Lush Life (Tradley au)

Chapter 2- Brad's POV

I'm sitting in the garden trying to make the most of the sunshine when I feel myself being poked as someone is trying to get my attention. I open one eye to find my friend James staring at me.

"What?" I ask, slightly annoyed.

"Who's the cutie next door?" he asks excitedly.

"Oh, the pale blonde kid? That's Tristan." I say. "I met him a couple of days ago. He's nice."

"And cute." James adds helpfully. "For you that is, not me. I'm not gay."

I snort with laughter, adjusting my sunglasses. "Are you sure about that?"

"Yes!" he says indignantly. "I'm just appreciative of nice bodies, that's all." In an attempt to cover his tracks, he starts boring me by telling me about a girl called Libby or something that he really fancies. Hmm, I'm not convinced he's straight to be honest. I zone out and start thinking about Tristan again. Why is he so shy? Why doesn't he want to talk about his dad? I know it's none of my business, but I'm nosy as fuck and I really want to get to know him. 

My prayers are answered when he walks out of his house shirtless and into the garden. God, I get what James meant about being appreciative now, he's gorgeous. It takes me a second to realise that I'm staring at him, but he clearly notices as he walks over to the fence. "Um, hi Brad."

"Hi Tris!" I reply, a little to excitedly. I then realise that I addressed him as Tris- is that weird? Yes, it is, shit. 

He either doesn't notice or ignores it as he carries on talking. "Why were you staring at me?"

I have to bite my lip to stop myself from replying 'Because you're beautiful', and I instead blurt out "I was just, er, daydreaming, sorry." I hear giggling coming from James, who is still sitting behind me, but I ignore him. 

However, Tristan doesn't as he peers over the fence. "Who's that laughing?"

I sigh. "James. You know, the ugly one I showed you in that picture?" The giggling promptly stops and I smirk smugly, before saying "You can come and sit with us if you want."

"Ok." says Tristan. " I'll be about 5 minutes, is that ok?"

"Sure." I smile. As Tristan goes back, I turn to James. "Try and keep your big mouth shut. He's quite quiet, and I don't think he wants to talk about what happened in the past." James nods, but I know that he might blurt out something stupid anyway- he doesn't mean to, that's just what he does. I go over to unlock the side gate to let Tristan in and James sets up a deckchair for him to sit in like we are. As James starts to chat to him, I silently pray that he took my request on board.

Tristan is just explaining about being an only child when James asks the one question I hoped he wouldn't. "What happened to your dad?" He looks slightly confused when he sees the look of panic on Tristan's face, and suddenly looks horrified. "Oh, god, I'm sorry."

"It's ok." Tristan says, even though I can tell that it isn't really. I don't say anything, but I reach over to take his hand and give it a gentle, comforting squeeze. He smiles weakly at me, and James still looks apologetic. 

Eventually, he says "I feel like we should do something special. It's so nice, it'd be a shame to waste the weather."

"Do what exactly?" asks Tristan.

James smirks evilly and turns to me. "Your parents are out of town this weekend, are they not?"

"Yes." I sigh, having a rough idea where he's going with this, as does Tristan, judging by the look of both horror and excitement on his face.

"Then let's have a party." James says.

"Is that a good idea?" asks Tristan. 

James shrugs. "We're teenagers, that's what we're meant to to. And it's summer, you'd have to be really uptight to care."

Somehow, I find myself agreeing to inviting loads of people I barely know to my house, and to find alcohol from somewhere. James has a tendency of coming up with bad ideas that seemed like good ideas at the time. Oh god, what have I got myself in for?

----- 

The good weather is kind of ironic because the weather was appalling round here today 😂

I have a sort of plan for this story, there might be a whole for some proper tradley but there will be some eventually. Which is good, given that I labelled this as a tradley fanfic.