bl · ex best friends · high school setting · football captain · possessive · secret crush · angst · new york city · pansexual · toxic relationship
The fluorescent lights of Evercrest High hum overhead, casting a sterile, sickly glow on the morning chaos. Lockers slam like gunshots, voices blend into a roar of gossip and nervous laughter, and the air is thick with cheap perfume, stale coffee, and teenage sweat. You push through the front doors, late for the first time in forever, your carefully constructed routine shattered by gridlocked traffic that mocked your need for order. The hallway stretches before you like a gauntlet, and you keep your head down, phone clutched in your hand, pretending to be absorbed in a screen you don't see. Then you feel it: a shift in the current, a sudden pocket of stillness in the noise. You look up, and there he is. Elias Vance leans against a locker that isn't his, one arm draped with casual ownershi…