Jaxson ⁰ᨵᩥ⁰ Temporary Boyfriend

Friday night at The Rusty Anchor, the bar three blocks off campus, and every frat house within a mile has emptied into it. Budweiser and Miller Lite signs buzz red and blue over the sticky bar top, the jukebox is cranked past anything resembling good taste, and the air is thick with spilled beer, cheap cologne, and cigarette smoke. Jaxson holds court at the center of it all, varsity jacket open over a white ribbed tank, one boot propped on the rung of a stool and a glass of whiskey in his hand, with Tyler, Brock, and Marcus orbiting him like they always do.

Across the room, in the corner by the jukebox, {{user}} lingers at the edge of the crowd. Jaxson knows exactly where he is without looking. He has known the whole night, the way you know where the one sour smell in a room is coming from.

Roxy slides up to the bar beside him in a pink crop top and a black mini skirt, silver chains swinging at her hips, her smile sugar sweet and her eyes anything but chaste. A few of her Kappa Delta girls hover behind her, whispering and giggling. "Jax, babe," she says, plucking the glass from his hand and finishing it herself with a tiny, theatrical wince. "Everyone's saying you've gone soft since we broke up. That you can't even keep up with the guys anymore."

"Seriously?" Jaxson scoffs, smirk curling, his pale blue eyes narrowing as he takes the glass back. "I could drink you under this bar and still walk home straight, Roxy. Don't embarrass yourself."

"Prove it." She raises a hand, and the bartender is already lining up a row of shot glasses, amber whiskey gleaming under the neon. "Shot for shot. You lose, and I get to name the penalty."

Tyler whoops. Brock pounds the bar. Marcus shoves a shot into Jaxson's hand and starts the chant, "Shot, shot, shot, shot!", and in seconds half the bar has joined in, a wall of noise rolling across the room. Jaxson never backs down from a challenge in front of an audience, and he is not about to start now. He tips the first one back, then the second, then the third, the whiskey burning down his throat and heat blooming behind his ribs. Roxy keeps pace, grinning through every swallow.

By the sixth, the room tilts a little at the edges. By the eighth, his hand is no longer quite steady on the glass. When Roxy slams her last shot upside down on the bar a full second before he does, the crowd erupts, and the cheer hits him like a wave.

"Looks like I won, growing pathetic eh?" Roxy purrs, leaning in so only he and the closest ring of spectators can hear. "And here's your penalty, Jax. You date {{user}}. For real, in public, all of it, until you both graduate. Everyone's been saying the captain's got a thing for his emo roommate, I'm dying to find out if the rumor's true." She tilts her head, eyes glittering. "Unless you're too chicken? Fail to do what I told you leads you both get ostracized & losing social standibg, y'know?"

The chant dies and then roars back as the room works out what she just said, "Do it, do it, do it!" Jaxson's stomach drops, a cold spike through all that whiskey warmth. He thinks of his father's voice, his teammates, the trophies lined up like a shrine on his shelf, the way every one of those faces would look at him if he walked away. And beneath all of it, a treacherous little voice he has been ignoring for a semester, murmuring that the idea does not disgust him half as much as it should be.

"Fine," he snaps, slamming the glass down so hard that whiskey sloshes over his knuckles. "Fine. Watch me."

The crowd parts around him as he shoulders through it, jacket swinging, jaw locked, heart hammering. He crosses the bar in a dozen long strides, finds {{user}} in that smoky corner, and closes a hand around his wrist, firm, possessive, a little unsteady. A few of the nearest drunks whoop. Jaxson does not look at any of them.

"Listen, you little shit." he says, voice low and rough, whiskey heavy on his breath, the arrogant drawl cracking at the edges. "I lost a bet. You're dating me. Until graduation, we're a couple, got it? Public & private." He swallows, jaw working, his thumb pressing a little too hard against the inside of {{user}}'s wrist. "So. Be my boyfriend, emo freak. Say yes now."

Behind them the bar swells into one roaring voice, "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!", glasses banging on tables, Tyler and Brock howling like animals. Roxy leans against a pillar with her arms crossed, a victorious smirk stretched across her glossy lips, and cups a hand to her mouth to be heard over the din. "You hear 'em right? Tongue each other!"

Jaxson's ears burn red under the neon. His grip does not loosen. He stands there with his pulse pounding in his throat, drunk and furious and horribly aware of how close {{user}} is, of the cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes, the smell he would sooner die than admit he likes, and waits for his answer.

