It had been the kind of day that gave Lucas those jittery, fidgety, anxious feelings that often came with a big change he hadn’t planned for, and no amount of consultation with Lupita did him any kind of good.

He'd looked through every spreadsheet, every notebook, and somehow he'd missed having a cute guy come to his house. Clearly, he'd expected himself to have more self-preservation instinct, but all thoughts seemed to fly out of Lucas’ brain whenever Jamari looked at him with those big brown eyes.

And sure, the library was a little out of Jamari’s way since he lived closer to the east side than Lucas did, but it didn't mean that Lucas had had to offer his house.

But, either way, here he was, sorting the slips of paper he'd written the characters’ names on into an order, and then another order, and then another one. Obsessively. Over and over again, replaying the conversation that had gotten him here with every change in organization.

(Jamari’d caught him between lessons, coming up to Lucas’ locker and just saying hi, asking how his day was, pleasant shit. When he left, he’d said something like, “I might be late to our session cuz I have to walk to the library,” and Lucas might've responded, “My house is like, a less than half hour walk from the school if that works for you,” like some kind of idiot.

But honestly, all Lucas could remember from that conversation  the way Jamari’s eyes looked when he'd said that, surprised and soft, reminding him of his auntie’s brownies.)

And now, Past Lucas’ imbecility had made it so he had no plan of action for having someone like Jamari the Star Running Back in his living space.

Here's to hoping, Lucas thought with a sigh, that Auntie Geum-hee’s ugly-ass decorations manages to make him less hot somehow.

His decidedly vitriolic thoughts were cut off by the tinny sound of his nerd aunt’s door bell playing the Super Mario theme — the damning sound of someone at the door.

(For a deeply irrational moment, Lucas hoped it was the mailman.)

“Hey,” Jamari said when Lucas opened the door, dark skin glistening in the setting sun. 

Damn, golden hour looked good on him — the light casting a halo around his hair. It was’nt fucking fair that he got to show up to Lucas’ house like some kind of teen heartthrob.

He quickly found himself taking in all of Jamari’s body, from the broad shoulders egregiously visible under his compression shirt, to the thighs and long legs that the shorts Jamari was wearing completely failed to hide. It hit him that Jamari must've walked here from practice, and somehow the thought of it made everything so much worse.

The fear of having his less-than-polite thoughts having shown on his face shocked Lucas into actually meeting Jamari’s eyes. 

Fuck.

He'd been staring at him for like. Way too long.

Fuck.

Jamari laughed awkwardly, and it didn't quite cut the tension, “Yeah, I’on know- I- I came straight from practice, so I probably look like a mess. Sorry.”

“You look fine,” Lucas blurted, once again coming down with the worst case of Idiot that’d been seen since Lucas fucking invited Jamari to his house. He switched gears quickly, “Uh, anyway, come in!”

The moment he turned away from Jamari, Lucas grit his teeth.

Lucas Choi did not blurt.

Lucas Choi was a thinker.

An intellectual.

Every word was calculated.

Lucas Choi carefully sorted his thoughts before he spoke to select only the most quality of sentences before he even opened his mouth.

Lucas Choi did not blurt.

He chanted it in his head as he followed Jamari into the house — who took his shoes off at the door immediately without being asked, which might actually have done something for Lucas — already beginning to script the tutoring session in his head to distract from the disastrous case of dumbass he seemed to be coming down with.

Seeing Jamari sat at his auntie’s tiny café table made Lucas want to giggle a little, with the way Jamari’s 6’2” frame had to actively fold up to fit in the seats comfortably, and the blatancy of Lucas’ weird, uncharacteristically impulsive decision-making was more than obvious in the way Jamari contrasted with his auntie’s kitschy decorations and obnoxiously bright colors.

Lucas took a breath.

Steeled himself.

Sat down on the other side of the table.

Placed his fingers on the slips of paper he'd meticulously placed in order of which characters had the most tall-person energy (Benvolio at the most, and Tybalt at the least, obviously).

And began.

“Hold up,” Jamari put up a light-colored palm like he's stopping Lucas right in his tracks, “No way you telling me Romeo had somebody on the side.”

“No, no, no,” Lucas said quickly, holding in a laugh at both Jamari’s bewildered (cute) expression and also so that he didn't blush as hard as his face was threatening to, “Rosalind is just the girl he liked before Juliet. Romeo was a lot of things, but one of them is definitely loyal.”

