Being in love with Boots is quite possibly the worst idea Bruno has ever had.
Boots makes funny whistling noises when he sleeps, and his hair always looks stupid, no matter how it's cut; Boots complains even though Bruno's just trying to liven things up or do something to further diversify MacDonald Hall's culture. Besides, eighteen's a stupid age to fall in love anyway; nothing lasts at eighteen, especially not eighteen itself.
But it's impossible, and unavoidable, Bruno thinks, sulking: Boots is always there.
Bruno goes to sleep listening to Boots breathe or finish up a paper or page through a book, the sound of water rushing in the bathroom through a closed door. And the next morning, just before math class starts, Bruno wakes up to Boots, and he hops down the hall on one foot while tying the other foot's shoe, and they laugh together.
It's not a new thing, this particular bad decision of his, and Bruno has spent the last two summers at home, humping pillows and making out with girls, neither of which change the fact that Bruno's still in love with someone named Melvin. It's starting to get on his nerves.
He figures that it's better just to ignore it, like a scab, and not pick at it. Over time, it'll fix itself and fall away, because Bruno Walton is not Like That, and if he was, he would not be Like That over his best friend.
In his head, sometimes he sees what Boots would say if he was. It's never pretty.
Bruno's got a thing for blondes, which now that he's a senior in an all-boy's school, is all the hot jabber. He never knew sexual frustration could be so dangerous but he was wrong, and everybody is poking him in the ribs and leering about Diane from across the street.
Pete Anderson talks about how hot Cathy is, and how funny it'd be if Boots married her and Bruno married Diane.
"It'd be disgusting," Pete laughs. "You four. Like one of those horrible romantic movies."
"They ever make you watch those?" Wilbur asks, concerned. He's eating cabbage in some parent-mandated effort to control his weight; Bruno figures it'd work better if he wasn't working his way through a bushel of them a day. "I hear girls make you watch those."
Boots laughs, and always shakes his head 'no.' "They're not like that," he explains. "They're pretty awesome. I mean--" he motions with his hand, food still in his fingers, and Bruno thinks that'd be annoying as hell if it wasn't so endearing "--think about all the stuff they got up to with us over the years."
Sydney Rampulski smiles. "Oh yeah, I'm sure they've gotten up to loads with you guys."
Boots scowls, and throws a biscuit. And dodging it, Sydney slips out of his chair and lands in a heap on the ground--nobody pays much attention; it's going on eight years of the same. You can only ask, "Are you all right?" so many times.
"We're not like that, all right?" Bruno cuts in. "We're just friends."
Nobody gets Bruno and Boots and Cathy and Diane--which is fine, because Bruno doesn't get Boots and Cathy and Diane. He thinks he might get himself, but then again, he's in love with a Melvin. Maybe Bruno's never gotten anything at all.
Though, Bruno probably gets why he likes blondes.
All that poking about Diane's pretty pointless; she's platinum, and Boots is dishwater at best.
And after a while, it becomes apparent that if Bruno doesn't do something about this he's going to go seven kinds of insane.
He tries grand gestures. But when Boots sees that Bruno has written "MELVIN P. O'NEAL YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE ETC BRUNO WALTON" into the MacDonald Hall lawn with weed-killer, he just laughs it off as a joke. Bruno spends his two weeks detention happy for the time alone and eating leftovers off of the carts in the kitchen, deciding Boots isn't worthy of his affection until Boots buys him some rubber gloves. "You sure need them after all these years," he says, grinning, before he turns back to his book, and Bruno falls in love all over again.
So then he tries little things, which don't even make Boots bat an eye. And when Bruno puts his arms around Boots after swim meets or during a football game, Boots just leans into the contact, pointing and shouting about something that isn't how he's the light of Bruno Walton's life. Bruno's pretty sure this has to be an engraved invitation or something, but figures he's too much of a coward to do more than put his arm around his best friend, and he's been doing that since he was twelve.
He considers asking Perry, who was the first one to get a girlfriend. But then, Perry still refuses to speak to him, and Bruno doesn't really want a girlfriend, he just wants Boots.
