You are the Answer {boyxboy} ✓ (Dogs, Bats & Monkeys series, Book I | Riley)

Chapter 1

~A Few Months Prior~

Tonight was the night I was going to approach them. Everything about them would make the average moral citizen go out of their way to avoid them: tattoos, piercings, leather jackets, bikes, owning a pub which was rumored to be a cover-up - a legal way for them to explain their income... They were the largest gang in the nearby towns yet no one could pinpoint what they were up to. Many people had tried to join but none had been accepted. It was as if The Silver Bullets were a family; either you were born as one of them or you were out.

I was unsure of as to what exactly had compelled me to try to gain their attention; I didn't even know how they'd react to the fact I was gay. Maybe they hated people like me; I had previously been burnt – metaphorically and literally – because of who I was.

I touched my right hand sleeve over the spot where the flames had permanently deformed the flesh. I refused to hide who I was even though it had brought me pain; I refused to cower and condemn myself to a life of loneliness because I was attracted to my own gender. No. This was it; this was the night when I'd either shine or my light would be forever extinguished with me lying cold in a gutter. And what was braver than to flirt with some of the fiercest men in town?

If I could do that, if I got through it, I would be able to walk with my head held high once more, just like it had been before he'd forced my arm over the blazing fire; if I didn't get through it, if these people were homophobic and cruel as he had been, then I would most likely die but I told myself that death was nothing compared to fear and loneliness.

I straightened the denim jacket I wore on the chillier summer evenings and crossed the street. My feet felt heavy but I tried to put a dose of carelessness in my gait; I'd always thought you could tell a lot about a person by the way they walked and I didn't want to appear weak and frightened; I didn't want to...

"You look like you are on your way to the guillotine," someone chuckled and once I turned around I saw a boy, perhaps a couple of years older than me, leaning on a bike. I immediately recognized him as one of them. It wasn't because I'd seen him and his almost unnaturally light blond hair before, nor because he was in the parking lot of their pub; it was because of him, the whole of him. Call it an aura, call it whatever you will, but there had always been something very feral about this bunch, something very primal. And then there was the way they looked upon those unlucky enough to catch their gaze; it was as if those outside their circle were a prey or a toy they'd like to sink their claws in. I'd never been this close to a member of The Silver Bullets, let alone be spoken to by one of them, and all the courage I'd thought I'd had dissipated under his pale, unwavering gaze.

The boy studied me with his head tilted to the side, eyes narrowed and calculating, for what seemed like an eternity. Once done with the examination, he drew a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and I released a tad of tension through a slow exhale as his eyes left my person to land on the flame he used to light his smoke with. He inhaled deeply then exhaled a thick cloud before he turned his attention back on me.

"You want one?" He extended the hand which still held the cancer sticks but once I shook my head, he returned them in the pocket of his jacket.

"So what do you want?" He asked and I realized, anxious, that I would actually have to speak this time in order to reply.

"Just taking a walk," I mumbled and as if my tone was not unconvincing enough, I looked away from him to hide my face.

"After you've been scouting the joint?" He said that in a neutral tone, neither accusing me of doing so, nor pleased with it.

My gaze shifted to him again. His body was loose, his facial features relaxed... There was nothing to signify he was a danger to me; nothing, apart from the general animalistic air about him.