Thank you all for the wonderful reviews. They helped out a lot, especially knowing what everyone else was wondering about the plot and Marco in general. Seeing as how the line of events is still very vague all the comments are very helpful.

I'm also (very slowly mind you) teaching myself sign language. So maybe, we'll see if that helps any.

Warnings: Still...language. Lot's of it. Not your cup of tea then I suggest the back button.

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His eyes hurt. Not burning or pounding or anything of the sort, just a very insistant itching caused by staring for too long without blinking at such an early hour. Not painful in the slightest but irritating nonetheless.

Marco sighed, tearing his gaze away from the page, balling his hands into loose fists and digging the heels into his eyes, bright fireworks of pink and silver exploding in the pulsing darkness. Removing his hands, it took a few seconds before the splotches of color disappeared enough for him to see properly again.

It was much too early for a teenager to be awake. Even more odd for a teenager to be in the library out of his own free will. But here he was.

Alex made a point to come and keep him company a couple of days out of the week, but she was, of course, a normal human being and slept until her alarm went off usually, so he tried not to rely on her too much. Tried not to rely on anyone really, but that was a different matter altogether.

Sighing for what felt like the millionth time that morning Marco pushed back his chair, wincing at how loud the legs scraping against the floor were in the quiet library, and stood, stretching out the cricks in his neck and back. He checked out the book he had been reading, too tired to even smile politely at the nice librarian lady before he shuffled off outside to sit on the front steps.

He liked being outdoors as a general rule. It felt cleaner, more real and tangible when you can actually feel the air moving, sliding through your hair and caressing your cheeks. One of the few touches he could bear to sit through anymore.

It was a grey dawn, all steel mist and pewter light, the faint vestige of pink from the rising sun shining through yellow leaves and climbing across the barren parking lot towards his toes like a flush of exhilaration making its way up your neck.

Scarily bright headlights flashed his eyes from time to time out of the grey as cars started pouring in at an unhurried pace, bringing with them the grating sounds of voices ruining the ghostlike world he had found solace in for the precious few minutes before their arrival.

Funny, it was the loudest and most annoying noise of them all that he was waiting here on the cold steps for. And it arrived soon enough.

From a block away a rhythmic thumping came, traveling like a heartbeat through the early October cold and attacking Marco's overly proliferated ears, making him clench his teeth painfully at the onslaught. Alex was here it seemed.

Morning, he sighed as the heavy beat cut off and the gaunt girl climbed out of the orange sports car, closing the door with a loud click. Alex smiled, well, smirked really, and signed a greeting back as she walked up, only waiting up for a dozy looking Jay with half a mind.

The trio made their way into the building, Jay trudging behind the pair signing to each other enthusiastically. It was too early to even be speaking let alone trying to remember all those damn hand movements, he thought. They were aliens. They had to be. No other life forms could possibly be that energetic at this hour. Atleast Alex's bored expression she always wore made her look a little bit less awake. That made him feel a bit better.

Jay stopped momentarily to get a drink of water from the fountain, cupping a small amount in his hand to splash on his face, rubbing at his forehead vigorously to uncloud his head. Straightening back up and being careful to catch any lingering drops off of his jawline before they landed on his collar, Jay looked up and watched the two of them as they continued down the hall.

They looked so...at ease, ungaurded and unwary. So different from the way they used to interact. Yeah, they sniped and carried on like an old married couple, but somehow they still respected each other in the end. Oh sure, he tried to ignore the way she actually paid attention to the queer. Close to the way she used to look at him after he ran a hand down her neck. Probably the expression of hers that he missed the most.

He watched as, after particularly agressive series of signs from the freak, Alex tipped her head back and laughed. Really laughed. Something he had only seen her do once before...which wasn't all that much of a comparison considering she had been drunk at the time.

It was almost as if time had slowed down, the ever dropping sands in the hourglass turning thick and liquid at the wave of a hand. Alex smiling genuinely for what felt like the first time, reaching up to place a hand on the midget's shoulder. His gaze moved, out of curiousity, he told himself, nothing more, to look at the Italian boy at her side. He was smiling again, like the day in the library, and the same odd, creepy feeling sank into his stomach.

Maybe he had been wrong. The queer definitely didn't look normal. He looked...eerie for lack of a better word. Like a vampire. So many things wrong with him, not too long teeth or pale skin. No, it was the eyes, too dark to be real, like a gem made of midnight. The way his hands moved...like an insect with broken wings. It was all so creepy....but mesmerizing.

All of the sudden, time sped up drastically, taking with it the emotional clarity. Stole away the confusion.

Jay coughed and averted his eyes, trudging wearily to his first class and pointedly did not look at the two lovebirds. He rather thought he had seen enough mushy gazes for one morning. He didn't feel like he could stomach any more today. Didn't think he could take another smile.

