Chapter Text
Andre drove like the steering wheel had personally insulted him.
Not recklessly, and not even fast, really. Just tense. His fingers stayed locked around the wheel at ten and two, shoulders stiff beneath his dark jacket while the headlights cut through empty suburban streets that looked dead this late at night. Every few seconds he’d tap the brakes for absolutely no reason, jaw clenching hard enough for Calvin to notice from the passenger seat. The inside of the car smelled faintly like Andre’s cologne. Calvin had no clue what brand it was. Probably something cheap from CVS that Andre sprayed on like he was trying to fumigate insecurity out of his bloodstream.
The radio played low static between stations before Andre smacked it off entirely.
Silence. Then more silence.
Then Andre sighed so dramatically it almost sounded fake.
Calvin leaned his head back against the seat. “You know, usually when people ask to go on a late night drive, they at least pretend to be chill for the first ten minutes.”
“I am chill.”
“You almost rear-ended a mailbox.”
Andre stared ahead. “The mailbox came out of nowhere.”
Calvin snorted. “Yeah. Those violent roaming mailboxes. Huge issue in America.”
That got the tiniest reaction out of him. Barely there. Just the corner of Andre’s mouth twitching before flattening again. The roads were mostly empty. A few streetlights flickered overhead, washing the dashboard in weak orange light every time they passed underneath one. It made Andre look worse somehow. Paler. More exhausted. Calvin noticed he’d been chewing the inside of his cheek for the past fifteen minutes.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong or are we doing the mysterious brooding thing all night?”
Andre didn’t answer immediately. He adjusted his grip on the wheel again. “It’s stupid.”
“Probably. Tell me anyway.”
Another silence dragged out between them, then Andre laughed once under his breath, humorless. “I’m gonna die a fucking virgin.”
Calvin blinked. “Oh.”
“There it is.” Andre gestured vaguely with one hand. “That’s the big crisis. Real deep stuff.”
“You’re seventeen.”
“Yeah, and pathetic.”
“You are literally not—”
“I haven’t kissed anyone since preschool.”
Calvin turned toward him properly now, one leg pulled up slightly against the seat. Andre kept staring straight ahead like eye contact would physically kill him. “Preschool barely counts,” Calvin said carefully.
“It counts to me.” Andre sounded genuinely angry about it. Not embarrassed. Angry. Like this was some cosmic injustice specifically designed to humiliate him. The car rolled through another intersection.
“I mean, seriously.” Andre scoffed quietly. “Everyone else has done something. Everybody. And I’m just…” He made a frustrated motion toward himself. “This.”
Calvin frowned a little. Andre wasn’t ugly. That was the weird part.
He looked intense more than anything else. Dark hair hanging into his face, tired eyes, acne, permanently irritated expression. The kind of guy that looked intimidating until he opened his mouth and started ranting about society collapsing or how people at school were “genetically programmed morons.” Which, admittedly, narrowed the dating pool a little.
“I just think it’s pathetic,” Andre muttered. “Like genuinely pathetic. We’re planning this whole thing and the only person who’s ever even liked me was some girl when I was five who ate crayons.”
“That’s harsh. Maybe she was advanced for her age.”
Andre shot him a look. “I’m serious.”
“I know.” Calvin’s voice softened slightly.
That seemed to catch Andre off guard more than the joke did. The tires hummed against the road, and for a moment Calvin just watched the passing houses outside the window. Most of them were dark. Families asleep inside. Completely normal people doing completely normal things. Watching TV together. Arguing over dishes. Existing in ways that felt impossibly far away from them now.
Then Calvin said, “I kinda get it.”
Andre frowned. “No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
“You have friends that are girls.”
“Yeah. Rachel also thinks Limp Bizkit is emotionally profound. That doesn’t mean I wanna marry her.” Andre let out a short laugh through his nose. Calvin continued before he could overthink it. “I’m serious. It’s not like I’m out there pulling girls either.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
Andre hesitated.
Because the real answer sat ugly beneath everything else. Because Calvin could probably have one if he wanted to. Because Calvin looked normal in a way Andre never thought he did. Because people actually liked Calvin. Andre didn’t say any of that aloud. Instead, he muttered, “You’re not weird.”
Calvin stared at him for a second, then he laughed. “Andre, we are planning a mass casualty event.”
Andre huffed. “Okay, fair point.”
“No, seriously. We lost the right to call other people weird months ago.”
That finally got a real laugh out of him. Brief, but real. Andre shook his head slightly, shoulders loosening for the first time all night. Calvin watched him quietly after that, then, before his brain could fully process the idea, he said, “What if we just fake it?”
