When their session is over and they part ways, Ellis has the strangest urge to kiss his tutor goodbye. It lingers like a bad itch all the way home, twisting his stomach into knots and settling as a deep, full ache in his dick until he’s finally in his bedroom with his back against the door and a hand around himself. 

The tattered denim of his well-worn jeans is slipped down around his parted thighs, showing off the purple and green-yellow of bruises fresh and faded alike with practice getting rough in recent days. His head falls back and he groans, stroking dry until the burn is too much and he draws his hand up to spit across his palm. 

Keith’s got freckles across his face in a pretty peppering of warm color, like autumn leaves on the pale winter backdrop of his lighter-shaded skin. Casey has some, too, but far fewer and they’re usually lost beneath the cake of her foundation. Once, he’d come across her face on accident when she’d drawn back to avoid swallowing, and when she’d angrily wiped her cheek off with a towel he’d been able to see the spots of color. 

He thinks of Keith’s face turned up towards him, lips parted like they are when he’s spaced out waiting for Ellis to finish trying an equation on his own; his blue eyes are wide, a little scared, glasses tipped back over his forehead to let the full bloom of his startled blush light his freckles like Christmas. When the first shot hits his face he doesn’t draw away in disgust - he shyly lowers his eyes and whimpers for it, the noise becoming a name, soft and desperate. “Ellissss…”

Ellis comes hard, shooting into his palm and thumping his head hard against the door in frustration. 

He wipes his hand off and throws himself onto his bed, kicking his pants off after he rescues his phone from his back pocket. He shoves a pillow up under his chin and elbows and shoves himself into a text before orgasm haze has quite faded from his buzzing brain. 

“dude u busy?” 

“Nope!” comes the immediate reply, and it’s paired with a smilie. “What’s up?”

• we’re just pretending hs football runs the same season as actual football
• okay? 
• okay.
• or actually i could change the scene dialogue from “game” to “practice” 
• prolly do that

and i’ve been doing a buncha firsthand account reading on Savannah’s tolerance levels of homosexuality, and a majority of comments on the still-thick but fairly scattered homophobia present is “well, there’s a lot of military and a couple of crazy churches there, what do you expect.” I hate always harping on “the religious fundies are the bullies” theme so maybe the boys giving El and Keith hell are football players with fathers in the military. Really, all it takes is one asshole to get his friends going. XP They’re probably responsible for all of the shit that happens to those two… 

Except, I really want to do something where Casey tries to “get back” at Keith for turning her boyfriend gay. 

Because I think half the shit they get is because they’re gay, and the other half is because it really, really looks like Ellis was cheating on Casey with a guy. He dropped her and moved on in less than 24 hours.. XD

anyway, most of what i’m reading is the same thing: tolerant inner city, trouble on the fringes, trouble with (older or family-based strains of) military and a few select religious organizations. Typical south, yet overall far more tolerant. P: 

I wish I’d done more research before. /ashamed 

Keith trying - but not really - to hide the hickey Ellis gave him. 

This picture is my favorite thus far of all of au Keith ;3; I don’t know why, something about it just tickles me. 

He’s giving himself a thigh massage to work out some strain from practice when his phone buzzes on the coffee table to alert him he’s gotten a text message. Sarah’s on the house phone in her room - talking to doctors, probably, because she’s using the polite voice that drips honey-thick with sugar - and he can hear her cough into her hand as he picks up his cell. 

It’s Keith, cheerfully agreeing to studying at pizza hut tomorrow instead of at school. There’s a smiley face there - none of the guys he knows use smilies aside from winks when they’re texting about fucking someone - that doesn’t make it feel like a lie like Casey’s do. He’s cool with getting pizza. Smile. There’s no manipulation, no faked interest, no indirect dismissal. 

Lighting a cigarette, he shoots him a text in response, testing the water’s temperatures; “got hurt in practise 2day” is thumbed out and sent before his brain catches up with him with a why the fuck would his tutor care? Even that barely registers before his phone is buzzing with, “Oh really? :( Are you okay? What happened?” 

