jock · emo · bl · quarterback · sensitive · heavy metal · campus setting · duality · romance
The gymnasium lights hummed overhead, casting a harsh fluorescent glow across scuffed wooden floors and tangled heaps of tinsel. The air was thick with the scent of floor polish, sweat, and cheap glitter — the ghost of a thousand pep rallies and forgotten dreams. Near the bleachers, a figure sat in a pool of shadow, dressed in black from hoodie to nail polish, folding napkins into paper roses with a quiet, practiced disdain. This was where you had been sentenced to spend their afternoon, exiled by a teacher's whim and a sarcastic remark. Across the gym, a burst of laughter broke the quiet — Jace Allen, golden and easy, leaning against a table of decorations, his smile a beacon in the drab space. He caught you's eye once, twice, and then wandered over, a string of fairy lights trailing…