BOYS OF SUBURBIA [boy x boy] [Wattys 2018]

✗ EIGHTEEN ✗

School had started. It was back to books, bitter teachers, general want-to-kill-yourself boredom but Niko couldn't find himself focusing on dreading the weeks of homework and finals when all he could think about was how Sebastian kissed.

He was drunk on the night, intoxicated and stupid, and the memory would've faded into nothing but a haze of fingers and bad mistakes but it was vividly clear. He remembered not exactly what happened but bits of it, like jagged pieces of a broken mirror. It should've meant nothing, really; it could remain a stupid, stupid mistake but the kiss was not letting Niko be. He could still feel Sebastian on his tongue, feel Sebastian's shyness in the way five cold fingers caressed his jaw, hear him make a little noise when Niko clutched his jaw and pulled him closer. Niko had to scrunch his eyes shut to kill all the memories of a particular 'night' travelled four thousand miles into his head in a split second. The sound of the fire crackling as their lips ground from friction and they slotted like puzzle pieces, perfect for each other. Sebastian tasted like cigarettes, inexperience, pine aftershave and whisky. Even in the sharp, crisp morning with the pine trees blooming in September, Niko could smell Sebastian like it was yesterday. Sebastian's shirt smelled like burned coffee and fabric softener, smelled like what Niko's home used to be before the shit hit the fan, before Miko died and everybody died along with him.

He ached because he wanted everything to be exactly like it was. With Sebastian, with Miko, with a family, with a home, before he became aware of the blackness that was the earth and hated everything on it. It was stupid and idealistic to hope and wish but still, Niko ached. And it was desperate, and it was painful, and it was everything he's ever wanted, and it was fading from his grasp even as he clung to it but that kiss gave Niko a piece of home, a way to steady his hold onto it. The feeling of (home, safe) being loved—he had always caught it in fractals and scraps and compromises but for some reason, Sebastian helped him gain some balance onto the ledge he was standing.

All his life, he had only fancied girls- fancied girls because it was the right thing to do, right? Men married women, boys dated girls, not the same sex, not each other. It was something society and tradition had honed into him since the first breath he took and expelled into the atmosphere. It was the customs of humanity to understand that it had always been a man and woman, Adam and Eve, Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet- not whatever it was that drenched his whole heart in gasoline and set in on fire when Sebastian's blue eyes landed on him or when Sebastian shyly blushed at an innuendo.

But Niko was doubting everything he knew, everything real, and everything about society.

His phone buzzed as the Math teacher had reclined into her seat after assigning them a few pages of their textbooks to do. It was the first lesson back and the teacher had wanted to see 'where they were at' in order to properly accumulate how weak they were. Niko cautiously slid his phone under the desk and lit up the screen, seeing Sebastian had texted him. He swiped past to read it, heart throbbing. It's the first time they had contacted with each other since that kiss.

Look at my teacher's weird ass was the caption and a picture of a slightly blurred tweed-covering ass tagged underneath the highlighted green message on his WhatsApp. Niko's lips traitorously twitch into a smile and he had to cough in order to disguise the laugh building in his throat.

He responded, sloppily, fixating an eye on the teacher as he tapped quickly in case the teacher decided to tilt her head up and catch him texting in class. Stop taking pics of random people you fuckin dildo. 

But all name callings and weird text messages aside, there was no doubt Niko's lifeline was officially entangled with Sebastian's. But whether the entanglement was to remain entirely platonic or something more was unclear and maybe the unclarity of it was better left as it was- unknown and anonymous, behind the shadows of closed doors and turned backs so they could conserve whatever they had.

Because whatever he had with Sebastian- that was keeping him alive.

-

yess.

knocked it right out of the park. i swear to god, i just wrote all the smut chapters and it's going to be set on private. WHOOPS. T_T am i disappointing my mother yet?

by the way, if you guys really wanna another album to vibe out to while reading this, may i suggest american teen by khalid (more like british teen but still)?

anyway, love ya lovelies!