Work Text:
“No!” Klitz protests without hesitation, furrowing his eyebrows. The video game character on the TV screen dies as the attention of the boy controlling him is pulled away from it.
“Why not?”
Klitz sets his controller down and looks at his friend like the answer is clear as day, which, to be fair, it is. “Dude, that’s gay .”
Eli grins.
“Yeah, that’s kind of the point of ‘gay chicken’,” he says, shifting slightly on the couch. “Y’know what, I bet you ten bucks that you’ll lose.”
Klitz rolls his eyes.
“Make that a twenty.”
“Alright! So you’re in?”
“I- I guess. How do you even play it?”
Eli thinks for a moment before answering. “I think we’re supposed to, like, lean into a kiss and the first one to pull away loses.”
“Where the hell did you even get the idea for this?”
“...Books and shit.”
Klitz gives him a look.
“Okay, okay… Porn.”
Klitz smiles, amused. “You watch gay porn?”
“No! Well, I mean… yeah… But not, like, on purpose!”
A laugh escapes Klitz’s lips. Sure, “not on purpose”.
“That’s gay as shit.”
It’s Eli’s turn to roll his eyes now. “Whatever. Let’s do this.”
“Why do you even wanna play this stupid game anyway?”
“Dunno. Just seemed fun,” Eli answers dismissively. He lifts his feet onto the couch and turns to face Klitz, who does the same. A smile is spread on Eli’s face, and Klitz can’t help but to stare at his friend’s lips. They look soft, kind of like a girl’s. Maybe he wouldn’t mind kissing those.
“Alright, you ready to do this?” the dark-haired boy asks.
“Damn straight.”
Eli grins. “I don’t think ‘straight’ is the word to describe this situation, Klitzy.”
Klitz has to stop himself from smiling. He wouldn’t give Eli the honor of making him laugh from such a stupid fucking joke.
“Shut up.”
After a while of some more slightly awkward deliberating and banter, the game finally begins. Eli is the first one to lean in. Klitz’s eyes are still fixated on the boy's lips, and he closes the gap between them, connecting their lips.
It feels nice enough. Klitz closes his eyes, trying to imagine a pretty girl in Eli’s place, someone like Danielle. Or the hot brunette in their history class. Feeling Eli’s tongue against his lips asking for permission to enter, takes his thoughts away from girls.
Eli’s clearly trying to make him lose, and Klitz is having none of it, instead parting his lips slightly and letting Eli’s tongue into his mouth. It feels weird; Klitz has never done this kind of thing before. He’s not sure if Eli has either.
Klitz tilts his head a little, moving his tongue awkwardly against Eli’s. His nose brushes against Eli’s cheek. If he wants to win this shit, he’d better start doing something.
He places his hands on Eli’s sides, pulling him closer to his own body. Eli doesn’t even flinch, only leaning deeper into the kiss. Klitz winces, accidentally scraping his teeth on the other boy’s tongue.
Klitz can feel Eli smiling against his lips as his hands travel from the other boy’s sides to his thighs, squeezing them gently. Eli responds by running his fingers through Klitz’s hair, brushing it away from his face, making his breathing get faster. It’s just something about having his hair played with that drives him wild. A gasp escapes Klitz, with Eli doing nothing to help, only continuing to stroke his hair.
They keep on kissing, Eli’s teeth tugging at Klitz’s lower lip. The taller boy’s hands slide down Eli’s thighs to his ass. He feels him up, grabbing his ass as discreetly as he can, paying no mind to the action, really.
Just then, Eli quickly pulls away from the kiss.
“Dude!” he yells, looking at the distraught boy sitting in front of him.
“What?”
“You groped me!”
Klitz stares at him, a bit dumbfounded and confused.
“I- I thought that was the point?”
Eli pauses before responding with the exact same energy as before.
“Yeah, but like… dude! That’s my ass!”
“Calm down, drama queen. You’re just mad that you lost,” Klitz answers, a small grin forming on his lips, “and you owe me twenty bucks.”
Eli rolls his eyes once more before getting up from the couch, going to fetch his wallet.
***
It’s been a few weeks since that little game of gay chicken. They both still tease each other about the kiss, Klitz more so than Eli. He can’t help but find it hilarious how defensive Eli is over being a ‘gay chicken’ or whatever the fuck, considering he was the one who wanted to play the game in the first place.
Despite the humor he finds in the situation, Klitz also feels strangely good about the whole thing, sometimes finding himself recalling the tiniest little details from their kiss. From how Eli’s hand felt in his hair to how their lips fit together so perfectly… Klitz didn’t know much about kissing, but he’d be lying if he said that theirs hadn’t been a damn good one.
And anyway, Eli’s not the worst first kiss. Surely, he could’ve done a lot worse. Eli’s a pretty good-looking guy, even from a straight dude’s point of view. Or at least Klitz thinks he’s straight.
‘Cause girls are pretty. Like, really pretty. But sometimes Klitz finds himself looking at guys instead of girls. Like that one guy in their AP calculus class, or even weirder, that ridiculously good-looking substitute teacher they had in physics once. He’s heard that it’s normal to look at other men like that sometimes, even as a heterosexual, but lately it’s gone a bit further than just looking.
He got himself a gay porn magazine.
