Meadow Grass In The Springtime

Hey peoples-who-probably-hate-me-because-I-still-haven't-posted-the-sequel-to-Given-Up-For-Adoption. Anyway, I'm posting this instead because I wanted to write this for vldatc 's writing contest, and if you have a problem, you can fight me. So, here's my submission, enjoy!

P.S. Go check out vldatc 's writing competitions and submit one of your own entries for her next prompt!

Everything had been going so well with their relationship. Except for the fact that Jake had wanted to keep it a secret. Honestly, Fletcher had been okay with that. He didn't mind hiding the fact that they were dating, so long as he knew that Jake liked being with him. He knew that he did. Or, he'd thought he'd known. Until it happened.

Fletcher didn't know how the secret got out – the only people who knew besides him and Jake were the cheer squad, and he trusted them all with his life – but somehow it spread throughout the entire school in just one day. And it was only down hill from there.

Fletcher himself had no problem with being gay, was completely open about it. People would have assumed he was anyway just because he was captain of the cheerleading squad, so he felt no reason to deny that he liked guys. Jake did not share this easy-going attitude with him.

When the rumors of their relationship reached the football star, Jake shot them down without hesitation. And he abandoned Fletcher along with them.

From that day on, he heard nonstop about how Jake was dating this girl and that girl, and how his sex life was great, and such nonsense. Fletcher had never felt more heart-broken in his life. He had thought that him and Jake would be together for a long time, and that, even if they did break up, they would still remain friends of a sort. But no. Jake left, and he never looked back.

The night they broke up, Fletcher couldn't stop crying.

***

It was a Monday, two months after the break-up, when a new student started at Fletcher's school. It wasn't exactly ground-breaking news, new kids arrived at their school all the time, so it generally wasn't so big. The thing that really blew it out of proportion was the reason he was starting there.

Addison Joseph Carter.

The word was that he'd been thrown out of his old school because he'd gotten one too many suspensions for starting fights. Looking at the guy, Fletcher could believe it.

They shared third period science, both sophomores from what Fletcher could tell. The boy was a little shorter than himself, maybe by an inch or two. And he just looked mean. The way his face was set made him seem angry at the world. And maybe he was, Fletcher didn't really know all that much about the guy, gathering what little information he could from glancing across the room at him. He couldn't even make out the color of his eyes.

When the bell for lunch rang, Fletcher was one of the first out of the room. Jake's friends had been giving him a hard time recently about the whole "rumor" thing, saying how he had started it and how desperate he was to be with the captain of the football team. In reality, Fletcher didn't even know who had told everyone that him and Jake were dating, but the rest of the football team didn't seem to believe that.

And it wasn't like Jake tried to stop them, which really pissed off Fletcher. It was like their whole relationship had meant nothing. He should have known better than to date someone who was so far back in the closet they were basically living in Narnia.

So he tried his best to avoid them.

He managed, because he still had the whole cheer team behind him. Especially his best friend Maria Yamashita. And no, it was not pronounced as one would typically pronounce Maria. As his friend had reminded people countless times, it was pronounced like CAR-ia. As in a literal car. Just with an "m" instead of a "c".

Now, he would have eaten lunch with the rest of the cheer squad, but in their high school, you were assigned specific cafeterias, which Fletcher found unbelievably stupid that day.

Usually, he didn't really mind because Maria was assigned the same lunch room as him and sat with him nearly everyday. But today, she just so happened to be absent, sick with THE RHINOVIRUS, as she liked to call it. Most just referred to it as the common cold. So she couldn't be there that day, and that left him alone to deal with Jake and several of his buddies, who also had the same cafeteria as him. And, despite his best efforts, he was one of the last ones to lunch. Which also meant that his usual seat was taken by someone else who'd gotten there with plenty of time to spare. The day was going just great.

This left only two tables to sit at. One was Jake's table, the one where the football players – and their girlfriends – sat. Fletcher had once been allowed to sit there. Jake had always told people it was because of his head cheerleader status, but Fletcher had believed it was because Jake loved him. After everyone had found out about them, he realized he'd been wrong.

The other table was one that Addison had so clearly claimed as his own.

The other male sat alone at the table. Apparently, no one had wanted to sit with the guy who looked like a possible murderer. Well, Fletcher figured he couldn't have been all that bad. He thought he like his chances of sitting with Addison and not ending up with food thrown all over him better.

"Hi!" Fletcher greeted in an exceedingly cheery fashion as he plopped his lunch down on the table beside Addison's and took a seat, "Nice to meet ya! I'm Fletcher."

Addison seemed in no rush to say anything. In fact, Fletcher thought he looked rather startled. So, instead of waiting for an answer, he continued.

"You're Addison, right? I've heard you're new here. Mind if I sit with you?"

"Yeah, I do mind, actually," he replied in a gruff voice after pausing for a moment to collect his thoughts. That was not what Fletcher had been expecting to hear.

"Er, well, I'm just gonna sit here anyway." Fletcher said awkwardly, turning toward his lunch while running his fingers through his pale blonde hair out of habit. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting from the guy, what with all the rumors about him, but he supposed he'd thought that maybe he'd be a little nicer at least. He guessed that maybe not all rumors were just rumors.

"Yeah, whatever." Addison rolled his eyes, and Fletcher noted, with a glance in his direction, that they were a particularly startling shade of green. Fletcher didn't think he'd ever seen eyes like his.

While Jake's eyes had only ever appeared the color of the sky, Addison's were like the color of forest trees during the summer, like clovers shimmering with morning dew. He would even describe them as meadow grass in the springtime, which Fletcher found odd, because he was certain that he'd never seen a meadow before. Not even in the springtime.