Maybe Alex had a crush.

But it wasn't like that was a big deal. He'd crushed on plenty of people in his life, and it's never been a big deal. A crush was very different from having feelings for someone, or being in love or any of that bullshit.

A crush was seeing someone and thinking they were cute or hot or both or whatever, and maybe kicking your feet a little, and maybe thinking about making out with them like, once, and that was it. A crush was superficial and a crush usually went away after like a week or two.

Alex once had a crush on some girl in middle school who he'd never talked to. Alex once had a crush on the cashier that always took the night shift at McDonald's like three years ago. Alex once had a crush on Min when they shaved their hair for the first time. Alex had crushes on a million people before, and now he had a crush on Youngbin, and it didn't fucking matter, because a crush was nothing.

A crush was a fly that Alex could kill with one swat of his hand, and then he'd never think about that fly ever again in his whole entire life. In fact, he was probably going to be circled by another fly in a couple of weeks or so, and then he'd kill that, and then there'd be the next one that he'd also kill, and that's how he was just going to live his life, with a billion flies swarming him and yet he'd never remember a single one of them.

Yeah. A crush didn't mean shit, alright. Who the fuck cared. Not Alex. He didn't care. He was convinced that he didn't care. And oh, he was pretty damn cool and chill about it. His face had started to feel numb, maybe from putting in so much effort to look cool and chill, or maybe because it was really fucking cold outside.

He leaned against the wall, the usual one, behind the school gym, crossing his arms like the cool guy he was, and the bricks were pressing into his back though the leather jacket. Next to him, at a million metres tall, was Lani, and she didn't seem to even be aware of the cold fall weather.

Alex knew that she'd put on her woollen tights underneath the long black satin skirt, and yet her shoulders were out in the open, merely covered by the thin straps of her top and ripped fishnet sleeves. In her gloved hands, fingerless, one might add, she held a couple of cue cards.

Lani's handwriting had always been so pretty. She was the only person on the planet that wrote in cursive, maybe it was a goth thing, but it looked beautiful, and Alex had finally learned how to actually read it. Even her notes, ones that were hastily jotted down in class, were written as if they were some love letter from the 1800s, just with more neon green highlighter and a couple of angry faces scribbled down on the side.

Lani also was the only person on the planet that actually studied for tests and exams using beautifully organised cue cards. Perhaps she also was the only person to actually study. And now she stood there, and read her notes in total silence, all while Alex was thinking about killing a fly in order to stop thinking about kissing Youngbin.

"So," Alex said, then closed his mouth again in hopes that Lani would say something. She didn't. "What are you studying for again?"

"Art class."

Alex' face twisted.

"Who the fuck studies for art class..."

"Me. I do." She pulled out the next cue card from her stack, and when Alex glanced at it, he saw a badly printed painting of whatever the fuck.

"What are you even studying? Anatomy of a pencil?"

"Western art history."

"Ah."

"There are like 10 eras of mediaeval art that I need to have memorised until-" She flipped over her cue card. "Tomorrow."

"That sucks."

"Would suck less if you let me study in peace."

"Woah." Alex furrowed his brow. "Alright, Miss Tryhard. Go get that good grade, I guess. I'll shut up, for the sake of your graduation."

"I'll graduate anyways, doesn't matter if you keep me from studying or not. Because I actually attend most of my classes."

"You say that as you're skipping maths class with me."

"I get to fuck math class for once. As a treat." Now, she finally looked up from her cue cards for the first time in a while, or rather looked down to face Alex. "I’m also skipping one class to study for another. I use my time well, unlike someone here."

"I also use my time well." Alex pouted.

"Sure. You mope around and wait for Margo to get out of class so you can annoy her instead." She flipped to the next card. Alex was about to disagree, but there wasn't much more to say, nothing that could prove her wrong, anyway. "Now what if you went to class, instead?"

"Nah." Maybe that answer came out too quickly.

"Do you not have any classes together with your boyfriend that you could go to?"

"Not that I know of." He did, in fact, have plenty of classes with Leia though. Those were the ones he'd tend to skip the most.

"Not that you know of? Do you know anything about your boyfriend, actually?"