Bruno ends up asking Diane, mostly because he's got no one else to turn to.
He's laying on the floor of her room, looking at the ceiling tragically. Even the carpet smells like girls; Bruno just doesn't get that--you're supposed to like how the person you like smells, not how their perfume does. Boots smells like pool water, ballpoint pens, and notebook paper.
"This is really pathetic," Diane says pityingly. She throws him a roll of Sprees.
Bruno debates being insulted, but in the end just takes the candy gratefully. Because Diane is right, this is pitiful. He's going to smell like girls for the rest of the month--the year. All the guys are going to think he finally got some; if Bruno ever really got some, he'd smell like pool water and ballpoint pens and notebook paper.
"If you're so lovesick, why don't you just tell her?" she asks, disgustingly logical.
Bruno moans. "But she's not that kind of girl, you know? She'd just look at me and tell me what a freak I am and how much she hates me." He pauses. "And then she'd set all my stuff on fire."
"Well, you are a freak," Diane admits, "and she might hate you." But adds brightly, "Still, it's not like she actually has access to your room, you know?"
Bruno sulks, Boots-ina most certainly does have access to his stuff. Boots-ina would probably burn all his things now if he knew what conversation Bruno was attempting to have.
"That's what you think," he says.
"Arson is not the typical response to unwanted affection."
"You don't know this girl," Bruno insists, trying to fashion his unbearable frustration with horrible clawing motions of his fingers. "She's like--she's almost mannish."
Diane levels a wrinkle-nosed look at him, but doesn't take the obvious bait. This is why Bruno likes Diane, because she's not Cathy.
"I think I'm in love with her," Bruno wails at the ceiling, hand uncurling and loose Sprees rolling out across Diane's side of the room. "Like, capital 'L' love."
Diane narrows her eyes and points at the window. "Get out of my room."
He looks up miserably at her, and Diane relents, sighing at him with a vague smile at the corners of her mouth as she says, "Look, if you really like this girl so much, you may as well say something--do something unmistakable." The smirk's full blown now. "You make yourself miserable without her, you make yourself miserable not knowing, those could be the exact same kind of miserable. If nothing else, you won't end up worse than where you already are."
Cathy bursts into the room, arms full of ruffled underwear, hair sticking in every direction.
"Diane! I just stole all of Miss Scrimmage's underpants and we have to--" she freezes mid-sentence when she sees Bruno on the floor. "God, Walton," she says. "Get off the floor, you're getting pathetic loser all over our carpet."
Bruno figures she's right.
That night at dinner, Bruno takes the back of his spoon and makes a heart in his mashed potatoes before he shoves his plate in Boots' face.
"What is that?" Pete Anderson asks.
Wilbur says, "If you don't want it, give it to me."
"Back off!" Bruno yells. "It's a message."
Boots blinks and looks at the plate from three separate angles, before he snorts and shoves it back at Bruno, saying, "Man, grow up. Making butt-prints in food stopped being cool in the fourth grade."
Bruno barely resists the urge to fling his tray at Boots' head, and settles for accidentally pouring his glass of milk all over his roommate's lap instead.
After Boots leaves to clean up, muttering the whole time, Elmer Drimsdale pushes his Coke-bottle glasses higher on his nose and looks at Bruno, saying precisely, "Communication is a tricky science. Perhaps, you should design and implement a procedure before you randomly start creating impressions of unsavory parts of human anatomy."
This time, Bruno does throw his tray.
Thankfully, it misses, and he only gets a day's confinement because the Fish can't tell if Bruno knocked Sydney down or if he fell on his own.
Bruno's versatility and desperation have a direct relationship, and by the end of Week Three Of Utter And Total Unforgivable Loser-ness the Fish calls Bruno into his office.
"Your behavior is even more bizarre than usual," the Fish says sternly, folding his hands one over the other. "Besides which, you haven't even been inciting chaos, just small-scale confusion which has sent Mr. O'Neal perplexed to my office no fewer than four times in the last two weeks."
