Ashton was better. Ashton didn't get me into any fights. Ashton wasn't a name that anyone tripped over, or made fun of, or that got me ignored in class. Peoplelistenedto Ashton. Ashton didn't have trouble making friends. Ashton was just —
Easier.
“Shame,” Dylan blew out a breath, still focused on the tree. “In a month, that tree will be forgotten; locked away in storage, kept waiting in the dark until it’s time to be trotted out and tarted up again next year. Me, I think I’d rather be a real tree. Out somewhere in the sun and wind, with an entire forest of other trees around me; all of us just going about our lives. And maybe no one stops and stares, or takes a photo of us. But then, there’s no one expecting anything of you either, telling you how you’re ‘supposed’ to grow.”
“Yeah,” Ashton sighed, able to hear the voices all too easily.
Don't slouch, fix your hair, smile, a real smile, no — not like that, fix your shirt, change your shirt, change your pants, eyes here, hold still, look normal, stand up straight…
They stood in silence like that for a while, both watching the red stream of cars ebb and flow in the city past the campus bounds. Ashton shrank back at a burst of laughter somewhere on the quad beneath their perch, unprepared for the bark of it; loud enough that the sound bounced between the buildings.
Dylan wasn't fazed by it, though. He leaned forward, his eyes hunting for the source of the sound, before dismissing it with a shrug and turning to Ashton.
"So what made you go up there that night looking for me, huh, Mr. Straight Guy?" Dylan asked, shattering what little was left of Ashton's defenses.
He… didn't have an answer for that. Had come here looking for an answer. Looking for… something.
Looking for what? Go on, say it.
But Ashton shrank back yet again, just as unprepared for that, too.
It was easier, with women. People expected that. He knew the script.
It was easier, when he drank. People laughed at the things he said or did. What a goof, what a joke.
It was easier, to sneer, to make a crack, to write it all off. It was easier, not to care.
Ashton glanced down at his shoes, the newMark IVhigh-tops he'd bought off Logan. And if you'd asked him before the party, before that night he and Dylan kissed? Ashton would have saidhe only got them because they were cool. Because his friend was in a bind, and — fuck if Ashton knew why Logan had been so set on winning his own roommate at the fraternity charity auction. But he'd been set on bidding on the nerd and it'd meant Ashton got the kicks, so what did he care?
But now…
Wasit the shoes you were after? Or was it his attention? You only got into collecting sneakers because Logan told you he did.
"Man, you are so twisted up," Dylan had said in a low voice after Logan left; heading back into the crowded party, presumably in search of Oz. "You don't even know what to do about it, do you?"
"I just…" And oh, hell. Even Ashton's own voice was betraying him, coming out low and small.
"Yeah?" Dylan prodded just as quietly, as if this was all normal to him.
How?Howdoes he make all this seem so easy, like any of it's just that simple? How doesn't he feel like a fake, a fraud, a fool? Always strutting around going, 'Hey, look at me!'; like he's got nothing to lose if it turns out he's gotten it wrong?
But that wasn't the case for Ashton, was it? He couldn't… Hecouldn't…
There's too many people counting on me. Expecting things of me. I-I can't risk messing it all up.
"I was just…confused about — about it all," Ashton muttered down at his shoes.
"Uh huh," Dylan replied doubtfully. "Soconfused, in fact, that you tracked me down — atwork, asshole — then followed meinto the bathroom and all the way up here to…what? What are you doing, Ashton? What made you come find me?"
"I… I'm not sure," Ashton whispered, the lie catching bright and wicked in his chest, a painful curl searing through marrow and lung; burning, smoking, licking and pricking at his eyes.
"¡No manches, Bobo!" Dylan huffed, the frustration clear even if the meaning of those words wasn't.
And yeah, could Ashton really blame him?
"For someone so smart, you're really fucking stupid," Dylan muttered.
Which was unfair, really. That was no kind of warning at all, before strong hands grabbed at either side of Ashton's head and — shocking the breath from him — yanked Ashton down into a kiss.
