Chapter Four

[tempered-rose.livejournal.com]

Title: Help Me Carry The Fire, Chapter Four of ???
Characters: Bojan Krkic, David Silva, Lionel Messi, Gerard Pique ; Mentions of: Raul Gonzalez, Pep Guardiola, Cesc Fabregas, David Villa/Silva implied, & a Mystery Player (ahem)
Rating: PG-13 this part, higher later
Words: this part: 2,506 ; total words: 10,184
A/N: next part, hope you like it :) Thank you to all of you that read and review, I really do appreciate it, and thanks to those of you that just read it, I appreciate that too :D Sorry, I’m so behind, I was working on my other NaNo. Yeah, I’m the crazy chick that’s doing two. Plus, I wanted to write one-chapter a head on this one before I posted it. So I have Chapter 11 done and will post that one tomorrow. Back on schedule, I soon will be! Thank you for your patience and understanding <3
Previous Parts: One | Two | Three



It wasn’t until the next day that Bojan fully realized how much he missed Leo. It had been a long, dull, quiet walk on the way to school that morning. He did not like not having anyone to speak with or share a joke with. When he had seen Leo, the other boy had been ahead of him, already far down the sidewalk. Bojan had decided to simply let him be and continue on his way. When he was half-way to school, he wished he had moved forward fast enough to catch up.

Instead of speaking with Leo, Bojan found his eyes drawn upwards to watch the way his best friend walked. Lionel’s shoulders were down, his head looking more at the sidewalk than at anything else, and his hands appeared to be in his pockets, but Bojan couldn’t be one-hundred percent positive from this distance. As he walked past all the shops on the street and the school got larger and larger, Bojan tried to again place why Leo had been so upset in the first place. He had only arrived at three possible reasons and he felt more and more confused with every one of them.

The first reason he had thought of was perhaps that Leo just was one of those people that had a huge problem with being late or scheduling changes suddenly. After all, it wasn’t unreasonable to want to be informed of a change in schedule many days ahead of time instead of all of a sudden you had something planned and then it was gone. Bojan could understand that quite simply. But Leo only found situations like that mildly aggravating, mostly when they came to his mother and she would change her mind of their weekend, or sometimes weeknight plans. He would scoff to Bojan or the others in their clique but he would not become angry or brash about it. So Bojan dismissed it as a plausible reason.

Secondly, Bojan had considered that maybe Leo had just simply been having a bad day. Everyone had them, so why couldn’t Leo? This was the most logical of his choices, Bojan knew, because it was the only one that made sense. School had just started, perhaps Leo just wanted to keep everything on the top and not become overwhelmed with his studies since it was their last year and all. Perhaps that’s what had done it, Bojan thought.

The third reason was the most absurd one Bojan had ever thought of. He reasoned that it had only come up was because he’d been drinking a soda, had a candy bar, and was watching a romantic movie because there had been nothing else on. The sugar high mixed with the sugary lines in the flick and that had produced the reasoning that perhaps, just maybe, Leo had a fancy for him. Bojan shifted awkwardly every single time he thought of it. It was weird, he thought, for him to have this thought. The first matter was that it put himself highly up in Leo’s affections and made him much more than he was; he felt like any second his head was going to expand for such a big-headed thought. The second issue was that Leo would have to be gay, or at least bi-sexual. That was something Bojan had never taken into account for himself or for his friends, not even his brother. The more he thought of it, the more he realized he hadn’t had a problem with Silva and Villa getting together. He guessed he was simply pansexual, uncaring of anyone’s orientation and simply loving them for who they were, regardless of gender.

The third reason Bojan felt uncomfortable with that one was that it made him feel very, very confused.

He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel with the idea of Leo being in like with him, he simply refused to say that other ‘l’ word. For goodness sake, they were teenagers. What did they know of love or of life really? He wasn’t sure if he wanted Leo to like him that way; he wasn’t sure if he didn’t want him to like him that way. Bojan didn’t know what that would make him if he decided that Leo should like him that way and he enjoyed that idea. He wasn’t sure if he should be happy that Leo liked him or sad because he did. He simply wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.