Bruno's eyes widen. "Boots--I mean, Melvin's been speaking to you, sir? About me?"
The Fish pushes up his steel-rimmed glasses and the corners of his mouth harden into something just shy of an administrative frown. It's an expression too tempered by concern for one of the Fish's Walton Have You Any Idea The Severity Of Your Transgression speeches.
"Yes, about you. He's extremely concerned and he--" the Fish motions with his hand "--claims that you've been acting wildly out of sorts." A small, fierce smile creeps across the Fish's face, and he adds, "He's gone so far as to suggest that you might need for a mandatory appointment with Mr. Fudge to be arranged."
When Bruno finds Boots, he's going to do something really awful.
Bruno forces himself to laugh. "I think that's a little dramatic, sir."
"Taking Mr. O'Neal's reports into consideration, I'm not convinced it's dramatic at all," the Fish says flatly.
Bruno swallows hard. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Sir."
The Fish raises both his eyebrows. "So the weed killer incident was an accident."
"That stuff just goes wherever it wants to," Bruno babbled. "I tried to make Elmer calculate the probability behind it going in that exact formation but he said he didn't have enough room for all the punchcards he'd need for the computer he's building."
This doesn't even make the Fish bat an eye; it's a sign Bruno has been in the school too long.
"Mr. Walton," the Fish finally says after an abnormally long pause. "Is there anything you'd like to discuss with me?"
Bruno blinks at the Headmaster, and concentrates on maintaining a mask of utmost, confused innocence; he's working off of movies and television, since he's never been lucky enough to be completely blameless in his life.
Mr. Sturgeon slips off his glasses and sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose, saying, "A bet you lost, perhaps? Some sort of dare?"
He puts an emphasis on 'dare' that makes it sound like a foreign language that he's just trying out. Bruno would bet his entire life savings that Mr. Sturgeon did the same stupid stuff they did when he was younger; old age and burgeoning senility have just allowed him to conveniently forget.
"Why, no, sir," Bruno says sweetly.
Fish narrows his eyes again. "Are you quite certain about that, Mr. Walton?"
Bruno is debating creating a wildly implausible story to weasel out of this. He's' trying to think if--aside from the weedkiller incident--he's done anything particularly difficult to explain by some sort of mood swing. He's not above pleading male PMS if it'll get him out of this; bonus willingness to be humiliated if he gets back to his room in time to smother Boots with a pillow before dinner.
He clears his throat. "I--I think I'm going through a phase, sir," he finally says.
The Fish considers this for a moment before he says, "I see."
"You told the Fish you thought I was crazy!"
"I told him you were acting funny! It's true! You were! You are!"
"I am not insane!" Bruno argues. "I can't believe you ratted me out!"
Boots glares from his corner of the room. "It's not like you got in trouble for it or anything! I'm just worried about you--you're acting like…like you're crazier than usual or something!"
"I am not acting crazier than usual! You're acting like a rat!"
Bruno does his best to be discreet about problems between him and his roommate, which is why he doesn't ask the mob of people three-deep gathered around their thrown-open doorway to verify his claim.
There's a loud, painful-sounding crash signifying Sydney Rampulski's arrival and it drags Bruno's attention away from Boots' face--which is really quite fetching the way he's all flushed in annoyance--to look at the whispering gaggle of boys camped in the dormitory three hallway. Bruno swears he can see Mr. Fudge in the back, looking just as interested as everybody else in this most recent turn of events.
So much for Boots' plan.
"Do you guys mind?" Boots shouts, and the crowd begins to disperse, albeit unwillingly and only further down the hall, where Bruno is sure they'll all hear anyway.
And when everyone is out of sight, Boots turns back on him to yell, "What is your problem?"
"My problem is your utter and complete betrayal of this friendship! Did I go to the Fish and rat you out when you had a skin magazine stuck under your mattress?" Bruno argues.
"That is completely different, I wasn't acting like a raving lunatic!" Boots explodes. "I mean, seriously, Bruno! First the weedkiller--"
Bruno panics.
"--then the petting--"
Shit! Boots had totally noticed!
