AN: I wrote this a long time ago and just never got around to posting it. Now I'm going to give it a try, and hopefully finish it. This story will contain dark themes, homosexuality and just other not kosher things. If these topics offened you, don't read. Just thought I'd warn you.
Disclaimer: The ducks belong to someone not me. I'm not making any money, so don't sue. Blah blah blah.
Seared
Prologue
He was my first kiss. Eleven years-old and we were nothing but innocent hand-holding and pecks on the lips. That was all we were. I think I would have called it love, to some extent. A love more on the younger side. The purity and wonderment of discovery. We were puppy love.
He showed me things in our later years together. Thirteen years-old and I came for the first time with his mouth around me. I felt dirty after that night, but the feeling faded when we did it again. And again. Not actual sex, not then, but just kissing and groping and things you're supposed to do with girls first, I did with him.
We never "dated." Dating required acknowledgement of a relationship. We never acknowledged. We never told. We snuck around. Empty houses, abandoned parks late at night. Wherever the dark could hide our entwined bodies, our swollen lips. Where it was only us and the watching emptiness.
I wish that we had been able to say something. Tell the people we cared about that we had found something that felt like love. That I was almost sure was love.
That now I know was.
We never said the words, but I knew how I felt. How I still feel. Anytime I read his name in the newspaper, the detailed descriptions of the Eden Hall Ducks' latest victory. Always the name "Charlie Conway" sitting in black ink next to his. Searing cracks into my perpetually bleeding heart.
Adam Banks. The God on skates. The love of my life.
Adam had always told me that he didn't want to live in secret anymore. He didn't want to sneak around forever. He told me that I was getting too comfortable with it. And I agreed. I didn't want to tell anyone. I liked it just be him and me. Me and him. No one else to judge or examine. No one to tell us we were wrong.
He had come out, anyway. Alone. I didn't want to, so we went our separate ways and that was that.
Only it wasn't.
I wasn't over him. Not even close. I'm still not, sixteen years-old, and I'm angst personified. And he's happy in love with Captain Duck. Now I try to forget and try to move on, but I can't.
I can't let him go.
My name is Jesse Hall and I am in love with Adam Banks.
And I have been since I was eleven years-old.