It would have been a situation that he asked Cesc about, but with Cesc gone, Bojan didn’t know whom to ask. For a moment, he had thought of Raul or perhaps Pep but then he would immediately feel a blush rise in his cheeks and that would take any thought of that away. They were the most likely candidates not to judge him should he decide to ever bring it up. Bojan had a feeling that they would be more inclined to encourage him to explore his own sexuality rather than tell him it was wrong. But Bojan wasn’t sure that’s what he wanted them to say.

Bojan had simply come to the conclusion that if it ended up with Lionel liking him, however unlikely that idea was, he would wait until whenever Cesc came home for the holidays and then he would ask about it. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be too embarrassed to have the formal discussion and Cesc wouldn’t mind talking about it.

There was a pang that hit him at the mention of his brother. Cesc. Bojan swallowed and he felt the familiar wish rise inside of him again. He missed when only the year before, Cesc had been walking with him to school. It had been fun then and Bojan had felt something along the lines of safe. Now, there was usually only him and Leo walking together, sometimes they would allow Kaka to join them since he was now attending their school, only as a freshman. He remembered easily when he, Cesc, Leo, and Silva would all walk to and from school. Sergio and the members of the band would occasionally join them, and sometimes Vicente would roll alongside them in his car as they walked. Bojan felt a smile tugging on his lips as he thought about it. The good old days, he thought and fell into more and more pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk since the shops and businesses were beginning to get closer.

He passed a little café just as a rush of people, mostly young students, came out brandishing their lattes and mochas in store-labeled cups. One student that was carrying nothing but half a muffin, bumped into Bojan as he walked past.

“Excuse me,” the boy said quickly and he smiled nervously.

Bojan simply brushed the crumbs off his jacket. “It’s all right, at least it wasn’t coffee.”

The boy laughed a little. “Thank goodness. “

Bojan smiled and continued on his way to the corner to wait for the sign to tell him he could cross sides. The small group that had come out of the coffee shop was only a several steps from the corner when it changed. Bojan, not knowing any of the boys and guessing they were freshman since he hadn’t seen any of them around the school before, didn’t wait for them as he crossed the street.


He made the other side with plenty of time to spare and, since he was first, pushed the next call button to cross the next part of the corner. By that time, the group of boys and several others had collected on the corner and they all waited for the stop lights to change so that once again they could cross. Bojan noticed that the muffin-boy had shifted so that he was a little bit closer to him. Bojan flashed a small smile and then crossed the street as the light changed before the other boy could speak again. He felt only a little bit bad for seemingly brushing the boy off, but he didn’t mean to. It wasn’t like he was really doing it on purpose, the lights had changed and he would be late to class if he stopped to chat for whatever reason the boy wanted to talk about.

There was that, he conscience reasoned, and the fact maybe he was still feeling a little sour over the whole Leo issue.

Since he was walking beside the wall of the school, more and more students crowded the sidewalk. Leo had disappeared amongst the throngs of people and Bojan wished Leo would just talk to him about whatever was bothering him. Instead, he sought out someone else that he knew so he wouldn’t have to walk into school alone. He saw no one but a few familiar faces from his year, but he didn’t know any of them well enough to stop and speak to them. He was comfortable in his friend group, but past it… Past it, he was still a bit more than a little shy and reserved. He wasn’t as bad as Silva, though, and that thought caused him enough to smile a little as he continued into the building alone.

Leo didn’t make an appearance in the courtyard either, Bojan noticed once he had gotten his books for his first few classes. Gerard stood with his latest girlfriend, a second year, blonde this time, and was showing off as usual. She was laughing, Bojan saw, so he must have been successful at whatever he was telling her. Silva, as always, had his head buried in a book for their Literature class. Bojan shook his head; the book had been assigned their second day of school, due to be read a month and a half from now, but Silva was almost done with it. The dedication he has, or the idiocy, I can’t decide, Bojan thought and moved across the courtyard to sit next to him.