"--and I'm not even going to mention the buttprint in the mashed potatoes--"
Bruno debates killing Boots for his silence. Or possibly killing everybody on the hall.
"--or the mooning around or the passing me notes in Chemistry that just say "Hi!" six times a period. I mean, if I didn't know better I'd say--"
Bruno stops thinking.
He stalks across the floor, slams the door shut and throws the lock before he stalks back over to where Boots was just gaping at him, grabs his roommate, and kisses him.
It is hard and uncomfortable and weirdly dry, closed-mouth and not exactly something to write home about, but Bruno hopes it gets the point across, because he is sick of shouting at the top of his lungs and not having anybody hear.
"There!" he says when he let go of Boot's face only to find a stunned expression there. "That's what that's been all about--okay? So now you know!"
There is utter silence.
And somewhere in Bruno's mind, he must have believed that Boots would get it, kiss him back, understand him, maybe even want him. But that's too much to hope for and Bruno had looked up the statistics before, one in ten, there were twenty-six guys on their hall alone, he'd reasoned, and maybe Boots was one of those 2.6 homosexuals. After all, he'd bet good money once that Perry didn't do the girl thing, but then he'd gone and gotten a girlfriend; all the usual suspects were off the list so why not Boots? Why not Bruno and Boots--and they could be 2.6 percent gay together, just like they'd done everything else together for the last eight years.
But Boots doesn't say anything, do anything, he just stares at Bruno in dumb shock.
Bruno takes an enormous step back, looks around the room, and decides he cannot stay there and listen to Boots slowly inhale, not when Bruno knows that he's just ruined everything.
He says, "You can get a room change if you want," and fumbles with the lock to the door before throwing it open. Three of the dozens of guys huddled around the doorway get knocked down from the force of it, and Bruno doesn't stop to ask if they're all right before he darts down the hallway, out of the lobby and through the double doors, into the late evening light, all blue and sheer from a long day.
Bruno half-expects the Fish to come find him with a note about how he's been expelled from McDonald Hall for kissing boys and other associated crimes of the homosexually embarrassing kind. But it doesn't happen and he just hides in the shadow of dormitory one all night until he passes out, and wakes up several hours later with dirt and leaves in his hair.
It's morning--the early kind, where the light looks like dishwater and the air is still wet. Bruno hasn't seek this kind of morning since the last time he pulled an all-nighter, burning the midnight oil underneath a tent of his blankets to finish an essay about Coleridge and his internal journey. At page seven, when his hand was too stiff to write, he'd shoved off the comforters to suck in a deep breath, and seen the gray light filtering into room 306 through the window and how it fell on Boot's hair, which almost looked golden in it, for no good reason.
Bruno groans, and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and feels completely filthy, which he
probably is.
Bruno figures that somewhere in his head, he was expecting Boots to come, like Boots always comes to him. In their fights, admittedly fewer and further between now that they are older, Bruno says something extravagant and Boots tells him to keep his feet on the ground, just bear it for a moment, that you can't change the world through sheer force of will. And so they glare and yell and Bruno doesn't bother with the masking tape down the middle of the room anymore--they're just understood.
But when they fight it's Boots who always apologizes, even if "I'm sorry" means "I'm sorry you are the way you are, but I'll put up with your shit, anyway." Boots doesn't have to decode, Bruno gets him, is like that ring you get in your cereal--Bruno can unravel Boots.
Just like Boots unravels Bruno.
"Oh, this is attractive."
Bruno turns and sees Boot's scuffed up shoes, then turns determinately to stare at the sky again.
"Like I care about being attractive to you," he retorts, which loses effect when you're laying on your back in the dirt on the lawn of your school.
Boots makes a noise that means Bruno Walton You're The World's Biggest Loser and flops down on the grass next to Bruno's head, laying back, hands pillowing his head.
"You could have given me a little more notice," Boots says quietly. "I'm not mad at you."
For some reason, this crushes Bruno's heart. "Oh," he says quietly, and turns on his side away from Boots, because Bruno needs space all of a sudden. And not-close-enough is suddenly suffocating, terrifying, all wrong.