Andre blinked. “Fake what?”
“A relationship.”
The silence that followed was immediate and catastrophic. Andre’s entire face twisted like Calvin had just suggested ritual sacrifice. “What?”
“Not publicly,” Calvin clarified quickly. “Jesus Christ. I mean just for us. Like an experiment.”
Andre looked almost disturbed. “Why would we do that?”
“To know what it feels like.”
“That’s gay.”
Calvin gave him a flat look. “Yeah, Andre. I think the hypothetical fake relationship between two guys may contain traces of homosexuality.” Andre’s ears turned slightly red. “I’m not saying actually date,” Calvin continued. “I mean like… pretend for a day. See what people even get out of this stuff.”
Andre stared ahead at the road again, visibly uncomfortable now. Calvin almost took it back, not because he was joking — he actually wasn’t sure if he was — but because Andre suddenly looked genuinely nervous. Not annoyed. Nervous.
“I don’t know,” Andre muttered eventually.
“You said you didn’t wanna die without anything.”
“Yeah, but not with you.”
Calvin gasped dramatically. “Wow. Okay. Devastating.”
“I mean— shut up, you know what I mean.” Andre rubbed a hand over his face hard enough to drag his skin downward. He looked exhausted again. Frustrated. Embarrassed. Every emotion hitting him at once and making him meaner because he didn’t know how else to handle it. “It’s weird,” he admitted quietly.
“Everything we do is weird.”
“That’s different.”
Calvin tilted his head slightly. “Why?”
Andre opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Because he didn’t actually know. The idea itself made his stomach twist strangely. Not in a good way. Not entirely in a bad way either, which honestly made it worse. The thought of pretending to hold someone’s hand, pretending to matter that specifically to another person, pretending someone wanted him around like that—
It made his chest feel tight. And maybe the worst part was that Calvin had suggested it so casually. Like it wasn’t a massive thing to say.
“You’re serious?” Andre asked after a while.
Calvin shrugged one shoulder. “Kinda.”
“Kinda?”
“I don’t know, man. We’re already doing all this other shit. Might as well unlock the final human experience before we go full terrorist.”
Andre barked out another laugh despite himself. The car slowed near an empty parking lot overlooking a dark little field. Andre pulled in without really thinking about it, parking crooked across faded lines. Neither of them got out, the engine kept running softly beneath the silence. Andre stared through the windshield for a long moment before speaking again. “You really don’t think it’s pathetic?”
“What?”
“That I care about this.”
Calvin looked at him. Andre still wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“No,” Calvin said finally. “I think you’re seventeen.”
That hit harder than Andre expected, his throat tightened slightly in a way he immediately hated. Outside, somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once. The town felt half-asleep around them. Calvin reached over suddenly and tugged lightly at the sleeve of Andre’s shirt, not even a big gesture, barely anything. Still, Andre froze immediately.
“There,” Calvin said. “Congratulations. Human connection.”
Andre looked down at Calvin’s hand on his arm like it had personally betrayed him.
“This is stupid.”
“Probably.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah.”
Andre swallowed hard, staring at the hand for another second before looking away again.
The silence after that settled strangely between them. Not awkward exactly. Just heavy. The kind that pressed against the windows of the car and made every tiny sound feel louder than it should’ve been. The engine idling. Andre tapping his thumb nervously against the steering wheel. Calvin shifting slightly in his seat every few minutes like he suddenly had no clue where to put his limbs.
Andre kept staring forward at the empty field ahead of them. His brain would not shut up.
This isn’t gay. This isn't gay. Not gay. Notgaynotgaynotgaynot—
It repeated over and over in increasingly unconvincing ways.
This is basically scientific. Exposure therapy. Social experimentation. Like astronauts training in simulators or whatever. Nobody called astronauts gay. Probably.
Andre rubbed both hands down his face hard enough to leave red marks across his cheeks. Beside him, Calvin stayed unusually quiet for once, looking out the passenger-side window while absentmindedly picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. The whole thing had clearly stopped being funny.
Finally Andre muttered, “Fine.”
Calvin glanced over. “What?”
“I said fine.”
“For what?”
Andre looked annoyed immediately. “Don’t make me repeat it.”
A pause. Then Calvin’s eyebrows slowly lifted. “Oh my god,” he said. “You’re actually agreeing to this.”
Andre’s stomach twisted painfully at how shocked he sounded. “Well now I don’t want to.”
“No, no, wait.” Calvin straightened up fast, holding both hands up defensively. “I’m not judging you. I just genuinely thought you were gonna call me a slur and drive us into a lake.”