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Pale green eyes took in the colored chaos of the lunchroom in cool awareness. Namely, a dark figure in the corner hunched over a disgustingly thick book held most of her attention.

Paige felt her eyebrows draw together as she appraised the boy. It had been so long since she had spoken to him. Not that he could exactly talk back mind you, but she hadn't heard from him all summer. Granted, she had plenty of reason. After Dylan's injury hardly anyone had seen hide nor hair of her at all since she had been at the hospital for the first two weeks.

According to her mother, Dylan had had a hockey accident while practicing with a teammate one weekend that July. She visited him often, but he stayed as silent as Marco was now. Comas could do that to you she found out. Paige knew the rumors going around about her dark haired friend were all false. She alone knew the reason he didn't speak.

Marco was mute because Dylan got hurt.

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"Please tell me you are not reading an...encyclopedia."

Marco looked up with a movement that could have rivalled lightning, and his expression change, from contentedness to blatant insecurity, seemed even quicker. As if trying to hide from the blonde girl even though she stood directly in front of him, Marco began to rake his long bangs over his face, again and again, clawing at his forehead until Paige feared he might start bleeding.

Clearing her throat self-conciously Paige took a seat beside him, almost surprised by her feeling that he might bolt if she moved to fast. She tried to smile even as she spotted the pinpricks of tears shining through his curtain of hair, a beacon of forshadowed futility. He looked like a caged tiger, eyes darting everywhere madly, looking for an escape through the bars.

"So, um...Mom has been asking after you for weeks now."

Marco started shaking dangerously, a single tear slipped down, disappearing into his hair as if it had never existed in the first place. He had atleast stopped trying to rearrange his hair, and his hands now lay fisted and white-knuckled on top of the book.

"Erm, they miss you a lot you know. You used to practically live over there after all. You might as well be family."

Paige looked down at his hands, hating herself for her inability to maintain eye contact because she couldn't face the tears. She watched as a presumably dead boring passage on an Indonesian politician slowly turned scarlet. She felt herself gasp sharply.

"Marco. Please..." she pleaded. "Please...stop. You're bleeding."

His fists unclenched with great force, floating an inch or so above the large volume in a tensed hold, like a poised claw, and shaking with great intensity. There was blood underneath his fingernails.

"Marco, hun. Please...tell me what's wrong." She felt tears of her own springing up out of nowhere, she wasn't even thinking about the fact that he couldn't really answer. "Please...why are you hurting yourself like that?"

Paige moved forward to soothe the quaking out of his hands and finally got close enough where he couldn't scrunch back any further to place a comforting hand on his right forearm.

The sound of a chair crashing to the floor and a blood curdling shriek bounced violently off the lunchroom walls. Hundreds of pairs of eyes jerked up from their meals in time to see a blurred black figure slam through the doors and out of sight, and a thunderstruck Paige staring after him with her mouth open in surprise.

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Jay turned to Alex beside him when he heard the crinkle of paper that signalled that she had dropped her sandwich. He had watched the entire thing, and obviously, so had Alex. One look proved that she was positively livid, an expression he was very used to, but even all of his past experience paled in comparison. Her cheeks were bright patches of pink and her eyes were nothing more than black flame.

If that look was any indicator, preppy bitch was about to get her well dressed ass kicked. A second later Jay was proven correct as Alex stood up so quickly her chair fell back on the floor loudly. Before the blonde even knew what was happening, Alex had crossed the room and held a handful of her shining hair knotted in her fist.

"What the hell did you say to him, bitch!?" his friend snarled into the blonde's alarmed face, spit flying. "I swear to God I'll beat you so hard you'll be sleeping in a hospital bed next to your brother! What! Did you say! To Marco!"

Homochuck's sister seemd to recover just a little bit, too offended to notice how one-sided the situation was. "Don't you dare talk about Dylan, welfare! You don't know anything, and Marco is just as much one of my friends as he is yours! Now let me GO!!!"

Jay watched as Alex relunctantly freed the other girl's hair with a final tug, her voice lowering to a harsh whisper. "Friends don't make friends run away fucking screaming. Remember that." She smiled, words falling like venom. "Don't come near him again. It's nice hair, I'd rather not have to make you eat it."

Paige stood up from where she had toppled down in her chair. "You have no right..." but what she had no right of, the crowd of onlookers never found out, as Alex abruptly turned on her heel and spit in her shocked face.

"That is where you're wrong. You are the one with no right," she hissed before storming off, leaving the other girl to wipe at her face and hide her wet eyes.

Jay smirked. Alex 1, Paige 0.

