Garen had inhaled enough artificial cinnamon scent to make him sick for a week. Either the department store employees had an inane amount of the fragrance circulating through the air vents, or he had sniffed that holiday candle a little too hard earlier, but he doubted that a single candle could pack that amount of punch. His headache was getting worse by the minute.

It had started out as a sick feeling in his stomach which gradually morphed into a sense of inevitable dread. The more he thought about his impending fate, the more his mind wanted to reject it. He kept telling himself it was for the sake of the pledge. A one-time dare which wouldn't follow him past his worst enemy's doorstep on Christmas Eve.

But the more he thought about it, the closer he came to realizing that this was the type of action that would follow him throughout his college career. The last time he had talked to Darius was to chew him out for calling someone an imbecile, and every preceding conversation between them had occurred in a similar way. If Garen broke the cycle of seething antagonism here, the bastard would never let him live it down. Never. Or at least, not for the two and a half years remaining before graduation.

Two and a half years of suffering in return for entrance to Jarvan's social fraternity. Was it worth it? Most definitely not. But he couldn't let down his best friend; not after he had come this far already.

He only wished he had resisted rushing for one more quarter. The winter pledge was formulated in the sickly sweet spirit of Christmas: give a gift to your worst enemy. No gags, and no snarky comments. They would videotape him from the side while he did it; behavior that was anything less than cordial would disqualify him, or so they said. It was the stupidest pledge ceremony he had ever heard of, but apparently past years had proven it pretty hilarious, so they held it as tradition.

There had been no way to claim a different worst enemy because Jarvan shared too many classes with him. Jarvan witnessed their squabbles daily, and the glares they exchanged as though they were equally offended by the fact that they shared the same air. And Jarvan couldn't keep his mouth shut to save his life.

When Garen found his sister and her friends in the same candle aisle they had been in ten minutes ago, he couldn't fathom how they were still smiling the way they were instead of puking. Maybe there were drugs mixed into the wax.

She caught him looking gloomy and dumbfounded at the end of the aisle, and asked, "Having any luck?"

"No," he sighed. He hadn't told her about the pledge. She was under the impression he was looking for something to give Xin, his roommate, and Katarina, who had been his homecoming date this year. She was a nice girl. Feisty, but in a nice way. She texted him daily but always disappeared mid-conversation because she was so busy with club activities. Every once in awhile she would appear on his doorstep, exhausted after soccer practice, promptly fuck him, and sleep there for a few hours before departing again at ungodly hours of the morning. But that was as far as their relationship went. The last time he had tried asking her what the hell all this was about, she had shut him up with a blowjob and marathon sex.

While Janna and Ezreal were discussing what 'Summer Breeze' actually smelled like in the background, Lux approached him and put her finger to her chin. After a moment of thought, she took his arm and started walking.

"I've got just the thing."

"What about…?" He gestured toward the duo in the candle aisle they were emigrating from.

"They'll be fine. They can argue for ages."

"What's your idea, then?"

"A book and some aftershave. It's a typical guys gift, you can't go wrong," she replied with a confident smile. Garen considered giving the aforementioned objects to Darius as opposed to Xin, and figured they would do, if only because he didn't have any better ideas. "And for Kat…"

He noticed that they were heading into the lingerie section, and stopped in his tracks.

"Luxanna, no."

"Oh, come on! What you two have going is pathetic. You need to show her that you're serious."

"Sexy lingerie is hardly a good way to tell someone you want more out of her than sex."

"Silly," she responded nonchalantly as she picked up a box containing a racy red lingerie set, complete with bra, lacy boyshorts, garter belt, stockings, and a short silk nightrobe. "Giving an expensive gift like this sends a completely different message."

"What message?"

He would have followed up with, 'I want to dress you up, my sex kitten?' if he wouldn't have felt completely obscene afterward.

"That you like her enough to spoil her."

She placed the lid on the box, which was tacky cardboard and would need to be re-wrapped, and placed it in his reluctant arms. He wanted to tell Lux that he didn't actually want to spoil Katarina; he just wanted to know why she insisted on maintaining a sexual relationship with him when they had never verbally discussed anything beyond friendship, and if he was getting some free stimulation along the way, then so be it.

