Boiling Point

The doors to the roof were all but kicked open, causing Evan to jump slightly and drop his cigarette. He softly sighed as the hurried sound of footsteps approached him. He glanced over to see Dae walking toward him, scowling. Even with the sour demeanor, Evan's heart skipped a beat when seeing Dae.

Evan hops off of the ledge, landing on the roof with a lopsided smile, "Oh hey Dae."

"What the fuck?!" Dae snapped back, and Evan noticed him clutching his phone so tightly that he should've broken it. The anger in his voice makes Evan jump again, subconsciously bringing his arm up to shield a certain shoulder.

"What?" Evan mumbled out, confused. "You know I hang out on roofs; it's kinda my thing--"

"Stop trying to be cute," Dae's words cut into Evan and his nervousness started to melt from his face. The combination of Dae's tone, his white-knuckled grip on his cell, and Dae's choice of words made Evan square his shoulders.

"Whatever," Evan took a step towards Dae, despite every fiber of his being telling him to walk away. "Either you think I'm cute or not. But if you think I'm trying to mess with you or something, that seems like a 'you' problem."

Dae let out a laugh that was torn between being full of venom or disbelief. "Wow. You're not even going to try to defend yourself?"

"I don't know what I'm even being accused of, Dae!" Evan shook his head, incredulously. "You can't just charge at me with wild mystery accusations."

"Unbelievable." Dae's grip tightened on his cell before he almost seemed to realize it was there. "Fine. If you want to keep pretending like you don't owe--"

Evan interrupted Dae with another step forward, feeling his own anger creep in. "Woah, woah, woah. I'm gonna stop you right there, Dae. I don't owe you shit."

"Cool. Guess I should've expected that this wasn't going where I thought it was. My bad. But I hope he was at least worth it." Evan could hear the undertone of sadness in Dae's voice, but when Dae flipped the phone around and started playing a video, Evan's anger overtook every other emotion he might've felt.

Evan watched as a younger version of himself pleased a ghost from his past; but his anger, pain, and disgust in the present riled together to brew a storm inside him. "So now you're interested? You had your chance Dae. And you didn't do shit with it."

Dae seemed so taken aback by Evan's rebuttal of rage that he physically took a step backward. But Evan was just getting started.

"You don't own me, Dae. And you're not my boyfriend. It seems like you can't even decide whether you like me or not. But know, I'm my own man and I can do what or whoever I want. And the fact that you had the audacity to come at me as if I betrayed you is insane. Goddammit, Dae. And here I thought you were different."

Instead of trying to solve the issue and come clean, Evan was too worked up to talk about it anymore. He started to walk past Dae before the dark-haired boy grabbed his wrist. Hard.

Evan could feel all of the pressure behind Dae's grip but knew he wasn't ever going to be someone's punching bag. Dae's grip tightened slightly, but before he could huff out any argument, Evan looked him dead in the eyes so Dae could feel every word. "Touch me like this again, Dae, and I swear I will kick your balls in before skinning you alive and sending you a piece every Holiday."

Suddenly, awareness flashed across Dae's face, and he let go of Evan immediately. Dae took a step back and looked as if he had just come out of a trance, but Evan didn't stick around for a half-assed apology. He stormed past Dae, threw the roof doors open, and all but ran down the stairs and out of the school with tears threatening his eyes the whole time.