Vyvyan didn't immediately realize what was different than usual as he woke up. He found out soon enough. Rick had shifted towards him in his sleep, his bottom all up against his crotch, which meant he was spooning the snotty bastard. Oh God, he thought. Wanking each other off was all good fun, but spooning was a whole different level of disturbing. He wasn't a bloody poof.
Best to stop this now before he would start to enjoy this too much. He grabbed the pillow from beneath his head and gave Rick a good smack with it. The other boy tumbled off the bed, which was a fairly hilarious sight. It was good for a laugh.

"Nice shot, mate", SPG commented from corner of the room.

As soon as Rick realized what was going on, he grabbed the other pillow and hit him right back.

"SODD OFF, YOU PRICK!" Vyvyan yelled.

"You were the one that started hitting me!" Rick defended himself.

"Your bottom was all up against my private parts!"

Rick got to his feet, looking down at him angrily. "Oh, so that's a problem now, is it? Is this how it's going to be, Vyvyan? You shagged me once and now you're dumping me aside like a used condom?"

"I didn't shag you, you twat! I only touched your knob!"

"So you just wanted to have me for the night. You just wanted to get off, is that it?"

Vyvyan wasn't sure how to answer that. It could be a trick question. Yesterday, Rick had made it quite clear he only wanted this as a 'one-time thing'. Now he seemed offended at the thought of Vyvyan having used him as a one-night stand. Speaking of mixed signals.

"Yes!"

This silenced Rick for a few seconds.

"I thought you said that was what you wanted as well", Vyvyan continued, still slightly annoyed, but not shouting anymore.

"It is. It is!", Rick shouted, sounding just a tad defensive. "So cherish the memory, pal, because you're not getting any more of this hot piece! If you'll excuse me now, I'd like to getdwessed". If Vyvyan didn't know better, he'd say he was hurt a little. But he did know better.

"Your clothes are still in your room", Vyvyan sighed.

"Right".

He shuffled towards the door, but before he left, he gave Vyvyan an intense look. "Listen. If you tell anyone what we did last night… you are going to get it young man!"

And he smashed the door.

Vyvyan didn't even answer. He just knew he felt the need to be sick again for the second time in a far too short period of time. And also that he really wanted to beat Rick's face to a pulp.

Of course he had been lying. Last night hadn't been 'just wanting to get off'. He knew what it had been about. He didn't know how or when he'd started to fancy Rick. It had started out as a joke, something that was so absurd to him it could only be a joke. Yet somewhere along the way, it had stopped being a joke. So he stopped joking about it.

Well, one thing was for sure. Rick couldn't know. That much was obvious. The last thing he wanted was to look like a bloody poof who wanted to go around touching each other's nobs as a hobby. It would make him look like a complete fool. There was no doubt Rick would laugh right in his face if he told him this. Anything that so much as resembled friendship between them would be completely ruined.

He'd had a lot of time to think about it last night when he'd lain awake, and he had decided not to risk it. Rick was an insufferable bastard, and sometimes he wasn't even sure they were friends, but nothing was worth it to risk even that.
It made him feel sick, though. He knew he would probably never get to touch Rick again and it made him sick. He sat on the bed for a while, trying to repress his nausea. Then he told himself to stop being a girl and started gathering his clothes around the room.

When he was fully dressed, he went about his usual morning routine of kicking Neil out of the bathroom. He needed at least half an hour to style his hair. This was a process that required utter concentration, so he ignored Neil's whining if he could 'please use the bathroom' until he'd glued the last stud to his forehead.

".. and I was just wondering if I could use the bathroom for a minute…"

"YES, YOU CAN USE THE BATHROOM", he screamed as he opened the door. "STOP SHOUTING". Bloody hell. He couldn't even make it downstairs without at least wanting to kill someone in this house. He was a bit nervous about seeing Rick, but he would put everything in the works to seem as normal as he could.

"Morning Vyvyan", Rick said, avoiding to look at him.

"Shut up". He sat down on the other side of the table, about as far from Rick as he could without seeming too suspicious. He started studying the dirt under his fingernails into great detail, and nobody talked for a long awkward moment.

Mike observed this from over the edge of his paper and sunglasses.

"Bit of trouble in paradise, boys?"

"I - I don't know what you're talking about, Mike", Rick said, clutching his cup of tea and almost knocking it over. "We're all completely fine. Me and Vyvyan are better mates than ever before, aren't we, Vyvyan?"

"Yeah", Vyvyan said tonelessly, continuing in a sweet voice: "Just the best mates in the bloody world".

Rick drummed with his fingers on the table nervously until he couldn't take it anymore and stood up. "Well", he said. "I will be off, then. I've got a poetry lecture". He said 'poetry lecture' as if this was the most noteworthy activity one could attend. "Are you doing something today, Vyvyan?"

"Not really", Vyvyan answered. "Although I might work on my newest potion that makes you turn into a rock-hard funky sex-machine". He turned to Mike and shot him a grin. "It's even better than the one that turns you into an homicidal axe-wielding maniac!"

