You have a crush on Dave and you hate yourself.
You have a crush on Dave and you hate yourself and your pants are around your ankles and you're hunched over on the bathroom floor, and you're not thinking about Dave right now because this is humiliating enough as it is.
This is all Dave's fault, you decide as you snake your hand between your legs. It's his fault for making your stomach flip. It's his fault for making you feel things low in your gut that mortify and terrify you. It's his fault that you even started to wonder how you would do anything…like that.
Sex is…you want to do it. At some point. Maybe not even with Dave but with someone sometime. You don't even want it now but you know someday you will and then what? What do you do when the parts of you that you need for that don't line up with what your head tells you they should be. When you've got the wrong set of plumping and you've got no idea how to work with what you've got.
You're terrified to work with what you've got.
You squeeze your eyes so tight it hurts and you press your index finger between the crease there. You breathe out, feel ridiculous because this is so stupid, and let your fingers play with the folds a bit.
After a few short minutes it gets boring and your shoulders relax and thank god, it should not be such a big deal in the first place. You find that if you keep your mind at a distance from yourself, observe what you're doing like it's not actually happening to you but maybe in a health video or something, it takes the edge of your panic away and you can focus on just exploring. You still avoid that 'magic button.'
Your junk's a junk. A girl junk. But, hey it's still a junk. You try to take a peek but then your gut squeezes like someone's got their hands in your intestines when you look at it too long so you close your eyes again, just focus on what you feel with your hands.
You saw enough to know it looked similar enough to all those photos you saw in sex ed. You were expecting it, but for whatever reason, you can't fight off the disappointment swimming in your veins.
You keep your feelings for Dave squished down, squelching it like an overfed slug into a jar of expired jelly.
That is to say - your feelings are a gross, mushy mess and tend to leak out anyway. Fuck.
You're sure Dave has noticed, just the way you've noticed his (admittedly obvious - how did you not see it before - )feelings for you. But neither of you bring it up, just continue to awkwardly dance around each other while trying to keep your whole friendship thing intact.
And honestly you do a pretty damn good job of it.
By the time the school year is coming to a close, it almost feels like you never broke apart. Your dynamics with each other may have changed, and maybe he's not your entire world anymore since you have more friends than just him (which is, honestly, probably healthier), but that closeness is there again.
When summer finally rolls around you're back to spending many of your days at Dave's. Bro gives you some mini review lessons of how to fight, something you hadn't even really thought about in years, but, oh, how happy you are kicking those punching bags and sparring with Dave. Especially sparring with Dave. He may be way more advanced than you now but when you do land a punch or kick to his chest, you get this smug sense of pride that you never expected to enjoy so much.
The day the two of you go uptown to the mall together, and Dave introduces you to another friend ('well, detention bro, really. Don't ask.') of his as his best friend you feel you might actually burst, happiness blooming and swelling deep in your lungs and you can't even manage to pass off your smile as a scowl.
You think Kankri suspects you have feelings for Dave, and you're pretty sure he disapproves, mentions that he thinks you should be care to not be hurt by him again. You usually try to turn the conversation away from Dave, and towards Meulin. It works well enough - he either goes on these long rants about why she's perfect, or turns completely red in the face if you're pissed enough to ask him about all the juicy details of his sex life. Which he may or may not have. You haven't gotten a clear answer out of him.
You want more from Dave, but you don't. You like what you have, even if it's not everything you want. You don't want to push the balance. You doubt Dave would turn you down if you did ask, but you're afraid that getting into a relationship will mess up the dynamic you have now, and you don't want to lose that again.
You're afraid of how far things will go, if you do get together.
What if you can't get intimate? What if you can't do it right? What if you're too scared because, fuck, you can't even handle your private bits. It scares you and what if Dave doesn't like that? What if he sees you as a girl when you're all stripped down. What if he sees you as a girl now and that's why he's interested. What if, what if, what if.
Easier just to pretend those feelings aren't there in the first place.
It's funny how smooth life runs when you're actually in a place you might call 'happy.'
The days blur together, rainy spring nights shift to thick, summer heat, and you're happy. You wonder if there are people who have felt this their entire life. People who didn't spend a majority of their childhood running from bullies or feeling as though they were being eaten from the inside out.
People always say that poetry and art and beautiful things are born of pain. But you think they're wrong. The world has never been so beautiful as when you actually feel the light of the world inside and out.
Not that all your problems vanished the moment you fell into friendship with more than one person. There are still those nights you spend locked in the bathroom, chest heaving and eyes burning and unable to look in the mirror because what you see in the reflection is wrong, so wrong.
And you still don't know what to do with all those feelings that bubble their way up to the surface around Dave. Still not sure where the line between friendship and something more is. Still not sure if you're walking on a tightrope above it or if you've already stuck a foot over the line.
But really, all that is like adding salt to sugar. It's gotta be there for the sugar to be that much sweeter right?
And maybe a part of you likes to have a 'normal' problem to be flustered over for once in your life. So you've got a crush on someone. So does like, 90% of the student body. It's normal and you like that. It makes you feel just like any other kid for once.
It's Dave who finally tips the balance.
You're crouched down, cramming homework into your bag, because, fuck, you're teachers are sadists who give out homework on the first week of school. Because 'you're in eleventh grade now and responsibilities and blah, blah, blah.' You're struggling to zip your bag shut when Dave steps up behind you.
"Yo," he says, and when you glance back, you note (jealously) how empty his own backpack is.
"Hey," you grunt back as you finally yank the zipper all the way closed. You stand up, swing your backpack over your shoulder and raise an eyebrow at the way he keeps shifting his weight from one foot to another, the way he keeps glancing off behind you. "What?"
He jumps a little and your eyebrows come down to furrow into a crease, a nervous twist building in your stomach at Dave's behavior. He tries to grin when he says, "Would you wanna go to the theater and watch a movie with me this weekend?"
"Sure?" you say, and it sounds more like a question than anything. "Was there something you wanted to see, or…?"
He shrugs. "Well, not really, but I figure we could just pick something out when we get there or something." His hand nervously finds its way to the back of his neck before he adds, a little rushed, "I was hoping we could go together as in like, a date. Type thing."
The tips of his ears are turning red, and he starts shuffling nervously again by time you realize you're staring, jaw slack, mouth dry. "I mean," he says, voice quivering nervously, "if you don't want to, that's -"
"Okay," you say abruptly, cutting him off.
Dave pauses for a moment, before a goofy smile pulls over his face, which he quickly tries to control into a casual grin. He doesn't do a very good job at it.
"Okay," he says in return, his smile in his voice. "Okay, cool. I'll call you tonight with show times and we can pick something out for tomorrow. Sound good?"
You nod, not trusting the stability in your voice to actually speak. And by time Dave has gone off to be picked up by his brother, you almost miss the bus because you spend a good few minutes staring blankly at your locker, not quite believing what just happened, actually happened.