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It took Marco a full hour to regain some semblance of control over his anxiety. He sat on the bathroom floor revelling in the cold tiles at his back. He kept his left hand firmly over his arm in an almost vice-like grip. He could still feel Paige's fingers there, burning him.

It's just...Paige. Paige was just blindly talking about family, implying Dylan with her eyes. And...and she touched him, and....

Marco shook his head, knowing that thinking about it wasn't going to change the way things were and pried himself off the ground to splash some water on his face in an effort to hide his red rimmed eyes. He was drying his hands when the bell signalling eighth period jangled him out of his thoughts and reinforced his resolve, helping him to shuffle off to class.

Sitting in calculus and all but seeing through the complex equations on the board Marco could feel his mind wandering, powerless to detour it in the slightest.

"Um, hi. I start working here today and I feel a little lost. I was wondering if you could maybe...I dunno, push me in the right direction?"

The red haired boy behind the counter smiled and showed Marco how to work the register, where he stayed for the rest of the day. It was a stroke of luck that he had managed to bag this job at Florence's. He did, after all, need the money, and soon enough he had learned the ropes. Register in the morning and refill coffees in the afternoon. Easy.

If he was completely honest with himself, his new job was a bit dull. The most exciting thing he ever encountered were the strange characters that frequented the place. However, three days in, he received a surprise.

"Marco, right?"

Jumping as if from an electric shock (and almost spilling the pot of coffee he was carrying) he whirled around to see who had recognized him so easily. What he found made a smile plaster itself onto his face and caused his heart to sputter momentarily. "Uh, Zacharias?"

The brunette grinned brightly and extended his hand, much like the day Marco had first met him. "Leo," he corrected, winking at the Italian boy. "So you work here now? Lucky me, I suppose I get to see you more often."

Red is such a horrid color, Marco thought distractedly, feeling a tidal wave of heat rise up his neck to stain his cheeks. "Uh, er...really?"

Shaking his head to clear it, Marco palmed his forehead. "Oh, sorry, would you like anything? My shift ends in about ten minutes, but I'd be glad to grab you something."

Leo brushed a few strands of his hair that had fallen out of his ponytail behind his ear and shook his head. "No, I'm fine. Thanks though." He paused, as if thinking of something. "Do you mind if I wait for you? I'd like to take you out for coffee." Leo glanced at the pot in Marco's hand and laughed. "Okay, not coffee. I'm sure you've seen enough of it. Pizza?"

Marco could only smile stupidly like a three year old eyeing the jar of cookies on the top shelf. "Pizza sounds...great."

As predicted, the dark haired boy's shift ended ten minutes later and after a short drive he found himself in a dimly lit and smoky pizzeria across from a very attractive boy.

"Well, I work in my grandfather's bookshop for money. But...I paint murals on my own time. I'd like to think one day I could get a sponsor, but at the moment I'm just another starving artist."

Marco found, throughout their impromptu eating session, that Leo was fascinating. He sat through the conversation completely focused on the older boy, the rise and fall of his words, the rumble of his laugh. Everything was just sucking him in.

"Anyway, enough about my sad career goals. I had actually wanted to ask you a question."

Marco cocked his head to the side, an action he only vaguely remembered using on Dylan on their first date to get him to elaborate on the killer whale statement.

"I was wondering if you would do me...the honor...of going out with me this Saturday?"

Marco ducked his head in embarrassment, blushing horribly....and nodded.

The bell ringing returned Marco's mind to his body with a nauseating jolt and made him jump. Students were filing out of the classroom on all sides and the teacher had his back to him, erasing the board.

Breathing out unsteadily, feeling the burning of tears stinging his nose, the Italian boy dropped his head down into his shaking hands.

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Jay stood beside Alex and squashed the urge to bang his head against the wall in agitation. They were outside the calculus room waiting for, you guessed it, the freak. Jesus, when would it all end? First the smiles, then the lunch fiasco, and now standing out in the hallway like faithful lapdogs. It was like the craziest, most cliched nightmare of a soap opera he had ever dreamed possible.

Letting his head fall forward against the door harshly Jay looked through the tiny window in the door now level with his eyes, and saw the creep's frail shoulders hunched over and spindly fingers buried in his scraggly hair. He was so...ugly. And yet....that made the feeling of hidden beauty all the more powerful. It was that same odd feeling grabbing his heart and squeezing like it did with every sad smile he had ever seen from this boy. Alex was already brushing past him to grab her new little pet, but he could do nothing more than stare, transfixed, at the fragile, almost childlike figure before him.

The gay kid was mute....and all of the sudden Jay really wanted to know why.

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Review! Please! Give in to my peer pressure! Feel the kindergarten playground nostalgia! Muah.