EVERYTHING SEEMED TO go back to normal after the kiss with Shawn and Kardern, which made his heart turn cold every time the two of them bantered or Shawn used Kardern's house as a refuge on Friday nights to watch TV and do homework.
With each following week that passed, Kardern got more and more frustrated, and what annoyed them even more was that Shawn didn't even seem to realise that anything was wrong and continued doing things as he would've before the kiss -- they didn't even have one conversation about it.
It was all so normal. How they both fell into a routine, like the kiss never happened, and like they were just continuing on as if something in their relationship hadn't shifted. As if Kardern hadn't felt Shawn's lips on his own, and an irrational part of his brain wanted more. Wanted to know what it felt like to hold Shawn's hand unbidden and when he actually knew what Shawn's feelings for him were.
Kardern hated it.
It was eating him up inside, and he didn't know why. Kardern tried with all his might to focus on his schoolwork, with the looming realisation that Summer was getting closer and closer, and his time in sixth grade was coming to a close. With that, the anxiety started to kick in; what if he didn't do well in his new school, what if everyone hated him? What if everything had already unravelled before he had the chance to work out what and who he was?
Would news of his anger issues travel over to the bigger school? Even the younger grades that weren't around when his. Anger issues started cropping up, had been warned to stay away from him as best they could, and that suited Kardern just fine because he found solace in the pages of books, more so than being around his peers.
He was broken, broken from something more than his mother leaving, but that was when the cracks started to show. It wasn't fair. The only person he had ever felt not broken around was Shawn -- or maybe they were both broken and just. Trying to find a place in a world that doesn't quite accept them.
But now even Shawn didn't feel like the comfort he once was, and he wasn't talking to them about the shift in their friendship, as he refused to talk about the kiss, while that was all Kardern wanted to talk about, but was too nervous to attempt to broach the topic.
It was slowly killing him, though the more time that passed and the more time they both spent avoiding it, the more it squeezed at Kardern's heart and twisted his guts inside out. As Kardern slowly read through the play they were supposed to be performing in a few weeks, legs crossed and off to the side
Occasionally, he looked up to see his peers on the stage doing a scene that he wasn't in -- although if you asked Mr Feeny, Kardern should have been the lead in the play and not Cory, as he knew Kardern could understand the text at a level years beyond his classmates.
It was Kardern who avoided stepping into the principal role, choosing instead to have a background role so the attention wasn't on him. He didn't like all the attention on him, preferring to live mostly through their thoughts and the stories they made up in their head.
Plus, with his thoughts consumed by the kiss and the myriad of conversations surrounding the kiss and what it could lead to -- hung in the dead air, and the longer it stayed there, the more anxious Kardern was beginning to grow.
Before he could once again slip into he safety of the world he had created in his head, a voice. called to him; so familiar that it made Kardern flinch and head jerk up as he looked up to see Shawn looking at him. Concern and care so bright in his eyes that it makes their skin crawl "What's up, Kar?"
"Nothing."
It seemed that Shawn had a bad habit of not understanding when he needed to leave Kardern alone and the boy in question had complicated feelings about that; he likeed that there was someone that cared enough to check up on him, but right now when Shawn was the object of his anxieties and one half of Kardern wanted to stone wall him while the other half of him wanted to scream and rage at him that why won't he talk to hm and be with Kardern in the way he wants him to
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What Should I do? | Shawn Hunter
FanfictionHe was a sweet boy with a little bit of a temper, struggling to find his way through life. After his mother walked out on him when he was just a little boy and his dad having to work double the shifts in order to make ends meet, Kardern found his fr...
