Chapter 43

Kwan watched the other two men in his group during their theater class. He, and everyone else at the table, didn't miss when the two of them suddenly got up and left the cafeteria. No one tried to stop them since they clearly wanted to talk to each other alone, and Kwan already had an idea about what that conversation was. Paulina, and even Valerie, seemed to share his thinking when they watched Dash and Fenton disappear through the doors. Foley and Manson, on the other hand, were clueless, sharing worried looks about what the jock might do to their friend. An amused grin tugged at his mouth, wondering what the two of them would think if they knew how Dash felt about Fenton.

Kwan turned his gaze away as he frowned. He really did try to be happy for his friend and encouraging for Dash to go for it with Fenton. But it wasn't always easy on him. He liked Dash. In a way more than a normal friend should like his best friend kind of way. It hurt watching Dash give Fenton that lovesick look when he thought no one paying enough attention to notice it. He wished Dash would look at him like that, but he knew the chances of that were slim. Dash only saw him as a friend, and that was most likely to be all Dash ever saw in him.

They were still rehearsing their play, which they would have to perform at grade schools during their last two days of school before the winter break. Their lines were pretty easy to remember, though they could get away with a little adlibbing if necessary. They were mostly working on where to stand and actions while they said their lines. His aqua green eyes slid back toward the other two men. Kwan frowned at the awkwardness between them, a weird tension that seemed to pass between Dash and Fenton whenever they came too close to each other.

When the bell rang, Kwan hurriedly grabbed his book bag and followed his friend out the door. After they walked some distance away from the class, he placed a hand on Dash's shoulder and directed him toward the nearest bathroom. A freshman with thick glasses and freckles upon his face was in there, but after seeing the two senior jocks, he hurriedly made his exit. Once he left, they were alone in the bathroom.

"Before you even think about denying anything," Kwan started as he leaned against the door, folding his arms, "I know you pretty well, Dash. So I can tell when you're lying and when you're hiding something." He let a sly grin slip onto his face despite the agony inside him over what he was about to ask. "Finally made your move on Fenton, huh?"

The blush that spread onto Dash's face as he turned his head away was really all the answer Kwan needed to confirm what he already suspected. "Well, I mean, he wanted to talk to me," Dash explained, rubbing at the back of his neck. When he turned back to his friend, there was a frown on his face that confused Kwan. "I kissed him."

"That's great, man!" The smile was hard to keep plastered onto his face. Kwan thought for sure his heart was breaking into a million pieces at that announcement. He always knew it would happen, but he didn't expect how much it would hurt him to see his friend finally hooking up with his crush. Sometimes he really wanted to simply grab Dash by the face and yell at his friend to look at him instead. But he was merely the supportive best friend to the leading man, and like in any play, the background characters rarely ended up with a main character.

"Actually," Dash sighed, raking a hand through his blond locks, "it was probably really stupid."

"How?" Kwan blinked, stunned by that response. "It should be a good thing. I mean, you finally made your move. Did you ask him out? When's your first date?" Why was he asking all of this? His brain was screaming at him to shut up already. He really didn't want to know the details about Dash kissing Fenton. But he was the best friend, and friends stood by and listened to their friends' problems, even if meant slowly dying on the inside.

Dash didn't smile like Kwan expected. He didn't start rattling off all the details about the kiss and Fenton confessing that he was madly in love with the jock too. Instead the blond man frowned, a miserable look passing through his dark blue eyes. "He pretty much doesn't even want to give it a try. He kept saying I deserve better than him."

"Were you being serious?" Kwan lifted one eyebrow with a skeptical look in his eyes. "If he thought you were joking around, he could have rejected you because he didn't want you pulling some kind of cruel trick on him."

"Of course I was being serious!" Dash snapped with a dark glower.

