Crushed Secrets {Phan AU}

Chapter 2

The bell rings which means first period will be starting soon. I grab my books and head to my first class, which is Art.

I walk into the room and find a seat in the front row, since the jocks like to sit in the back. The bell rings and the teacher walks in.

"Sorry I'm late." He says walking to his desk and setting his briefcase down. He grabs a clipboard off his desk.

Then Dan walks in casually. "Sorry." He says quietly. He looks around the room and sees, since he's late, there's only 1 seat left. Can you guess where it is? Not in the back, in fact, it's right next to me. I see him roll his eyes and groan, while looking at the back of the room. He sits down and trys to shut me out completely.

The teacher then starts to call out our names. I doodle in my book and wait for my name to be called. One by one he calls out our names and we are expected to say "Here."

"Daniel Howell," He says, going through the list by alphebetical order.

"I'm here... and it's Dan." He says quietly. The teacher, Mr. Jax, as it says in the board, continues with the list.

"Emma Keller," He says causing me to look over at her.

"Here!" She chimes. Emma Keller has had a crush on me for 3 years now, but she doesn't know I'm gay. She sees me looking at her, and looks back at me. I look away and focus back on my book.

"Philip Lester." He calls my name.

"Here, and it's Phil, Thank you." I look over at Emma and see she's still looking at me, but as soon as she notices, I notice her, she looks away. like what I did earlier.

"Do you like her or something?" Dan suddenly says quietly, avoiding looking at me.

"Me? No. She's had a thing for me for, like 3 years." I say continuing to doodle.

Mr. Jax finished and he wrote "Guidelines:" on the board.

"Guidelines." He says. "I'm going to jump right into the school year, and give you a project that will be due in 2 months. So 2 months from now, is when it's due." We all groan when he says it's a project.

"Oh did I mention it's a group project!" He says expecting us to groan, which we did. "The person you're sitting next to will be your partner." Most of the class was happy, but a few tables weren't. Like Dan and I.

"You must create some sort of art form, a painting, a sculpture, anything, but it has to be about something both of you share in common." Dan and I look over at each other briefly.

"You won't get much class time to work on it, so you will have to work outside of class, and come up with work time with you partner." He explains the project some more and he goes over a bunch of stuff for it. Once class is over, we head back to our lockers.

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After a few periods, which weirdly Dan was in all of them so far, it became lunch time. I ate with my friend, Heather. She's a really close friend of mine, and is the only one who knows I'm gay. She hangs out with me, but is also apart of the "Popular" group, and the 'Popular' groups is made up of mostly girls and the jocks. During lunch, we're allowed to go out and get something to eat, that's what most people do, including us.

Not a lot of people know that Heather and I are even friends. We never see each other at school, because we have no classes together, so we mostly hang out outside of school.

"You had art 1st period, right?" Heather asks unwrapping her sandwich a little.

"Yea." I respond doing the same.

"What do you do? I have it later."

"Ugh, he makes you do a project with whoever you sit next to, so choose wisely." I say taking a bite afterwards.

"Please tell me you weren't sat next to Emma." Heather doesn't like Emma. She finds her annoying, and last year she was really clingy to both of us. Emma also tried to cut Heather out of conversations, which I didn't let happen. I think Emma has a nice personality, but she gets jealous easily and can get on my nerves sometimes.

"I wasn't, I was sat next to someone worse than her." I say swallowing.

"Who could be worse than Emma?" Heather jokes.

"Dan, aka the guy with the locker next to mine, aka the guy in all my classes so far, aka the guy who's apart of the group that likes to punch me left and right." I say.

"Oh, What's the project?" She asks taking another bite.

"You create some sorta art thing based on something the two of you have in common."

"What do you and Dan having in common?" She laughs.

I shrug.

We finish our lunch and head back to school.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

At the end of the day, I get to my locker and put my binders in my backpack.

"We should meet up for our project tomorrow after school." Dan suddenly says not looking at me.

"Yea, okay. Yours or mine?" I ask.

"Mine, 6pm." He says closing his locker and then walking away.

I finish packing my stuff, sling my backpack over my shoulder, and walk out of school. I walk down the street when I hear a group of guys behind me talking loudly.

I duck my head down, and walk faster, because I know who they are.

"Dude, look." One of the guys says to the others.

Why bother running when they're going to run after me and beat me up anyways? I sigh still walking. They catch up to me. One of them comes up behind me and puts their hand on my shoulder, causing me to shutter.

"Scared?" A tall blonde haired guy, named Keith says. I don't answer.

"Not very talkative today, are we?" Peter, a dark haired guy with large muscels says. "Well you know, we don't like people who don't answer us. Do we boys?" The other guys laugh.

"Lets walk shall we?" Keith says putting his arm around me and basiclly pushing me forwards to walk with them. We walk a little till they see a dark alley, and we walk in there. They take my backpack off and shove it next to a large rubbish bin.

It's really dark, with only a little light shining through the end of the alley way. One of them pushes me against the wall holding me by the shoulders.

"Who wants first hit on gay boy today?" Peter says.

"How about..." Keith decides. "You." I hear him shove whomever.

"Take over." Peter says letting go of me and letting the other guy put his hands on my shoulders to hoist me against the brick wall.

I look at the sun shining on one side of their face, right before they punch me and I black out. As expected, it was Dan.