His hair falls in his face, but he doesn't brush it back. His tears run down his cheeks, but he doesn't wipe them away. His blood drips from his wrist, but he only pushes the razor deeper. He can't feel the pain anyway. Not anymore. And never again.

He rewraps the gauze around his arms, carefully concealing the cuts and scars beneath them, then looks into his mirror. His crying blue eyes filled with such intense hate and pain.... Never again would he be able to smile.

They found out. The whole school. They found out what he had been hiding for years, and now, after trying to hard to keep it a secret, it was as if he had advertised it with neon signs. Blinking on and off, on and off....

He walked to school, immediately shrinking back into his hood, turning up the volume of his headphones so the screaming almost, almost drowned out his own. Determined to make it through the day, he kept his head low, ignoring his classmates and peers.

At least the burning in his wrists is comforting, reminding him that no matter what, his classmates could never hate him as much as he hated himself. How very comforting it was to know that at least his peers would never hate him enough to kill him.

No, no, he was the only one that could accomplish that intensity of hate for himself. He didn't want to be the way he was. It wasn't his choice. Fate had his life planned this way, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

There was nothing he could do to cure himself of this disease, as his classmates called it. "At least it's not contagious," they would say. Laughing. He bites his lip as he walks through campus, almost hard enough to make it bleed. But he doesn't feel a thing.

He makes the mistake of looking up, up into the eyes of his peers. Into their disgusted, mocking expressions. They thought him inferior to them. Not worth anything but a sneer. He felt like puking.

He ran into the bathroom to empty his stomach into one of the toilets, then rinsed his mouth out with water from the drinking fountain. He wouldn't last through the day. His feet immediately carried him swiftly through the crowds, away from his classmates and peers.

Behind the PE building. That's as far as he needed to go. He could see it now, his refuge. Just around the corner, he'd be safe from those heartless stares. It wasn't his fault. Why did they look at him like that?

He turned the corner and froze. There he was—the person that had turned his life into hell. The very man that forced him to be this way. That forced him into this lifestyle that he never wanted any part of. There he stood, leaning against the back of the PE building, looking as nonchalant as ever.

Uchiha Itachi.

The Uchiha looked up at him, eyes reflecting the yellow of his hair, the electric blue of his malicious, hate-filled eyes. The blond suddenly didn't know what to do. Frozen in place, he stared at the Uchiha in front of him, so beautiful it hurt to look at, leaning against the back of the PE building. Destroying the feeling of safety the blond had longed for.

"What are you doing here? ....un," he muttered, finally finding his voice. His face turned a bright red as he slowly thawed.

"Just waiting for you," the Uchiha replied, standing up straight and looking down into the blond's blue, self-disgusted eyes.

"What more could you possibly want to take from me?" His voice was filled with hatred, his expression so filled with rage it should have burned holes into everything he glared at. "Not only have you taken all the respect my classmates once had for me, but also my sanity! And now!" His voice grew louder and louder with each word that he said. "You've taken away from me the one place I thought I could be safe!" Angry tears filled his eyes as he glared at the Uchiha, who simply stared back emotionlessly.

"I haven't taken anything from you," he responded curtly after a short pause. A hiss escaped the blond's lips. "It isn't my fault this school is full of disgustingly shallow people that won't give you the respect you deserve." With wide, blue eyes, he stared, unable to process what he thought he had heard as the Uchiha stepped closer to him, expertly guiding him backwards. "It isn't my fault I've hoped every single day for you to return my feelings for you." Breath caught in his throat, he staggered backwards, trying to put distance between himself and the red-eyed man in front of him. "And it isn't my fault," the Uchiha continued, "that you come here every day when you decide you can't bear the looks you get from everyone in the halls. I knew I could find you here, Deidara."

Deidara was backed against the wall now, pressed against the back of the PE building. His safe zone. The one place he thought he didn't have to be anything different for anybody. There was never anyone there to care whether or not he was heterosexual.

But now, there was someone there. The most perfect someone he could possibly imagine was there with him in his safe zone, where no one could see them, and he was staring at him with love and lust building up behind his blood-red eyes.

"I knew I could find you here," Itachi continued, closing the gap between the two of them, "and that's why I came."

Itachi's breath blowing across his face, Deidara froze again, unable to string together a single coherent thought.

"I finally got what I've been hoping for for ages."

And so have I, Deidara wanted to say, though his voice failed him. He was lost—lost in Itachi's mesmerizing red eyes—as his face grew closer and closer.

When their lips came in contact, the blond not only thawed, but melted. His heart stammered, and his breathing quickened. How long had he been waiting for this? Now, here he was. In his safe zone with Itachi, pinned against a wall with his lips against his only love's.

As they pulled away from each other, neither of them could think of a word to say. Both speechless, blushing, and frozen in place, it seemed like they could stay in that spot forever, gazing into each other's eyes.

But suddenly, shattering the perfection of the moment, the bell rang. They both abruptly unfroze, jerking at the sound. Deidara chuckled nervously to himself, his blush deepening. Itachi simply looked away to hide the red on his cheeks as well.

"We should get to class.... un," the blond mumbled awkwardly.

"....yeah," the Uchiha agreed, much more confident. Taking Deidara's hand, he walked out into the crowded hallways of the school, deathglaring everyone that looked their way disgustedly.

At first, the blond shrunk back into his hood instinctively, but, with a glance at Itachi's perfect face meeting their peers' revolted expressions head-on, he changed his mind. He lifted his chin up stubbornly, challenging anyone to question them.

They walked through campus, fingers intertwined, both scared shitless at what might happen, but knowing that the world didn't matter. Not anymore. And never again.