Friendship

Be honest about your feelings. Don't let slights or grievances fester and injure your relationship by keeping them to yourself.

"Mason! Hey Mason, wait up."

Mason hears Liam's voice as he walks down the line of buses that are disgorging their passengers into the parking lot of Beacon Hills High School. For a moment he hesitates and considers using his earphones as an excuse not to acknowledge his friend and just keep walking. But Mason does stop and Liam runs up beside him and they fall into step. It could be the start of any other school day, Mason thinks. Best friends walking into school. It makes him feel good that they are back together again. Only not really, he realizes, because he remembers why he had hesitated, unsure if he wanted to wait for Liam.

Slipping off his earphones he drapes them around his neck and checks out his friend. There's nothing obviously different about Liam today. He seems the same as always. No, maybe, not entirely the same. Liam has said nothing, merely paced along, head down, off in his own world since he caught up with Mason. Can't be because he had to run to catch up to me, he thinks in irritation. After the show Liam put on in the weight room and then again on their run on Friday, this little jog would not have made a difference. He wonders what it would take to render his friend breathless. He'd been joking about steroids but…Still,he reasons, a wordless Liam is not unfamiliar territory. His friend has always preferred action to words. It provides him a measure of reassurance that his world hasn't come totally unhinged.

But today he is unnaturally quiet even for Liam and this lengthening silence is beginning to unnerve Mason. Finally Liam breaks his silence but he still doesn't look at Mason.

"You didn't save me a seat."

Liam's remark pricks Mason's conscience. It had been a petty thing to do. He'd known it at the time; but, hey, he's a fourteen-year-old, pissed-off guy, not a candidate for sainthood. You could have been fucking dead for all I knew, asshole. The thought of a world where Liam is dead infuriates and terrifies Mason. His response to Liam is not just lame, it is embarrassingly limp.

"What?"

"I said you didn't save me a seat. What's up with that, man?"

"I thought you were running to school these days." Mason snarks back, fixing his friend with a pointed stare. "How would I know you weren't doing that today? I haven't exactly heard from you lately."

Mason cocks his head and stares off into space. "You know, in fact, I haven't seen or heard from you since Friday. One minute I'm eating your dust," He scowls and takes his frustration out on an innocent rock that goes flying across the parking lot. "Way to go buddy! The next I'm standing on an empty road, looking like an idiot, wondering where you went. What's with the disappearing trick and then going incommunicado on me? I lost count of how many texts I left you this weekend, Liam. Do you know how pathetic it made me feel, sending you all those messages and not getting an answer? It felt like you broke up with me, dude, but didn't have the balls to tell me."

Although it reflects how he feels, Mason hopes that his complaint doesn't sound as gay to Liam as it does to him. He doesn't feel that way about Liam; but, damn it, he does love the self-centered jerk. If Liam thinks Mason is finished; however, he hasn't been paying attention for the last seven year.

"How was your weekend you ask? Thank you for asking, Liam. I had a great weekend. One minute I was furious at my best friend for leaving me twisting, twisting in the wind; and the next I was having a freaking panic attack, scared out of my mind that something had happened to him. So, no, I guess I didn't save you a seat on the fracking bus."

"And, for the record, Liam Dunbar, I am not your personal secretary."

"Huh?" Liam's look of confusion gives Mason a little kick of satisfaction. He knows he is not a good person for feeling that way but he doesn't care.

Having unloaded himself of a weekend's worth of anger and fear, Mason waits for some kind of explanation. But Liam just keeps walking

Mason has never, in their years of friendship, felt any compunction over profiting from Liam's lack of a poker face. Surprise, guilt, confusion, fear and sadness all make an appearance on his handsome face. Mason thinks that since it is merely a statement of an objective truth, like the sky is blue, he can notice how good looking his friend is without it meaning he wants to jump his bones. Liam is, like a brother. Besides, all the guys who feature in his fantasies are tall brunettes.

Liam deserves the guilt Mason sees reflected on his face for his shabby treatment of his best friend. Confusion, yeah, he'll explain the 'personal secretary' remark to him. He threw that in to screw with Liam's head; and maybe, if he's being totally honest with himself, out of jealousy. Why the fuck was Scott McCall so interested in finding you?

But the fear and nervous way his eyes sweep his surroundings and scan the faces of the students sharing the walk with them are just totally bizarre. And where the hell does the sad Liam face fit in, he wonders? What kind of trouble did you get yourself into this weekend, Liam?

It's Mason's turn to feel guilt. Liam has been doing so well with his anger. He kept his cool with Brett before and during the scrimmage. He'd been proud that his boy made it through an entire game against the Douche bags with no red cards. But Liam's body language suggests that something major and awful happened over the weekend. If Liam is really in serious trouble that changes everything. Mason's problem with him gets relegated to unimportant, we'll deal with it someday, if we have time and still remember what the problem was, status.

Mason is not religious but after doing some mental calculations, he offers up a prayer for his friend that is not so outrageous that it doesn't have at least a chance of being considered. Please, not any worse than vandalizing the coach's car bad this time.