It's quiet for a long time before Bruno feels not-at-all-soft hands in his hair, rough fingers threading through his bangs for a moment in an awkward, comforting gesture. Like these fingers have never done this before, and don't know how--but they don't want to mess up, Bruno can feel that through his skin.
And Bruno can barely believe it when Boots says, "You surprised me, all right? You don't just surprise a guy like that."
He twists his head around in the grass, and he feels the dirt, damp and cool under his cheek when he hazards a glance at Boots' earnest expression.
He's not really sure what to say. It's a weird feeling.
"Sorry," Bruno croaks. "I didn't think."
"Bullshit," Boots laughs. "You're always thinking--especially when you don't look like you're thinking."
Bruno is startled into laughing, and he flops over on his back again so he can see Boot's face, handsome in the morning light. Cathy refuses to say which one of them is "cuter" by female standards, but Bruno has always thought that Boots was--while Bruno is more oddly interesting than conventionally attractive.
But today, even when Bruno thinks Boots has stupid hair most of the time, Bruno thinks that Boots is probably beautiful, though he doesn't think he could ever be gay enough to say that out loud. Boots has blue eyes and dishwater blonde hair and he always smells like pool water and looks completely stupid when he sleeps.
But Bruno's in love with him anyway.
"Yeah," Bruno admits. "Still sorry."
Boots pulls his hand out of Bruno's hair, shrugging. "It's all right. I mean," Boots pauses, "I mean I don't know what this…really means."
Bruno rubs his hands over his face and says, "Great, that's two of us."
"Yeah, well, you started it," Boots mutters under his breath. "You've always gotta be doing something completely crazy. If it's not causing riots or creating artificial earthquakes--"
Bruno holds up a finger. "Uh, Elmer did that."
"--then you're marrying off our teachers and kissing your roommate."
They fall shyly silent at that.
"Do you--do you want to never talk about this again?" Bruno asks hoarsely. He figures it's the least he can do. After all, he kissed his best friend and roommate and he didn't even get punched in the face, by Bruno's count, that's way in his favor already--he shouldn't be pushing his luck.
Boots doesn't say anything for a long time, but when he does, he's saying, "Did you mean it?"
Bruno freezes. "What?"
"Back then," Boots says irritably. "Back then when you--" he cuts himself off. "Did you mean it?"
Bruno briefly considers flying into a total rage, but vetoes that to gulp hard and say, "I think you're too important--" God, Bruno just can't get over the fact that he just said that out loud, he's going to have to let his little sister kill him this summer or something "--for me not to have meant it if I did--that."
"Right," Boots says, and then pushes himself up to his feet. "All right, get up. It's probably getting close to eight. You can eat breakfast today, I'm sure the guys'll be happy to show you the wonders of daylight."
Bruno's so used to following directions from Boots--which makes no sense, because if you listen to how Boots complains, it makes it seem like Bruno's the one who makes all the decisions or something--that he's already up and brushing leaves off his ass when he realizes that Boots didn't answer the question.
And when Bruno follows Boots back into the dormitory shouting about how Boots didn't, he doesn't anticipate that later that day, after a weirdly normal day of classes and meals that he would come back to the room half past nine and Boots would be waiting for him.
"Hey," Bruno says, like this is a normal day. "Missed you at poker night."
Boots is already in a beat-up t-shirt and pajama pants, flopped in his bed. He does a shoulder roll that might be a shrug. "I had to think about some stuff," he says.
"Oh," Bruno says stupidly, and goes to the bathroom.
When he gets back, Boots is standing in front of the bathroom door, looking kind of sick and mostly nervous and Bruno doesn't get so far as a "What are you doing?" before Boots leans over and kisses him, shy and fast and painfully red before pulling away and throwing himself into his bed, pulling the covers over his head.
Bruno tries to process it for about five minutes before he gives up, towels off his hair again and goes to bed confused.
This is just payback, he thinks furiously. Figures that Boots is a vindictive little bastard.
