Bite Me

kieran

     "I guess I'll go first," I said awkwardly when neither of us made much move to speak. "But I'm warning you, there are a lot of gaps."

     Mason nodded in understanding, silently urging me to continue. I was never good with situations like these, but I found a strange sort of comfort in his blue eyes.

     "I think you and I both know how it started," I began. "I hated you. Like, straight up. It all started with that feeling I got when you walked into the room, you know what feeling I'm talking about. After that, I sorta just started disliking everything about you, even the good things. Then you kissed me—which, by the way, I did not anticipate at all—"

     "Neither did I," Mason inserted honestly.

     "Hm. Well, it kinda changed everything. I felt this weird attraction to you, I guess, and I started noticing all of your good features. Which had me like, oh shit, this is bad, because you were with Cella and I was supposed to hate you. The whole werewolf thing made it even worse. So I was like nah, this can't happen, and I tried to avoid you, but then the Maria thing happened and I was just hella confused. Then you starting flat out ignoring me and, dude, it drove me crazy. You better not do it again," I gave Mason a pointed look and he laughed, putting up his hands in surrender.

"I won't," he assured, grinning. I couldn't believe how honest I was being, but it came kind of easily. I didn't think about what I was saying, I just said it, which was a very un-Kieran thing to do.

"Good," I nodded approvingly. "I turned into a total attention whore for you, and made this weird plan to get you to quit ignoring me. And by plan I mean I dragged you off after the football game with no idea what I was going to do. You know how that ended up. After, I was totally freaked out, because I kissed you after swearing that nothing would ever happen between us again. I was a shitty best friend—I still am—and I finally quit lying to myself and admitted that I liked you. Well, like you. But that was—is—really fucked up so I kinda just avoided you for the next week in hopes that everything would stop if I did. Obviously I was wrong."

     Mason was silent for a moment, and he was staring at me with a look that I couldn't diagnose. "What happened yesterday, then?" he asked after a minute. "...and today. What changed?"

      I shrugged. "I was kinda like fuck it. Well, at first it was purely me being a hormonal teenage boy. But things kind of evolved from there, I guess, and it became...more? Shit, that sounds lame. But last night you hugged me...maybe I overthought it, but it kinda changed things for me. Ugh, I'm not good at this," I looked away bashfully. If I could blush, I'd be tomato red.

     I heard Mason's soft laugh, and felt fingers gently gripping my chin, turning me to face him. I wondered to myself how I'd never noticed the warmth in his eyes before. They were constantly comforting, making me want to curl into him and do some mushy-shushy cuddling shit.

      I wouldn't do that, though. That would be weird. We weren't that close yet.

     "You're really not that bad...okay I mean you are but," Mason teased, releasing my chin with a smirk on his lips. I punched him in the shoulder, satisfied by the little yelp he let out. "Okay, I deserved that," he admitted. "Is it my turn, then?"

       "Yup," I said, popping the 'p'. "Start barkin', Fido."

       Mason rolled his eyes but laughed nonetheless. "Very funny," he said sarcastically. "Question."