"Lux-"

"No buts. Trust me. She'll like it."

And with that, she headed toward the Christmas section containing gifts especially for men.

There was no point in arguing once Luxanna Crownguard had made up her mind. Garen looked down at the box and shrugged.

What's the worst that could happen?

It was the typical college apartment. Top floor of a two-story complex, curtains drawn, completely unadorned porch area. This one didn't have an iota of holiday spirit. Not a wreath, or a string of lights inside the front window. Nothing.

The fraternity had found the address for him and driven him here. Jarvan and a couple of other fraternity brothers were hiding in the bushes below with a tripod, snickering to each other while causing a completely unreasonable amount of leaf-rustling. He couldn't imagine that they would get a great angle on the shot, but they were certainly close enough to hear everything - and record Garen's embarrassment for all of posterity.

He cleared his throat loudly, casting a warning glance their way. Once they had quieted down long enough to give him a thumbs up, he took a miserable breath and knocked on the door.

When Darius opened it, he was dressed in a grey wifebeater, dark sweatpants, and his typical stone-carved expression of disgust. If Garen wasn't mistaken, Christmas Eve had him feeling more spiteful and not the other way around. He didn't say a word. He glanced between Garen and the gift-wrapped box in Garen's hands as if to say, Are you fucking kidding me?

"Merry Christmas," Garen monotoned, holding out the box.

"What the hell is this?"

What the hell does it look like?

"A Christmas present," Garen answered flatly, biting back every impulse he had to punch this asshole in the face right here and now, since there weren't any school authorities around to expel them. Unfortunately, he had a pledge to uphold.

"What is it, a time bomb?"

If it were up to me it would be.

"No." He shoved the box out in front of him. "Just take it."

Darius did. "I hope you're not expecting anything back. The only thing I have for you is a door."

"I-"

The door slammed in his face, and suddenly he got the joke.

Jarvan and the others started guffawing, but Garen couldn't see what was so funny about making a complete fool out of yourself in front of the one person you wished you didn't have to. That was the point of these pledge ceremonies, he supposed. To prove that the fraternity meant more to you than your honor - which it really didn't, in Garen's case.

He descended the staircase to be greeted by a barrage of bro-hugs and back-pattings.

"Congratulations, you're an official member of Phi Kappa Tau!"

"That wasn't so bad, was it? The guy looked miserable. You did a good deed."

Garen tried to think of it that way, but it was hard to imagine that there was anything more to Darius than a deep-seated hatred of all mankind. You can't change a person like that, he figured. So he smiled and tried to forget the impending humiliation as they walked back to the car to attend the afterparty.

Lux was at the door bright and early the next morning to drive them back home for Christmas. She lectured him all the way there for having a hangover, which only made it worse rather than better, and knocked him in the head on their parents' front porch only to greet the pair with sugarsweet enthusiasm when they opened the door.

Sometimes he thought that she deserved to be the favorite, what with her impeccable manners and her natural proficiency in everything the Crownguards considered admirable. They were the old-fashioned type; they had raised their children to sit up straight and keep their elbows off the table since the day they were old enough to sit in a proper dining chair. Even so, Garen would come home with his knees covered in mud while Lux sat in the parlor reading, and Garen had a vague interest in politics while Lux could out-talk him any day, and she was studying to become a physicist.

She was less than perfect, but they didn't know that. From the favorable manner with which she responded to gifts of teddy bears and unflattering spring dresses, they would have never been able to guess the things she wore out to nightclubs, or the way she acted when things didn't go her way. She had a gift for sociability, while Garen had a tendency to wear his heart out on his sleeve whether he wanted to or not.

They gave him a hi-tech sports watch and several sets of businesswear, which would be useful when he started seriously working towards a career in political science. He wasn't sure yet exactly what he wanted to do. Jarvan had plans to run for the presidency, and he consistently urged Garen to work with him as his right-hand man (and maybe one day, vice-president).

