Word Count: 1850 (Umm. I got carried away.)

The deserted classroom was just the sort of place Paris had been looking for. Dark, empty, and at the end of the hall, it was removed from the rest of the classrooms and tucked away in a corner, almost forgotten by the rest of the school. He wondered how often it was used for actual classes, and thought it more likely that it was used most often for the sort of illicit activities he liked to partake in himself.

He didn’t bother to turn the lights on upon entering. The last thing he wanted to do was to bring attention to the room. He grabbed his companion’s hand before the other boy to could flip the switch and flood the room with light, giving him a look of warning.

“Do that and a teacher will come looking in minutes,” he told him knowledgably.

The other boy looked nervous, taking his hand away to wipe both of his sweaty palms on his school issue pants. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” he said, nervously glancing around the room.

“Don’t be stupid,” Paris smirked invitingly, inching closer to grab the boy by his tie. “We won’t get caught as long as we’re careful.”

His accomplice didn’t look reassured. He shifted from one foot to the next, refusing to meet Paris’ eye.

“Don’t you trust me?” Paris asked, his voice light and playful. He tilted his head to seek out the other boy’s gaze. “Relax. I do this all the time.”

This hardly seemed to mollify the boy. He looked at Paris, disgruntled, and then shifted his gaze to the floor.

“No one’s going to catch us so long as we’re quiet and we keep the lights off,” Paris continued to reassure him, giving his tie a tug and leading him further into the classroom. “You didn’t seem all that against doing this earlier, and you had plenty of time to back out on the way here. Why the cold feet now?”

Paris let go of his quarry when he felt the edge of a desk against the small of his back. He smiled and pushed himself up onto the solid surface, placing his hands flat against it as he leaned forward suggestively.

They were in one of the lesser used science classrooms, which served as both a room for lecture as well as a place to conduct labs. The normal, individual desks that populated other rooms on the math and English halls were nowhere to be seen. Instead, they’d been replaced by longer tables, with enough room for two students to sit comfortably and conduct their experiments. A collection of telescopes resided in glass-door cabinets on one side of the room, beside a deep sink with an attached eye-rinse. Other cabinets, locked on the outside, lined the back wall, and the nozzle of a decontamination shower hung from the ceiling in one of the far corners.

Paris thought the room was perfect, and couldn’t understand why his companion couldn’t seem to agree with him.

“You know you want to do this, Roscoe,” he said enticingly. “You told me so yesterday, and I told you I could make it happen.”

Roscoe shifted again and spared a quick look toward the closed door. “I can’t get in trouble again.”

Paris snorted. “It’s not like you’ll be sent off somewhere. You’re already at Hillworth. There aren’t any other places in the district they can send kids like us, unless they want to throw you in Juvie.”

“My old man’ll kill me.”

“You going to let Daddy control you for the rest of your life?” Paris wondered, unimpressed. “Don’t be so pathetic.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Roscoe grumbled, lowering his head to stare are his feet. A curtain of thick, mousy brown hair fell to conceal his eyes.

“If you’re not going to do anything, go ahead and leave. I’ll find someone else. Harvey’s probably out by the bleachers. He’s never turned down a good time.”

Paris made a move to slide off of the table, but a pair of hands on his waist stopped him. Curiously, he lifted his eyebrows and peered up into Roscoe’s partially hidden face. The other boy still looked as if he wasn’t quite sure they should be doing this, but he also seemed unwilling to miss the chance.

“That’s more like it,” Paris said, lifting his arms to drape them over Roscoe’s shoulders. He pulled him closer, and as he did so Roscoe’s face descended, closing the space between them until their lips met in a firm kiss.

The vacant room was filled with the rustling of fabric and the wet sound of kissing. Roscoe’s hands drifted over Paris’ clothes, tugging on his shirt and vest and his already loosened tie. Paris let him do whatever he wanted, savoring the feel of another’s hands on his body, heedless to the smearing of his red lipstick.

This was Paris’ idea of time well spent. Aside from his dance class – which consisted largely of a group of boys whose prior experience in the art was limited to hip hop and street dancing – Paris’ school days were generally long and boring. He had no use for science, and the only time he ever used math outside of class was to count the money he made in his little private “business” to make sure his patrons didn’t rip him off. Literature was even duller, listening to his teacher drone on and on about dead old men and the deeper meaning behind their dreadfully boring books.