"Plenty," Alex quickly answered, hoping that he didn't have to actually name any Youngbin facts, because he really would not be able to name a single one on the spot.

"And what do you know?"

"Everything."

"What's his mother's maiden name, then."

"Han Dahyeon." Easy. He knew that. Easy peasy.

"Huh. And what's his favourite era of western mediaeval art?"

"Like... Roccoco or something?"

Lani made a noise that sounded a little like a buzzer at a quiz show. "200 years too late. Roccoco started in the 1700s, that's not even mediaeval anymore."

"Who the fuck cares?"

"My art teacher. Now let me study."

"Y'know, it was you that started the Youngbin pop quiz just now, so-" Alex stopped talking, because he knew that he wasn't going to receive another answer, now that Lani had looked back at her stack of notes. Instead, he leaned back once more, then pulled out his phone. He checked the time, but really, didn't read the time, just looked at the numbers and ignored them, before opening Instagram, and after scrolling through the same five posts and six ads on his feed, closed it again.

Kind of sucked how the internet wasn't interesting anymore. Or nothing was interesting anymore. Perhaps nothing had ever been interesting ever in the first place. How was he living, actually, for the past months, if not years? Well- Huh. He couldn't really remember. What anything felt like, ever.

The fly that was a big fat crush started circling Alex' head again, slowly. He knew what sitting next to Youngbin on a mattress on his floor felt like, and he knew what holding his hand felt like. He wasn't sure if he should kill that fly now, or let it buzz around a little more, if he should let himself feel that, or maybe just stop, and then stop feeling altogether, once again.

The school bell, far away yet close enough for the sound to reach Alex behind the gym, rang and the buzz of the fly became quieter for a couple of seconds when Lani sighed heavily. She pushed herself away from the wall, picked up her little black backpack and let the cue cards slip in.

"Gonna assume you'll stay out here in the cold waiting for Mango?"

"Do I look like I'll follow you into physics of all classes?"

"You don't look like anything right now, actually." Lani patted Alex' shoulder, then swung her backpack over her own. "I'll see you in... politics, then? Assuming you spend the lunch break with Youngbin?"

"As always," Alex answered, and pulled out his phone once more knowing fully well that there wasn't much to do with it. "See ya later."

"Mhm. Bye." Fallen leaves crunched underneath the thick soles of Lani's boots as she stomped away.

Alex stretched his neck, then his arms, then he moved his shoulders around a little. His back hurt. As it always did. Maybe someone should massage it, or perhaps just break it. Perhaps someone should take a baseball bat and swing it at Alex, or maybe he needed his bones to be turned, at least twice. He rolled his head back, and bumped into the brick wall behind him in the process.

"Fucking hell," he hissed, rubbed the back of his head. Ah, yeah, right. Besides knowing what Youngbin felt like, he also knew what physical pain felt like. Great, cool, maybe he could start banging his head against walls now in order to feel anything that wasn't his stupid crush. Or, perhaps, it'd go away quicker like that.

Did he even want it to go away quickly, though? He could just enjoy it for a little while. It wasn't like it felt bad to, you know, think about Youngbin every now and then and maybe kick his feet a little. And also, they were kind of dating. Not for real, of course, obviously, but- Truly, what could even go wrong if Alex thinks Youngbin is really cute and he also happens to play a role that thinks Youngbin is really cute as well? It was a form of method acting, maybe. And it also wasn't like Alex liked Youngbin the same amount as Alex' role liked Youngbin.

Alex liked Youngbin like he'd like a cute stranger. He liked his eyes and his hair and his lips and the way he spoke and moved and giggled, and so on. And that character, the Alex that was dating Youngbin, liked his eyes and his hair and his lips and the way he spoke and moved and giggled, but in a really strong and 'I would die for you' way. Right? Obviously. Naturally.

Real Alex had a silly stupid little crush on real Youngbin. Fake dating Alex was head over heels in love with fake dating Youngbin. Quite easy to understand, really. And also, and this was an important detail, fake dating Youngbin was also head over heels in love with fake dating Alex. And real Youngbin was glad that real Alex was his good friend. Yeah. Very simple, really. And because of that, it didn't matter if Alex had this tiny little very superficial crush on Youngbin, because-

Because what, again? What was he on about? Alex blinked, and swatted away a fly that was buzzing into his ear, only to realise that there wasn't one.