"God, you're pathetic", Rick said. "Why can't you ever do something pwoductive with your life." A bit of spit landed on Vyvyan's face at the 'p'.

For the first time since he came in, Vyvyan looked him in the eye. "I didn't hear you complain last night!" he commented.

That would certainly piss him off. Satisfied with his own comment, he watched Rick's face go from shocked, to angry, to putting on a smile towards Mike - who was watching them with great interest.

"Ha HA HA, that's a good one, Vyvyan", Rick laughed - not very convincingly, in Vyvyan's opinion. "I would never sleep with him!" he said directed at Mike. "God, we're such good mates, aren't we!? Always joking awound… I'll better go now before it gets too much".

He turned and ran for the door before they even had the chance to respond. Mike put down the paper.

"Now, hold on", he said. "There's something going on with you two, and I'm not sure I understand".

"To be completely honest with you, Mike", Vyvyan said, "I don't think anyone understands".

Mike shot him a meaningful glance. It was probably the way Vyvyan had answered –not playing or taking the piss- that made Mike realize this was something serious.

"If you play with fire, Vyvyan, you'll get burned", he finally said, before turning his attention back to the paper.

Vyvyan had no clue what he meant by that. He'd never considered Rick to be fire. Rick was more like the annoying drizzle on a hot day, or the sun that shines in the corner of your eye and spoils your bloody sight.

Later that afternoon, he decided he was bored, so he went to school to see his friends. He found Scumbag, Pissface and Dickhead on their usual spot. He didn't actually know their names. Most people just called them that, and he didn't see why he should go through the trouble of trying to find out their real names. Their nicknames seemed to work for them just fine.
They usually hung around school when they had a class they hated – which basically meant almost every class. They smoked, a lot of cigarettes and sometimes pot. Some days they hung around in the alley next to school, other times they walked through town, wrecking things here and there if they felt like it. It was usually a fun way to kill the time.

Today however, he wondered why he bothered to hang out with them. For what may be the first time ever, he'd prefer to be at home watching telly and bickering with Rick. At least with Rick, he could have somewhat of an intelligent conversation. Even if he was a complete idiot. In this group, the conversations were always the same. Pissface was telling some stupid story of how drunk he'd gotten the other night. Scumbag laughed at every bloody thing he said.

As a daily tradition, Dickhead asked Vyvyan if he'd scored any birds lately. The answer was always the same, and he answered no different today. No, he had not. What was he supposed to say?
I'm gay for that sissy bastard Rick I live with? We touched each other's nobs and I loved it? No. Those all seemed like fairly poofy things to say to your friends. It was always better to shut up than to seem like a complete poof. Besides, it was better to be on the safe side, Vyvyan reckoned. This was pure speculation, but inside the hallways of Scumbag College, stories were being told of how Pissface derived his name from pissing at people's faces.

Suddenly, he realized he didn't like Pissface all that much. Usually, he liked to hang out with them for a good few hours. They didn't ask questions, and that's what he liked about them. But not today. Being at home would be rubbish, because he would have to face Rick, but it was better than being here with these idiots.

"Hey, Basterd", Pissface called after him. "Where are you going?"

"Home, actually", he said.

When he arrived home, he found Mike had mysteriously managed to get the floor fixed. He didn't ask him how he did it. You never asked Mike how he did things. That was part of his cool and part of why he respected him so much. He was the only one who ever got things done around this house. Not poofy things like Neil did: cool things. Except he wasn't sure if he was happy that the floor was fixed. It was not like he'd expected to get off with Rick two nights in a row, but still, the whole thing made him grumpier than usual during supper.

Rick went back to his room that night, and he tried responding to that in the appropriate way: by not caring. He fell asleep after a lot of twisting and turning and throwing his sheet on the floor. And so everything went back to normal. Except it didn't. He didn't feel like everything was normal at all. What was different was that he thought about Rick a lot. In fact he was thinking about him so much it was making him bloody sick. So he drank. He always had a vodka bottle or five hidden under his bed, so he was safe for a few days. This was a habit he had picked up when he was fifteen and he'd sneaked into the living room in the middle of the night whenever he'd heard Mum leave the house. He'd look in the fridge and drank whatever was there, which usually had been alcohol.

Time went by at an excruciatingly slow pace. Not a bloody thing happened. Tuesday was as insufferable as Monday. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday were the same. The fact that Rick was constantly around didn't help. He spent his days being bored out of his mind and drinking in his room, sometimes using SPG as a bouncing ball against the wall. The sound drove Rick crazy, which was all the more reason to keep going. Although he could barely stand to hear his voice or see the little prat's face. It confused him too much. He was far past wanting to smash kittens at this point. He was probably capable of strangling a baby.

So he went to Rick's room to set fire to some of his stuff. He may not be able to have him, but he could still annoy the bloody hell out of him. That was practically the next best thing.