“Gardner.” Theo opened his eyes, the silver irises cold. “Leave me alone.”

“Stand. Up.”

“And if I won’t?”

“Then you’ll prove that you’re nothing more than Daddy’s little—”

Theo rose up off the bench like a serpent striking, tightly coiled to fast and deadly, and he made a sound like coughing up glass, and he pinned Jack to the lockers with a painful clang. His bare chest was pressed up against Jack’s, arms holding him entirely still, and he brought one hand up to put pressure on his neck.

“Fuck you,” his lean features as sharp as a blade, “I should—”

Jack struggled to escape—to breathe. “What, Beau? You should what?”

Theo trailed his eyes over his face, down his wiry frame, and looked back up, holding him hostage and clearly loving it. “I should teach you a lesson.”

And then his hand pressed down farther. Jack’s vision grayed out around the edges. Theo slumped against him, breathing heavy, his lips snarling and close to his ear, and Jack realized with some panic that Theo was crying onto his neck, wet and warm and it felt—and Christ, that was too close, and Jack strained against him, pushed him away.

And he hit Theo’s face with enough force to split the knuckles of his hand.

Theo fell back onto the bench and his head slammed into the wall. His lip had torn. Jack looked down at his right hand, bleeding heavily, and Theo’s face, also bleeding, and he was filled with a cold horror.

In him was that ugliness, the ugliness that his father must have had, and his mom... It had always been there. He felt terrified of what he had done, his neck prickling with shame, and at the same time he felt—victorious, and god-touched, and so fucking turned on, and it was the most exhilarating combination; Theo was maybe unconscious, face damp and pinched with pain, and he thought that this was what it must feel like to be gloriously drunk.

And they would absolutely kick him out for this.

He listened to make sure Theo was breathing. Because if he wasn’t—if Jack had—he knew he’d never—

Theo’s chest rose and fell, a steady rhythm.

And then Jack ran.

He spent the entire night and next day in terror, waiting for the dean of students or head of school to show up at his dorm room and tell him to leave. Maybe for security to escort him out like some kind of criminal. He even packed a bag, looking at each item—the uniform, his textbooks, the newer fantasy novels he’d borrowed from Dare—and imagined where he’d hide them in his room back home. He barely slept.

No one came.