"Hey!" Kwan unfolded his arms and held them up in surrender. "I'm just trying to look at this from his point of view. You haven't exactly been the nicest guy to him the past three years." And he wondered what Dash would think if he knew how he treated his hero that whole time, but he held his tongue on that point. "I wouldn't be surprised if he thought you were just fooling around. You were quite the flirt in the past, hitting on tons of girls. Plus you're pretty much the king of the school, and a bunch of girls wish you would date them. Maybe he thought you just wanted to toy with him, make out in some dark corner like he's your dark little secret you don't want anyone to know about, and when you get bored of him, you'd just toss him aside and move onto someone new."

"Okay. First of all, I kissed him right in the middle of the hall where pretty much anyone could have seen us," Dash argued angrily as he pointed a finger at his friend.

"Yeah." Kwan rolled his eyes. "While he was wearing a skirt and a wig and could have been mistaken for a girl."

"I'll admit it probably looks bad that I kissed him while he was dressed like that." Dash winced. "But he was the one that called me out to tell me it wouldn't work between us."

"While I'd really like to tell you to go for it," Kwan said, closing his eyes because somehow that made it easier to say things, "it might be better not to push things too forcefully. If he's resistant right now, being aggressive could turn him way off. You might," he shrugged, "just want to try going at it slowly. Talk to him a bit. Show some interest in things he likes. Maybe if you treat him like a friend first, he'll warm up to you."

"Yeah, maybe." Dash looked doubtful about that. "I guess it's worth a try." He groaned as he nudged his friend to move aside. "And we should really head to class now."

Kwan sighed as he followed his friend out of the bathroom. He really didn't feel like heading to class, especially after hearing that Dash kissed Fenton. If he could, he would run off to find someplace where he could be alone and try to forget all about it, but he couldn't because he still had two more classes to suffer through before the day ended.

After waving goodbye, he parted ways with Dash and headed off to his class. He sneaked into his next class only a minute or two late, and thankfully, the teacher only gave him a brief glance before returning to the lesson. With a sigh, Kwan pulled out his PDA from his pocket and held it below the desk so that his teacher wouldn't notice it. He pulled up the data on Phantom. His mind still boggled over the fact that Phantom was actually Fenton. It shocked him to learn that from Foley.

But the news made him frown severely. His hands tightened around the PDA as he thought about his brother's presence in the school. Fenton was in great danger with Jing around and alert for any virus activity. If Fenton wasn't careful, Jing might manage to get his hands on him. Kwan ground his teeth. He knew one way that he could keep Fenton safe, but that meant actually sticking to his brother like glue to trip him up whenever Jing ran off to chase after viruses. He really hated the idea of having to do that since being around his brother was infuriating.

The final bell of the day rang, and Kwan filed out of his last class with the rest of the students. The hall was fairly crowded with the throng moving sluggishly as students headed toward their lockers or after school clubs or to the exits of the school. Kwan was almost to his locker when Foley caught up to him. They had a pretty nice chat during lunch, discussing various things about tech, and he was surprised that things were going well with their whole break away from the A list norm.

"Hey, can we talk?" Foley asked awkwardly, his green eyes glancing around nervously.

Kwan nodded, realizing exactly about what Foley wanted to talk. At lunch, they couldn't really get into talking about Phantom with the whole cafeteria around to overhear them and their friends sitting right at the table with them. He shoved his hands into his pockets as he followed Tucker through the halls. They left the school and found an empty bench far removed from where the rest of the students were. As long as they talked in hushed tones, they wouldn't have to worry about being overheard.

"I just wanted to compare things with you," Foley said as he sat dropped onto the bench. His PDA appeared almost magically in his hand, but since the techno geek always seemed to be playing with it or something like it, he could have held it the entire time without the jock really noticing it.

Kwan followed, taking out his own PDA and pulling up the information on Phantom. "I had it scanning him all during lunch and our theater class," he explained as he held out his PDA for the other man to see. "It's hard to get a good reading on him though while he's human. If he was walking around as Phantom, I could get a better scan of him."

"Yeah, I know." Tucker sighed tiredly and held his PDA next to the other one so that they could do a side by side comparison of the data.