And as Bruno falls asleep, he realizes warily he's in deep, because that seems okay, too.
But if Boots has learned one thing from Bruno, it's to follow through on threats and promises, and after, Boots kisses him at night, finds reasons to touch him. It's like Boots is feeling this out, figuring out how this work, if he wants it to, and Bruno's okay with letting him work it out, take it slow. So Boots' quick kisses before bed get deeper on one Wednesday of no consequence, and it leaves Bruno hot and throbbing, and awake until he hears Boots fall asleep so that he can go into the bathroom and slick his hands into his pants, jerk three times quickly and muffle his yell with a towel.
It gets harder to be frustrated with what Boots is doing two weeks later when Bruno comes home from poker night slightly drunk and Boots laughs and slams him back against the closed door to kiss him hard. It's sloppy and funny and not smooth at all, and Bruno's tongue slides across Boots' and nothing has ever made more sense.
Boots tastes like toothpaste and is smiling into Bruno's mouth and this might be the best thing ever, Bruno thinks and kisses him furiously, running his hands greedily through Boots' hair.
"I can't believe this," Boots gasps out, and darts in for another kiss.
Bruno grunts, and when he pulls away to breathe throws back, "Whatever, I'm making out with a Melvin."
There's thumping on the door, and Mr. Fudge yells, "Hey, knock it off. Lights out!"
So Bruno muffles his laugh into Boots' mouth and shoves them away from the door. And Boots throws his arms over Bruno's shoulders, fingers linked, as the small of his back hits the desk, and they laugh into each other's mouths, gasping and young and completely insane--totally nuts, there's not other explanation and Bruno doesn't want one.
And all of a sudden he's so grateful, filled with it, and his mouth slides from Boots' mouth to his ear and Bruno murmurs:
"Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you thank you thank you."
McDonald Hall loses its next three swim meets, and one night, Bruno wakes up and finds Boots' bed empty and the window opened.
There aren't that many places Boots can go, so Bruno groans and pulls on some sneakers before walking out to the pool.
When he gets there, the water is throwing blue wavy shadows on the ceiling, and the moonlight is slanting across the floor. Bruno yawns and picks through the buoys and floaters and nets, the folded up chairs and crates of pool shit that Bruno's never going to understand.
Boots is cutting through the water, muscles and white arms slicing through silvers of light and otherworldly blue, blonde hair dark and pasted to his skull, and Bruno groans. It just figures, of course his roommate will do this: have some sort of fit at two in the morning.
He shuffles over to the far side of the pool and flops down, legs crossed and glares into the pool.
When Boots peels out of the water, sheets of it rolling off of his shoulders, even Bruno's not exhausted and grumpy enough to not enjoy it.
He says, "So what are you doing?"
Boots flips his hair out of his face hooks his arms over the side of the pool, clinging to the edge. In the light, Bruno can see ever silver slide of water over Boots' muscles, and it suddenly makes his mouth dry and swollen.
"Swimming," Boots gasps, panting. "What're you doing?"
Bruno scowls. "You're my best friend. I wake up at two in the morning and you're not there. What do you think I do?"
Boots grins, totally seventeen and says, "You jack off, like always."
Bruno glowers and slams his hand down into the water to slap a wave of it into Boots' laughing face. "Asshole," he mutters. "You guys won't keep losing."
"Yeah," Boots says, glancing away.
"Hey, I'm trying to cheer you up."
Boots smirks. "I figured. You suck at it, Bruno."
"I don't know why I like you," Bruno says, scowling.
This makes Boots cock his head to the side, considering. He slides a little down into the water again and he looks at Bruno through suddenly-dark eyes when he says, "You do."
Bruno blinks. "What?"
"Like me," Boots murmurs. "You do."
Bruno thinks that that's been pretty obvious since, you know, it was him shoving his tongue down Boots' throat, him sliding his hands down Boots' smooth, smooth back, and him whispering thank you, thank you, all the time.
"Uh," he manages. "Yeah, I'd say that."
