TWELVE

 

It was one step up, even for Warren, Tristan realized as he surveyed the wreckage of Grant’s desk.

When Tristan had worked so hard at undoing Warren’s last prank, he had sort of hoped that maybe that would be the end of it. People like Warren just wanted a reaction, right? If Tristan didn’t give him one, then hopefully he would get bored and move on to something else, that was what Tristan had been desperately clinging to.

He had underestimated the sheer, burning hatred which Warren must feel for Grant, though. How much did football mean to these men, that they would go to such lengths, just for a stupid game? Tristan would never understand it.

Grant had been working very hard on his midterm project for English. Each and every night, Tristan had been dropping off to sleep to the sound of the clicking of Grant’s laptop keyboard as he furiously typed away. And that would have been fine, but his English teacher was old-fashioned. Grant had just told Tristan the other day that his teacher demanded that everything be typed, and then printed out, rather than emailed.

Teachers had their little quirks, but in this case, this particular quirk might just get Grant a failing mark in that particular class.

The stack of papers that made up the short story had been ripped into quarters, then scattered around the desk. It looked like a whirlwind had been through, and that would have been bad enough, but still fixable.

The coffee, however, which had been poured all over the ripped paper, that was going to be a whole lot harder to recover from.

For a moment, Tristan stood rooted in place, and then he rushed forward all at once, glad that Grant was in the shower. Glad that he, at least, had some time to fix this, if he could, or at least to lessen the shock a little, before Grant was going to see this. Tristan knew all too well how much work Grant had put into this, and it was going to be devastating for him. Tristan could at least try to help.

Glancing around, he grabbed a dirty shirt from his laundry pile and started to try to mop up the coffee. Even moving as fast as he could, there had been such a mess made, and he rushed as much as he could, but he still heard a movement, a voice, behind him far before he was ready, before he’d even made much of a dent in the mess.

“Tristan? What are you doing?”

With a guilty start, Tristan turned around, still clutching the coffee stained, sodden shirt in his hands. What did this look like to Grant? To come in and find Tristan standing over the shambles of Grant’s desk?

“I’m sorry,” Tristan whispered, hardly able to speak over the lump of pure, jagged ice which had formed in his throat. “I was trying to fix it.”

He had to watch as Grant took in the horrific scene in front of him, and it was every bit as bad as he had feared that it would be. Worse, maybe. His imagination hadn’t been good enough to be able to predict how the light in Grant’s bright blue eyes would fade, how his face would change from confusion and a slight hint of wariness to a completely blank, cold, stark expression that Tristan didn’t even know how to put a name to.

“You didn’t do this,” Grant spoke, and his voice was pitched just slightly above a whisper, enough so that Tristan could hear the way that Grant tried to pull an expressionless tone over all of the churning emotion beneath. “You couldn’t have done this. Who did this?”

With a sigh, Tristan dropped the stained shirt back into the pile of his clothing, then looked down at his hands, observing the droplets of coffee there in the minutest detail. Better than having to look into Grant’s betrayed gaze.

“I don’t know, for sure,” he finally managed to speak. But he didn’t have to know for sure. He didn’t have to see Warren with the coffee literally in his hands to paint a picture here. Who else could it be?

“Everyone has been busy,” Grant spoke slowly, and Tristan glanced up, taking the sight of the handsome man in. And he was still so handsome, even devastated, even with his eyes curiously dull and flat. His hair was darkened and shimmering from his shower still. “With midterms. Most of them with football, too. Everyone except …”

Tristan sighed softly. Every so often, his own prejudices against football players came up, and he realized that on some level he thought they were all idiotic muscle heads. But Grant was plenty smart enough to put the logic of that together.

“He’s just a dick,” Tristan tried to explain, and it was even true, to a point. Warren had given everyone a hard time. No one was really safe from him, but this was a whole other level, and they both knew it. Warren might play jokes, and he might not have really any concept of when it was appropriate to do so, but this was outright cruel. It seemed more like an attack than something which was supposed to be funny.

“Your desk is fine,” Grant pointed out, still in that slightly strained voice, like he was barely holding it together. And Tristan knew that it was true, he just didn’t know what he was supposed to do about it. He’d never been great with emotional stuff. “And I bet if I asked any of the other guys, they would say that none of them had coffee dumped all over their midterm project.”

“Grant, don’t,” Tristan spoke sharply, because the way this conversation was going, it was nowhere good.

“I need your support, Tristan,” Grant spoke once more, ignoring Tristan’s pleas. Somehow, this was exactly what Tristan had thought might happen. “I know that you’re scared of your parents disapproving of you, of us, but where is Warren going to stop? You’re supposed to have my back.”

The sheer amount of self-righteous judgment in that voice was enough to make Tristan bristle. He couldn’t even help it, and the words were out before he could even think about trying to hold them back. There was this lecturing tone in Grant’s voice, and it was exactly the sort of thing which could be counted on to drive Tristan utterly insane.