Unsurprisingly, Silva said nothing so Bojan pulled out a notebook and began to doodle. He had sat perhaps about five minutes before Silva seemed to realize he was there.

“Awful quiet this morning,” he observed, eyes still on the page.

“Leo’s ignoring me.” Bojan mumbled after a moment’s pause. He had half expected Silva to remain silent the entire time.

“Why?” A turn of the page.

“Don’t know. He’s being weird around me lately.”

“Why?”

“I sort of brushed him off accidentally because my Uncle is returning from England and Cesc this weekend. Raul and I were going to take him to the restaurant to welcome him home.”

Silva nodded and turned his head ever so slightly to begin on the next page. Bojan wondered if Silva was actually listening to what he was saying or just nodding to pretend if he had been.

“Talk to him.” Silva advised and turned the page.

Bojan opened his mouth to protest before he closed it with a heavy sigh. There really was no point, he reasoned. Silva would simply say talk to him, it would be worked out with communication and everything would be fine again. But how could Bojan talk to a person who would possibly walk away from him? How could he talk to someone that would only stand there like a stone wall and say nothing, even if he listened at all? And what if he said that he liked Bojan? What if that happened?

Bojan swallowed at the last thought. He didn’t want to think like that, and yet he couldn’t stop himself from letting the thoughts in and taking over his mind once again that morning. It was at the sound of the bell ringing and Silva’s expectant look that pulled him away from the quagmire of his thoughts. Bojan rose quickly and started for the doors to class and tried to pretend that he knew what he would do if Leo did say that he liked him.


When Bojan arrived home that afternoon, he was in a foul mood. He shut the door harder than necessary and practically fled up the stairs. He was glad that Raul wouldn’t be home for a few hours at the least so he could calm down. Once he got into his bedroom, he kicked off his shoes and threw his bag onto Cesc’s empty bed. Since Cesc had gone and he wouldn’t ever be the wiser, many of Bojan’s things—clothes, books, mail, notebook, pens, IPods—ended up on the empty bedspread. He ignored the load of homework he’d been assigned immediately and sat at his desk to boot up the computer. He was in the perfect mood to do absolutely nothing on the Internet for a while until his temper had calmed.

It had turned out that he had been late to class that morning, though it had not been the first one. Bojan had been unable to shake his mind of the thoughts he had about what if Leo liked him, what if his best friend fancied him? That distraction had continued on the walk from his first period class room to his second period one, the farthest distance he had to walk all day and he had been late by three minutes. His penalty had been an extra essay to write: a page and a half on why it was important to be prompt, prepared, and polite. The glare Bojan had given his literature teacher due to his newest assignment had been anything but polite.

Lunch had been completely horrible. Silva had had to go home early due to an “appointment”, which Bojan guessed had nothing to do with a “sore tooth” but more like the fact Villa only had a half-day on Thursdays. Bojan guessed there’d be a lot more “appointments” come Thursday afternoon in the future. Due to that absence and the fact Leo still wasn’t speaking to him, Bojan had to eat his ham and cheese sandwich by himself in the hot sun. He hadn’t been thrilled by that idea to say the least.

The afternoon’s lessons had not fared much better. It seemed that teachers did not speak to one another because they all assigned homework on the same day. And boy had they assigned a lot of it. Two essays were due by the morning bell and another on Monday. One had given a novel to read in only a month, a boring one by all first-looks Bojan had given it. Plus maths class had given him a whole two pages of multi-step problems without being able to skip a one.

Bojan’s head felt like making repeated contact with the keyboard, but he didn’t. Instead of doing the responsible thing and cracking open the books to get the crap over and done with to get on with the fun part of his day, Bojan did the only teenage thing he felt he could do: he opened up World of Warcraft and began to log in, hoping that tomorrow the day would go a lot better.