Boots seems to think about this for a long time before he pulls himself to the edge of the pool again, and this time he's looking at Bruno like there's nothing else in the world. He reaches out two wet hands and tugs Bruno forward, and Bruno slides down the smooth tiles with Boots because he can't say no and he can't look away.
"What are you doing?" he asks quietly.
"Shut up," Boots says, almost a whisper, and drags Bruno's legs into the pool, cold water shocking against his feet, seeping into his worn flannel pants and crawling up his legs, sneakers flooding.
Bruno sucks in a hard breath when he realizes Boots is floating in that ghostly blue water between Bruno's knees, splayed open, and he's barely sitting on the edge of the pool. He's clutching the cement edges, feeling it cut into his palms, breath shortening and suddenly terrified, like that time he thought Boots was going to leave. Only Boots isn't going anywhere.
"Yeah, yeah," Boots whispers for real this time, fingers reaching up to touch Bruno's face, draws him in, and just before their lips meet, says, "Me, too."
And Boots kisses him boneless before one hand down the front of Bruno's gray shirt, fingers trailing dark, wet cloth before catching the hem and sliding underneath, nails scraping over Bruno's belly, which isn't as flat and muscled like Boots'. It's made him self-conscious before, living with one of the sports stars of McDonald Hall, but this is Boots, who's known Bruno for all of his life that's mattered, and all Bruno can do is moan into it, feel himself arch into it.
Boots slides himself down along Bruno's chest, muscles rippling in his shoulders and he sinks back into the water, mouth trailing down Bruno's neck. There's water beading in Boots' long, long eyelashes when he looks up at Bruno from beneath them, and it makes Bruno let out a soft, desperate sound that means everything he's still too straight to say.
"Thank you," Boots murmurs softly, mouth dropping a wet, hot kiss to Bruno's stomach, to the line of flesh against the elastic waist of his pajama pants.
"Oh my God," Bruno groans, and feels himself gasping, like there's not enough air in the world.
Boots grins against his stomach, and those same wet fingers are cold against Bruno's skin when they slide under the waist.
The first time Bruno did this, his hands shook and he moved too fast, but he knew how to touch Boots, it was all familiar, none of the new territory and soft curves he'd never known before like with the girls during the summer.
It's all old geography, raised cartography that Bruno studied before, and when he'd wrapped his hand around Boots' dick under the sheets it was like coming home, and all that other sentimental crap. But he'd loved it, watching the way Boots' eyelashes had fluttered, the way his mouth fell open, how tongue ran obsessively over his bottom lip, the gasping, hushed noises he made in between Bruno's indulgent kisses.
But Boots' hands don't shake at all when his fingers wrap around Bruno's hardening cock and his thumb strokes over the head indulgently, liquid trail of pool water and pre-cum leaving a damp line along the underside.
Bruno thrusts up, curves his body into the touch and hisses, sucks in oxygen through clenched teeth and debates yelling at Boots to hurry the fuck up. But Boots looks beautiful like that--fuck! he said it!--concentrated and mesmerizing and dark-eyed and staring at Bruno like this is it, like this is it.
Boots pulls Bruno out of the pajama bottoms and in the rushed, awkward way that they seem to do everything, he kisses the head of Bruno's cock, lips impossibly hot and wet against Bruno's skin. And then they part and Bruno's spine melts out of his body.
Bruno's only upright long enough to see his Boots' thick, pink lips slide down the head of his cock before he moans and his arms give out, leaning back until he's flat on his back, hands fisted at his sides. He wants to grab Boots' hair, just let go, fuck Boots' hot, hot mouth but he can't, he can't and now he can't think--definitely can't breathe.
And the thoughts are like fever dreams, hazy and hot.
This is Boots. Melvin P. O'Neal who came to school on the first day of sixth grade wearing a pink shirt that Bruno promised never to tell anybody about. Boots who Bruno gets, and needs, and cares about more than he thought he could care about anybody, so much that it's seeped into his skin and melted into his hands and soaked into his brain--until everything that Bruno does is colored with it, and now it's all pouring out.
