𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒 | 𝐁𝐗𝐁

ＮＩＮＥ

"Cute..."

When I woke up to a slight tickle in my ear, I saw only the shadow of the person sitting next to me in the dark library. He spoke so slowly I didn't recognize his voice, and he giggled as he used one of the feathers on the top of my head to tickle the skin of my ear. "It's very late and there's a storm outside, Ben, what are you doing here?"

"Why is it so dark?"

I saw a row of pearly white teeth as he grinned as he pulled a strand of curly hair from my ear and wrapped it around his finger. "Because the city is going through a bad power outage, so you won't be able to go home anytime soon."

"Byron?" The reason I mentioned that name was because of his brightly shadowed face, which I could barely make out in the light of a lightning bolt that suddenly decided to strike. He ruffled his red hair and used two fingers to push something onto the table in front of me. "What's this?"

"A gift," he crossed his arms in his seat as he lifted his broad shoulders, "I was at the cafe outside of campus and I wanted to make it up to the guys on the team for treating you like a real jackass this morning. Sorry about that, man."

I coughed to clear my throat, which was dry from sleeping for so long, and as I reached for the hot drink on the table, I stammered, "It's okay, I'm used to it..."

"No, it's a problem, Ben." He raised his hand to interrupt me, "You shouldn't get used to this because you're in this together now. We'll be teammates from now on, and if we're going to be together, we should be together to play well. Instead of making each other angry."

"I'm not gay," I took a long sip of coffee before explaining myself, "I know how it looks, the things they said to me in the locker room were horrible, but none of them were true Byron. It's true that I was hanging out with Luke, but I didn't know he was sleeping with Sean. I..."

"I believe you," he moved to interrupt me again, "I can see Matt acting like a real jerk, man, but you're his roommate. He loves you."

I frowned and tried not to look too curious as I took another large sip, "Does he love me? Has he told you that?"

Byron continued to nod fervently, "Yeah, man. He really regretted what he did after you left this morning, and he seemed really upset."

"Really?"

Byron dug a hand into my shoulder and shook it firmly before nodding again, "You're a good man, Ben, and so is Matt. In fact, I think you're a good choice for each other."

"W-What...?" I nearly choked on my coffee from what I heard, "What do you mean?"

He chuckled as Byron's tight jaw turned into a devilish smile, "Oh, don't mind me, I'm just wandering around, mate. Do you like your coffee?"

At that moment I went from sucking on the straw to gnawing like a real pig, "It's so good. I even get my coffee from that cafe most of the time and it tastes better than ever."

Byron smiled strongly, "Bon appetit, Ben."

When I smiled briefly, I felt a terrible itch in my throat. It was interesting. Suddenly I started coughing. Sitting there laughing, Byron did nothing, and it wasn't strange, because how could he interfere with this man who was about to drown in front of him? I felt my eyes blur with tears as my tiny coughs turned into something much more severe. I put my hands to my throat and the reality that hit me at that moment seemed much more frightening than the situation I was in. 

Coffee... What was in it?

I didn't even know if it had anything to do with that coffee because I was an asthmatic... "B-Byron..." I managed to move my hands and pointed at my bag to tell him that my spray was in my bag and that I needed to get to it right now, but that was all, Byron was continued to sit without moving a muscle. He did it.