angel | dealor

three

A few weeks had passed since John and I had had that first study session, and since then we'd been having two a week. He'd come over to my house after school two days in the week for a few hours, and we'd actually managed to get some work done. He wasn't even that bad at biology, it turned out. He was just lacking in confidence.

I didn't have a lesson second period, the period before break, so partway through the hour I took myself down to the office and convinced them to give me a copy of John's timetable, as well as give me his locker number so I could try to find him. We usually had tutoring after school on a Tuesday, but that night I had been roped into going to visit family, so I had to find him and cancel. Hopefully we'd just be able to do it the next night if he wasn't busy, and from what he'd told me he wasn't often busy outside of school. He had mentioned not being massively social, and the only time I'd heard him talk about other people besides his family was when he mentioned being in a band, but he also mentioned them having broken up a while back.

I had to spend quite some time convincing the office lady that I wasn't going to track John down and kill him if she gave me details of his classes, which meant break had already begun, making it harder for me to find him. I started by going to his Maths classroom, which I found empty. I then followed the numbers on the lockers, looking for number 315. Luckily, the lockers nearest to me were in the 250s, so it didn't take me long to figure out which direction to go in, and the 300s started just around the corner.

Oddly enough, there was quite a few people stood just a little way down the hall, where I assumed locker 315 would be, or thereabouts. Either John wasn't there, or he had majorly down talked his social life.

As I neared the group, I realised both conclusions were incorrect. I could hear the mean jeers and unfunny jokes from down the hall, and upon one mention of his last name my ears pricked up. A group of year eleven scum surrounding and taunting someone named 'Deacon' definitely didn't sit well with me, and suddenly the lack of proper uniform made me feel powerful. Out of nowhere I felt a surge of superiority over these people, and I quickened my pace as I strode over to them. I spotted John stood with his back to the lockers and his eyes wide with panic, and I felt like I'd been stabbed in the heart.

"Don't you rats have some bins to dig through, or something? You're meant to be sixteen, not nine. Grow up and get out of here," I near enough growled, trying my best to make eye contact with and glare at as many of them as I could. "Why aren't you moving? Go!" I shouted, causing a few other heads to turn in the hall. The boys shifted their asses pretty quick, letting me move in and stand in front of John.

If my heart had broken before, it had now been shattered into a million pieces. He still didn't move even after they'd gone, just leant his head back against the lockers and stood there, his body trembling. I'd had to coax Freddie out of a few panic attacks, and this felt pretty similar.

"You're safe.." I muttered, gently taking a hold of his shoulder and pulling him away from the wall. "Trust me... Come on." I slung his rucksack over my shoulder and put my hand on his back, directing him to the toilets just down the hall. Once we'd stepped in and I'd glanced at the cubicles to check they were empty and we were alone in the room, I pulled him in for a tight hug. It wasn't until I pulled him into my chest that he finally opened the floodgates, tears came streaming from his eyes and his whole body was wracked with sobs. He dropped his head to rest it on my shoulder, his arms loosely around my neck.

I hated myself for not showing up sooner. Admittedly, it wasn't my fault, but this whole situation could have been avoided if I'd just met him straight after his class.

"Listen.. I know this is hard, but I need you to try and focus on your breathing.." I whispered, tracing patterns on the small of his back with the tips of my fingers. "Focus on my breathing, yeah? Can you copy me?" I got a small nod in reply, resting my head on his shoulder so that our heads were side-by-side and breathing purposefully quite deeply so he could mirror my breathing pattern. This was all I knew from helping Freddie, drawing on his back and getting him to copy my breathing. He had told me that not everyone wanted touching in this situation, but John certainly didn't seem to be objecting to the contact.

Eventually his breathing evened out, the mirroring exercise combined with some soothing words pulled him out of the anxious trance, and all he could do was apologise for getting worked up.

"I promise it's not your fault, John. Not at all. Do those dicks always taunt you?" He nodded. My million pieces of shattered heart were now being stomped on, crushed into the ground like ants.

How could anyone want to hurt such a sweet, funny boy? It didn't make sense to me. What bad could he have possibly done to deserve it?

"I'm so sorry. You don't deserve that, John. They're just evil little wankers. God... I'm gonna break their bones if I see them near you again.. Did they touch you?" He shook his head. "Have they before?"

It felt like time had frozen. I pushed him back slightly and looked pleadingly into his eyes. He eventually gave a single nod, his gaze dropping to his shoes.

"I-I think they would have beat me up if you hadn't saved me... Thank you, R-Rog.." He whispered, and my heart broke even further, if that was even possible. Fuck, it had already been stomped into the ground. Now they were just dancing on its grave. I could do nothing but pull him back against me and hug him tight so that he wouldn't see the tears falling down my own face.

Something was special about this boy. He made me feel some way, and I knew from that moment that I would do anything in my power to protect him.

———

Brian and Freddie were already sat at our table as I wandered over, both on one side with Freddie's sketchbook open on the table. A few days had passed since the incident with John, and I'd spoken to the staff. I'd not mentioned the bullying, because he'd begged me not to get any teachers involved, which I didn't really understand, seeing as the worst they could do was nothing at all. I'd brought up our tutoring sessions and mentioned needing somewhere to sit on a lunch, so he'd been allowed access to our common room from that day on. Technically, it was purely for tutoring, but there was never any staff around to monitor who was there and what they were doing.

Both boys looked up when I sat down and an extra body took the chair beside me, both of us putting our bags under the table. I had pre-warned them about John joining us, but neither of them knew it would be at that lunchtime.

"Guys, this is John. John, Brian and Freddie." I gestured to each of them respectively as I introduced them, smiling when John nervously held his hand out across the table and muttered a precious 'hi'. I gently pushed his hand down, smiling. "Don't bother with formalities. They're uncivilised beings."

"Excuse you, Roger Meddows Taylor. Just because your only method of communicating is your caveman grunts doesn't mean none of us respect ourselves," Freddie teased, outstretching his arm to shake John's hand across the table. "It's a pleasure, Darling."

Brian smiled politely and also shook John's hand, easily striking up a conversation about his subjects, and what he was considering for A-Level.

We'd all get along just fine.

a/n
updates will be more spread out from here on out, I'm just excited to publish this and want to give people a taste of the story (you can't form much of an opinion off of one chapter)