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#25: ᴘᴏᴘ ʜɪᴍ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ ꜰᴜᴄᴋɪɴɢ ʙᴀʟʟᴏᴏɴ

Maybe this was a blessing or a curse, but to decide which one it was, I'd have to take the ass beating that was coming for me.

Perhaps Eddie's hesitation was his mind preparing the best way to reject me, and Henry butted in just in time to stop him. My dreams and hopes would have been shattered if it weren't for Mr. Mullet Overlord, so I guess I would've had to thank him for that. Lose lose.

On the other hand, maybe Eddie was going to return the feelings, finding that it was the perfect time to confess, before Henry fucking Bowers takes his shit bomb and shits all over the place.

There was a stunned sort of silent tension that consumed the dark corridor, where Henry's intense and gruff voice echoed off the lockers surrounding us. I was stuck in position as usual, thinking this was the best and the worst time for him to stop us.

I just confessed the biggest secret in the history of secrets. And now I didn't even get a response. I got a free trip to the morgue instead.

Despite Henry's voice being extremely intimidating and pulling me out of my thought process, I could feel Eddie's wide-eyed stare on the side of my face. No matter how hard I looked at the tiles below me, trying to figure out a last minute James Bond trip out of here, Eddie continued to watch me like a stunned victim in a car crash.

It made me feel fucking awful, I couldn't lie.

As he noticed my failure to respond with some wit as I usually did, Henry pressed even harder, as he usually did. It seemed to round back and forth. "Hey, fucker, I'm talkin' to you."

Just kill me now. Quit chatting me up and get to it already.

I turned on my feet. This would be ten times easier if Eddie wasn't here. Now I had more things to worry about, when the one person I cared most about on this dumbass planet was in the way between a bully ready to strike and me. Watching Eddie get hurt was like watching a newborn kitten get sliced open. I would not recommend either sight.

"Listen, Henry, just take me, alright? Eddie didn't do anything. He's always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Let him leave," I wanted to get straight to the point if Henry was going to be this intense right off the bat. "It'd be easier to take just one of us."

Henry stared for a moment and then his lips twisted up into an awful grin. Well, at least, it seemed like he was smiling. But I wasn't really sure. It was hard to tell, he doesn't smile often. Then he laughed, deep and guttural, which only made matters worse. 

"Nah, nah, you don't get away that fucking quick. You think I'm gonna go easy on your boyfriend just because his lungs are fucked up? I don't accept faggots in this town, no matter what medical condition they have or not. Understand me?"

Eddie swallowed so hard that it looked like it hurt.

If I had said no, Henry would have dragged me all the way back to the lake,  stabbed me repeatedly in the side until I fainted, and then watched all my blood mix in with the water until I was dead. He was fucking insane like that. 

So I nodded.

"That's right," Henry cracked his knuckles individually with each hand, almost as an intimidation method. "It was one thing to show up here at all, that takes real fucking guts. But it's another to show up in the faggiest suits you can get and show up together, like a couple. You are a couple, ain't you?"

He was messing with us now at this point, and he loved it.

He was trying to figure out which one of us was going to break and spill first, and it wasn't going to be me. No way in fucking hell.