Bruno can feel it in the air, in the hot, damp oxygen between them that Bruno's not breathing: it's being roommates and sneaking out to Scrimmages, it's walking into The Fish's office together and it's getting this stupid pool so that Boots could stay. It's sex and their entire life's history, everything they've ever done together leading to this moment.
Somewhere in the background, he can hear the water splashing, can feel cold air on his stomach from where his damp shirt is riding up, but it's all peripheral, all background static to the sound and the filthy, wet, slick of Boots' tongue on his cock.
He's making noises that are coming from high in his throat, and Boots has both large, cool hands on Bruno's hips, holding him down and sucking him off and the idea of that, the hugeness of that--that Boots is doing this is enough to make Bruno shout, jerk upward, and freeze as he comes and comes with a hoarse cry.
"Oh, fuck," Bruno manages to say, before his head swims back into focus and he hears Boots laughing, happy and laughing and red-cheeked, mouth swollen, looking ridiculously pleased with himself. "Oh, fuck," Bruno croaks again.
Boots is still laughing when he grabs Bruno around the back of his knees and tugs him down into the water, and by the time Bruno's brain gets paged by the rest of his body about what's happening, it's too late.
He's wet and drowning and he's fumbling around in the deep end, choking and wet and lost in the dark--and he can't swim what the hell was Boots thinking--until he feels Boots' hands dragging him up, until he feels their bodies sliding along one another, until he's above water again. Then he's circled in Boots' arms, bobbing in the water, dripping and trembling and untethered, floating along together. Bruno's not scared at all because this is real, and Boots' mouth tastes like pool water and ballpoint pen ink and Bruno Walton and it is a revelation.
It's mid-May by the time they talk about it.
Bruno's been waiting for it, but it seems like a bad idea to ask Boots how he feels about "them" when Boots is boneless in his sweaty sheets, just fucked into the mattress. And the guys are always around the other times, needling Bruno about who's the unlucky girl, because obviously if he looks like he's getting laid, somebody at Scrimmage's is going to pay with their supposed virtue.
They're picking up trash on the east lawn when Boots says, "So what do we do after?"
Bruno stabs a Styrofoam cup and asks, "After what?"
"After we graduate," Boots says, matter-of-fact. "I mean, three weeks from now, we're gone."
Bruno looks up in shock, and the look on Boots' face tells Bruno that Boots has been thinking about this for a long time. But the thing is that Bruno hasn't really been thinking about leaving the Hall, that's too big for him to wrap his mind around--and now he gets that it's more than leaving the Hall.
They started here, there's this ominous feeling that they're ending here.
Which is ridiculous because they're both going to McGill. They're thinking about getting an apartment off-campus. Mostly because they forgot to turn in their housing forms--Bruno was inciting riots again--and it's kind of their only option. But that's different, not really like living with Boots at the Hall, going to the same classes and poker nights on Monday, setting up illegal roadblocks and stowing away movie stars to Die In The Woods.
"Oh my God," Bruno says.
Boots stares at him. "You didn't think about this before," he says.
"Oh my God," Bruno says again. "We're leaving--!"
Boots starts stabbing trash again, rolling his eyes and ignoring Bruno as he begins to wail.
"So," Boots says, cutting into Bruno's tragic rant, "the world is crumbling all around us--right?"
Bruno pauses mid-tirade and looks at Boots, in his worn-soft jeans and hockey jersey, stabbing stray food wrappers on the lawn like every other May they've been at the Hall. The sun is melting behind them into orange and red in the sky and the horizon is jagged and black with the shadows of the buildings. But as bleak as the future may be without Scrimmage's across the highway and The Fish and Mr. Fudge to booby-trap, there's still Boots and his stupid hair, his fixation with not being in perpetual danger of expulsion, and the way his lashes droop when he's about to fall asleep, eyes heavy and dark and expansive.
"Well, no," Bruno admits. "Not really."
"Yeah?" Boots asks, surprised by that, eyes wide and blue.
So Bruno smiles.
"Yeah," Bruno agrees. "Yeah, I think it's gonna be okay."