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Of course he’d known Jack Kelly was hot. Or cute, rather. Hot felt demeaning somehow, like David didn’t care about his personality. Jack Kelly was cute in personality, and hot in just about every other way. Or at least he had assumed that Jack was cute in personality; he didn’t actually meet the guy until junior year.
First day of eleventh grade, and there Jack was, in the best seat in the classroom: second row, a good amount away from the teacher’s podium, and close to the door. And there was an empty seat right next to him. So David had flashed his best award-winning smile and put his books on the desk.
“Mind if I take this?” he had asked.
“Sure,” Jack had smiled up at him. “I’m Jack.”
“David,” he introduced himself and sat down.
“I know,” Jack nodded awkwardly. “Our mutual - friend. Romeo.”
“Right,” David sucked air in through his teeth. “Romeo, of course. How could I forget him?”
It would have been a joke, were it not so true. David and Romeo had each had feelings for each other at different times of the year during tenth grade, but it had never worked out like either of them wanted it to. Instead, it had ended with a broken promise of remaining friends. While David had been crushing on Romeo, Romeo had been crushing on Jack. Romeo, never one to lose out on a chance to date someone, had proposed polyamory. Jack opposed the idea, and that was that.
“I don’t think anyone could forget Romeo. It’s impossible,” Jack joked. It was a friendly, light joke, but the implication was there. They may not have talked to each other last year, but they certainly had made an impact on each other.
-
By October, seeing Jack had become the best part of David’s morning. They were really, legitimately friends. David had never honestly been one to make friends in classes; he preferred to stick to himself and do work, but he couldn’t pass up having a friend to help him do work in class. Not that Jack was much help, of course. He tended to get loud and excited, and crack jokes, and David couldn’t stop watching the way his blue eyes lit up when he had a good idea, or his freckles came out on weeks when the sun was shining. If anything, Jack was a hindrance to getting work done.
“Hey, Jack? What do you think about discussing intersectional feminism for this essay?”
“Like how?”
“Like what if I defined intersectionality,” David explained, “and defined like, ‘white feminism,’ and then compared the two, then moving into an argument of evaluation about how feminism should be intersectional?”
“I think that’s an awesome idea,” Jack had affirmed with a smile. “And I really agree with that. You know…”
Jack had trailed off on some rant about intersectionality, and David took notes on some of Jack’s ideas about how it was better than “old-fashioned feminism”. But mostly, he had just watched Jack’s face move. He was pretty, and his ideas were really good, and he cared so much.
“And my boyfriend and I were talking about it yesterday,” Jack’s face softened at the very thought of Crutchie.
Yeah, then there was Crutchie. David wanted to hate Crutchie a little bit. He was the boyfriend who had what David didn’t have. Crutchie was probably smarter than David. He was sure funnier than David, and cuter than David, and less awkward around Jack than David was. More than that, he had Jack. Even though the two of them had only been together for about four months, it was obvious that Jack was completely enamored with the guy.
“That’s really a good thought,” David nodded, writing it down, hoping his face didn’t show his feelings. “Crutchie’s got a good way of looking at the world.”
“Yeah,” Jack smiled. “He’s pretty smart.”
It wasn’t David’s place to feel jealous. He and Jack weren’t dating, and that was it. And he certainly shouldn’t place any anger on Jack or Crutchie for having an adorable relationship. It wasn’t their fault that David had never dated someone long term. He tried to keep his crushing to a minimum. It wasn’t going to happen, so he was allowed to thing that Jack was cute, but nothing else.
-
The next semester only made things harder. David and Jack got closer and closer; they shared stories about when they were kids, and even about some of the hardest things they had ever gone through. David didn’t like to think about Jack’s past. The semicolon tattoo he had gotten stick-and-poked on his wrist was hard to look at, since he knew what it meant. Jack had never been secretive about the suicide attempt he’d made a few years ago, or about the reasons he’d done it. That didn’t make David any less upset whenever he thought about how Jack had been treated so poorly and come out of it so strong.
As if that wasn’t enough, Mr. Perfect himself just had to show up in David’s AP United States Government class. Crutchie really was incredible. He kept up to date on all the current politics, asked good, insightful questions, and always had a funny joke to tell. He also just happened to wear t-shirts about David’s favorite musicals and music artists. So. Yeah, he kinda was Mr. Perfect.
And now, David could blame Jack even less for wanting to be with Crutchie and not David. Which only served to make him angrier. It wasn’t fucking okay that Jack was so cute, and that Crutchie was so cute, and that they were so cute together, and that David was lonely and wanted to be in a relationship and didn’t get to be in one. At this point, he wanted nothing more than to date at least Jack, and be - maybe queer platonic? - with Crutchie. Or maybe just date both of them. But he remembered how Jack had felt about polyamory last year when Romeo had suggested it. And he didn’t want to be the asshole who broke up a relationship because he thought someone was attractive, or the asshole who rooted for a relationship to fail. No thanks. Hopefully, this would all pass soon.