It’s not that weird, right? He knows for a fact that Eli had watched a gay porno at least once, so he’s not the only one in the tripod to experiment with this stuff. Maybe even Matthew had done something like that before Danielle came around…
…He probably shouldn’t think about what kind of porn his friends are jacking off to.
But in any case, he can’t help but to feel aroused by some of the images in the magazine. Not all of them, of course, not the weird, kinky shit that Eli would probably be into.
…Goddammit.
Stop thinking about Eli’s porn preferences!
One one occasion, Klitz finds himself jerking off while browsing the magazine. He stops at one of the pages, featuring a picture of a young, Hispanic-looking guy. The guy’s got dark eyes and hair, and overall he’s just… gorgeous, with his fit, lean body completely on display. It doesn’t take long for Klitz to bring himself to completion while looking at the picture.
Once he’s come back down from the orgasmic high, Klitz lets out a sigh and wipes off the semen from his hand and dick. He takes another look at the picture that he came to. Something about the model feels familiar, even though Klitz is a hundred percent sure that he’s never seen him before — it’s not another Danielle situation, unfortunately.
Then it hits him.
The guy looks like Eli. The dude who Klitz just jacked off to bears a striking resemblance to his best friend.
Fuck.
***
The next few days are awkward. Klitz barely talks to Eli when they see each other, avoiding the usual topic of sex almost completely. He’s suddenly begun feeling breathless, lost for words around his friend.
It’s embarrassing, so goddamn embarrassing. It’s one thing to jerk off to a random guy, but jacking it to someone who looks fucking identical to your friend? Christ.
One evening, they’re at Klitz’s place, watching some cheap 80’s slasher film. Eli had picked it, and he keeps pointing out the goofs and spewing out little fun facts about the film. Klitz keeps smiling politely, finding it pretty… cute how invested his friend is in the movie, despite its low production quality. Still, he can’t get a word out, it still just feels too weird. He can only hope that Eli hasn’t noticed his strange behavior, but he knows he’s screwed when Eli asks him if he’s doing okay.
“Yeah… Yeah, everything’s alright,” he answers, lying through his teeth, trying to keep the same, awkward smile on his face.
“You sure?” Eli asks, raising a brow, obviously not buying into his bullshit. “You’ve been acting weird. Like, weirder than usual. And that’s saying something.”
Klitz huffs out a small, forced laugh. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Eli nods slowly. “Okay… But y’know, you can always talk to me if there’s anything—”
“Well, y’know, I’ve been feeling kinda weird ever since we kissed, and I bought a gay porno, and there was a picture of this guy who sorta looks like you, and I jerked off to him, and now I’m not sure if I’m gay or straight or whatever, and I kinda feel like I like you, and I understand if you don’t want to be friends with me anymore but I just thought you should know.”
Klitz’s eyes are just as wide as Eli’s at the sudden confession, the words just having spilled out of him like a dam had just broken or something. He thought saying it all out loud would take the burden off his shoulder, but it’s still there, heavier than ever. If he just could, Klitz would disappear off the face of the earth.
Eli just stares at him, eyebrows raised in surprise as he takes in what was said.
“...Okay,” he finally says. Klitz turns away from Eli, unable to look him in the eyes. His face feels hot; he’s pretty sure he’s red as crimson at this point. “Not the answer I was expecting, but okay.”
Klitz doesn’t know how to respond. He hopes Eli will keep talking to fill the dead air.
“And, y’know, I don’t hate you.”
At those words, Klitz shyly turns back to look at Eli. A tear forms in his eye, which he tries wiping away as discreetly as possible. The situation was already embarrassing enough, crying would only make things worse.
Eli moves his hand onto Klitz’s shoulder.
“I- I think I might like you as well,” he says, looking Klitz in the eyes and letting out a quiet laugh.
Klitz’s eyes widen at that. Had- Had he heard Eli correctly?
“What?” he manages to say.
“Yeah, I, uh… this is fucking gay, dude,” Eli mutters, a grin on his lips. Klitz can’t help but to smile as well, despite still being in disbelief of his friend’s words. Something about Eli’s mere presence is comforting to him, even in an awkward situation like this.
“I think we might be gay,” Klitz says quietly. Or at least bi.
The grin on Eli’s lips gets a bit wider at those words.
“I guess so,” he mumbles, his hand moving onto Klitz’s knee. “Do you, like… actually, seriously like me?”
Klitz nods sheepishly.
“Do… Do you like me?” he asks in turn, his voice soft and low, almost whisper-like.
Eli’s hand idly strokes Klitz’s knee as he answers. “Yeah, I… I think I do.”
Klitz moves his hand onto Eli’s, grabbing it. He lets out a sigh, one he didn’t even realize he was holding in. It’s quiet. Someone in the movie gets killed and blood splatters everywhere on the screen. They both ignore it, even Eli, who just a while ago couldn’t shut up about the flick.
“So…” the shorter boy finally says, grinning. “you jacked it to me…”
The blush comes rushing back onto Klitz’s cheeks. “W-Well, not literally !”
Eli laughs, giving Klitz a playful shove. “You’re so gay.”
“Well, you’re one to talk…” Klitz huffs. “You’re the one who challenged me to that stupid fucking game in the first place…”
A shy smile forms on Eli’s lips.
“Whatever…” he replies quietly. “And about that game… you wouldn’t care for a rematch?”
Klitz smiles, immediately pulling the other boy closer to him.
“Damn straight.”