To Put On An Act [bxb]

Chapter 14 - LIES LIES LIES

Maybe Alex had a crush.

But it wasn't like that was a big deal. He'd crushed on plenty of people in his life, and it's never been a big deal. A crush was very different from having feelings for someone, or being in love or any of that bullshit.

A crush was seeing someone and thinking they were cute or hot or both or whatever, and maybe kicking your feet a little, and maybe thinking about making out with them like, once, and that was it. A crush was superficial and a crush usually went away after like a week or two.

Alex once had a crush on some girl in middle school who he'd never talked to. Alex once had a crush on the cashier that always took the night shift at McDonald's like three years ago. Alex once had a crush on Min when they shaved their hair for the first time. Alex had crushes on a million people before, and now he had a crush on Youngbin, and it didn't fucking matter, because a crush was nothing.

A crush was a fly that Alex could kill with one swat of his hand, and then he'd never think about that fly ever again in his whole entire life. In fact, he was probably going to be circled by another fly in a couple of weeks or so, and then he'd kill that, and then there'd be the next one that he'd also kill, and that's how he was just going to live his life, with a billion flies swarming him and yet he'd never remember a single one of them.

Yeah. A crush didn't mean shit, alright. Who the fuck cared. Not Alex. He didn't care. He was convinced that he didn't care. And oh, he was pretty damn cool and chill about it. His face had started to feel numb, maybe from putting in so much effort to look cool and chill, or maybe because it was really fucking cold outside.

He leaned against the wall, the usual one, behind the school gym, crossing his arms like the cool guy he was, and the bricks were pressing into his back though the leather jacket. Next to him, at a million metres tall, was Lani, and she didn't seem to even be aware of the cold fall weather.

Alex knew that she'd put on her woollen tights underneath the long black satin skirt, and yet her shoulders were out in the open, merely covered by the thin straps of her top and ripped fishnet sleeves. In her gloved hands, fingerless, one might add, she held a couple of cue cards.

Lani's handwriting had always been so pretty. She was the only person on the planet that wrote in cursive, maybe it was a goth thing, but it looked beautiful, and Alex had finally learned how to actually read it. Even her notes, ones that were hastily jotted down in class, were written as if they were some love letter from the 1800s, just with more neon green highlighter and a couple of angry faces scribbled down on the side.

Lani also was the only person on the planet that actually studied for tests and exams using beautifully organised cue cards. Perhaps she also was the only person to actually study. And now she stood there, and read her notes in total silence, all while Alex was thinking about killing a fly in order to stop thinking about kissing Youngbin.

"So," Alex said, then closed his mouth again in hopes that Lani would say something. She didn't. "What are you studying for again?"

"Art class."

Alex' face twisted.

"Who the fuck studies for art class..."

"Me. I do." She pulled out the next cue card from her stack, and when Alex glanced at it, he saw a badly printed painting of whatever the fuck.

"What are you even studying? Anatomy of a pencil?"

"Western art history."

"Ah."

"There are like 10 eras of mediaeval art that I need to have memorised until-" She flipped over her cue card. "Tomorrow."

"That sucks."