Instead, there was Margo, astral projecting right into Alex' line of sight.

"Jesus, fuck, since when have you been standing here?"

"I literally just walked here this second?"

"Warn me first?"

"Oh, sorry." Using the bike stands as a ladder, Margo quickly climbed up the wall to sit down on top of it, and once more, Alex was the shorter one in this conversation. "I'll make some siren sounds next time. Or send you a letter. Or throw a rock at your head."

"Everyone's so mean to me?"

"You're used to it." Margo dropped her backpack to the ground, and it fell right next to Alex. "What's up in your life, boy?"

"Not much." Alex turned his phone around in his hands a couple of times. "What about you?"

"Bleh, when have you gotten so boring?" Margo kicked her feet, almost hitting Alex in the process.

"I'm not boring, I'm grounded."

"Be more unstable, then. Anything been happening with your great enemies lately?"

"Nothing. Leia just glares at me when we cross paths. Kinda funny." And kinda disappointing. Alex had hoped for a little more drama. "You know about any rumours she's spreading about me?"

"How would I know? I think she's trying to, like, get away from you. Not talk about you like every second of her life."

"I kind of expected her to do so, though. I am quite the topic to talk about."

"I don't think you really know Leia that well." Strange fucking thing of Margo to say. Of course he knew her. They dated for ten months, and had been friends for even longer than that. "I don't think she intends on torturing herself by spending her energy on, like, making up shit about you?"

"Oh, no, she absolutely loves spending energy on people that don't give a shit about her! She-"

"And to say that you don't give a shit about her..." Margo shook her head and her tone started to sound a lot like her fathers. "Like, we always talk about her, and oh, Leia is mad, Leia is angry, L-"

"Margo, you're the one to bring her up, though, you're telling me all that 'OMG, Leia totally looked so mad today, what did you do' and then-"

"Okay, but what do you do?" Margo also sounded like Lani's mother, and even a bit like Youngbin's mother, and Alex hated it when Margo started speaking like a parent in any way. "I'm bringing her up because I feel like that's what you want to hear. Like you're doing something to get a reaction out of it."

"You don't even make any sense."

"Alex." Margo hopped off the brick wall and stood face to face with Alex now, and though she was a good chunk shorter than him, she still looked absolutely terrifying. "Can you tell me the truth?"

"What truth?" Alex tried to sound confused, and failed.

"I want to know what's up. I'm worried." Those two words were the absolute worst that had ever come out of Margo's mouth.

"I already told you last time-"

"And I don't believe what you said last time." She furrowed her brows, bit down on her lower lip before taking a breath, and going on: "I know you, and I know what your relationships look like, and this isn't- You're fucking around with someone here, and I haven't really figured out whether it's Leia, Youngbin, or me, but I want to know what the fuck is going on."

Lani and Margo knew everything about Alex. They knew every little habit and every thought he'd ever had, they knew every scar on his body and on his mind equally, and now he felt really fucking stupid for believing that they'd just accept everything and not question a single thing. And, more importantly, Alex felt stupid for believing that he could make them stop questioning everything.

And it felt heavy. To lie to them, first of all, there was a weight on his shoulders that really worsened his back pain a lot, that he had to keep something from them in the first place. And moreso, it felt heavy to not be able to say what he was feeling. That he couldn't tell them about a good dinner with the Lee family, and that he couldn't tell them about the friendship that was growing between Alex and Youngbin, and that he couldn't tell them about the crush, and couldn't tell them to help him make it go away.

"You won't be mad at me?"

"I already am," Margo answered, maybe out of habit, then she stopped to think, and her face softened up a little when she noticed the insecurity in Alex' voice. "I mean- I'll try to not be, I guess."

"Maybe I'm kinda faking it."

"Huh."

Great. And now on to explain this whole deal. As if Alex had even been able to explain his idea to Youngbin without sounding like a lunatic.

"I guess, I kinda-" Alex looked around as if to check if anyone was close. "Well, we both are faking it? You know. Acting."

“Acting," Margo repeated, and coming out of her mouth it sounded even sillier.