Another smiley. Or frown-y, whatever. 

Grinning, Ellis texts him back, his cigarette smoldering in the corner of his mouth as he takes three texts to explain the muscle strain. Casey had only responded with a “my poor bby :(” - out with friends getting new bras or whatever girls did when their boyfriends were blacklisted from their afternoon activities - and hadn’t even asked what he’d messed up. In contrast, here was Keith, asking questions and offering sympathy and smilies both. 

“Hurtin’ ‘er not, there’s no smokin’ in th’house, Ellis,” Sarah says suddenly from the kitchen, and Ellis wordlessly shuffles out onto the porch, still typing away on his phone. “Ah see tha’ smile awn yer face, buddy - tell Casey Ah said hi!” she adds as the screen door groans shut behind him, and he doesn’t even bother correcting her. 

“Uh  convention, huh? Full uh dork stuff?” muses Ellis, comfortably slumped in his boyfriend’s desk chair with his legs spread wide apart. He’s spinning a basketball on his finger - not particularly good at it, the ball frequently falling into his free hand - and watching the redhead with the private grin he uses when Keith’s being particularly adorable. “We s’posed tuh dress up?” 

“Yew can,” Keith mumbles, pushing his hair out of his face. He’s getting flustered by Ellis’s casually negative response, and further trapped by the expression he recognizes as fondly intended only for him. “I have buhfore - ya dun gotta, s’jus’ fer fun - ”

“Wut’s th’point uh goin’ half-ass?” Ellis says, spinning the ball once more and catching it between both hands as he leans forward. “Dressin’ up could be fun. Ya kinda make errythang fun,” he adds conversationally, and tosses the ball. 

Keith scrambles to catch it, momentarily hugging it to his chest as he stares, blushing and pleased, through glasses slipped low on his nose. “O-oh. Really?” 

The predator in Ellis’s eyes rises with interest at the redhead’s shy smile, and Keith sets the ball beside him on the bed before Ellis is on top of him, pinning him to the mattress with the warm, muscled line of his body and the now-familiar press of his tongue in Keith’s willing mouth. There’s frustration in the way Ellis kisses him, the way their bodies fit together everywhere, because Keith’s mom is home and Ellis can’t have him the way that he wants. 

“In th’truck,” Ellis says into his ear as he’s shifting away, “Buhfore Ah head home, Ah’ll treat yew righ’, promise.” 

Keith shudders and gives a soft moan for Ellis getting up. 

They end up looking at cosplay pictures online for the last hour before Ellis has to leave, Keith perched in his lap in the desk chair as he scrolls through galleries, Ellis murmuring comments against his neck. 

Googling for free gay porn isn’t really something you should do when you just got a semi-satisfactory blowjob from your girlfriend, but thinking about a boy while you were getting it kind of sets you up for certain subsequent steps. It had started out as lackluster as all the other blows she’d tried foisting on him, until he’d found himself thinking of dark blue eyes - like midnight when the sky hasn’t actually gone black yet - peering up at him through thick-framed glasses instead of the bullshit doe-eyes Casey pulls when she thinks Marliyn Monroe’ing might keep him hard. He’d thought of handfuls of auburn hair and freckles everywhere across skin paler than his own. He’d clenched his eyes shut and let his mind handpick a few times where Keith had been talking close to his ear or had moved in certain ways to accidentally make things awkward during their afterschool sessions, and like magic he not only kept his erection but he’d shot in her mouth without warning, Keith’s fragile smile and shy downward glances all tangled up in his head with panicked thoughts of “wut th’hell.” 

Finding free gay porn is a lot harder than finding straight porn, and Ellis ends up on some pornographic version of Youtube sitting through two minutes of sex toy ads before he can actually watch anything. Most of the guys are gross - huge, hairy, hulking motherfuckers in leather shorts and huge hiking boots - but he randomly comes across the twinks and teens section by clicking through tags, and things get a little more interesting. 