The only truly gratifying parts of his day were gym – when he could sneak into the locker-room with one of his classmates or hide behind the bleachers when they were supposed to be running around the track – and moments like this, when he skipped the monotony of his classes and found a dark corner or empty room somewhere, and enjoyed his time in the company of another boy.

This was what he loved most. Roscoe wasn’t a horrible kisser – a little overenthusiastic, but considering how long Paris had watched Roscoe panting after him, he couldn’t blame him for becoming too excited now that he had him. Paris certainly wasn’t going to complain. At least Roscoe smelled better than Harvey, who always seemed to want to paw at him after football practice, and he’d stayed away from the burritos at lunch, so his breath wasn’t quite as foul smelling as it could have been. In fact, Paris thought he could detect the taste of strawberries in the other boy’s mouth.

He loved strawberries.

Unfortunately, Roscoe pulled away before they could take things to another level, tearing their mouths apart and looking around the room anxiously.

“We’re going to get caught,” he whispered.

“We’re not going to get caught,” Paris replied exasperatedly. “Quit being so scared. You act like I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. No one uses this room.”

“What if one of the teachers comes by?”

“If someone else comes by, it’ll be others like us.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“How many times have I done this?”

Roscoe paused to look at him. Through the scant amount of light filtering in from the hall and the shaded windows, Paris could see Roscoe’s mouth stained red from his own lipstick.

“Weren’t you caught at Meadowview and expelled?” Roscoe finally asked.

Paris grinned at the memory. “I was being a bit naughtier then. In retrospect, the bathroom probably wasn’t the best place to do it, but the possibility of getting caught was all part of the thrill.”

Roscoe’s eyes widened in alarm.

“Don’t worry. We’re completely safe here,” Paris reassured him, fingering his tie again.

He leaned up to kiss him again, but Roscoe pulled away.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said, backing toward the door.

Paris rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

“My teacher’s going to notice I’m not in class,” Roscoe continued.

“Since when have you cared about skipping class?”

“What if someone else comes by and sees us?”

“Then they’ll get quite a show, won’t they?” Paris said, grinning again.

Roscoe looked slightly sick. “They’ll know that I’ve been with you. I’ll never live it down.”

“You think I haven’t been with half of the guys who’d pick on you for it? The only reason they give people such a hard time is because they don’t want to admit they’ve been with me, too.”

The comment didn’t seem to make Roscoe feel any better. “That’s gross,” he said.

Paris shrugged, unconcerned. “People will do anything as long as it feels good.”

Roscoe shook his head, taking another step back.

“Maybe you should have thought about what people would say before you decided you wanted in my pants,” Paris suggested, growing a bit testy and impatient. He didn’t usually have to work so hard to convince people.

The other boy flinched. “This was a mistake.”

“It didn’t seem that way when you were kissing me.”

“Yeah, well, you… I was just… and you were…”

It didn’t appear as if Roscoe was capable of completing his sentence. He stuttered for a while longer, alternatively opening and closing his mouth, uttering a few strings of words that didn’t make any sense. Paris sat on the table and let Roscoe stumble in his speech, idly bouncing one of his feet and tapping the heel of his shoe against one of the table legs.

They were interrupted by the blaring of the school bell, signaling the end of class. Roscoe’s eyes widened at the sound of doors banging open all along the hall, and the voices of students chatting and shouting at one another on their way to their next classes. Not a single person came to the room they occupied together, but the noise seemed to be too much for Roscoe. He turned and bolted, forcing the door open and sprinting down the hall, forgetting the lipstick that had smeared on his face.

Whether or not the poor fool wanted people to find out what they’d been doing, they were going to know anyway. As far as Paris was aware, he was the only boy at school who chose to sport red lipstick.

Sighing over the disappointment but smiling at the thought of Roscoe’s face when he discovered why people would soon be laughing at him, Paris slid off the desk to touch his feet to the floor, lifting his arms into a stretch before lowering them again to begin making his way toward the door. He considered going to his next class, but the prospect of sitting through another round of algebra was far from appealing. He supposed he could always go back to his dorm room, but he’d risk being caught wandering the halls to get there, and then he’d be forced to sit in the principal’s office and listen to another one of his lectures about skipping class.

Perhaps he should find another secluded spot on campus in which to hide out?

Vaguely, he wondered if Harvey would join him.