With all the strength of a great typhoon (Amos)

[Romeo Buckland]

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Romeo wasn’t particularly competitive when it comes to sports. Sure he knew he’s better than most of his peers (ball sports come to him naturally and he’s actually among the fastest runners in his class), but unless there’s something in it for him other than bragging rights, he doesn’t usually go all out. Too much effort for something people can easily attain for less than half what he might put, he says. (Nobody gets less than a B in gym class anyway, or at least that’s what the Irish boy heard).

So even when their gym teacher told them they’d be having a beach volleyball tourney and the winning pair gets at least 10 percent in bonus marks (it could go as high as 25, depending on their performance), Romeo didn’t really give much of a damn. But when Jeremy heard that he didn’t really care much for it and started taunting the Irish teen’s abilities, well, it just got a bit real. Add the fact that they had a seventy-five dollar wager (it started out as twenty, but ego and all that brought the pot way up) and the boy suddenly found himself all in. Already he had a partner in mind anyway (Oberon, the new kid), so he’s pretty sure he had Jeremy’s bet in the bag.

Until Mr. Guntrie announced that he’s already chosen partners for the whole class. And Jeremy got in with Oberon. While he got Amos.

Fuck.

It wouldn’t reflect on him nicely to call back the bet, so he had to rethink his strategy. And thus there he was, early weekend morning, standing inside Amos’ bedroom in his gym gear, volleyball in hand. “Wake up fag,” he prodded the boy with his feet, and when he didn’t respond, threw the ball at him (softly, slightly at least), “Come on. We have a long day ahead of us. Don’t make me dump a bucket of cold water at you.” Knowing Romeo, that’s far from an empty threat.

[Amos Freeman]

Amos had probably been dreaming, but he couldn’t remember now. The only thing he knew for sure was that his immediate reality involved being slogged in the head with a volleyball. He furrowed his eyebrows into the pillow, offering a muffled groan.

He knew that voice.

“Who even let you in here?” He murmured with disdain, deciding to ignore Romeo's malphemistic choice of words. His mother has always said, after all, that if you ignore it, they'll leave you alone. With this in mind, Amos sat up and decided to address the more pressing concern.

“We what?” He said plainly, rubbing the left side of his face in an attempt to alleviate some of the sinus pressure in his forehead. His heavily-bagged eyes surveyed the other boy skeptically. He was completely decked out in his gym uniform. Amos blanched. He wasn’t a telepath, but he could make an educated guess.

There were certain disadvantages to having a non-physical power. For example, he didn’t generally publicize his sub-par grade in gym class, but it wasn’t stellar, to be sure. For another thing, he spent so much time sleeping, writing, and eating lettuce that he had the approximate muscular strength of a bowl of wet noodles.

Half a bowl was probably more accurate. He didn’t want to give himself too much credit.

That still failed to explain how he always found himself in this kind of situation. He looked Romeo up and down again, sighed, and tentatively put one bare leg on the dorm floor. He was shirtless, although the view was not especially spectacular, and he was wearing an old, loose pair of boxers.

There was no use in resisting.

“Just… give me a minute,” he grumbled, grabbing his limp gym bag from the back of the chair in the corner. He dressed as quickly as humanly possible, making a point not to shed anything important; somehow, undressing in front of Romeo felt like an invitation for verbal sexual harassment.

“Okay.”

[Romeo Buckland]

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“Ugh, finally,” groaned Romeo when Amos finally woke up and spoke. He was this close to forcefully dragging the poor boy out of his bed. The Irish teen’s anything but a patient boy; five minutes of doing nothing but prodding and yelling at the other boy was more than enough. (You’d think he’d at least find some perverted joy in it; unfortunately the fact that he himself had to wake up earlier drained the fun out of it. Romeo’s never been and probably never will be a morning person. He insists that such training sessions are just isolated incidents). “Stop complaining twerp. Just take that butt plug out your ass and get ready. The tourney starts on Monday and we are not getting eliminated during the first round.”

