Chapter 22: Chapter Twenty One

[A/N] I'm way later than I meant to be, but that's nothing new with me. Hopefully I should be getting more regular updates in but I have an allergy to schedules and yet I need them to get anything done. 〰(o' ~   'o )〰〰

As a reminder, Pierson isn't Patrick, Pierson is the one mentioned at the beginning who draws on Elliot's desk every morning. Patrick is more of the de facto leader of the group, but there are a few of them that are particularly unsavoury characters independently of him.

The way the class fawned over the very unreceptive newcomer was a little jarring. So many sparkling eyes turning his way, the girls, most of which waited at a distance for a while until Emma, who might be classified as the most popular of the girls, at least with the guys as far as I knew, approached herself and suddenly there was a lot of excited gushing I'd never heard the sound of before.

The teacher stepped out to speak with the headmaster in the corridor before we could leave for a good fifteen minutes giving everyone who was interested the opportunity to satisfy their curiosity.

The boys in the class asked him questions but tried to act casual even as they slowly circled in on him at the end of class. Passing each other looks as they leaned in around him, trying to size him up.

I couldn't tell if they were annoyed or gaining respect with how little Arran gave them in reply, his nonchalant, cold expression all they had to work with as he leaned back in his chair while we waited for the teacher to return to let us go.

"Why are you starting the year so late? What did you have? Is it cancer?" Patrick asked.

Arran folded one of the sheets in front of him for the seventh time and slowly looked up and to the side at him, but his gaze felt both sharp and completely disconnected. "No."

"What did you have then?"

He thought about it, seemingly, and then spoke. "A headache."

There was a murmur after that.

Everyone let loose with their questions after that.

"What sports do you like? Football or basketball?"

"Are you good at like, school?"

"Where do you live? Do live near here?"

He massaged his right temple and sat upright slowly, leaning forwards so that his elbows were just off the table as he twisted a pencil effortlessly between his fingers. He really did have ridiculously attractive features, even his lips seemed so attractive without looking the slightest bit feminine. It was weird... I really didn't think I had ever seen a boy more handsome than Victor but here he was.

I couldn't compare them directly because he hadn't shown up today, although he might yet arrive in the middle of the day.

Victor was busy, he and his parents all were all well known classical musicians, his mother as a violinist and his father as a flautist. Victor had followed his mothers footsteps and was under high demand, with an acceptance letter for a conservatory in Austria when he graduated sixth form.

The school supported him and let him take whatever time off he needed to practice and perform he needed, so I'd had very little ability to predict when he would show up or not.

But as much as I'd been head over heals for Victor, dragging myself behind the guy like a lovesick puppy, I still couldn't quite imagine how he could compare to the strangely magnetic features on the murderer's face.

He had to though, I remembered being so quietly wrapped up in him, when he got back I would remember what it was that made me feel that way, probably.

I got up the moment the teacher returned, signalling that we were okay to leave.

I looked back at the headmaster's son as I was leaving. He looked so strange in my classroom. He didn't belong there. He didn't even make a move to get up but just waited.

The bell sounded five minutes later than usual and school officially ended for the day but he made no move to get up.

Suddenly those insidious dark eyes flashed in my direction and I looked away immediately instinctively.

It was strange.

Since my fall I felt as though I was watching the world through a tunnel, with people standing at the other end, their faces hard to see, eyes that might be judging me, might be grinning or mocking me, but they had defaulted into some sort of twisted mess, the harder I looked the less I saw.

But his eyes remained in my memory, blazing and sharp, even after I looked away, leaving my skin feeling a little hot.

Did I like that feeling? Or did I hate it?

Like I was jogging in the sun...

I looked back at him, he was slowly getting up, that strangely intimidating expression on his face, with lips that I couldn't help but stare at.

I raised my forearms and hands slowly, letting the scratches show, and then, without looking at him to see his reaction, left immediately.

I was sweating, I realised, as I headed fast down the corridor.

I heard footsteps following behind me and hesitantly glanced back, it wasn't him, just another student. I relaxed.

What was I doing? I asked myself this question only briefly as I took the shortcut to reach the lockers around the other side of the somewhat sizeable building, through an empty piece of field along a gravel path with the empty art rooms on one side and the school fence on the other.

Was I taunting him?

Trying to goad him into something?

