Leon, Leon (BoyxNB romance)

Chapter 11

“Hello, Callum. How are you?”

You would not even believe my relief when I heard those words as I walked in to English class. We only had two classes together, other than reg – English and RE – and the former happened to fall on last lesson almost every time I had it, while the latter was the universally most hated subject throughout the school, and since the teacher hadn’t even turned up to school since last January, it gave everyone a good enough reason to scurry off before anyone saw them and cram some other subject, or, more likely, go around the back where I had taken Leon and have a quick smoke. Either way, I had never seen him during that subject, and I didn’t feel comfortable enough asking where he went just yet. Or ever. I wasn’t sure.

Anyway, back to English, where he was present. Thank God.

“Hey, Leon, are you ok?” Playitcoolplayitcoolplayitcool. “You weren’t in registration.” Bit forward there, brain, but alright, 5/10 start.
And then he turned around, and I saw exactly why. Oh. “Yes, ah, I went to the nurse’s room. I told her every time, ‘I am fine, I can go,’ but she gave me ice and said that I must stay. I am sorry.”
I scooted past him and sat down. “No, it’s fine, it’s just... I don’t know. It must have been a really bad fall, half of your face is purple. No wonder she didn’t let you go, you look like you’ve been in a fight.”
He chuckled awkwardly, and for a second the air between us grew sour. Is he... I squeezed the bridge of my nose and shook my head. “I am also sorry,” he said, more quietly, “For not sending texts to you. I wanted to, but I forgot, I had revision to do, and my parents, they are a bit strict, you know? They do not like a child to use a phone often. They think that it is, uh... distracting.”
“Oh, that sucks,” I smiled a little, and he tried to do the same back, but I could tell him he genuinely felt sorry. “But I understand, so don’t worry. Do you... do you think you’ll be free tonight?”
He played with his fingers. “I... do not know. However, I will try to talk to them.”
“That’s good,” I said, quietly, still looking over at him. He raised his head to look back. “Your English has already gotten much better, by the way.”
I saw his cheeks go a little pink, and he looked back down. “Thank you very much,” he mumbled. “I am happy I improve.”
“Yeah, you are...” I flicked carelessly through the book, realising that we were on our own. “Oh, yeah, we should probably get on with this, right? I forgot that he’s away.”
“But... we do not need to wait for the teacher? What word do you use... a substitute, right?”
“To be honest, the supplies here are useless. I think their general idea is “‘Why do my job when the staff room is so warm and has biscuits?” Which I mean, fair enough, it is cold as fuck here, and we’re at the other side of the school, but still. I think we’ll have to fight this battle ourselves, if you see what I mean.”
“Oh, ah, alright,” he chuckled, standing up. “I will get paper. Do you want it too?”
“Yeah please. It’s on the desk, under the hole punch, by the way.” He nodded, rifling through the old past papers and piles of open workbooks, with lines of red and green writing on each page.

He sat back down, and started writing the title and the introduction Mr White had given us as a starter to the essay. His letters were smaller than they had been in his book – and slightly slanted, I could tell this was him rushing through to be done as quickly as possible with the boring part to have more time to actually write anything that would gain us a grade - but it was still amazing to look at, and I noticed how delicate his hands were. The fingers were long, and his nails were pristine, perfectly cut, smoothly rounded off just past his fingertips. As he moved his hand with the pen, they reflected the lights in stripes, showing the pale pink of the underneath against the light brown of the rest of his skin.

I realised he had gone pretty far into the second paragraph by the time I had stopped looking at the way his eyes turned hazel and his skin bronze when they caught the light in the just the right way. I waited until he finished his sentence, then tapped him on the shoulder.
“Do you want me to check what you’ve done so far?”
He looked back at the sheet, scanning over it one more time, then passed it over. Also, didn’t he have some acne on his cheek last Monday? I swear to God. I drink like, five bottles of water a day and even genuinely moisturised one, and I’m still a bumpy mess. “Ok, thank you. It will be bad, however.” He smiled, his eyebrows furrowed.
“I’m sure it’ll be great, don’t worry about it.” With one of those dumb shots of impulsive confidence going through me, I punched his arm, gently. “And if it isn’t, it’s your first go, so who gives a shit, right?”
He nodded, looking down at the floor as I started reading over it. I could tell he had prepared for this – he had learnt a ton of the words the teacher always emphasised we used, like metaphor and personification and allegory and all that shit – and though his spelling was... off, for a lot of it, it was only by a few letters, and it wasn’t incomparable to mine, which wasn’t nearly as snobby as it sounded – I think a lot of shit like this was practice, and while I was nowhere near an A* grade pupil, I could still do the basics well enough.
“Do you mind if I write on it?” I asked. “It’ll be in pencil, so you can rub it out, if you want. It’s just to make a couple of notes.”
“Yes, um, ok. Also, ah, you need not to be kind. If it is bad, you say it is bad, please.” He rubbed his palms on his jeans, and I realised his thumb was bandaged up, too. He seems stressed about this... no use pressing about that, too.
“Alright, I will, but it really isn’t that bad,” he turned away his head, but I could see him roll his eyes. “Really! Don’t worry about it.”

I went through the page, mostly just adding little things – a line through a word, a letter or two at the ends, and some sentence rearranging, but nothing major. I decided to write a little note at the bottom, like the teachers usually did, hoping it wouldn’t come off too horribly patronising or stupid.
Très bien ! Mais nous utilisons le présent progressif plus de.
I gave it back to him, and he read it through, moving his mouth with the words, but with no sounds coming out. Then he moved his eyes down to my addition to the end, and smiled.
“Merci Beaucoup, Monsieur Callum.” He chuckled. “Aussi, ah, tu n’écris pas maintenant ?”
“Um... non,” I forgot, by concentrating on you, “Je vais écrire à mon maison.”
“Ma maison,” he corrected, and took my piece of paper. “Je peux écrire quelque chose ?”
“Ah, yeah, uh, ouais, sure.” He smiled. “Bien sure.”
“Bien sur. With an ‘oo’ sound. Et...” he scribbled a line down on the top of my page.
Plus de = More of
Plus que = More than
Plus = More
“...We use the last one for that sentence.”
"Oh ok, yeah, sure, right. I get that." I thanked him in my head for his advice, but also for the way he talked to me in a way that made me deem to feel like I was going to burst, a little.

We, I thought. That ‘We’ felt good.