“I do suggest you buy a new doorknob after our session though. Two doorknobs actually.” He pointed to the currently mangled knob just in front of his door. How else would he have gotten in the room(dorm room and Amos’ private quarters, to be exact)? He wasn’t some gifted teen who can scale walls or pass through floors after all.

He begrudgingly sat on bed as Amos got ready, absentmindedly throwing the ball up and down as he did. “Sure, take your time dipshit,” answered the boy with quite the sarcastic tone. Playing with the ball soon bored him though, and soon enough he’s right beside Amos, looking through his clothes. “Who in their right mind would wear this?” he said with a dark chuckle, throwing the shirt over his shoulder soon after. “And this? What the fuck is this? You just got lamer and lamer asswipe, not that I expected any better though.” And then he moved on to Amos’ underwear drawer and boy did he laugh out so loud. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.” He held the supposedly offending article of clothing and even wore it over his gym shorts. “Fuck, even I couldn’t make them work. What were you thinking?”

When the other boy finally got dressed, Romeo happily took Amos’ boxers off and put it on top of his head. “Great. To the field faggot. I’ve seen you play in class. The earlier we start, the better.”

[Amos Freeman]

Before he’d met Romeo, Amos had been quite fond of Irish accents in general. They were melodic, he had previously thought; melodic and unassuming and definitely not the kind of accent that filled you with dread.

Unfortunately for Amos, hearing the words ‘butt plug’ in an Irish accent could really ruin it for you.

“It’s just gym class,” he mumbled, half-hoping that the other boy wouldn’t hear him and also half-hoping, mostly for the sake of his pride, that he would. “It’s not like you’re going to fail if we get eliminated. It’s graded on participation.”

He squinted over at the doorknob to his room, which was half-hanging pitifully out of its socket. Amos closed his eyes in order to roll them more expressively, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

The quieter he was, he told himself, and the more compliant, the sooner it would be over.

During the time it had taken to reassure himself that he was going to be okay, Romeo had taken the opportunity to rifle without permission through his wardrobe.

He clenched his teeth so hard that he felt it in his forehead.

To be fair, Amos had never put much stock into what he wore. He didn’t think it was that important; as long as he was clothed, it was nobody’s business, right? He watched several clean, carefully folded shirts fly through the air, and he sighed.

Contrary to popular belief, purple was not Amos’s favorite color. The majority of his shirts were purple, of course, but only because they didn’t make shirts in ultraviolet. It could be very difficult to express yourself through fashion when your favorite color was not on the humanly visible spectrum of light.

Wearing purple didn’t make Amos a faggot. Wanting to have stable, loving relationships with boys made Amos a faggot, and he was very picky about the distinction.

He lifted his hand to the top of his head and pulled his boxers off, throwing them on the floor with the rest of his clean clothing. His room looked like a warzone, wherein Romeo had singlehandedly disposed of an entire army of invisible purple-clad soldiers.

“Let’s just go,” Amos half-pleaded, in that particular tone of the bullied in which he or she hopes, rather desperately, that their aggressor is truly a good person in some deep, private portion of their soul. He walked carefully towards the door to his room, slipped out into the hallway, and bolted for the stairs like a frightened rabbit.

It was ridiculously warm and bright considering how early it was in the day, and Amos squinted painfully as though he’d been socked in the jaw. His pale skin glowed in the unforgiving heat, and he could already feel himself starting to lose hope.

He trekked in silence toward the training field, which was, much to his chagrin, still not completely empty despite the unholy hour; he stood in one corner and waited to be humiliated further.

[Romeo Buckland]

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“And this is why nobody likes you Amos,” groaned Romeo as the other boy took the purple boxers off his head. He made an effort to catch it midair from Amos’ throw, but he reacted a little too slow, with him reaching out only resulting to almost losing his balance. “You’re no fun. Like seriously, you’re more boring than a sleeping sloth.” Romeo promptly rolled his eyes as he lead the way, grabbing the ball as they walked out the room. “Gays are supposed to be all fun right? Parties and unicorns and rainbows and shit. You know, like Francis and Jeffrey.” He could still remember the wild party Jeffrey threw two nights ago. And they didn’t have to outsource any drugs of sort, because the pixie boy’s dust was more than enough to get them high. “Are you sure you’re even gay man? I mean, have you ever been with a dude? At least kissed one? Heck, if I’d known any better, you’re actually straight, telling people you’re gay so you can get close to a girl easily.” Because girls feel comfortable around gay men more than they do with straight guys right? Aren’t gay bffs the new ‘in’ accessory or something? “It won’t work. Not with a loser like you.”

