Prologue
Matthew swore his heart was pounding so heavily against his chest that he was moving ever so slightly with each beat. He was frozen. It was like God had decided to put life on pause for a moment while he went to the bathroom. Was he even breathing? No…not at all. In fact, it appeared that his brain had suddenly forgotten that he needed to continue life via respiration. It seemed everyone else's brains had done the same; as the table had gone deathly quiet for the first time all year.
"Really, me?" Gil nbert glanced at Antonio and Lars as he broke the unnerving silence.
With that it seemed God had finished using the lue and set life in motion again. Matthew could finally breath again, albeit shallow and shaky. Slowly, he lowered the hand that he'd just used to flip off Gilbert Beilschmidt, his long-time crush. Lars gave Matthew a brief confused look before looking away again as the uncomfortable silence settled in again.
Out of everyone, even Gil, he was the one person Matthew could say he was genuinely friends with; he was also the only person who knew about his pathetic crush.
Slowly but steadily Matthew nodded.
"L-like, in that way?" Gilbert stared at Matthew at a complete loss.
"...Yes," Matthew replied, ashamed and almost hoping that it wouldn't be heard.
"Wow… Uh, thank you," Gil turned his gaze to the floor a light blush painting his cheeks.
...Okay, that was better than expected... Not to mention that Gil looked adorable. No, Matthew stop it right there. You know Gilbert is straight.
But Gil was very straight and that made his reaction all the more again, he wasn't a homophobic at all. In all honesty, he'd always been incredibly understanding and supportive of Matthew. Regardless, he supposed it was far better than the scenarios that had been running through his mind the moment he'd realized his fate was unavoidable.
If there was one thing that Matthew had learned today, it was that despite how fun it always seemed like it would be, Truth or Dare was a game conceived by Satan's most conniving henchmen in the most dark and twisted bowels of hell. Alas it seemed that Matthew was well on his way to being a full on glutton for punishment, because, even with that knowledge, he had jumped at the opportunity to play upon Antonio's suggestion.
Oh why did they have to finish all their work early? Not that it mattered, everyone always finished early in 's class. He taught the class fairly well in Matthew's opinion; he cut out the unnecessary bull shit that was in the math textbook and taught them what they actually needed to know. It was nice most days but right now Matthew would gladly have accepted "textbook bull shit" if it meant he could avoid the clusterfuck he found himself in.
After another moment of excruciatingly painful silence, the game continued on just as before. It was like Gilbert had never dared him to flip off the person he liked most in the room. For that, Matthew couldn't be more thankful. His friendship with Gil had always been more important to him than some masochistic crush.
That idiotic little crush of his. That stupid little crush that would never quite die no matter how many times he'd tried to kill it. For Christ's sake, he needed to stop thinking about this. Gilbert was straight, he even had a girlfriend; some girl named Elizabeta taht was a grade or two ahead of them and went to a different school. The two of them had been together almost the entire time he'd known Gil. Matthew was just a fool, who dug his own grave often enough that he could put it under "skills" on his resume.