All in all, it was a pleasant day, and his hangover was gone by the end of the feast they called Christmas brunch. Relatives came and went, and he practiced asking open-ended questions, actually getting to know the people that he would previously forget every year. Turns out his elder cousin had just become mayor where he lived. He spent a lot of time talking to said cousin about what it took to be a politician, and about how stupid so many of the office's predecessors were.

He arrived home late the next evening to a pleasantly empty apartment. Xin must have still been with relatives. Just as his head hit the pillow, his phone buzzed.

It was the last person he had expected to ever receive a text from, let alone a friendly one. The only reason they had each other's numbers was because they had been grouped together for a project in their first quarter of college, before they knew how much they hated each other. It had been an oral presentation. Darius had done zero of the preparation work, but when presentation day came, he grabbed the stage first and performed the best presentation of the day, which boiled Garen's blood because not only had he essentially taken credit for the entire group's work, but because he had proven just how much better at this he already was than everyone else. The worst part was that when he sat back down afterward, he resumed his usual routine of glaring at everyone in unamused silence, retaining not a scrap of the passionate and well-versed presenter he had left behind in the front of the classroom. It didn't make any sense.

That had been the beginning of a long and tempestuous rivalry which, Garen admitted, had been initiated by himself the day he was walking behind Darius and coughed 'asshole' loudly enough for the entire hallway to hear.

Hello, the text said. Garen wasn't going to answer, until another one came shortly afterward.

Did you have a pleasant Christmas?

Why do you care?

Just wondering.

Yes, I did.

When an answer didn't come for several minutes, he got up and made herbal tea, which was his usual solution for being unable to sleep. He had been baffled into discomfort, and despite how little he tried to convince himself he cared, he wanted to know why he was suddenly receiving texts from someone who hadn't texted him in more than a year, at midnight two days after Christmas.

It was the stupid gift.

When he came back with a warm mug and a mind full of irritation, another text was waiting.

Mine sucked, thanks for asking.

I didn't ask.

And that was the end of the conversation. He went to sleep wondering why the bastard thought he cared whether he had a good Christmas or not. Apparently, nothing says affection like aftershave and a book titled How To Be a Man.

He thought it sounded more like an insult than a gift, coming from him.

The day before school came back into session, Katarina arrived at his apartment armed with her unwrapped gift box and murderous intent in her eyes. She had him up against the wall by his collar in seconds, not bothering to close the door behind her. If he remembered right, she had gone home for the holidays as well and had just returned today.

"What the hell is this supposed to mean?" she snarled, holding up the closed box in her left hand.

Shit. She didn't like it.

"It was, uh, Lux's idea…"

"Are you serious? You think you can pass the blame off on your sister for a stupid idea like this?!"

He was lost for words as she glared at him, throwing the box to the floor, where the lid came askew and wrapping tissue flew out.

"Is this your way of coming out of the closet, or did you just want to insult me?"

"What?" he responded in confusion, glancing downward at the box. It was barely open, but he thought he could see the end of a bottle inside. A bottle of…aftershave.

"Oh, god," he breathed.

Lux had done the wrapping for him, knowing how likely he was to screw it up with his "huge barbarian hands". She must have gotten the gifts mixed up on accident. Which meant that Darius had the lingerie.

He had given Darius a box of sexy lingerie on Christmas Eve.

He felt like he was going to throw up.

"Oh, god," he repeated, taking a deep breath in.

"What?" Katarina retorted, though her grip on his collar loosened. "Spit it out."

"You have the wrong gift. I'm so sorry, Katarina. I-"

"Seriously?!" she snapped, and he was shoved against the wall again with a surprising amount of force. "You think you can get away with this by calling it an accident?! It's just one excuse after another. I had no idea you were so despicable. Consider yourself dead to me."

"Katarina, please allow me to explain!" he called out to her, but she was storming down the walkway with no intentions of ever coming back again. He would likely only earn himself a black eye if he tried to follow her before she calmed down. It felt horrible, though.

This entire situation felt horrible.

His roommate's voice came floating in from the other room. "Is everything alright?"