Then Amos suddenly bolted out of sight, making Romeo curse under his breath and forcing the Irish boy to run after the teen. “What was that about?” It’s not the first time someone ran away from him just to get out of reach of his hideous remarks, but he never really got the hint.

“Yeah. But since we’d be losing early, how much participation do you think I’ll be able to do?” answered Romeo, walking back ten or so paces from where Amos was standing. He juggled the ball a few times, eyes fixed on it as he passed it on from hand to hand. “You ready? We’ll start with receiving.” He put the ball down for a bit and showed Amos the proper stance. “Hands together and pop your elbows out. You want the ball to hit the area between your fists and your elbows.” He’s pretty sure their gym teacher already pointed the basics out during their first day, but Romeo insists it doesn’t hurt. Especially when it’s Amos they’re talking about. “Remember to move. Kneel, walk sideways, jump up, whatever. Follow the ball.” He tossed the ball up, then passed it to Amos using the same form.

“Our first opponent’s Ron and Harry. I know you have a big crush on Ron, so I’ll be watching you closely.” He gave Amos a wink just to let him know he’s serious. “And while he may have a six-pack, I tell you, he gives bad head. Too much teeth. And he screams a lot. Then again, I hear Mark says he loves ‘em when they scream, so I guess it’s just not for everyone.”

ooc:
Kelly, if you'd want to kill me, I'd understand. Sorry for taking forever in this. u.u
- Jam

[Amos Freeman]

“People like sloths,” Amos murmured defensively, wrinkling his brow. He knew for a fact that there were several blogs on the internet dedicated exclusively to pictures of the endearing, long-armed creatures.

To be quite frank, people probably liked sloths better than they liked him, most of the time.

At the mention of his sexual orientation, Amos’s shoulders sagged. It was always like this with Romeo; gay loser gay gay sex faggot gay sex sex kissing faggot. Did the other boy ever think of anything else? Didn’t he understand that there was the potential for life outside of raucous parties and the meaningless groping of others?

He had resolved earlier that he wouldn’t rise to the bait, but the Irish boy’s comments had already pressed all the right buttons, like they always did. He cast a stony look sideways.

“Sexual and romantic attraction are different,” he said rather lamely, parroting what Dr. Neville had told him in one of their weekly sessions. “Anyway, it’s none of your business. Just because I don’t kiss people in public doesn’t mean I haven’t ever done it.”

Of course, he hadn’t done it; he hadn’t done anything of note, other than write somewhat angst-ridden poetry about boys he found appealing, which had been meticulously hidden away in the depths of the abyss that was the space under his bed.

He wasn’t prepared to give up that last vestige of mystery to someone like Romeo and, by extension, everyone in the entire Institute.

Amos eyed the ball with a queasy look on his face, as though it, too, existed solely to make his life miserable.

“Whatever,” he mumbled. He popped out his elbows and laced his fists together.

The ball sailed towards his left, and Amos twitched pitifully sideways, joined arms flailing. The volleyball landed with the dull smack of failure. It rolled away, and Amos went to fetch it, his cheeks burning horribly.

“I—” Amos began testily, with every intention of vehemently pronouncing the fact that he did not have any sort of crush on Ron. As Romeo finished giving unnecessarily lewd details, he just settled for gritting his teeth and sighing through his nose.

“If I had to have sex with you, I’d probably scream too,” he mumbled so lowly that he could barely hear himself. He tossed the volleyball up and attempted to serve it; it veered horribly, landing at least five feet away from the other boy.

“Damn it,” he lamented half-heartedly, rubbing his now-red forearms with both hands like a mutant chicken.



((OOC: It’s fine! No rush; I’ve been really busy lately so feel free to take your time.))