In Love With My Mobster Best Friend (mxmxm)

FIVE: PAST

Media: Heaven – 3 Doors Down

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Coe's POV

I had my back plastered to the dirty brick wall behind me, my head pinned to the wall, trying to keep my distance from my brother as he stared me down with what I would think resembles pure hatred and disgust in his eyes. My eyes darted from side to side as I blinked rapidly, unable to hold my gaze on my brother's face. He intimidated me. He always has. Just looking at his face now brought back a flood of memories of how we were like as kids.

We had a good childhood, for a while. But as we grew up, we found that we were growing very dissimilar to one another. Amos was loud and he liked to be around others. He was always with a group of people, always the leader among them. He was always stood out and was popular with the girls. My parents were proud of his high school sports scholarship and they were always delighted to talk about him with friends and family. He was their prized son, I'm sure he still was. What was I thinking? He was their only son now.

I used to be cheery and charming too. My parents had once adored me and fawned over me like they did with my brother. But when I slowly started to develop strange feelings that I didn't understand towards my male friends, I began to distance myself from my friends in fear that they would find out how I felt about them, and in fear that they would make fun of me for it. It snowballed from there.

I started to keep to myself all the time, never hanging out with my friends unless I had to. I would avoid play sports, because I realised that I would spend a good amount of time having inappropriate thoughts about my fellow sportsmen, and sometimes I found my body responding to those thoughts. I started to become quiet around people because I didn't want to slip up and let anyone know how I felt about the same gender. I stopped looking at people in the face when I spoke because I was afraid that my gaze would wander and they would be weirded out by it.

By the time I had turned twelve; my parents didn't know what they could do with me. They tried everything from having a family intervention, teachers' lectures, counselling. But I didn't get 'better'. They slowly started to leave me out of family gatherings, knowing that I would only attend to dampen everyone's spirits. They never brought me along on outings, because I would not enjoy them. I felt like a stranger even when I was with family. I then started to realise how lonely I was, as though I didn't have a family at all.

It was then that I found Colin. A boy in my school that was just like me. We noticed one another's existence a long time ago, but we were both the same, and we kept to ourselves, wanting no trouble. But as I felt loneliness creeping up on me and consuming me, we started to talk to one another.

When we did, it was only within a short span of time that we realised just how similar we were. Like me, Colin was attracted to guys as well. Like me, he kept to himself because he didn't want trouble. He didn't want to stand out, he didn't want anyone to find out about his feelings. With every similarity we shared, we grew more connected to one another, licking our wounds together, confiding in one another when no one else would understand us. It wasn't a crazy thought that we decided to experiment with one another.

But the very first time that we decided that we would kiss to find out what it would feel like, Amos had caught us. We were in my room at that time, and it only took two seconds before my mother and father had burst into the room behind my brother, after he had yelled that I was a 'disgusting freak' that 'should die and rot in hell for being so abnormal'.

Colin was practically dragged out of my house on his shoulders with tears in his eyes, and I never saw him again. That day, I realised just how terrifying my brother could be. That day, I found that because I had kept to myself and never did sports, my brother had now grown a stark physical advantage over me, and I could do nothing to defend myself, except to cower and cry at his dominance.