Xin was peeking around the corner with a bewildered look on his face. He was a foreign exchange student, so he didn't talk much, but when he did talk he made himself out to be nothing but considerate.

"Not quite," he responded glumly, picking the dented box up off the floor. Upon further inspection, it did, indeed, contain a bottle of aftershave and Glenn O'Brien's comedic guidelines on how to be a man. He didn't want to imagine the look on Katarina's face when she had opened it, nor did he want to imagine how she must have felt for the remainder of the holidays.

"I need to fix this."

"Let me know if there's anything I can do," Xin said, staring at Garen perplexedly for a moment before moving to retreat back into his room.

"Hey, Xin."

"Yes?"

Garen placed the lid on the box, straightened it out as best he could, and walked over to hand it to the timid young man. "Merry Christmas."

"Thank you, Garen," came the overly zealous response, along with a smile wider than Garen had seen all quarter. Xin made a small bow before closing the door.

What a good guy, he thought.

Unlike the intolerable asswad he got in his car to go visit and offer an explanation to, who must have currently believed he was asking for some sort of sick, twisted booty call.

What a mess.

Darius wasn't glaring when he opened the door, dressed in a pair of black jeans and a wifebeater one shade darker than the last. He was almost smiling. Almost.

"You came," he said.

"I'm here to offer an apology," Garen replied, but before he could continue, Darius had stepped aside for him, revealing a living room littered carelessly in clothes and old dishes.

"Come in."

"I'd rather not."

"Come in," he repeated, and the sharp edge had returned to his voice.

Garen hesitated before stepping inside. The stale smell he was certain he would have been greeted with was disguised by a powerful air freshener the scent of mangoes. The place - not surprisingly - looked like a pigsty, but smelled like a tropical paradise.

"I'm not here to stay. I just wanted to explain that-"

Darius closed the door with an obnoxious amount of force and walked past him down the hallway. It seemed that he had no intentions of listening to whatever Garen had to say, and that wouldn't do.

"Darius," Garen remarked firmly, not moving from where he stood. He received no answer. Darius had presumably gone inside his room; he had invited Garen inside only to ignore the fact of his existence.

Suddenly Garen remembered with certainty why he hated this guy so much, and blatant disregard for others was only one of the reasons.

He stormed down the hallway to the open doorway he had watched Darius walk through, all the while grumbling, "Darius, the gift I gave you-"

Upon reaching the doorway he crashed into the bulk of man carrying the very gift he spoke of, still arranged neatly in its box. "This? I was under the impression you wanted me to wear it for you."

"I have no such intentions."

"Good, because you're going to wear it for me."

"What?"

He shoved the package into Garen's chest as though his instructions were clear as day and equally acceptable, narrowing his eyes in challenge. The two of them were almost the same height, but from here Darius looked taller, and his obvious physical capability was accentuated by his choice of shirt. To be honest, Garen wasn't sure which one of them would win in a fight. Both of them spent half their free time at the gym and the other half participating in relatively violent club sports, but Garen supposed that having won first place in the Regional MMA Tournament gave the other man an advantage.

"I'm not putting that on," Garen said scathingly, his fists clenching by his sides. "I'm not sure why you would want me to in the first place, douchebag."

"You wouldn't want the entire school knowing you gave me lingerie for Christmas, right? I'm sure you know my brother. He's got a pretty big mouth."

"You have a brother? Gee, I feel bad for him."

"His name is Draven."

Garen stared at him in disbelief. The Draven he was thinking of had enrolled as a freshman this fall and was already notorious schoolwide for pranks and womanizing. The funny part about those types of people was that they were popular. Popular enough to spread a rumor around the entire campus in the course of a day.

"You wouldn't," Garen growled through gritted teeth, but he already knew the answer, and a deep sense of dread was sinking down through his midsection. It was too late now to take back the mistake. How could he have expected someone like Darius to do anything with this situation but evil?

"I gave you the wrong gift," he muttered sheepishly.

"Do you think the greedy ears of ten thousand university students care about the details?"

"No," he responded, taking the box with an angry jerk.