I didn't know what my end goal here was, I was operating half on instinct, half in a dream. Everything in this version of the world seemed pliable, momentary, pointless and consequence-less.

"HEY!" Someone bellowed behind me just as I reached the middle of this area.

I didn't stop immediately because it took a moment to reach me.

"HEY!I" The voice was so loud it seemingly reverberated off of the walls of the building.

I blinked slowly, stopped slowly, and turned slowly, to look at the owner of the voice.

I squinted. "Yes?" It took me a moment to realise it was Pierson.

He stormed up to me, barrelling with his shoulders all broadened out trying to look big and square and ridiculous.

"You really have no fear you fucking shithead."

As he walked right up to me, with all imaginary guns blazing. I realised quietly that he was the guy following me out of the classroom, and thought to myself that it was odd I hadn't recognised him.

I blinked down at my hand. Did I need glasses?

Was it possible I was short-sighted and hadn't realised that up until now?

I frowned.

"Why do you look so confused? You think you can slap a guy and not fight about it? You wanna act like a big man then act like it! You wanna act big so let's fight then you tiny piece of shit boy!" He grabbed my collar in this time and I let him.

In fact it wasn't because of my lack of fear that I wasn't doing anything, I just felt clueless, in a way, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do.

It was easier to describe it this way. All my life I'd been afraid, of exactly this, of the possibly getting kicked so hard in the head I lost the capacity to speak, or write, or them choking me out into a seizure, or one bad kick landing on my spine and leaving me paralysed for life.

I had no one there for me most of my life aside from Victor, and aside from him no one would probably comfort me, and even then I would remain forever rotting in my cast, or wheelchair, or bed, wishing he wasn't straight, day-dreaming that he would lean down and kiss me out of a broken, unwanted fever dream.

My imagination went far when I was afraid. So I covered my head, I curled up in a ball, I tried to press my back against a wall, closed my legs as tight as possible, tried not to let them kick me anywhere low or anywhere high, and if it came down to it cried. Cried until even they started to feel they'd had enough, moved onto something less physical, something to taper off the unsatisfying end to their aggression, like pissing on me or slapping my face until it burned.

What did I do when I suddenly wasn't afraid anymore?

So I took the incoming punch to the side, and to the other side, and I felt so strangely numb, even the air seemed harder to knock out of me.

He pulled back and punched me again but this time in the face, and I ended up stumbling back a couple steps from the force of it.

He blinked at me, his chest heaving heavily. "What is wrong with you?" He asked me, slightly breathless as he pulled back another fist.

I tilted my head slightly. My chest stung. My face stung, a warm ache spreading to my left ear.

"You're the one punching me." I replied smoothly.

He chuckled, and then it turned into a full blown laugh. "You really must have knocked your head or something down in that puddle. You're fucking weird." He walked right up to me.

I watched him but didn't move.

He practically breathed on me as he stepped in close, utilising every bit of that half an inch of height he had on me.

"You gonna let me punch you?"

I shrugged.

"You gonna come in early, let us beat you up for fun? You like being beaten?"

I raised a brow.

He cackled. "We always thought you were too weird about Victor. You like him don't you. Does he beat your ass as good as we do? Is that why he saves you? Because he likes punching you as much as we do?"

This conversation took a turn I wasn't expecting so it took me a moment to start laughing and when I did I didn't even notice I had started until I saw a flicker of annoyance in his eyes in response.

"I don't want to know what your search history is Patrick. You can keep your fantasies to yourself and your mother."

He went very still, his eyes blazed, he pressed his lips together and grabbed my collar with one hand and raised his fist with the other. "My name is Pierson fucktard."

Had I said something else?

"Pierson." I corrected myself.

"Guess we know who you dream about at night then..." He leered at me.

I made a face. "You're both identical and ugly. My dreams are much nicer than that."

They weren't, they were an empty black mess.

He went still, he stared at me for a moment longer than I expected, so that by the time he swung next I did duck enough to very nearly avoid the punch, his fist still clipping my ear.

I thought maybe this upset him more than I expected, because as much as I tried faintly to push him off of me he ended up dragging me to the ground and climbing on top of me, punching my stomach so that for a moment I felt like retching.