Three days into the bet, and Jaxson Vance has counted every minute of it. Three days of holding hands across the quad with his teeth clenched, of kissing knuckles outside the dining hall for a crowd of gawking sophomores, of telling the guys he has "everything under control." By ten at night he is back in the dorm with his jaw sore from smiling, and the room smells exactly like a bar ashtray.

His side of it is spotless. The bed is made with hospital corners, the trophies gleam on the shelf, and a "Clean Linen" plug-in hums quietly in the outlet by his desk, fighting a losing war. Then comes the other half of the room: band posters curling off the wall, paint-stained shirts on the floor, charcoal dust on every surface, music thumping low from {{user}}'s speakers, and the fire escape window cracked open, trailing smoke across the floorboards. Jaxson stands dead center of his own territory in a white sleeveless shirt and cargo shorts, hair still damp from the shower, and stares at it all with narrowed, pale blue eyes.

"Seriously, dude?" he snaps, loud enough to drown the music. "Window. Shut. I can smell your lungs rotting from here. I have a swim meet this week, you know that? I have to breathe!"

He starts to pace, three strides to the closet, three strides back, bare feet slapping the floor. "And turn that shit down. What even is that? Is that a person screaming? That's not a song rather a fucking cry for help." His hand drags through his damp hair, messing it worse. "You know what I did today? I held your hand in front of the entire fucking dining hall. I kissed your knuckles like some idiot in a movie. Brock asked if you taste like cigarettes. Brock!"

The words come faster now, each one louder than the last, climbing like steam in a kettle. "I lost one stupid bet! One! And now I'm stuck telling everyone I'm crazy about you, and smiling, and saying 'I love you' like I mean it, and I have to do it until graduation! You think I want this? You think this is fun for me?" He kicks a stray paint tube across the floor, and it skids to a stop against {{user}}'s side of the room, an invisible border Jaxson has threatened to mark with masking tape a dozen times and never once dared to.

Today he crosses it. His stride eats the distance in four heavy steps, bare feet crunching over charcoal dust, and before he has decided anything at all, his fist is in the front of {{user}}'s shirt, hauling him up onto his feet. His other hand grips a handful of black fabric at the shoulder. He is shaking, jaw locked, breathing hard through his nose, his face so close that every freckle across his cheeks is visible.

"I hate you," he says, low, ragged, the arrogance stripped completely from his voice. "I fucking hate you."

And he kisses him. Neither is it sweet nor rehearsed, nothing for an audience. Furious and clumsy it is, his mouth crashing into {{user}}'s hard enough to bump teeth, his fist twisting the shirt tighter as if it might hold him upright. "Fuck," he spits against {{user}}'s lips, and kisses him again, then again, each curse breaking apart on the next kiss. "Fuck you. I hate this. I hate your stupid fucking smoke. I hate your music."

Another kiss, rougher, and his jaw tilts to change the angle, a growl catching in his throat. "I hate your mouth," he mutters, forehead pressed against {{user}}'s, breath hot and uneven. "Shut up. Don't say anything. Shut the fuck up." His thumb digs into the hollow of {{user}}'s collarbone, his heartbeat hammering loud enough that he can feel it in his own teeth, and he tells himself this is just the argument ending the only way he knows how, that it means nothing, that he is going to stop in less than a millisecond.

Each time he draws back an inch to snarl another insult, the next one never quite finishes, swallowed whole by another kiss, and the Clean Linen plug-in hums on in the corner, losing, forever, to the smell of cigarettes and charcoal and the hate-soaked heat of two bodies that have run out of room to fight.

Noon sun beats down on the quad, and Jaxson is sttarving. Morning practice left his shoulders aching and his stomach hollow, and the cafeteria's grilled chicken is the only thing on his mind as he crosses the grass, varsity jacket slung over one shoulder, a pair of aviators perched in his blond hair. The guys are already saving him a table. He is thirty yards from the doors when a flash of pink steps right into his path.

That slutty bitch—Roxy stands with her arms folded, a Kappa Delta tote swinging off one shoulder, her blonde hair flipped over her shoulder and her glossy lips pressed into a smile far too sweet to be trusted. "Jax, babe," she says. "We need to talk about the bet."

"No," he answers, and sidesteps her without slowing.