"So-" And now he was about to contradict his very own words from just minutes ago. "I guess, I kinda didn't want Leia to move on that quickly, and so I thought, maybe, if I pretend to have a boyfriend-"

"Alex, what the fuck! That's awful, poor Youngbin-"

"No! No, no, not like- he's in on it. I mean, it's like, we're like, not even into each other." Little lie, maybe. A small one. "I mean, we aren't actually dating. This isn't- I'm not using him for anything, I mean, we kinda use each other, I guess?"

"No, wait, Alex. Start from the beginning, please? You're just saying shit."

"Yeah! I know! I-" Alex took a deep breath, and he wished he still felt as confident about this shit plan as he did when he first proposed the idea to Youngbin like three weeks ago or so. "Okay. So I caught wind that he's getting bullied. And then I thought, you know what, we could really help eachother out. So I was like, 'hey, let's pretend to date, so your bullies will leave you alone, and my ex will think I moved on already!' and he agreed, and now we are fake boyfriends. Okay?"

Margo said nothing, just stared at Alex, and her ice blue eyes were freezing him into place. Her mouth stood open, and after a couple of seconds, she closed it again, just for her lips to twist into some kind of odd frown.

"You're so dumb."

"I know," Alex answered near instantly.

"I have a lot to say about this," Margo said, and then didn't say anything for ten years.

"I would prefer if you said what you have to say instead of staring me down and making me feel like a dumbass."

"No, actually, I want you to feel like a dumbass."

"I already do? Can you just say something?"

"I sure can." She inhaled, then exhaled, then inhaled again, then- "You're a massive fucking asshole, do you realize that?" Alex didn't have to answer. He knew. "I get that you have beef with Leia and your breakup went shit, but that's cruel, isn't it?" Yes, indeed, that word had been used a lot to describe this situation. "It's like, specifically your goal to hurt her. As if both of you weren't hurt enough already."

"Please, it's not like we were really h-"

"No, you were hurt, stop pretending like you weren't. Like actually, it pisses me off. I'm sick of you acting like the tough boy with no feelings, man. It's gonna fuck you up and I'm not in the fucking mood to watch you be eaten by your own emotions." She inhaled again, as if her entire rant had only taken her one breath. "You're fucked up, and she's fucked up, and because you're fucked up, you want to fuck her up more before she fucks you up more. And frankly, I don't think she was going to fuck you up that much in the first place! I think she was planning to talk shit about you for a week or two, and then move on."

Alex felt like a puppy being scolded for pissing on the couch, but worse, because he could actually understand human language, and Margo's words hit a weird spot that Alex didn't know could be hit, with words nonetheless. And yet, he tried to defend himself. As he always did, automatically.

"Come on, it's not even like it's hurting her much, just- I just want her to think that I've moved on, so she can get a little bit upset, and then she can move on as well-"

"I just don't understand why you feel the need to make her feel upset in the first place, though? Why can't you just move on by yourself? You know, Alex, I'm worried that you’ll- Maybe turn into a person I don't enjoy being friends with?"

That one hit too hard. Alex felt a pain taking over his heart, a jab with a needle, or knife, or sword. If he ever became a person that Margo could no longer love, he might as well just kill himself.

"I don't want to see you turn into a self absorbed, egotistical asshole that's too worried about his own image. And, I mean, you already kinda are all of those things, but at least I know why you're like this and where it comes from. But, I don't know, at some point I feel like you can't use that as an excuse anymore, and then you're just some asshole."

"You know," Alex said, setting up to defend himself once more, "I'm not just doing this for me, yeah? This is for Youngbin too. We both benefit from this, actually."

Margo raised her brow, again, tilted her head. Her gaze really made him realise how insane he was sounding.

"And how is he supposed to benefit from being dragged into public by you? Do you want your enemies to hound him to death? Is being called a faggot by a group of jocks gonna help him somehow?"

"You don't understand."

"You're right, I don't. Explain away."

"As long as I'm around him, nobody's touching him, because everyone knows I'll beat their asses. And maybe people respect him more when they know he's with me. And also, I helped him come out to his family, and I met his mom, and I made her less homophobic, okay?"