As Kwan discovered after glancing over the data in class, Fenton only leaked a small amount of his Phantom signature while he was human. It didn't provide a whole lot to go on, but with the coding he still had from the football game, they at least had a strong source to compare things. Both of them frowned, leaning in close as they scanned through the information on both PDAs.

"There's," Foley squinted at the screens, "something weird right there." He pointed at part of the coding on Kwan's PDA, and sure enough, a small blip in the data showed differently from the rest of it.

"It could just be a fluke," Kwan said, though he felt some doubt about that.

"Kwan, if I know anything, it's that we shouldn't ignore something as 'just a fluke.' Ignoring a small thing could be disastrous." Foley's frown didn't simply show worry for his friend. It read as terror. "It's like that weakest link or something phrase. What is it? A chain is only as strong as its weakest link? This," he pointed a little too dramatically, "could be his weak link. This could be something that actually kills him. I'd rather make a big deal over nothing than ignore something that I'll regret later."

Kwan swallowed. "Point taken. But," he frowned at the other man, "I feel like you're not telling me something."

Foley dropped his gaze to the PDA in his hands. Misery and guilt melding in his eyes. "I may have done something really bad to Danny over the weekend. And I'm terrified that if something bad happens to him, that it'll be all my fault."

"And what did you do?" Kwan narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

"Um." Foley turned his head as he scratched at his cheek. "I may have accidentally shot him with one of his parents' inventions." He snapped his head around, hands waving in front of him. "But I didn't mean to! All I did was pick it up, and the thing went off. I didn't even really touch the trigger." He hung his head, dropping his face into his hands. "I'm such a bad friend."

Kwan patted the other man on the shoulder. He sometimes felt like a bad friend for harboring feelings toward Dash. It would be a lot easier on himself if he could simply forget about them and find someone else. "But you're trying to do right by it," he pointed out, though if he was in Fenton's shoes, he would probably want to punch Foley for shooting him with something potentially dangerous to him. "A bad friend would actually shrug that thing off and not care about the consequences. But you're not like that. You're checking on him to make sure nothing bad is happening to him. That's what a good friend does. He doesn't run away after making a mistake. He tries his best to make up for it."

"I know you're trying to cheer me up," Foley said, still talking into his hands, "and that's still kind of weird since you're a jock and you're not supposed to care about cheering up a loser. But I still feel horrible."

His mouth pulled downward as Kwan lowered his eyes. He knew a lot about feeling horrible with the tangled mess of emotions twisting around inside him. Not sure what else to say to help the man, he advised, "Next time, keep away from the weapons."

Mischievious Kiss27: Poor Danny~ What's happening to you? D: Danny will never live down the drag! XD

swagdanny: But I start to feel lazy when I don't get at least one chapter of something written each day. XD;; Haha, whoops! XD My Dash x Danny is showing again. XD;; I think Danny has enough going on with just Dash and Vlad without throwing Valerie and Phantom at him too. XD;;;

DB-KT: Hm. Maybe that was just in my head. XD;; But I know I've had the idea of him wielding a scythe more than once. XD;; And he'll definitely be seen with a scythe in another story. =)

SherlocksDoctor: Thanks! =D

maltese: And the great war for Danny's heart begins!

midnight: *pats Dash* D: You'll be okay! Who knows? Maybe he's just feeling under the weather. D: Ah, if only Danny thought about doing that before~ XD

Sammi: *sobs* Kwan's just like "why won't you look at me, Dash!?" orz

DARKLOVEFORFANFICTION123: Haha, Tucker was totally like "Dude, you're gushing like girl after her first date with a guy she really likes. And you're going to sit there and tell me it wasn't a date? Not buying it, Danny. Not buying it." XD;; That's okay. XD

Just Will: I'm glad to hear that. =) Haha, Danny should have, but he took the bet to mean a skirt/dress and no pants underneath. XD;; Now he's really wishing he had thought about the pants beforehand. Poor guy is getting sick. =( Another reason he shouldn't be walking around with his legs exposed in the middle of winter. XD All the love drama! D: