Dreamer's Disease

Chapter Nine

"Dude, did you hear about Elliot and Blake? Getting off in the showers!"

"...Who'd have thought Elliot swung that way, eh? I expected it from Blake but from Elliot...?"

"Y'think they'll get kicked off the soccer team for this?"

Blake closed his eyes tightly, bowing his head and sighing. This was all he had been hearing for two days now, since Hunter had walked in on Elliot and Blake doing absolutely nothing at all in the locker room. They'd just been talking, and yet the dickhead had taken it the wrong way and told the rest of the soccer team. And, as scandals tend to do in high schools, the rumour had spread like wildfire.

"God fucking dammit." Blake found himself groaning, listening to the people at the table next to them gossiping about the whole ordeal.

"Just...just ignore them." Elliot forced out, always the sympathetic. Blake glanced up from the tabletop, and his strangely untouched sandwich, to see that Elliot was bright red, and had shrunk down in his seat slightly, glancing around him nervously. That was really unlike Elliot; rumours had been spread around the school about him before, about the "dozens of girls" he'd "slept" with after "dates", and he'd never reacted like this before. So why react like this now that the rumour was about Elliot and Blake?

Right enough, it was a rumour about he and Blake, his best friend and himself, doing The Unmentionable. Of course he was bound to freak out and find it disgusting. Blake found it disgusting, for crying out loud. And anyway, how the fuck would that work? Where was he meant to... And where was it meant to... And... How?! Was that even anatomically possible? He doubted it was, really.

"I wonder," Blake thought aloud, "how the rumour managed to change so damn quickly from 'kissing in the locker room' to 'getting off in the showers'..."

Elliot flushed an even deeper shade of red at the mere mention of the rumours, and Blake narrowed his eyes. Why was he so embarrassed by the whole ordeal? He could just easily shake it off, like he'd always done with rumours. That was something that came part-and-parcel with being popular in school, you found yourself at the centre of rumours and lies.

"Chinese Whispers effect." Elliot spoke, his voice a low mumble. Blake cocked an eyebrow.

"You what?"

Elliot sighed. "Chinese Whispers effect," he said, his voice a little louder now. "One person says one thing, and another person overhears and misconstrues it in such a way that the original concept is warped and, thus, different. Creating the perfect rumour." He sighed again, then, a weary sound. "And it seems these people have perfected the very effect to a T."

"Well, fuck these guys." Blake said, trying to lift his friend's spirits a little. Elliot had been so down these last couple of days, and Blake couldn't pinpoint what on earth was wrong with him. All he knew how to do was say stupid, not-so-motivational things to try cheer up his friend. He'd tried asking what was wrong, but that had only resulted in Elliot snorting and rolling his eyes, before replying that, in fact, nothing was wrong, and Blake was just looking into things too much. "They want to spread rumours? Let them. They're just jealous because the rumours are centered around us and not one of them, eh?"

Elliot gave Blake an incredulous look. "Is that meant to make me feel better?"

"I don't know. Did it?" Blake smirked for a second, before realising that it probably wasn't the time or place for such jokes. Elliot narrowed his eyes, and the action reminded Blake, as he studied his friend, that he still had that bruise around his eye. He still had to find out what dickhead had done that to his friend, dammit. He'd kill them when he got his hands on them. "Sorry."