Andre snorted despite himself, though his face still felt hot. “Shut up.”
Calvin leaned back again, visibly trying to process this development. The problem was that now the idea actually existed. Before, it had just been some weird half-joke Calvin tossed out into the universe because he hated seeing Andre spiral like that. But now Andre had agreed, which meant they were apparently committing to... whatever the hell this was.
Calvin scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. “So,” he started carefully, “how do we make this not weird?”
Andre immediately answered, “Impossible.”
“Good point.” Another silence, then Calvin said, “I mean, couples usually do stuff.”
Andre visibly tensed again. “Like what?”
Calvin shrugged, trying and failing to look casual. “I don’t know. Holding hands. Talking about feelings. Listening to shitty music together. Tax fraud.” Andre stared at him blankly. “Too soon for tax fraud?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Objectively true.”
Despite himself, Andre could feel some of the tension easing out of his shoulders again. Calvin had this annoying ability to drag conversations away from complete emotional collapse right before they became unbearable. Then Calvin made the mistake of continuing. “And I mean…” He hesitated just slightly. “Kissing too, probably.”
Andre looked at him with absolute horror. Not mild discomfort. Not embarrassment.
Pure dread.
Calvin nearly laughed at the expression alone. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You look like I just asked you to disarm a bomb.”
Andre’s voice came out strangled. “Why would we do that?”
“Because that’s part of dating?”
“No it isn’t.”
“It literally is.”
“Says who?”
“Every human being alive.”
Andre turned toward the windshield again immediately, jaw clenched so hard it looked painful. Calvin could practically see the internal panic happening in real time.
This isn’t gay.
This isn’t gay.
This is still somehow not gay.
The issue was that Calvin wasn’t helping by looking the way he did right now — slouched sideways in the passenger seat, dark hoodie sleeves pushed up slightly, messy hair falling into his eyes while he stared at Andre with open amusement. Andre suddenly became hyperaware of the fact they were alone, which was stupid. They’d been alone together hundreds of times before. But this felt different now.
Calvin noticed him shutting down almost immediately. “Okay,” he said after a moment, tone lighter now. “Forget it.”
Andre frowned slightly. “What?”
“The kissing thing.” Calvin waved a hand dismissively. “You clearly hate the idea. It’s whatever.” Andre’s chest tightened unexpectedly. Calvin looked away again, trying to sound casual even though there was an awkward edge underneath it now. “We can just pretend I never said it.”
Something ugly and panicked flared in Andre’s stomach at that. Because suddenly the whole thing felt like it was slipping away before it had even started. The one chance he had to experience literally anything before everything ended. And yeah, the situation was weird and uncomfortable and made his entire nervous system short-circuit, but Calvin was still sitting here offering it to him.
Offering him something. Andre reacted before fully thinking, his hand shot out fast enough to surprise both of them, grabbing Calvin hard by the wrist. “Don’t,” he snapped. Calvin blinked at him. Andre’s grip tightened unconsciously. “I want this.”
The words came out sharper than intended, almost angry. Like he was pissed Calvin had even implied taking it back. For a second neither of them moved, Calvin just stared at him with that same stupid expression Andre secretly hated because it made him look weirdly soft. Confused. Open. Like some lost dog somebody forgot at a gas station. Andre’s heart was beating so hard it genuinely hurt.
This isn’t gay. (His brain sounded less confident now.)
Calvin glanced briefly down at the hand still wrapped around his wrist, then back up at Andre’s face. “Oh,” he said quietly.
Andre swallowed. Then, before he could think better of it, he leaned in.
It was clumsy immediately. Neither of them knew what they were doing. Their noses bumped awkwardly at first and Andre nearly recoiled on instinct, face burning with humiliation so intense he almost opened the car door and threw himself into traffic. But Calvin didn’t laugh, that was the thing. He just looked startled for half a second before leaning forward too, careful and hesitant in a way Andre wouldn’t have expected from him.
The kiss itself barely lasted more than a few seconds.
Awkward pressure. Warmth. Calvin’s breath catching slightly against his mouth. Then Andre pulled back fast, staring straight ahead again like he’d just committed a federal crime, and the car went completely silent.
Calvin blinked twice. “Huh,” he said finally.
Andre wanted to die instantly. “That bad?”
“No.” Calvin still looked a little stunned. “No, actually.”
Andre didn’t answer that his hand was still gripping Calvin’s wrist. He hadn’t even realized it until Calvin shifted slightly beneath it, slowly, carefully, Calvin turned his hand over until their palms pressed together instead. Andre stared at it, immediately looking away again like eye contact with their joined hands might kill him on the spot.