Meatloaf Chapter 2, an off*beat fanfic

Note:It's a bit short, but it sets up a lot for the next chapter.

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" '…and so I would gladly use my magical powers of goodness to help you, brave adventurer Tawdry, for I am the most powerful Mage of the Seven Kingdoms, Jah- Jeh - ' how do you say this? Ja-da-di?" Colin looked up, seeming rather bemused by the entire play.

"Jah-dah-di-eh." Mandy said impatiently. "Jahdahdieh. It's not that hard, Colin. And I'm T'auni, not Tawdry. Honestly."

"…Sorry." Colin said after a moment. "Okay. Do you want to take it from the top?"

"Okay," Mandy replied. "Let's see - ah. 'Why good sir, you have dispatched that ferocious beast with just the quickest flick of your mighty staff.'"

" 'All to help who must surely be the most beautiful maiden in all the land, a blossoming rose in these foul-fumed times.'"

Tory chose this moment to look around the corner. Colin and Mandy sat very close on a bench reading the script, heads bent together to share the single copy. From his vantage point he couldn't see the script, just the two heads… and the closeness…and hear the…

" 'And yet somehow, one so lovely as yourself does not have anyone…'"

Something constricted - painfully - deep in Tory's chest and he took a step backward. He was now unable to see the physical evidence of their - their - rendezvous, but he could still hear Colin's voice -

" '…and so I would gladly use my magical powers of goodness to help you, brave adventurer T'auni, for I am the most powerful Mage of the Seven Kingdoms, Jahdahdieh.'"

Wait, what?

Cautiously, Tory peeked his head back around the corner, saw the script, and felt two immediate emotions: deep relief and irritation. What was with Mandy and this play stuff? Roping Colin into it too - the two of them had almost shocked him to death!

He sighed, and Kevin of basketball team fame knocked into him - hard - from behind. Tory stumbled, and ended up tripping gracelessly to the ground in front of Colin and Mandy, who stared at him.

"Sorry, dude." Kevin called as he walked in the other direction. Tory glared ineffectively. Mandy giggled. Colin made that odd, muffled snorting noise.

Oh, right. The meatloaf and… missionary sex…

Tory felt his face heating up immediately, and scrambled to his feet.

"Er, hi!" He said brightly. Mandy smiled cheerfully at him, and Colin kept (rather obviously) trying not to laugh.

"Morning, Tory!" Mandy replied. "I finally got the last lead for the play! Colin's going to be the Good Mage, Jahdahdieh!"

Tory ignored her as he was wont to do.

"So, um, Colin," he said tentatively. Colin nodded.

"Yes?"

"I, uh, that phone call yesterday." Colin's mouth twitched.

"Yes?"

"It, uh. Uh. It." This was not going well. "It was a - you know - theoretical - sort of - just so you know, um, thing. It wasn't - um - implying - that, sex. Right."

They both stared at him, Colin with his twitchy mouth and Mandy as though he'd grown another head.

"So now we've got that cleared up," he said somewhat desperately, "Look, classes are going to start in a couple minutes, I should really get to homeroom!"

And off he went, leaving two very confused teenagers behind him.

After school, Tory collapsed on the couch and fingered the copy of the play Mandy had forced on him that afternoon. He could still hear her voice reverberating in his mind…

"And make sure to study it! It's really important, Tory, the whole school's going to see it - well, mostly, anyway - and it has to be great."

The whole situation was like something from Tory's nightmares made flesh. Er, paper.

His mind thought back on the day, and he pulled his ever-present journal from his backpack, stuffing the script back in. Thumbing through the day's entries, he reflected idly on that morning.

Had Colin understood him that morning at all? It seemed unlikely, given that Tory hardly even understood himself. His fixation on the other boy could be considered obsessive, but not… he blushed at the thought… sexually or romantically. He just thought about him a lot, and tried to learn as much about him as possible, and… Tory flipped, by force of habit, to the entry dated "December 3rd".

…and it felt really good - odd, sort of shocking, but good - when they held hands.

As if on cue, the phone rang.

Tory, lost in his thoughts, jumped half out of his seat at the shrill and grabbed for it, adrenaline racing.

"Hello?" He managed.

"Hello." Came Colin's voice. "Tory?"

"Uh, yeah." Tory replied. "Hello."

"We've established that," Colin said dryly. "Right away, as I recall. It's about the physics homework - do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?"

"Yeah, sure. Which ones?" Tory asked. The sound of rustling came over the line.

"Uh, 12a through 12f, 14, 15, and 20."

"…acouple of questions?" Tory said. He flipped to the relevant page in his notebook, looking for the scrawled homework questions. "That's almost the whole assignment!"

"Well - it's really -" Colin sounded embarrassed.

"Nah, I don't mind." Tory said easily. "It's just that'll be hard to explain over the phone, especially 14 and 15, since you need the diagrams. Why don't you just come over?"

"…" There was audible silence from the other end. "Yeah, okay. Um. In about an hour okay?"

"Sure," Tory replied.

And that was that.