hi, I'm Trey," he replied, immediately berating himself for such a common, empty greeting.
Lane gave his lips a quick wetting, lifting them up into a full grin. "I know," he chuckled. "Everyone knows. You're Dr. Parker's son," he added an instant later in explanation.
Fire licked at Trey's cheeks, his shoulders falling and chin dropping to his chest. His eyes landed at the level of the youth's belt buckle, flicked down an inch to the front of Lane's jeans, which were cut high at the crotch, putting his package front and center for anyone wanting a glimpse. As though he could feel Trey scoping out the contents of his 501's, Lane hooked his thumbs in his pockets, framing the area and making it that much more inticing. Trey allowed himself one more look, his mind storing the image for later use.
"So I was wondering," Lane said, drawing Trey's eyes back to his face, "what the Principal's son does for fun because everyone knows the principal's son has the most fun. So I asked myself, 'Lane,' I said, 'If you were the principal's son, what would you do for fun?' But I couldn't come up with an answer." He lifted his hands from his pockets, using one to comb his hair back while the other braced itself against Misha's locker. He leaned in, his spearmint scented breath whispering in the air between them. "Maybe you could help me out."
Trey felt his temperature rising as the space between them decreased from hugging distance to kissing range, an intimate bubble forming around them that blocked out the rest of the world. His peer's voices faded into a low, celestial hum, their forms fading away as his whole field of vision filled with Lane's form allone. He gave silent thanks to the wall for being a wall, holding him up while his legs turned to wobbling stubs that may, or may not have been attached to his pelvis. When the time came to offer a reply though, his mind was overrun with so many possibilities, from the innocent to the vulgar, that it was all just noise. Nothing stood out amids the tempest tossed surface of responses, which left him in the awkward position of finding an empty, useless, non-comittal reply that did precisely nothing to convey any of the real answers he wanted to give.
"Sure," he said, the sound coming out of his mouth an embarassingly high pitched croak. He cleared his throat, adding, "What... what did you have in mind?"
Lane's eyebrow twitched. His grin quirked. He dropped his gaze to the space between their bodies, and then lifted it once more to meet Trey's with a hunter's gleam that pierced the veil separating safety and adventure. The barriers inside Trey's mind that kept him from acting out on impulses crumbled, the battlements falling to the earth in a cloud of dust. The youth tucked his bottom lip between his lips, letting it go in slow motion, his face tilting as if in preparation for a kiss.
Trey's breath caught, came out in a soft, needy whimper. He felt his arms lifting of their own volition, sent out a panicked command to reverse course, but it was too late. They landed on Lane's hips, fingers finding and hooking in the youth's belt loops. It was precisely the sort of thing that Rebecca Duffy would have done, exactly what Trey wanted to do, yet it still left him feeling self-conscious and, now that he had taken the action, he had no idea whatsoever he should do next.
He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to pull the young man with the chestnut hair, the naughty grin and the most delicious lips he had ever seen, against him. He wanted to run his tongue over those lips, tasting the youth's breath as he exhaled, stealing it for his own. He wanted to rub every part of himself against every part of Lane until they merged into a single being. Instead, he blushed, lost his gumption, and let his hands fall away from Lane's hips to hang limply at his sides.
Out of the corner of his left eye, he saw Misha approach and then come to a dead stop, looking between them and not quite sure whether she was walking in on something that should have been private, or if she needed to step in to defend her best friend from a bully.
Lane caught sight of the visitor as well. He wiggled his eyebrows at Trey and then rolled to lean sideways beside him, sharing the small door frame of his locker. The proximity of his position, his fingertips brushing against Trey's palm, sent an intoxicating twinge of excitement rushing through every never in his body. He gave an involuntary shiver, smiled.
"Hi..." Misha said, extending the word out and shifting its pitch to turn the smile she pulled onto her features audible.
The tips of Trey's ears colored, and he did his best to fix his face into a neutral expression but failed miserably at it. He cleared his throat. "Hi!" he replied, with a touch more enthusiasm than he was accustomed to using.
Misha approached, leaning against the wall opposite to Lane. "Who's your friend?"
The name Bleeborp form Omicron Perseii VIII came unbidden to Trey's mind. Fortunately, Lane took the initiative, lifting his hand around the front of Trey's body, the toe of his shoe coming into contact with the side of Trey's heel. "Lane Hunt," he offered, accepting Misha's hand once it had been extended. "I'm the new guy," he added with a small laugh.