“Calm the fuck down,” Tristan demanded, crossing his arms over his chest, which just wiped the coffee all over his shirt. That hardly put him in any better of a mood, it had to be said. “I don’t need that tone of voice from you.”

“What tone of voice?” Grant asked, with the exact same self-righteous bullshit there. The same tone that Grant had used when he had accused Tristan of drinking before. The tone that said, as clear as words could, that Grant thought he was better than Tristan.

“That tone of voice!” Tristan tried to keep his own volume low, but he wasn’t sure that he really succeeded. He barely cared, honestly. “You’re being a judgmental prick. Just back the hell off for a second.”

“I’m being a judgmental prick because I want you to be my boyfriend? I want you to have my back?” Grant was still speaking in that same maddening, superior way, and Tristan wasn’t the type to punch someone, but if he had been, he would have been tempted to try to shut him up physically instead of verbally. “You know he’s going to keep on attacking me. We need to stand up to him together, or he’ll just keep going.”

The worst part was, Tristan was starting to think that Grant was right. He didn’t need to say it in that way, though.

“Come on, just shut up,” Tristan was almost begging, though he tried to hide the plaintive sound and block it from his voice. “This isn’t as big of a deal as you’re making it. This is supposed to be a laid-back thing, you and me. Don’t turn it into something that it isn’t.”

Well, the good news was, his words worked. They got Grant to shut up. The bad news was, the look on his face was just as shocked as if Tristan had smacked him. He looked just as helplessly betrayed, and immediately, Tristan regretted his words. But he wasn’t even wrong! This whole relationship was supposed to be a secret one, and how were they supposed to keep it that way if Grant wanted to take some sort of big stand against Warren?

Still, it was hard to feel good about himself. Sure, he had gotten what he wanted, but it was hard not to feel like he had kicked a puppy or something. Grant was big and strong, and the sort of guy that anyone would want, but Tristan had power over him that he wasn’t even sure that he wanted. Not if it hurt him so much.

“It’s no big deal. It was just a prank,” Tristan spoke again because it didn’t seem like Grant was going to. “You have the file on your computer, right? We can just print you out another copy.”

Grant’s shoulders relaxed a little, and he brushed past Tristan. Even with the situation as tense as it was between them, he couldn’t help but shiver a bit when he felt Grant against him even that much. For the first time, he noticed that Grant was wearing nothing but a towel, clutched loosely around his slender waist, dipping dangerously down like he might show a lot more than he was with just the slightest encouragement.

Tristan had said some things there that he wished he hadn’t. Maybe Grant had, too. Maybe they could get to the makeup sex part of the fight. There was definitely some tension to break, and Grant was more than halfway undressed already …

“It’s gone.”

Tristan’s libido didn’t need a lot of encouragement to get going, but when Grant spoke, when he said those two words, it was like he’d had a jug of ice water thrown over something which hadn’t even really started yet. He turned away from Grant’s ass, just barely covered by that towel, and to the laptop screen instead.

Grant had the file open, but when Tristan looked, there were only a few words in it. Not the pages and pages that had made up so much effort on Grant’s part, the story that was going to count for forty percent of Grant’s final mark in his English course.

Get out, faggot.

That was it. In big, bold letters, taking up the majority of an entire page, the words blazed. They would be etched into Tristan’s head for the rest of his life, he suspected. This prank was against Grant, if it could even be called a prank anymore, but it could equally as well serve as a warning to him, and he knew it.

“I’ll talk to him.”

Grant was just looking at Tristan. Tristan had to say something, and the truth of the matter was, Warren had crossed a line, and they both knew it. Tristan couldn’t abide bullying, and there was definitely a difference between pranking and bullying.

“Tristan, I should …” Grant started, but Tristan shook his head impatiently and cut him off.

“No. I’ll go.” They both knew that Tristan’s family connections would protect him, at least a little bit. It was certainly more protection than Grant had. “Don’t delete that file. Save it. Just in case.”

It was a risk, but if it came down to it, Tristan would escalate this. He would push it, because some things were worth the risk. He had never had any power to stop the bullies back in high school, but now he did.

And it was easier, somehow, to think of protecting Grant than it was of himself. Was this what love was? Caring so much more about someone else than he did about himself? Wanting them to be happy, even if it meant giving things up for them?

If that was love, then he was even more sure that he wanted no part of it.

“Be careful,” Grant told him, and Tristan nodded and, without knowing what else to do, really, he headed for the door. There was really no time like the present, and even though terror clawed through him, it somehow seemed better, more manageable, when he looked into Grant’s eyes just before he left.

 

* * *

 

Warren was in his room. He was pretty much the only one of the frat brothers who actually got a room all to himself, just one more sign, as if Tristan needed it, that Warren was sort of an incredibly huge deal.

