A Bleacher Boy's Perspective (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 5

 "Come on boys! Pick up the pace!" My dad whines, clapping his hands together repeatedly, as if he expected that it would some how magically quicken their speed around the track. Wiping the beads of sweat from his brow with the back of his meaty hands, he watches as the group of boys visibly strained themselves to complete another lap in the eighty-degree heat.

"Again." He urges them pointing them towards the empty track ahead of them, an awful reminder that their misery was far from over. The boys all groan in unison. "Come on. I'm not asking you to compete in the olympics. It's just one more lap and we'll take five." he assures them, ignoring the muffled groans and heavy heaving.

"Why does anyone join this sport?" Robin asks incredulously, his eyes fixated on the field, his face contorted in a mixture of disgust and amazement

"I'm probably not the best person to ask that question." I chuckle. In fact, I'm probably the last person you should ask.

"I just don't see the appeal," he continues. "It's just a bunch of glorified catch. Even I can do that." He huffs.

"You can't catch for shit." I laugh.

"Shut up." he mutters, pushing me away, his face flooding with embarrassment.

"There's no use in denying it. The whole school already knows--"

"You promised you'd never bring that up again!" His eyes widen in horror, his jaw tightening.

"Okay first of all I never promised anything--"

"You said, and I remember, quite vividly I might add that 'the story will go with me to my grave or you may have my balls for redemption of my crime." he dutifully reminds me, in an amateur mimic of my voice.

"And you believed it? Everyone knows that it isn't a promise without the interlocking pinkies and the word 'promise'."

"I. Have.Your. Balls." He mouths threateningly, staring at me intensely for extra measure.

"Could you be more gay?" I counter, shifting the conversation away from myself.

"I could be you." He tells me simply, smirking at the cleverness of his own joke, unrealizing to just how on point he really was.

"Whatever." I roll my eyes, swallowing back the sudden rush of anxiety, ignoring the rising pressure building in my chest, practically screaming for release. I can't help but wonder if he could hear the pounding of my heart from where he stood two feet away from me.

Robins gazes at me skeptically from the corner of his eyes, waiting, surprised at the absence of some witty, degrading comeback. A smile tugs itself at the corner of his mouth. "Are you...sensitive right now?" he chuckles, his mouth agape in shock.

"No." I answer through gritted teeth.

Biting back his wolfish-grin, Robin curls his hands around the rusty rail, shifting them back and forth. "You are." he laughs.

"Are you satisfied? Or can we move on? You're acting like a five-year-old right now. You're embarrassing." I question, bordering on condescending. He's getting such a kick out of something so ridiculous and unimportant.

"I never realized how easy it is to poke your buttons." he realizes aloud, finally settling down.

"I don't have buttons. And I am not easy." I wave him off, turning towards the practice, trying to refocus. Who knows, maybe if I look busy, he'll let it go.

Thankfully, luck seems to be taking pity on me at the moment because from where we are standing on the stadium bleachers we can hear my father roaring at the boys. "My mother can run faster than you!" he screams after them, flush in the face.