"The bathroom is down that way," Darius informed him nonchalantly, pushing past to return to the living room, where he splayed himself comfortably out on the couch and turned the TV on.

For a moment Garen hesitated there in the hallway, and he was about to ask why when he grasped the obvious answer: humiliation, pure and simple. He thought the pledge ceremony had been bad. That was nothing compared to this.

He wanted to blame Lux, but it wasn't her fault. Not really. People made mistakes. It was Garen who had decided to fuel this thread of hatred for the past year and a half. Darius was undeniably the most impolite, self-serving, disheartening isle of desolation Garen had ever met, but that didn't mean he had to let it affect him. He could have accepted from the start that someone this loathsome actually existed, instead of doing everything he could to try to prove something otherwise, to find some sort of reason behind it.

After all this time he still hadn't found a reason. Maybe it was time to get this over with and then give up.

He walked to the bathroom, closed the door, and glared at himself in the mirror, trying to imagine beforehand what he would look like in women's lingerie. He was a 225 pound hunk of muscle with a scar on his lower abdomen and a perfect side-sweep he was a little too proud of. This lingerie was meant to fit on a woman half his size. His balls were aching already.

The bottoms fit, although the seams were ready to burst. The garter belt didn't reach past his thighs, so he scrapped it along with the stockings, and he didn't even bother with the bra. He was wearing lacy red underwear that cut off his dick's blood circulation and a matching short-sleeved silk nightrobe that, fortunately, had been designed loose-fitting, so on him it was extremely snug and fell to his upper thighs.

He left his clothes in the corner of the bathroom floor and emerged red-faced and regretting his own existence. Darius was watching Stargate: Atlantis. He must have decided he was more comfortable without a shirt on, because it was draped haphazardly over the backrest, and he had a can of beer in his hand. No wonder the place was such a mess.

"I'm...dressed," Garen muttered from behind the couch, but Darius didn't turn around to look. He simply raised his free hand and beckoned, so Garen trudged around to the front. "What the hell do you want from me?"

Darius sat up, placed his beer on the side table, and grabbed the front of the nightrobe. An ordinary person wouldn't have been able to break Garen's balance, but this man did it like it was nothing, and he did it out of nowhere, because half a second before he yanked his eyes had been glued to the television screen.

When Garen fell into his lap, their eyes met, and perhaps that was the only reason he didn't throw a punch right then and there: he saw something other than the cold, lifeless gaze he had seen for the past year and a half. He saw calm scrutiny. He saw the hint of a smile, and the mischievous inklings of some sort of scheme.

It occurred to him that it couldn't be a good scheme, especially with the position that they were in, one on top of the other and Darius with a fistful of red silk that was too tight not to start slipping off of Garen's shoulders. He tried to pull away, but Darius's grip was strong, and suddenly he was under another person's physical control for the first time since he'd started working out in middle school. Even when he grabbed the huge fist and dug his fingernails in, the guy didn't appear to feel a thing. If he tried harder he could get away, but in this unstable position that would only make him fall further, and touching skin was the last thing he wanted.

"Let me go," Garen said, one scathing word after another.

"No," Darius replied simply, tightening his grip on the silk rather than loosening it. They were inches apart.

"Darius-"

"You're blushing," he remarked with a smirk. "Who was it for?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The gift. Who was it meant for?"

"That's none of your goddamn business."

"It is, unless you want my brother to talk."

"Katarina."

"I know her. She was one of Draven's group leaders at new student orientation. He fucked her afterward."

It was by impulse that his fist flew forward, but Darius cocked his head to the side so that it landed harmlessly in the couch cushions. That, he honestly hadn't expected.

"Is that true, or are you just saying it to piss me off?"

"You decide," Darius responded calmly. "Whatever I tell you won't matter, because you already have a pre-conceived idea of me as some sort of devilspawn."

"You gave me the evidence yourself."

Darius gave him a look as if to say, 'try me'.

"Not a single action you take is meant to benefit anyone but yourself. For the past year and a half I've watched you do whatever it takes to get a good grade, yet you walk into class every day with a storm-cloud hanging over your head. When people try to talk to you, you unfailingly find ways to insult them. You steal unclaimed coffee from the Starbucks counter and pocket money that people drop. Even now, you're holding me here against my will, blackmailing me because I made an honest mistake."