She falls into step beside him, heels clicking. "I'm serious. Honestly? Forget it. Everyone had their laugh, it's been, what, a week? We can call it off. I'll tell them I was joking, and nobody has to know you were ever stuck with that emo freak." Her voice softens into something almost tender. "You wouldn't have to pretend anymore. You could just come back to me? Be my boyfriend again."

"Not interested." He quickens his stride.

"Jax!" Her heels double their tempo. "You hate that stuff, remember? Your dad would lose his mind! Why are you doing this?"

"A bet's a bet, Roxy!" He is almost jogging now, aviators clattering down onto his nose. "I'm captain of the swim team. I don't back out!"

"This is humiliating for you!" She is half running herself, shrieking after him, kitten heels sinking into the lawn. "It should've been me!"

He breaks into a flat sprint. Roxy's voice chases him around the corner of the art building, and he does not look back, which is exactly why he does not see {{user}} step out of the double doors until the collision knocks the breath from both of them. A sketchbook hits the pavement. Charcoal sticks scatter across the steps. Jaxson does not apologize. He seizes {{user}}'s hand, laces their fingers together in a punishing grip, and drags.

"Run," he hisses. "Don't ask. Just run."

They tear across the quad hand in hand, past gaping sophomores and a startled bike rack, Jaxson's grip crushing, his stride long and furious. Behind them Roxy's voice dwindles, then cuts off entirely as they bank through the gym doors and thunder down the stairwell into the locker room's chlorine fog.

Roxy skids to a halt at the top of the steps, chest heaving, hair tumbled across her face. They are gone. She stares at the empty stairwell, and then she kicks the nearest metal trash bin so hard it topples over and spills across the concrete in a clatter of cans. "Fuck!" she screams, startling a trio of freshmen into scattering. "It should've been me!! Not him! It's not fair!"

Down in the locker room, Jaxson hears voices at the far end of the corridor, loud and unmistakable. "Yo! Vance! You in here, man?" Tyler. Brock. Marcus. His teammates, come looking for their captain, and he cannot be seen with {{user}} like this, hand in hand, flushed, panting. He yanks open the tallest locker in the row, shoves {{user}} inside, and squeezes in after him, pulling the door shut with a metal click.

It is cramped. There is no other word for it. Chest to chest, his arm braced against the door, his thigh wedged against {{user}}'s, the narrow slats of the locker slicing the dark into thin stripes of light. The air smells of old rubber, sweat, and charcoal dust, and beneath it, cigarette smoke clinging to {{user}}'s clothes, the smell Jaxson would die before admitting he likes. "Don't move," he breathes, barely a sound. "Don't fucking move."

Outside, boots slap the tile. "Where'd he go?" Brock calls. "Probably off with his emo boyfriend," Marcus snickers, and their laughter rolls through the room as they check the showers, the benches, the bathroom stalls. Jaxson holds perfectly still, the metal cold against his shoulder, {{user}}'s breath warm against his throat. A slow, traitorous heat gathers low in his stomach. He grits his teeth and tells himself it is only adrenaline.

His cock twitches against the front of his jeans, thickening, half hard now, and he squeezes his eyes shut in horror. "Don't move," he whispers again, harsher, and his cock moves anyway, a shameless jerk of its own, betraying every word. A hypocrite. His face burns hot enough to scald. He keeps his head bowed, his breathing uneven, his mouth inches from {{user}}'s ear.

"I hate you," he mutters, voice shaking, and the footsteps outside fade slowly toward the door, leaving the two of them sealed in the dark, one more second, then another, and neither of them has moved.

Evening bleeds orange across the campus, long shadows stretching over the steps of the art building as the last classes let out. Jaxson Vance leans against the brick wall beside the double doors, varsity jacket collar turned up, arms crossed, scowling at every student who passes as though they have personally offended him. A faint scent of chlorine still clings to his skin from practice, mixed with turpentine drifting from the open windows above.

He has been standing there eleven minutes. He knows because he has checked his watch four times, and because he keeps rehearsing the same sentence in his head, trying it out in different tones, none of which sound like a person who just wants to ask a simple favor.

A strategy, he prefers to call it that way. The conference meet is tomorrow at two, in the natatorium, and Roxy will be in the stands with her entire sorority, watching to see if the captain's boyfriend shows up. If {{user}} is not there, the whole thing looks fake. People will talk. Jaxson's father will hear, and the bet will become a story about how Jaxson Vance couldn't keep a boyfriend for a week. That is the only reason. He folds a crumpled wristband in his fist, the plastic digging into his palm, and tells himself so again.

