Chapter 1 — It's not a ‘boner.’

Trevor's POV

"Trevor, I want to have all of you in my mouth." Sean whispered against my ear, his voice so low it felt like it was meant only for the space between us. He closed the distance slowly and deliberately, like he had all the time in the world and knew exactly what he was doing with it. The air between us felt different — heavier, charged with something I didn't have a name for but could feel on my skin like a second heartbeat.

I swallowed real hard.

"I have never done this before." My voice came out smaller than I intended.

He didn't laugh and didn't pull back either. Instead, his head dipped lower and his breath grazed the side of my neck in a way that made my whole body betray me at once. "That is not a problem," he said in that low, hoarse voice wrapping around the words like something between a promise and a dare. "You just need to follow your heart and you will get to know how much you can do."

And God help me, I almost did.

But the shocking thing was that how I ended up in Sean Pierre's bedroom and everything that followed isn't something I could easily explain. You wouldn't understand it… and you definitely wouldn't be in any position to judge me, if I didn't take you back to where it all started.

Because as much as I knew, Sean Pierre wasn't just the star quarterback. He was the high school god…The hetero heartthrob. A self-absorbed jock who moved through this school like it was built specifically for him, and honestly, sometimes it felt like it was. He was everything I hated about this place.

But somehow, at the same time, everything I wanted.

So, shall we?

…

"Sean, wait—"

I shot up from the dream so fast that my elbow nearly knocked over the water bottle sitting at the edge of my desk. Immediately I jerked my head up, my heart was slamming and my neck was damp. I pressed two fingers just below my jaw and felt my pulse running like I had just sprinted a full lap, which made zero sense because I had been sitting in ‘AP Literature’ for the last forty minutes doing absolutely nothing except apparently dreaming about Sean Pierre.

The air conditioning was on, yet I was still sweating.

For a full second, I just sat there and stared at the board like if I focused hard enough on the chapter heading still written in Mr. Calloway's handwriting, I could rewind the last thirty seconds and start them over differently. 

But then, the silence in the classroom had already changed its texture. It wasn't the half-asleep, phone-scrolling, nobody-is-paying-attention kind of silence. It was the kind where twenty-something people are all holding the same breath and waiting to see what happens next.

I could feel their stares of every single one of them even without looking. 

I was sitting in the front row, which I had always preferred because it kept me focused and away from the noise at the back. Right now I was regretting every single academic instinct that had ever put me there.

I kept my eyes forward for as long as I could convince myself it was working. Acting like I hadn't just screamed someone's name out loud in the middle of class felt like the dumbest play I could make, but it was the only one I had. So I held it for about five more seconds before my own nerve gave out and I looked sideways.

The first person my eyes landed on was him.

Of course it was.

Sean Pierre was already looking at me. He leaned back slightly in his chair the way he always sat… like the desk had been designed around his comfort specifically, and his pen was resting loose between two fingers, in a forgotten manner. His eyes were steady, unreadable and fixed directly on my face, and I knew without needing him to say a single word, that he had heard every syllable.

I could bet that the whole class had heard every syllable too.

"Hey." His voice was easy and unbothered. He set his pen down slowly on top of his book, like we had all the time in the world and he was genuinely curious where this was about to go. Then he leaned forward just slightly and tapped the side of my head with one finger. Although not hard, but just enough to get me to listen to him attentively in case I was still reminiscing about the dream. "Did I give you permission to say my name, nerd?"

The classroom came apart.

Some people laughed, while some of them made that dramatic ‘ohhh’ sound that a crowd makes when they smell blood. Somebody at the back clapped once, which was somehow the most annoying part of all of it. This was what they lived for…which was the slightest crack in Trevor Matai's composure, any small thing they could point at and say or see. 

‘He's not untouchable after all.

I had heard it before, but the thing was, it never actually stopped stinging.

I straightened in my seat and looked at Sean with every bit of collected energy I had left. "I fell asleep." That was it. I mean, that was my whole defense. To me, that was neutral, factual and absolutely nothing to dissect here.

"Awwwn." Sean tilted his head, and I could see the corner of his mouth pull like he was deciding how far to take it. "Dreaming about me, huh?"

"No." I was on my feet before I finished the word. Faster than I meant to be. My chair scraped back and everything. I didn't even plan it as it was pure reflex, the kind that kicks in when your body decides it's going to respond before your brain gets a vote. I just needed to shut that down immediately and clearly as that was the only way to make him not know that I actually had him in my dream, with zero room for interpretation.

The problem was that the moment I stood up, the laughter stopped.

Not because I had said anything impressive. Because the room's attention dropped all at once, like a coordinated thing… from my face straight down to my waist.

The silence lasted for maybe two seconds.

Then it kept rolling in.

"What the fuck!"

"What the hell!"

"Oh my God."

I didn't look down as I didn't need to. My body had already ‘told on me’ in the worst possible way and the classroom's reaction was confirming everything I was desperately hoping was not happening right now.

"Oh shit, this twink has got a boner." Someone near the window said it loud enough for the hallway to probably hear.

"His pri*k is trying to kick out from his boxers… see the way it's pointing straight at us." Another voice, and more laughter rolling over it before he even finished the sentence.

My reflex neurons moved faster than my pride. I grabbed my bag off the floor and pressed it against my front in one motion, and I didn't care how obvious that looked because the alternative was worse. My face was doing something I had no control over. I could feel the heat crawling up the back of my neck and I genuinely could not decide if I wanted to sit back down, walk out, or simply cease to exist.

Half the class had just seen me standing in the front row of AP Literature with an erection I got from dreaming about the straight quarterback sitting next to me.

I was so dead.

"I could bet with anything that he had a dirty dream about Sean." That was Max. Of course it was Max. He had this specific tone he only used when he had found something he planned to squeeze for as long as possible. "Got himself worked up and everything."

I knew if I let that sit without a response, he would run with it for the rest of the semester. Max Tucker had never needed much of an opening as he would take two seconds of silence and build an entire reputation-destroying narrative out of it.

"It's not a boner." I said it clearly and firmly. Like a person who had a completely reasonable explanation. "I'm a…show-er, not a grower."

It was the first thing that came to my head. In hindsight, it was not my strongest moment.

Before I could build on it, redirect or do anything remotely useful, Sean reached over and pulled the bag straight out of my hands just like that. His seat was right next to mine and it took him approximately zero effort. He looked down, looked back up, and said with complete calm, "Oh. But that looks like a boner to me, dude."

Then he tossed the bag back.

I caught it and said nothing because there was genuinely nothing left to say.

Max wasn't done. He fixed his eyes on me with that particular expression he wore when he was really enjoying himself. "Bro. You know Sean is straight with a capital ‘S,’ right?" He stretched the ‘S’ out long and slow, making sure every single person in the class heard exactly how he meant it. "So be realistic and come off your dirty and unimaginable little fantasies."

I opened my mouth but nothing actually came out.

"Trevor." Max cut me off before I got a word out, throwing one hand up in the air like he had just remembered something. Like he was doing me a favour by continuing. "It's honestly just a little bit sad that you got bricked up for the straight quarterback." Then he turned his head toward Sean and let the pause breathe for a moment, "Sean, wait…"

He said it exactly the way I must have said it coming out of the dream. The tone, the urgency, the way my voice had probably cracked right through it. He had been sitting on that and saving it, and now the whole class was losing it all over again and I was standing there with my bag pressed against me like a shield that had already failed.

I already knew this wasn't ending here.