The second time he comes it snaps something in his gut, a cord of tension he didn’t know was coiled there, and he stares at the computer with parted lips and jizz all over his lax fist with the terrified realization that he’s not just gay. 

Every video sitting in his recently viewed list has glasses, or lank dark hair, or freckles, or a delicious combination of any of those things on a thin, boyish frame or with some kind of gamer geek theme going on in the video. The clip still playing on his headphones is a barely legal ginger tied up with the cords of his play station controller, mouth stretched wide on the thick push of a bulky guy in a football letter jacket’s dick.

He’s not just gay.

He’s gay for his tutor.

“Fuck,” Ellis says, with feeling.  

There’s handmade decorations all over the library for Halloween, even though it’s only halfway through the month and everyone’s kind of too old for paper chainlinks and happy-faced pumpkins. Ellis tips back in his chair and ignores his text book in favor of studying a glossy witch window cling, thinking about the scanty little costume Casey showed him with thigh-high striped stockings and not much else. 

Instead of a getting a boner, he’s kind of just wondering how she expects to walk in those stupid heels. She’s so impatient, she’ll probably just kick them off and demand he carry her, like when she wore stilletos to watch fireworks last year. 

“Ellis?” says Keith quietly, in that firm coaxing voice that works best. Ellis thumps back down on all four chairlegs and offers a grin that Keith returns with a patient smile and a shake of his head. “We’re almost done.” 

“Damn sure don’t feel like it,” Ellis mutters, but he picks his pencil up and looks back down at the gibberish written on his homework sheet. “Ah don’t git it,” he grunts, and drops his elbows to the table to perch his face on his knuckles. “Explain it again?” 

Keith smiles, pushes his hair back, and says, “Of course.” 

Ellis’s shoulders relax, and he stops worrying about Casey and her bitching about aching ankles and sore toes. Halloween falls on a tutoring session day, maybe he can get out of going to the team’s party by asking for an extra-long cram session. The math doesn’t sound appealing in place of spiked cider, but… 

“Yew okay?” Keith asks quietly, not looking up from writing out an equation, and his voice is soft and genuine. 

“Sure, sure,” Ellis dismisses, but he feels warm all the way down to his toes. 

He bumps into him in the hall, once; Keith’s lanky and just as preoccupied with his own thoughts, so he topples back on his ass and his books and papers go flying all over the hall in a violent flutter of movement. He looks up at him, blinking owlishly behind those thick-framed glasses, like he expects Ellis to kick him on top of running him over. 

“Hey, uh, sorry,” the football player blurts, and stoops to help him gather his things. A few people are laughing, and Ellis has to give Devon a sharp look to keep the hulking black boy from intentionally stepping on the open pages of a math text, but they manage to get everything picked up off the floor. 

“Thanks,” Keith says in a rush, still on his knees, and blinks again when Ellis offers him a hand up. “Thank ya kindly,” he murmurs, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose before Ellis hauls him up. 

“Hey,” Ellis says speculatively, peering through the mop of Keith’s bangs with squinted eyes. The redhead stares, face stained pink at the inspection, and stutters on a “yes?” as Ellis’s mouth glides into a slow grin. “Never noticed ya had freckles!”

He leaves the bespectacled boy to wobble in his wake in the bustle of the hallway, jogging to reach his doomed math class with thoughts of Casey and football and his Mom’s appointments jostled up in his head. They start tutoring the very next week. 

[The first half of a conversation during Ellis’s January/February suspension from school.]

“*Grins as he salutes the redhead in temporary farewell, stepping into the bathroom and leaving the door ajar by slight inches to allow himself to be heard; strips out of his jogging clothes, having been keeping up with himself during his suspension pending a - hopefully brief - ejection from the team. He flicks the water on, the rush of heat building steam almost immediately, the brunette licking his mouth in anticipation of the soothing burn; he steps into the spray as soon as he’s naked, hissing at some barely healing scrapes but otherwise melting* …Hey, can yew hear me in there?”

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[The boys have that December sleepover and much adorableness abounds.] 

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