"You're insane-"

"And I'm also being a fucking friend. He has like one friend! And now he has a second one! I'm supporting him! This goes beyond the little deal we had in the beginning! It's no longer just about my image and his protection, it's just that we are really good friends who happen to also pretend like we are a couple, yeah?"

Margo said nothing again, and this time her eyes didn't tell her emotions. Which maybe was worse than exactly seeing the disappointment in her face. Then, she actually looked down, like she was collecting her thoughts that she had all dropped on the floor, and after an agonising silence, she raised her head a little more, but this time stared to the side.

"You're aware this can very easily end badly?"

"I'm not, actually."

"Friends that sometimes make out in public to fool people? Do you really think either of you have the emotional maturity to just go on like that and not develop feelings?"

Fuck.

Alex didn't say anything, and maybe that was already saying too much.

"And aside from that-" Good. Move on. Keep talking about something that isn't feelings. Though, of course, Alex wasn't experiencing any feelings but just a stupid little fly that he could kill easily, alright. "Are you just gonna go on forever like that? Neither of you will ever be able to date someone else because you're cursed to fake date forever so nobody will look like a loser? Or do you break up, and then you look like a pathetic idiot again, and he is the victim again because the world's coolest guy just broke up with him and now you're no longer there to play his bodyguard?"

"We can quietly break up when things blow over?"

"Because the great big Alex being gay will ever blow over in this society."

"I've got it handled, okay? It's fine. It's okay. I'm okay, we both are okay." Alex inhaled. "We got this. We're a team, you know?"

Silence, again, god fucking damn it, Margo, say something.

"Someone's just," she started, then looked up, right into Alex' face again, and her expression was a mix of every emotion out there at once, "gonna really get their feelings hurt, I feel like."

"I don't get my feelings hurt, come on now."

She rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to punch Alex in the face as hard as possible.

"With that attitude you will." Then she cleared her throat and tried to sound less... mad. And more caring. More like she actually wanted to help, and not just tell Alex how stupid he was, though she was very much in the right to do so. "Honestly, if you were to ask me- stop this. Cancel the whole plan before it's too late."

"And how is that gonna help any of us?"

"How is keeping up a really dumb and dangerous fucking lie helping you two instead?"

"We have this under control."

"Well." Margo slowly nodded. "Can't say I didn't try to warn you, then." She turned away, climbed back onto the brick wall now, like she was done with this whole conversation. "Lani is gonna be harsher about this than I am, by the way. Like a lot."

"Bold of you to assume I'll tell her."

With an exhausted sigh, Margo rolled her eyes once more, looked up into the sky like she was hoping to be beamed up there in an instant to escape Alex’ bullshit.

"Sure, because why would you tell your best friend that your relationship is fake."

"Like you said, she's gonna be a lot harsher. And a lot more worried."

"Oh no, we will be the same amount of worried." Margo still didn't look back down, instead closed her eyes. "But the difference is that I deal with being worried about you by just putting the trust in you and telling you 'I told you so' when shit goes down. And when she's worried about you, she watches you get self destructive, and then joins right in." Margo was silent for a couple of seconds, and lastly added: "You still really need to tell her, though. She deserves to know."

Alex didn't answer, because he knew that she deserved to, but that he still wasn't going to do it, at least not any time soon. And he also knew that this wasn't good, and that actually, Margo was right, and nothing about this was good, and yet Alex had this talent at doing things that weren't good, and pretending like they were, because he didn't like to admit that he was wrong.

And to be clear, he wasn't wrong. The plan worked out perfectly, better than expected even, Alex was doing great, Youngbin was doing great, and actually, if it wasn't for that buzz, that fly, Alex would've felt better than he ever had before in his life.

No, actually, he really was feeling super good, or at least better than in the past, what, ten months? No, even before that. This relationship that wasn't a relationship, this friendship has started to make him feel happier than any of his fucking exes before, for sure.

Youngbin made him so fucking happy, and also sometimes like he needed to shoot himself in the head, or maybe in the heart, but at his core, Youngbin made Alex so very fucking happy.

Margo didn't need to worry. Margo didn't need to tell him what was right or wrong, because Margo didn't know what it was like to have Youngbin.

Chapter 14 - LIES LIES LIES

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