He forced two fingers inside my mouth and I coughed automatically, eyes stinging from the dust reaching my eyes. I squinted at him from the side as he glared down at me darkly. There was some fidgeting for a moment while I couldn't see properly. I bit his fingers but I didn't really put my heart in it, mildly disgusted by the salty taste. He didn't bother to remove them.

I coughed again as he removed them for a split second and then shoved them back inside having grabbed a fistful of gravel.

"You wanna apologise now? Huh? Freak?" He whispered harshly.

I continued coughing, mildly concerned I would end up inhaling the small pieces of rock, bits already grinding against the bottom of my gums between my lower front teeth and my lip.

"Apologise." He whispered closer to me.

I still didn't say anything, mucus ran down from my nose and I spluttered as I coughed up the rocks.

He covered my mouth so I was forced to breath through my nose. "This is what happens. This is what happens when five years isn't enough time for you to learn how to act around people that are bigger than you." He knocked my head against the ground. "Better than you." And again. "And stronger than you." And once more.

He got up slowly, watching me as I coughed up the remaining stones and got the rest out with my fingers, pocketing his phone.

I looked up at him from the ground.

He looked down at me.

He then smiled. "You know how happy Patrick would be if he could see you now?"

He didn't wait for me to answer. He simply turned and marched off.

My mouth was bleeding, I realised as I cleared the rest of the gravel and dirt from my mouth.

It took me a long moment to realise there was someone else there, watching me from the direction I'd come from, opposite to the direction Pierson had headed down.

An unaffected dark gaze watched me and eventually hummed. "So you can cry?"

I blinked and checked my cheeks and realised I was indeed crying, but I doubted that was from fear as much as it was from the dirt that made my eyes sting, as I hadn't felt scared or afraid, or really much of anything other than pain.

I wiped my face and licked my lips, looking up at him. "Dirt in my eyes."

He didn't reply to that. "Do you like it?"

I savoured the taste of blood in my mouth for some reason, it felt right. "What?" I asked him.

"Laying there, letting them beat the shit out of you."

"Not particularly."

I couldn't read his face.

"Is it the pity?" He took a step towards me, a slow one, but a long one too. Even the way he walked felt somehow dangerous. "Some kind of self flagellation?"

I licked my teeth clear of blood as he approached with such a panther-like gait that I almost didn't notice him cross the distance he had crossed.

There was a constant prickle in the air between us that I didn't understand. Why didn't it exist anywhere else? Why did I want to reach up and touch that strange energy where it floated, crackling oddly between us.

"What should I do?"

"Fight back."

"I'm not that strong."

"Get stronger."

I fell silent. Was there a reason not to get stronger again?

I was too weak to get stronger. Right. No energy. Tired all the time. Scared all the time, not just of danger but of people's gazes. Every day on the way back from home I was followed by the shadow of an exhausted Elliot who dragged his feet and hunched as close to the ground as possible.

"That would take a while." I replied eventually.

"Then," He dragged an elegant long index finger down from the corner of his eye to the bottom of his jaw. "Run to the teachers and make a show of it." He looked me over slowly.

His eyes made my skin feel like it was being crisped over a fire.

I liked it, a little too much.

"You're small enough, thin enough, they'll probably weep for you if you play the part..." He decided, in the same cold, low voice.

I felt, from the soil beneath me, a strange energy thump into my veins, slowly sinking into my muscles, my bones.

I slowly stood up.

"If you do me a favour I'll give you your cat back."

It was hard to describe how those dark eyes managed to turn very nearly black right before my eyes. Suddenly pitch black, intense and yet blazing, his nostrils flaring.

He stared down at me, the warm colour of his skin at odds with his glacial features.

I thought he was probably imaging killing me right then and there.

I licked my dry lips, the skin on the back of my neck feeling sweaty again, itchy.

His eyes just barely glanced at my chapped, possibly bleeding lips, but they dragged back up to my eyes so that I was able to notice it.

"You're daring for a doormat." He spoke, his voice low and smooth enough to send a certain tingle straight down to my cock.

I tilted my head slightly. "Do I get to live then?"

He smiled thinly. "We'll see..."

[A/N]  I was actually meant to have finished this book last month but the Wattpad Creators Program let me have an extension so that I didn't have to rush the ending of the book. It was a good experience. I'm chuffed I got to be a part of it.

Also... my patrons.... (˶♡‾ ᵕ ‾♡˶)