Reality And Us

Chapter Twenty Six

Nicklas had been thinking way too much about Zane this past week, he realized only then when he left the house that Saturday noon. Just a week ago he had found out about the boy's eating habits, and a few other realizations had followed after that excessive amount of thinking that had come the first one.

His mind had been very occupied this past week. It wasn't very uncommon for him, so nobody really noticed a difference. Except him of course, because the topic running around in his head had changed.

Usually he thought about football, about physics, or science in general, interesting stuff. Not that Zane wasn't interesting, but thinking of someone wasn't exactly mentally challenging, and so he had made sure to spend the Friday afternoon discussing and learning new information about science together with Jamie. Just to get his mind to exercise a bit.

Because the past week he had mostly thought about how to get Zane to stay healthy, to get him away from Lee, and the last two days, why the hell he was so fucking great. And whereas the first two topics did have some opportunity to actually think, it wasn't enough - and his little crush was a bit bothering, had almost no way of making Nicklas train his mind.

And here he was again, walking to go to that boy who had occupied his mind way too much the past week. If he hadn't had met Jamie the day before, he might've asked to meet up already then, even though he didn't think Zane would've agreed, simply because there was surely something the boy had to do. 

Since Nicklas wasn't planning on doing sports he hadn't asked to meet at the gym, and since he hadn't wanted to get the boy into an environment he could feel pressured to eat or something they couldn't meet up at a food place. And hey, what place was better for serious topics than the little park?

So that was where he was going, already planning out the whole conversation he was about to have. Because, he had promised himself, he wouldn't back down from this just because he wanted to see more of Zane's happy side. The boy had to be happy in the long run, so there was no way around this talk. Even though it might not exactly be enjoyable, especially for someone with the social competence of a hermit.

The park was right in front of him when he heard the sound of a ringing bell, and then the one of sharply braking. He looked around and was met by the familiar sight of a grinning Zane.

"Hi!", the older boy exclaimed.

He seemed to be in a pretty good mood. Not very surprising, he always seemed to be in a good mood. Seemed, Nicklas wasn't too sure anymore how much of this was just a fake reality.

He looked closer at his friend who got off his bike, and mentally scolded himself. Yeah, they hadn't seen each other for, like, three days, but that was no reason to stare at or even worse, check out the other. He wasn't used to this side of himself, and he wouldn't complain if it could kindly fuck off as soon as possible, it was too unpredictable, making it so difficult to organize his future in advance.

"Hey.", he answered, and stood around a little awkwardly. He had forgotten all the ideas on how to introduce the difficult topic of Lee when starting the actual conversation, and now he was  kind of lost.

Zane looked at his friend, he was happy to hang out again. He just came back from volunteering at a food bank, and he was usually quite enthusiastic after doing so. It was so nice to help people, and he helped there sometimes - seeing those people's happy faces never failed to make his day.

But Nick looked a little bit weird. A different weird than usual, the boy was always weird, but normally it was a good kind. But that day, he looked like something was bothering him.

"You seem a little bothered.", he commented, trying to get the younger tell him what was on his mind.

Zane had understood by now that his friend usually wasn't one to voice his thoughts just like that, to start conversations was seemingly difficult. And Zane respected that, he didn't mind, he loved starting conversations anyways, so that didn't matter.