It didn’t really matter, though, other than because it meant that they could have this conversation in private. Tristan really had no idea how this was going to go, and it was comforting to think that at least no one else was going to hear it. Otherwise, it didn’t matter. His mind was made up, and no matter how huge a deal Warren was, no matter how rich his father was, or what his family connections to Tristan were, he was going to have this out.

“Hey, handsome,” Warren was perched on his bed, holding up an expensive tablet, probably watching a movie. But he paused it, whatever it was, and gave Tristan a surprisingly warm smile.

Hastily, Tristan pulled the door shut behind him. Was Warren drunk or something? It was sort of early in the day, but Warren wasn’t exactly known for being the heart and soul of temperance. And there had to be something going on for Warren to call him handsome.

Warren, after all, had every bit as much to potentially lose as Tristan did. As long as Tristan could keep that fact foremost in both of their minds, this should go fine. He hoped.

“Knock it off,” Tristan got right to the point. He didn’t want to be around Warren for a moment longer than he had to. He had always known that Warren was not a particularly nice person, but this whole stupid feud with Grant had really brought home for Tristan just how ruthless, how cruel, this man could be.

“What?” Warren asked, carefully getting to his feet. He was still on crutches, and Tristan felt a brief moment of pity gripping him. This had to be killing Warren, to feel so helpless. It would be like if Tristan couldn’t think, like if he couldn’t use his brain as he was used to doing. Warren was such a physical person.

“Just stop it. Okay? I know it was you. It couldn’t be anyone else,” Tristan informed him, fighting off that surge of pity. It didn’t matter how injured Warren was, that wasn’t an excuse for him doing the things he had been doing to Grant. “I’m not gonna put up with it. You can’t treat people like that.”

Warren smirked, just for a second, but Tristan noticed. If not for that smirk, he might have even bought the innocent look which Warren turned on him the next second, cold blue eyes widening with mock hurt.

“I didn’t do anything,” Warren informed him. “I mean, I’ve done some hazing, yeah, but no one cares about that, man. We both know that. I didn’t do anything so bad that you need to come bitch me out about it.”

Supporting himself carefully on the crutches, Warren stumped across the room to stand in front of Tristan, gazing down at him. His face was sober, but there was the faintest hint of merriment in his eyes that Tristan found suspicious.

“Just stop,” Tristan started, and then something happened which he did not expect, had had no reason to think would ever happen again. Warren took Tristan’s chin in his strong fingers and forced him to look up at him, holding his eyes ruthlessly captive.

Before Tristan could react, Warren was leaning down and pressing their lips together. He was kissing him, out of nowhere, and maybe Tristan would have been able to read the signs leading up to that if he hadn’t been so worried about Grant.

The whole thing left him cold, shaken, a little bit sick to his stomach. For a moment, it was like he was paralyzed, frozen right in place with shock and disbelief, but then the situation caught up to him and he pulled away, his lips tingling like they had touched something repulsive, filthy.

“What the fuck was that?” Tristan asked, his fingers trembling with the urge to clap them to his lips, but he didn’t dare to show the faintest sign of weakness. Warren, he knew, would be looking for that.

“So what, now you’re suddenly some sort of saint?” Warren mocked, in exactly the same tone that he had used when they were both younger, right before he was going to dare Tristan to do something that was going to get him into a lot of trouble. That tone had worked far too many times in Tristan’s life.

“No. I would never say that,” Tristan said, and his voice was quiet, but he was glad to hear that it was nice and steady. Even with the situation being as potentially socially perilous as it was, he was sure of himself.

“Good. So … come here,” Warren demanded, his hands moving, intending to grip Tristan by the hips, he was pretty sure, and pull him close. “We haven’t gotten any time alone together since this summer.”

There was something so slimy, so utterly repulsive, about the way that Warren said those words. Something about the tone of voice which suggested to Tristan that Warren would back off of Grant, but only if Tristan did as Warren told him. But Warren, like his father, was a master of saying things without actually saying them. Giving himself deniability in case someone tried to claim anything later.

It didn’t really matter. Even if Warren had outright said the words, it wouldn’t at all change the way that Tristan dealt with it. Either way, it was utterly repugnant, and Tristan took a step back, letting his disdain show in his eyes.

Maybe tact really should have come into play. Then again, Warren hardly deserved it, with his slimy double talk.

“You’re repulsive,” Tristan informed him, and it was nothing but the truth. Good looks or not, money or not, Warren was pond scum. “Stay away from Grant. I mean it.”

That was really all that needed to be said here, he figured. There was no point in him sticking around any longer. Maybe Warren was going to do his best to ruin Tristan’s life now. Maybe he’d even succeed.

But if he tried, Tristan had a few things of his own to say. The more he thought about it, the more he thought that Warren couldn’t take Tristan down without taking himself down, and Warren was just simply too self-interested for that.

There was even a chance that Grant would be safe, too. Warren knew that Tristan knew what he was up to, so maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to protect both himself and Grant.