“Maybe too loyal,” Jamari muttered, shaking his head at Romeo and Rosalind’s names where they sat in front of him. He looked back up at Lucas. “Imma be honest, ain’t no way I’d kill myself over a girl. Especially not a girl that I don’t even like enough to let her speak in my own story.”

A girl. Lucas took note, using the words to remind himself the state of affairs: Jamari was straight. He was straight, just the same as Lucas was supposed to be.

He breathed, not letting the amused smile fall off his face in the whirlwind of thoughts that flew through his head, and responded with a short laugh. “Me neither. There isn’t anything I’d do that much over.”

“Nothing?” Jamari asked suspiciously, his voice quiet in the way that Lucas was slowly finding himself enjoying a little too much, his slight Southern accent dropping the ‘g’ from the word. Jamari adjusted to look Lucas right in his eyes, and his leg moved to rest against Lucas’ knee. Lucas fought not to jump or drop his eyes from Jamari’s deep brown ones. “Okay, then. Not even your best friend?”

Unbidden, both Deku and Jazaiah popped into Lucas’ head, before he quickly dismissed them both. Deku had dumped him when the rest of his friends did last year, and Jazaiah just happened to be the person he talked to the most, outside of his brothers. Not to mention the fact that Lucas was actively lying to him in every interaction. “Nah, there’s no way.”

“You got siblings?”

Lucas nodded, “Two.”

“Them?”

The first thing Lucas thought was ‘yes,’ but his brian quickly drew up memories of Dylan’s files of photos and videos of the time he got the flu and had a fever for about a week, and Dae’s tendency to bring up all his most embarrassing memories with a straight face with no regard for who was in the room when he did. “Yeah, no fucking way.”

Jamari thought for a second, before his eyes narrow like a predator catching sight at a target. “What’s your favorite animal.”

“Blue whale,” Lucas said, barely thinking. Sperm whales had dropped to being his fourth favorite whale, since Marisol and her pod had distracted him from his notebook being stolen at the party that ruined his life. 

“Okay,” Jamari responded, stretching his ‘a’ out with something that sounded like a mix of being impressed and sheer wonder. He folded his large hands conspiratorially, his brows rising with a smug smile Lucas wasn’t sure how he felt about. “Would you kill yourself for a family of blue whales? With the babies and everything.”

He said the question slowly as if Lucas needed to take every word about as seriously as a cardiologist would take a heart attack, and the question made Lucas eyebrows shoot up with shock.

Damn. 

“Fuck, I would.” Lucas sighed, defeated. “I would definitely kill myself for a pod of blue whales. Especially for the babies.”

Jamari put his hands up as if to say ‘there you have it!’ and it reminded Lucas somewhat of Jazaiah. He shifted again, into something relaxed and comfortable, his knee moving away from Lucas’. 

Finally, he could think again.

And so, when Jamari tried to bait him into talking about whales, (“Why do you love whales so much?”) Lucas could resist, directing him back into their conversation about how Shakespeare presented Romeo’s attraction to both Rosalind and Juliet. 

It was productive to say the least, with the slips of paper with the characters names providing a visual aid that Jamari seemed to follow easily — a note Lucas had made from their previous sessions. Jamari came up with pretty astute observations, even if he managed to say them in the funniest ways that Lucas can imagine (“Romeo kinda reminds me of the dumb one from that movie with the white girl from Africa.” “You mean Karen from Mean Girls?” “Yeah. My sister made me watch that damn movie.”) and Lucas couldn’t help but smile and laugh like the airhead in a chick flick from the late 2000s.

It was going well until Jamari began to struggle in understanding what Lucas meant by ‘objectification and infatuation, rather than true love,’ getting confused about the genre of Romeo and Juliet. Lucas was more than happy to explain that Romeo and Juliet is a pure tragedy, rather than a romance, and that the two main characters were destined to die from the moment they met, but Jamari’s frustration at his own momentary confusion was obvious.

“Man, I’m sorry you had to explain all that,” Jamari mutters in a tone that seems like its trying a little too hard to sound good-natured, “I should’ve gotten that.”

Lucas waved him away, “Nah, don’t worry about it! It’s a mistake a lot of people make, and I’m always happy to explain anything you don’t get — it’s literally what I’m here for.”

“Yeah,” Jamari mumbled in response, dropping his eyes from Lucas’ to stare with furrowed brows at some spot on the table. Lucas was pretty damn sure that Jamari didn’t agree with the ‘don’t worry about it’ statement.

Lucas swallowed.

Jamari’d seemed, so far, like a self-assured, confident person. Everything about his body language made Lucas wonder just how much of it had been an act.