Garen expected retaliation, as would be the typical response of an enemy being called out for their offenses. Argument, denial, physical recoil, anything. Instead, Darius unflinchingly remarked, "You've paid a lot of attention to me, haven't you?"

Either he actually accepted the blatant social inadequacies of his own behavior, or he hadn't been listening to Garen at all.

It was true, though. Garen had devoted a considerable portion of the time he spent in Darius's presence since the oral presentation directing hatred through his eyesockets, and another portion of his time at home complaining about his countless misdemeanors to Lux. He wasn't the type to complain, and she knew that. He was the only person vile enough to complain about.

"They say that in order to hate someone, you have to love them first," Darius said, and Garen honestly couldn't tell whether he was joking or not. He had withdrawn his fist and was attempting to pry the guy's fingers apart, to no avail. This stupidly close proximity was getting on his last nerves. He could smell the beer on his breath, and it didn't mix well with tropical mangoes.

"You're dreaming if you think I want anything more from you than justice for twenty years' worth of shit," Garen spat back.

"Are you sure it's the injustice that makes you so angry? The stolen three-dollar coffees, the twenty that some rich kid dropped?" Darius yanked him another inch closer, and suddenly he was aware of a hand on his waist. "Or is it the fact that I've outshone you since our very first quarter?"

"It's the fact that you're a dishonest bully that this world would do better without."

He chuckled humorlessly. "You sound like my nonexistent mother."

Just like that, Garen had happened upon an inkling of a reason, but before he could delve any further, Darius continued. "Look at yourself, Garen. Where do you think this situation leads?"

He looked at himself as though he were a witness rather than a participant. He was sitting on top of a shirtless musclehead while dressed in overtight Christmas lingerie, half of which was already falling off. Darius had no intentions of letting him walk around for awhile and leave. Next he would ask for him to get on his knees, and after that…

Darius let go and told him to sit down on the couch.

"What?"

"You heard me."

Garen sat, and Darius knelt down between his knees.

"I'll tell you a secret," he said, pulling loose the tie that held the nightrobe together at the waist. "I've found you attractive since day one. You're the one who chose to hate me."

"I'm straight," Garen responded, shocked and relieved but a little too distressed to express either. Unfortunately, the right kind of physical touch was all it took to make the body react, and as Darius rubbed Garen winced from the pain of increasingly constrictive fabric against a hardening cock. "Stop it."

"No."

"This is rape."

"Let me blow you, or the whole school will find out that you blew me."

"Shit," he uttered, half in response to the statement, and half in response to the warm mouth he felt against the outside of the fabric, which was thin enough to feel invisible but had all the elastic power to pinch harder by the second. He laid his head back against the couch, trying to imagine that it was anyone but who it was.

One time. He just had to endure one time, and then this would all be over.

But it wasn't so much endurance as it was impatience, as soon as the overtight panties were pushed down his hips and the pain in his groin was replaced by a hot, wet mask of pleasure.

He was moving, slowly at first, and then quickly, and all Garen could remember thinking was that this guy wasn't an amateur, god, he knew exactly where to put his tongue and where to place his fingers, at what rate to speed up and just when to slow down and start teasing again before he came. It lasted four minutes that felt like forty, and that was only because Darius made it so he would last that long.

He wiped what remained on his lips with the back of his hand, and then sat down beside Garen, sideways against the armrest. "You can leave now, but if you want more where that came from…"

Garen turned his head and glared at him. "I can't believe you."

He was smiling, his massive arms spread out across the arm and backrest, comfortable as could be. He retorted, "What is there not to believe?"

There was too much on Garen's mind for him to come up with a smart-aleck answer, so he pulled the panties up, walked quickly to the bathroom, and changed, leaving half of the lingerie in the sink and the other half on the floor to match the rest of the home's organization. As he left the apartment, Darius didn't even glance at him. He was back to watching what, if Garen remembered right, was the season finale.