Marshall sat down on the steps of his front porch. Steady breaths. He needed a moment to retain those. The sky was already blackening like burnt chicken, though he'd only departed from the bus several minutes ago. He closed his eyes and waited. Eventually amidst the night silence he felt his body ease up, and Marshall took this as cue to return to his former standing position.
"Good, I was starting to worry that we wouldn't be heading inside after all."
So much for the whole "calming down ritual".
Out of instinct Marshall reached for his pocketknife, the one he always kept glued to the intestines of his pocket like a security blanket, preparing himself for hypothetical attack right up until the moment he realized just who he would be attacking.
"You carry that at school? Mm, somebody likes breaking rules…" He had this habit of saying things that could almost be received as compliments or flirtation, but he'd say them with that condescending tone, with the overbearing posture, so that even the densest knew that they were being mocked.
Still, it made Marshall blush. Out of agitation or excitement, he wasn't quite sure, and wasn't quite looking to delve that deep in search of sureness. The "Prince" reached out and clutched the knife hand gently, as if daring Marshall to do something with it. Anything. Because he knew for a fact that he wouldn't.
Marshall coarsely yanked his hand away from the grasp and forced the blade back into his pocket, folded up gymnast-style once again.
"How the hell do you know where I live?"
"I know everything. Aren't you going to invite me in?"
On one hand, there was the possibility that this was all an elaborate dream. In which case Marshall should just go with it in honor of self-indulgence. Didn't he deserve some minute smidgen of satisfaction, at least in his dreams? On the other hand, this was real, and not letting him in (in other words: disobeying) would mean some sort of overdramatic retribution the next time the two were together. Together. Marshall swallowed the fatty lump in his throat. He closed his eyes again. He didn't really have a choice.
"If you wake my mom up, I'm kicking your ass," he replied at last, slowly slipping open the porch door, steadying it with both hands to muffle all potential shrill screeches.
"Sure," the Prince said, looking him up and down as if he knew some sort of secret, "That's what you'd do to me."
Marshall's hands were already starting to sweat. He wiped them on the seat of his jeans, but it scarcely helped in alleviating the situation.
Luckily for both of them there was no long hallway to maneuver through, and they were able to make it to Marshall's bedroom unnoticed.
Marshall's bedroom.
"So, what is it that you want?" Marshall asked, "and make it fast, because I want to listen to music, and then sleep. You caught me on one of my busier evenings." He was trying for a joke, poking fun at his pathetic social life situation, but it fell flat and lacked any noticeable form of reciprocation. He wasn't exactly surrounded by the jesting type.
First and foremost, the Prince took off his jacket. Marshall hadn't even realized that he had worn one today. To be fair, he'd been too busy offering up goods and services to acknowledge any of the other's current get up.
It wasn't anything particularly special, standard rich boy pink shirt and a pair of neither school nor weather appropriate shorts. Nothing he hadn't worn a million different times in a million different variations. There was in fact but one difference, one distinguishable outlier, and it lie further upward, hidden in his eyes. Something different about his eyes…
"It's hot in here," he stated bluntly, clearly insinuating that Marshall' s mind was still on the now discarded jacket. Like that were the greatest of his problems.
Marshall scratched at the back of his head.
Well he isn't wrong.
"You didn't answer my question, you come into my house at night the least you can do is answer my questions." Something about the way the Prince was acting, or more accurately, the way he wasn't, was throwing Marshall for a loop. Even for a dream, his eyes...the entire situation was sketchy at best.
"I'm sorry, what was the question?" The prince took a step closer, his legs so pale that they seemed to shimmer like strips of moonlight with each step he took. It was either eerie or beautiful, maybe both. Marshall wasn't sure how to take an "I'm sorry" from his present company, so he didn't.
"Yeah, I'm sure you totally already forgot. That you've got a 4.0 and you can't even remember my stupid question."
He first let a single palm rest upon Marshall's shoulder, curiously. Tentatively as a baby bird. Further confirming the earlier "this is all a dream" suspicions. Marshall immediately tensed in retaliation, waiting for some sort of violence to occur. He had never really thought of the high school's number one nerd as a sincere physical threat, but to be fair he'd never thought of him coming over to his dumpy little home in this first place. This night was simply proving to be full of surprises.
But the most surprising surprise by far, was when the Candy Prince's lips met his own.
To say that Marshall Lee "panicked" would be a blatant understatement. So much so that it was almost a total lie. He stood there with his eyes wide open, mouth unmoving. For an infinity's worth of ten seconds, he thought that he was having a heart attack. He thought that he was going to die. And not the giddy schoolgirl variety of "die", in which the term is simply used to illustrate a combination of giggles and endearing excitement. No. Marshall quite literally thought he was about to be not breathing, and then continue to be not breathing for the rest of forever.
Eventually he pried himself from the rapid-fire stagnation, and squinted like he was staring directly into the sun. Definitely not a dream. Dreams don't hurt so much.
"What the hell was the point of that?! Who put you up to it?!"
The Prince appeared to have been expecting that he would revive the opposites sort of reaction, he seemed almost genuinely offended at what he had actually evoked. As if he himself were any position to play shocked.
"You do like me don't you? Maybe not in regards to my ever so pleasant personality, but at the very least in regards to this." At the mention of this, the prince gestured to his body with one singular motion of his hand, a conductor and his incipient silent symphony.
Marshal still couldn't even properly meet his eyes. His body was shaking to the slightest degree, and he hoped that much wasn't ultimately noticeable. That, his hot face, twitching hands, or the heartbeat that he could've sworn would disturb the neighbors. He tried to clench his fists, preparing for a punch he'd never throw.
"I'm not playing with you, who set you up to this!" Marshall's eyes widened as they danced across the perimeter, "Do you…do you have cameras on you?"
The prince tilted his head.
"Christ, you're paranoid. You really think I'd want anyone else seeing me like this? That it'd be any good for my reputation?"
And therein lie the difference betwixt dreams and reality. Even when he was offered it all by the one whom he wanted offers from the most, something still remained missing. Love. The feeling of mutual acknowledgement and acceptance, a feeling Marshall had been excluded from in his lifetime for so very long. Even if they were to make love, it hardly sounded like there was going to be even a sliver of love in the making.
Marshall wasn't swayed so easily. He was a lot of pitiable things, but stupid was far from one of them. He chewed on his lip, trying to remain sensible despite the horse's gallop worth of a pulse he presently maintained.
"Then why?" he questioned, as if he had hopes of getting any sort of any honest and heartfelt answer, "Why come here to my home, and do this to me?"
Marshall sat down on his mattress, and despite his scrawny build, it caved a little underneath him. It had after all, been his since childhood. Deep within the confines of his gut he was still bracing himself for a heavily a saturated confession, or at the least a little bit of misty eye. "Because you're beautiful" wasn't quite everything he'd been looking for, but he would gratefully accept one of those as well. No such luck.
"Does it matter?"
After surviving the initial pain of hearing it aloud, Marshall had to think a bit on that one. It mattered to him, sure, but to be fair, so what? It was getting late, and who among us can stay wholly locked into feelings and morals and ethics and reason 24 hours out of the day?
He looked back at the other boy standing in his bedroom, for the first and probably the last time. Life doesn't freely give out opportunities such as this one, not for the faint of heart. The undersides of either of his hands were all sweaty again, and just being in the same room as him all alone was making it hard to think straight.
He could either take the moral highroad, or die with the knowledge, with the exact feeling from all of his fantasies.
Marshall shook his head.
The Prince smiled, and Marshall was glad that he wasn't given the time to register whether or not the smile had its typical alligator essence before he was kissed again. He didn't want to know.