“Look, Jamari,” Lucas began, just a little louder than he needed to to make Jamari’s brown eyes snap back up to his. “You’re really good at analysis. Way more than I expected when I saw your grades. It’s like it’s totally natural to you. Shakespeare is always hard to get at first pass, especially if you haven’t interacted with it too heavily beforehand, and over these sessions, you’ve gotten it way quicker than a lot of people do. You’re literally fine.”

It had come out of him before he could think the better of giving a motivational speech to a guy he thinks is cute, but Lucas couldn’t find it in himself to regret it, with the way Jamari’s eyes seem to soften at his words.

He didn’t get a chance to ruminate on it for long, though, the tension broken by the vibrations of Jamari’s phone from where it rested on the table. 

Jamari picked it up a little too quickly, breathing out a exhausted-sounding “Hey, Pops,” before closing his eyes with what Lucas recognized as resignation as Jamari answered with “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” and “Sorry, sir,” intermittently enough that his dad must be the type to be constantly asking ‘do you understand me?’ questions. 

Lucas was reminded of Jazaiah’s words about Jamari’s father, something along the lines of him being a piece of shit who put too much pressure on his son and didn’t seem to care about his son doing anything other than what he wanted. And with the way Jamari’s shoulders continued to slump into something a little too close to complete defeat, Lucas couldn’t seem to find it in himself to disbelieve the words. 

The phone call finally ended with a final “Yes, sir,” and the tell-tale beep of someone hanging up on the other side,  and Jamari was silent for a few moments, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger before breathing deeply and steeling himself. His gaze softened when he and Lucas’s eyes meet again.

“I’ve gotta go, man. Sorry for cutting the session short.” Jamari’s apologetic smile was lopsided and Lucas’ heart squeezed at the sight of it.

They stood up at the same time, and Lucas scurried to grab the keys to the door as Jamari picked his stuff up from where he had left it on the floor. 

Lucas couldn’t seem to help the way his mind began to scramble to make sense of the events immediately prior. Jamari’s regular, small, slanted smile that showed a little of his slightly crooked teeth between his plush lips, versus that sad, apologetic smile after the phonecall. Jamari’s relaxed, easy observations and analysis, versus the frustration written all over his brow at struggling to understand one thing. Jamari’s casual, quick-wittedness versus the smallness projected by his body language when his father was speaking to him.

It was quickly decided that Lucas hated Jamari’s dad.

The seconds ticked by as Jamari tugged his Nikes onto his feet, but the silence between them was companionable, even as Lucas thought daggers at Jamari’s father.

“You know,” a smooth, deep voice said, interrupting the silence and drawing Lucas’ gaze up to Jamari’s warm, mirthful one. The sadness wasn’t gone from the corner of Jamari’s eyes, but his normal smile had returned, and Lucas found the butterflies in his stomach relaxing at its presence. “I genuinely wanna know why you like whales so much. That’s a cool as hell favorite animal. Folks usually say shit like dogs. Or like… kittens.”

Lucas couldn’t help but laugh at the derision with which Jamari said ‘kittens’, the way Lucas would imagine a mafia boss saying the name of a rival syndicate. It was full, and genuine, and Jamari’s easy smile got bigger in return. “Yeah! Kittens? That’s a basic bitch answer. Now, blue whales—”

Jamari snorted a little, bracing himself on the doorknob, before starting conversationally, “You can tell me about them next time, if you want?”

“You tryna get out of talking about Mercutio, Benvolio and Tybalt, Jamari?” Lucas responded playfully, raising an eyebrow with fake disapproval. For him, the dynamics between those three was the best part of the play.

Jamari didn’t respond with a laugh, though. “I’m being serious though. I’ve got questions.”

The last sentence kind of sounded like a threat, and the butterflies in his stomach and the warmth in Lucas’s cheeks return with a vengeance. 

Fuck.

If there was anything Lucas liked, it was the opportunity to talk about whales. And Jamari had just offered. 

“If you go back on that, you’ll regret it.” The warning was fake, but it got a chuckle out of Jamari as he stepped over the threshold of Lucas’s door. 

“I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”

Jamari’s smile was the last thing he saw before he shut the door — directed at him as Jamari walked down the drive — and the moment Lucas is sure Jamari’s long legs and broad frame were out of view, he braced himself against the door, letting his eyes droop shut.

He and Lupita were going to spend a lot of time together.

A lot.

He was fucked, wasn’t he?

And with that thought, the familiar, thick burn of fear settled in his stomach.