Mason grabs Liam's arm and pulls him off the sidewalk, out of the stream of chattering, oblivious students. If we're tardy, we're tardy. Some things can't wait. Liam in trouble is one of those things. It has to be dealt with immediately.

The two of them have always been there for each other. It's been the two of them against the world since grade school. They remained best friends even when Liam transferred to Douche Bag Prep and left Mason behind, going through puberty as a gay kid without a friend to have his back, in the circle of hell called Middle School.

Mason has always been able to defuse or smother Liam's rages when they exploded out of nowhere; and Liam has always been Mason's defender. No one was allowed to mess with Mason. It was a little like having one's own attack dog. Not that he ever let Liam off his leash no matter the provocation. The possible consequences from that were too awful to consider both for the object of Liam's rage and for Liam.

After Liam left it had sometimes been necessary on their nightly calls to selectively edit his life-in-middle-school stories. But Mason had never regretted a single bruise he'd received or humiliation he'd endured during that time. As he saw it, he was every bit as responsible for protecting Liam from his self-destructive impulses as his friend thought he was responsible for Mason's safety.

Mason doesn't waste words when he has Liam out of earshot of the crowd. "What's wrong?" He asks quietly. His hands are on Liam's shoulders and he leans into his personal space trying to get his friend to look at him. Liam is a terrible liar. If he can get him to look him in the eye his friend won't be able to hide the truth from him. He can see kids looking their way from the sidewalk but ignores them. Hopefully he isn't doing permanent damage to Liam's cred in this new school. He doesn't think Liam is ready to be consigned to an alternative lifestyle before he's had a chance to kiss at least one girl.

"Nothing." Liam's head comes up and he attempts a glare. The effect is spoiled by the sheen Mason sees in his friend's eyes. Liam quickly swipes his hand across his face and Mason sees only bright blue eyes staring back at him. There is no sign of tears now.

"Everything's fine. Please, just let it go, man." Liam steps back and Mason lets him. Arms crossed, Mason watches his friend.

"It's something I have to handle myself. You need to trust me." He pleads. Liam is making what Mason thinks of as his sad, please forgive me, puppy eyes.

Mason stares at his friend wide eyed in disbelief.

"Are you really playing the best friend card on me? I just forget that the last weekend happened? It is God's in his heaven, all's right with the world time? Kumbaya is breaking out all over?" Mason turns his back to Liam. Right now, he doesn't want to see his friend's face. He can feel himself shaking in anger that Liam would shut him out of something that seems so important.

"Mason?" Mason ignores the plea in Liam's voice.

Liam gives his friend some time but eventually he tries again. But now there's urgency in his voice. "Mason? The first bell… it'll ring soon. You can't be late today."

Mason turns slowly back to face him. "What?"

His irritation with his friend hasn't diminished but his sour mood lifts somewhat as he sees the weak smile tugging at the corners of Liam's mouth. It's the first smile of any kind that he's seen on Liam's face since the incredibly embarrassing BRETT THING before the scrimmage.

"What's the big deal about today?"

The smile on Liam's face widens. "It's Monday, dude."

This earns Liam the duh look that such an asinine observation deserves. But then his friend continues. "You're supposed to be in the journalism office today, first period, Mr. only-Freshman-on-the- school-newspaper for your first assignment."

"Oh shit! Oh shit!" Mason looks down at his watch panicked but then breathes a sigh of relief. He's not late; but looking up, Mason fixes Liam with a suspicious look. "You did that on purpose."

"Kept you from being late?" Liam asks innocently. Mason's look becomes sharper.

"Distracted me from all your…" His hand waves vaguely as he gropes for a word adequate to encompass all of Liam's many transgressions. He sighs loudly as he watches the smug, self-satisfied grin that spreads across his friend's face. Mason's mood does not improve as Liam continues.

"You're right. I am a bad person because I remembered that something really important to my best friend was happening. I should be horsewhipped for being so inconsiderate as to remind him of it."

Mason's hands go up as though appealing to a higher power. Receiving no answer from that direction he drops his hands and glowers at his friend who is trying not to laugh but failing spectacularly. Mason sees tears in Liam's eyes again but they are from laughter now. Try as he may to maintain his state of righteous indignation, the relief he feels at seeing his friend climbing out of his funk is too great and he returns his friend's smile.

" Yeah. Okay, funny man, we need to get to class."

They rejoin the trickle of last minute students making its way into Beacon Hills High School. Liam turns to his friend. "We're good then?"

Mason nods. "Yeah, we're good."

But he drapes an arm across his friend's shoulder. A wicked smile plays across his lips as he gives Liam's shoulder a squeeze. "But Liam, you are still going to tell me what happened. You know I always get the truth out of you."

Mason drops his arm because fourteen-year-old boys are only allowed to touch each other for 4.7 seconds outside the context of sports. Mason smiles as he mutters softly to himself, "Always."

However, if Mason had chosen that moment to glance over at Liam, he would have been deeply worried to see the look of total panic that flashed across his best friend's face as he spoke.