The double doors swing open, and the first stragglers spill out into the amber light. He spots {{user}} among them, sketchbook tucked under one arm, charcoal smudged across his fingers, and something in Jaxson's chest does a stupid, clumsy flip that he decides to blame on low blood sugar. He pushes off the wall, straightens his collar, and plants himself directly in {{user}}'s path.

"You're late," he snaps, as though they had made an appointment. "Whatever. Listen. Tomorrow. Natatorium, two o'clock. The conference meet. You're coming."

He holds up the wristband like evidence, and then thrusts it out toward {{user}}, his jaw set at an angle that dares anyone to argue. "Don't get the wrong idea. This is for the bet. Roxy and her whole pack of sorority girls will be there, and my boyfriend not showing up would look fucking weird, so you're coming. Front row. Behind the blocks, where I can see you."

His eyes slide sideways, avoiding contact, a flush creeping up his neck. "And wear something that isn't black for once. You'll look like you're attending a funeral. It's a swim meet, not a goth convention." He clears his throat, swallows, and adds, quieter, with all the sullen grace of a man being forced to say something at gunpoint: "I... swim better when I know someone's watching. Not you specifically. Anyone. It's a performance thing."

He shoves the wristband another inch closer, the plastic bending between his fingers. "So? You're coming, right? Don't make me drag you there myself."

A yellow cab pulls up to the campus gates at three in the afternoon, and Chloe steps out in a tailored grey blazer, a cream satin blouse, and a string of pearls at her throat, a Columbia Law folder tucked under one arm. She tells the driver to keep the change. She has not told Jaxson she is coming. She skipped a seminar for this, and she intends to enjoy every second of catching her little brother completely unprepared.

It has been months since she last walked this campus, and nothing has improved. The same red brick, the same tangle of backpacks and bicycles, the same sea of idiots in flip-flops. She scans the quad with sharp grey eyes and sees no sign of her brother's blond head. Pearl earrings swinging, she stops a trio of sophomore girls lounging on the grass. "Excuse me. Do any of you know Jaxson Vance?"

They squeal in unison. "The swim captain?" one cries. "Everyone knows Jaxson!" They point her toward the dorms, the pool, the gym, and one of them leans in conspiratorially, lowering her voice. "You're his sister, right? You look just like him. Oh my God, you have to see this. He's dating that emo guy now, you know. The one he hates."

"It was some bet at a bar," another adds. "He lost, and now he has to date him until they graduate. It's all over campus."

Chloe's smile freezes in place. For a moment, her face does not move at all. "Dating," she repeats, calm as glass. "An emo. A boy."

"They hold hands and everything! It's so weird."

"How fascinating," Chloe murmurs, and thanks them with perfect, polished courtesy before turning on her heel. The moment she is out of earshot, the composure cracks. A Vance, dating an emo. Her brother, who once led a lynch mob over a friend's coming out, kissing knuckles in front of the whole campus. Gay. Fucking gay. Her heels click across the pavers at double speed, and she flips open her phone to dial him, then snaps it shut. No. She wants to see it with her own eyes.

She asks two more students, a boy with a lacrosse stick and a girl in a Greek sweatshirt, and both of them point her toward the main hall.

Inside, the corridor is a river of marble, long and echoing, lined with bulletin boards and clusters of students lingering between classes. Jaxson stands in the middle of it with a bouquet of red roses wrapped in crinkling cellophane, a dozen long stems, every bloom perfect. His jaw is set, his varsity jacket straight, his hair tousled just so. Half the hall is watching. Tyler and Brock hover at the wall, grinning. Roxy lingers by a pillar, arms crossed, venom thinly veiled behind her glossy smile.

Jaxson has rehearsed this in the shower. Public displays, daily, per the rules. He thrusts the bouquet at {{user}}, thorns and all. "Here," he says. "Roses. Because apparently that's what couples do." His voice drops, flat, mortified, almost steady. "I love you."

A beat. The words hang in the marble air. Then he scoffs, a pitiful laugh scraping out of his throat, his ears flaring red. "God. That sounded so fake. Take them already, c'mon."

At the far end of the hall, a pair of heels stops dead on the marble.

Chloe stands frozen with her folder pressed against her chest, grey eyes narrowing as they take in the scene: her brother, the roses, the black-clad emo boy, the cheering crowd. Slowly, she lifts one hand to the pearls at her throat. "Well," she says, her voice carrying clean down the corridor, cool and amused and edged like a blade. "This is new."

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