Touch of Fire (bxb)

(3) Montgommery

He didn't talk to Hayden for the rest of the day. He tried to call two more times after school was over, but Killian ignored it again. It was only when he was walking to practice that he could no longer avoid him.

Acutely aware of the marks on his body, he made sure to get dressed in his gear as quickly and discreetly as possible, back turned to the other guys. As usual, everyone was rowdy and upbeat. Usually Killian would join in on the fun and be among the first to pull some stupid crap, but he wasn't in the mood for it. 

His body didn't hurt anymore, and he was entirely clean (he'd made very sure of it that morning), but he didn't feel clean. 

Right when he pulled his shorts up, the door opened and the reason of all his misery walked in, looking calm and nonchalant as usual, but still with bags under his eyes. 

Killian looked away before Hayden could catch him looking, and hurriedly finished getting dressed. As far as he could tell, no one was looking his way, so no one had seen the evidence of his little escapade yet. He immediately went out onto the court. The coach was out already, and so were two other guys on the team. He joined them. 

When more guys came out of the room, they started doing warm-ups, running, stretching and stuff like that for about half an hour during which Killian pointedly avoided Hayden's eyes. Everyone was joking and laughing as usual, no-one was giving him weird looks, so he relaxed a bit. 

After that though, the coach instructed them to get into pairs of two for some exercises, and Killian panicked a bit. 

Normally, it was an unspoken fact that he and Hayden went together. They were like two peas in a pod, which everyone knew and loved to joke about. Some of the guys would refer to them as the siamese twins or Ken and Barbie. 

But today, there was no way Ken would pair up with Barbie. Looking around frantically, his eyes settled on a short, skinny figure who was looking straight at him with an unamused frown. 

'Nathan! Hey bud, wanna do the exercise together?' 

The group fell silent, all eyes turning to Killian in disbelief. Partially because Ken was ignoring Barbie, and partially because no-one aside from the captain ever interacted much with the weird, unsettling guy that was Nathan Montgommery. 

Nathan shrugged. 'Sure.' And the two walked towards an empty section of the gym, still surrounded by a thick silence. 

When the rest of the team got over their curiosity and started talking and laughing again, Killian released his breath and secretly looked over at Hayden, who was paired up with Jonathan, his mouth in a hard line. 

Looking back at Nathan, he found the guy scrutinizing his appearance intently. 

He sighed, remembering why he disliked Nathan. The guy was pretty in a delicate, feminine way, but very crass with his words, not at all bothered to hide his disdain for the rest of the basketball team -excluding Gabriel of course- and way too fucking perceptive for anyone to ever feel truly comfortable around him.

'You could've put a bandage over it at least.'

Killian cocked his head to the side. 'What?' 

Nathan huffed, as if he was annoyed to have to put up with an imbicile like Killian. 

'Your hickey? I'm pretty sure they can see it from fucking space.' 

His throat tightened up and he felt his hand going up to his neck, where the hickey that was highest up wasn't covered by his jersey.