Twin desires competed for Trey's attention, strobing alternate suggestions at him to either lean toward the right, thus increasing his physical contact with Lane or to try extracating himself from the linked hands in front of him altogether. He reclined his head in defiance of either option, lifting his eyes to the panneled ceiling in hopes that a course of action would be written there for him to follow. The yellow pencil stuck into the ceiling and dangling above, swaying gently under the pressure of the school's ventilation system, gave him no clear answer.
Lane's fingertips walked closer to the center of his hand, started making small, swirling motions in the middle of his palm. It was gentle, intimate, and just about the most arousing sensation Trey had ever experienced. He gave his own fingers a soft wiggle, felt them come into contact with the knife edge of Lane's hand. The youth switched to fingernails, casually stroking, bringing Trey's concentration to how sensitive that hands really were; how much a little touch like the feather-light stroke being delivered to him now could convey. It was playful, sensual, asking for more without demanding it. It was one hell of a way to let Trey know that Lane was interested in him, and it made him wonder why everyone didn't just do what Lane was doing now. It certainly felt better than the verbal sparing, the back and forth that counted as flirting these days.
Presently, Misha introduced herself, adding, "It's nice to meet you Lane. Got plans this weekend?"
Trey's head snapped to the side, his attention falling to Misha with such intensity that he didn't register the pain of whiplash in his neck for a full second. Either she had just hit on Lane, or she was trying to hook him up with Trey. He looked to her with a broad, wide-eyed intensity that could have equally been a warning glare or a plea not to go on.
Lane leaned against him, managing to weave his fingers with Trey's. "We were just discussing that very topic," he replied. "Do you have any ideas?"
Misha lifted her gaze to the ceiling and brought a finger to her chin in a mockery of deep thinking. "Well, someone is having a birthday bowling session this evening" she offered. "Of course it be would rude of me to invite you without checking with him first."
She gave Trey a nudge, jarring his voice loose from whatever hook it had caught itself on in his throat. With the power of speech restored, he found it easier to breathe as well. "Oh, right!" He turned to Lane, found his face enticingly close. "Would you like to come? It'll probably be really boring though," he concluded, his voice trailing off.
Lane gifted him with a full smile, squeezing Trey's hand and then letting it slip from his grip, leaving it lonely in its emptiness. "Love to."
Misha pulled a square piece of scratch paper from her bag, scribbled hastily at its surface, and then handed it over. "There's the address. We'll be there around 7:30." Grabbing Trey by the other hand, she gave him a tug, dragging him away even as she waved. "See you there," she called over her shoulder.
Trey cast one final backward glance at the young man, and followed along behind his friend.
* * *
Lane watched the two of them depart, his attention focused to a narrow beam on the back of the principal's son, but he didn't need his eyes to follow their progress. Trey Parker's spirit sang the Hellsong to lane's like a Siren calling to Ulysses, and now that the first contact had been made, he could track the youth anywhere in the world. He was definitely the One that Lane had been looking for too. There had been some doubt initially, and Lane's Mother had prepared him for it. After all, when the Umbrae, his Darkling, finally settled on a compatable being, it rarely took into account its owners will and paid no regard whatsoever to modern concepts of morality. Claiming his Umbrae back, though, might prove tricky. Trey was both a virgin, confirmed by the Breif contact Lane had been able to make with his Darkling, and one of the most inhibited people Lane had ever met. Being the only gay boy in the school had done a number on him for sure. Well, Lane would help with that and, hopefully, Trey would let him.
He closed his eyes, soaking in the sound of the youth as the song grew more distant, tracking it from the exit, through the parking lot until it faded to the low, symphonic tune ever present at the edge of Lane's awareness since his Darkling had detached from him to link to Trey. Terrifying was it was for Lane to have a part of himself ripp away from the core of his being, he could only imagine the fear that Lane must have been struck by when it had happened. Neither of them would have survived had his Mother not been there to guide him through it.
Fixing Trey's direction in his mind, Lane let his eyes open once more, blinking through the red hued fuzz; distortion from too many people shedding too much emotion in one place. Once his vision had cleared, he lifted the folded note that the girl had given him, reading her loopy scraw silently.
Surprise Party, it read at the top, followed by an address and a telephone number. The address, he noted, was nowhere near the bowling alley. Smiling, he tucked the note away for safe keeping and opened the locker to the right of Trey's: 222-A. Securing that space had cost him more energy than he should have devoted, and he would pay for it when the evening came. Already, he could feel the ragged edge of fatigue coiling in his muscles.
Reaching within the cubby, he donned his leather jacket, pulled out his helmet, and then closed the door. Just as he made to turn toward the path that Trey and Misha had taken, a heavy impact landed on his back and locked him in place, crushed against the metal with the dial knob poking into his lower abdomen. His helmet clattered to the floor and skidded away, its progress stopped as it struck a boot.
"You were warned Incubus," someone growled into his ear.
He was turned by rough hands to face his attacker, found himself standing nose to nose with a young man in a leatherman's jacket. The blazing preternatural eyes stained coal black were threatening in their own right, but it was the youth's teeth, fully matured and quite deadly, that concerned Lane the most.
His gaze flicked to the small contingent of three that the youth had brought with him, vampires all though the one holding him against the wall was the only one born that way. Knowing how that breed made more of their own, he permitted himself a momentary grin. Trey, it seemed, had not really been the only one with a preference for male companions.
Taking his grin as a challenge, the youth flexed his superior strength, lifting Lane off of his feet. Oh, he was a powerful vampire, but all the Argents were, though they tended to be less showy about it. And he was frustrated too, Lane sensed. So much so, in fact, that he didn't even need his Darkling to read the symptoms of the creature's carnal yearnings.
Hello, Deacon," he said conversationally to the youth. "Rough day?" It was the wrong question to be asking. The youth slammed him into the locker, denting the door and knocking the breath out of him. Pain sliced through the side of one ass cheek as the locking mechanism buried into the meat.
"All fucking day I've heard nothing but Lane Hunt this and Lane Hunt that," Deacon snarled at him. "You were told not to draw attention to yourself." He pounded lane against the locker in emphasis again. "You were told to keep your powers to yourself," he continued, delivering another bone jarring blow that whipped the back of Lane's head into the metal.
Stars burst before his eyes. Like any respectable Incubus, he could handle a bit of pain, but this was too much. Fighting back was not an option, not with his Umbrae attached to Trey, and even if he had full use of his gifts, he could never match the strength of four vampires. Which left him with only one option: he called for help. Reaching deep into his being, he found the etheric link that connected him to his Mother and plucked it.
Her response was swift. From a shady corner, the woman materialized and drew herself to her full height. She wore the guise of a human, but moved with a serpentine grace that stirred the cthonic depths of the psyche. Her long dark hair shimmered with each measured, high-heeled step.
"Please," she said, coming to a stop a few feet away, her voice straddling the edge of humanity and ancient, long dead divinity, "put him down." There was neither compulsion nor threat in the request. In fact, it was positively cordial. But it twisted in the air, reverberating in every lust touched place in the listener's body.
Deacon dropped him, turned the full force of his vampiric gaze on her. She gave him an amused grin in reply and then looked to lane, scanning him from head to toe. Her emereald eyes flashed at the level of the bruise now throbbing on Lane's backside, but she remained silent about it. So long as Lane didn't complain, neither would she.
He retrieved his helmet from the floor and moved to stand beside, and slightly behind her. Her mind brushed against his, slithering through his thoughts without regard for privacy or the sense of violation it left in him. Each examined memory, every picked apart emotion, was its own intrusion; his very essence laid bare before her. There was an incestuous quality to it that turned his stomach and made bile rise to his throat. He'd been dealing with it for eighteen years, and each year, the pressure of her mental explorations grew more unbearable. But it was the only affection she could give him. She was a being out of time and out of sync with a world that she could scarcely care about or even comprehend.
The threat resolved, and Lane's brains thoroughly sifted, his Mother slipped back into the shadow cast corner and melted into the darkness.
Deacon narrowed his gaze, scowling at Lane with naked hatred. His comrads fared worse, though. One of them teetering on the border of passing out, or throwing up, was kept on unsteady feet by the others.
"She won't always answer your prayers, Incubus," Deacon spat out at him. "Remember that."
Lane squeezed the helmet over his head. The vampire was right of course, but with any luck, Lane would never have to test that prognosis out. He walked along the empty corridoors, waiting until he was astride his motorcycle and it was purring beneath him to extract his phone. The text message he sent to Misha was answered an instant later. He gave the bike some gas and headed in the direction of the town's center, where he could find the items he needed for Trey's party.
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