Survival Of The Fittest

"It's just a snake." Andy didn't hear a word of it. Elizabeth didn't know he was that afraid of snakes; for that matter, she didn't know much about him at all, but just then it was the deal with the snake that mattered. "Andy? Yoohoo! Anybody home?" Something else caught the boy's attention momentarily before he made a break for it, and grabbing Elizabeth by the wrist on the way.

Elizabeth stumbled, but caught herself and, realizing that she had not been released, decided to run along so as not to fall over completely. That, however, ended quickly enough with a head-on collision with someone else. The girl managed to avoid falling on top of everyone, but fell anyway. "Sorry! Wasn't watching where I was--" It appeared that the third party of the crash was that Eduardo guy. It also appeared, more the reason for her sudden halt of speech, that the two had fallen in a rather awkward position. "I hope nobody's too hurt."

"Oomph," Andy cried out upon making impact with Eduardo, sending the boy to the ground and the beer bottle in his hand slinging through the air and onto the ground. That was just like Andy, running off before thinking things through rationally. Good grief. This just wasn't his night. His eyes having closed in the bracing, the blonde boy had absolutely no clue as to what position he had landed in, only that his arms were clutching at opposite sides of a hard, curved surface that did not belong to him.

Andy's face, as well as the rest of his body, was covered in white, grainy sand, the substance gritting at his skin. The brown eyed boy felt the stirring movement as Eduardo sat up, and the blonde finally opened his eyes warily. Turning his head slightly upward, he saw that he was gripping Eduardo's chest and more importantly, his ribcage. He also realized that the Latino boy's crotch was mere inches from his face.

The boy had groaned something in another language, but Andy had no clue as to what he said. The sand on his face hid the majority of the scarlet flush that spread across his cheeks, but did nothing to hide his brown eyes from widening at the circumstances. It appeared as though Eduardo hadn't realized just where his attacker had ended up. Elizabeth added her own awkward vibe to the situation with her babbling about nothing at all.

'Oh my god,' Andy thought, freaking out about the entire thing. If only he had never gotten out of the car, he wouldn't have to be seen with his face four inches from the weirdest kid in his class's genitals. Oh, but that was his life. His hands were still on Eduardo's chest, and he was having a bit of a hard time removing them. The boy soft and nice to the touch. Oh, God no. He had not just thought that. 'Someone, please kill me.'

Of all people, the teen didn't want to think about doing something with such a lowly peon. Andy wasn't going to even acknowlege that part of his thinking. If only Eduardo wasn't so adorably angsty in comparison to himself... Figuratively shaking the thoughts from his mind, the blonde confronted fear as the other boy opened his eyes and came face to face with the boy sprawled out below.

It did not take long for Eduardo to look down and realize not just who crashed into him, but how they landed. The instant Andy filled his field of vision, Eduardo had started to tremble, his face starting to cringe as blood caused him to blush. And this was not in a way he considered good, especially since the grasping had caused another part of his body to become active before the rest of his body kicked into panic mode. Of course, many of the signs of that panic mode - such as rapid breathing and the blood rush - were similar to that of his other arousal.

"Ohshit...dios...mio..." he groaned, as he tried to shuffle hurriedly away from Andy. The normally straight-as-a-ruler-faced boy was actually starting to get scared. Two homosexual encounters and a bitchslapping could not possibly be just a sampler of the school year to come, and at the moment he found his normal acceptance of his sorry fate slipping away. If only he could say that about the pretty-boy grasping onto him.

Andy's eyes met Eduardo's, and a catastrophe ensued. First of all, there was immediate motion a few inches from his face, and Andy was blushing even further red as he realized just what it was. The stirring of the Latin boy's nether regions was causing blood to rush straight to the blonde's own groin. Realizing this, Andy gasped in an odd mix of arousal and horror. Were people watching the scene in amusement, already preparing to mock him? 'Oh, holy crap,' thought the blonde, wondering whether or not he had just ended his popularity in one swift movement. Oddly enough, Eduardo was trying to scurry away, but Andy had a good enough hold on his chest to where it wasn't doing much good.

Eduardo had uttered something else in a mix between Spanish and English, but Andy had no clue as to what. He felt his hands slipping down the boy's sides as the other boy squirmed. With another great jerk, the blonde's right hand fell right onto the Latin boy's crotch, groping the covered flesh in surprise. Realizing what he had done, Andy attempted to push himself off the boy, but ended up simply pressing one hand onto Eduardo's privates. This was not going to end well. Eliciting a groan of frustration, Andy looked up at the boy once more, trying to find words of explanation and apology that could solve the problem. He couldn't think of anything to say as he gazed flusteredly into eyes just as brown as his own.

'Oh crap...'

At the most, Eduardo had expected the pretty-boy currently grasping his sides to rip his shirt off, letting him go free. Even with Clive's drunk encounter, he didn't expect it to get this bad, unless Clive had told Andy about what happened, causing the blonde to have his own go. Of course, all of that was prematurely ended as soon as Andy made his own move.

The instant that hand started to press down upon him, Eduardo let out a choked cry whose tone was impossible to distinguish between pain or pleasure, though the humiliation was evident, as well as its consequences. He now found himself squirming and somewhat flailing himself just to get away from the boy, and if he could somehow get away, the party and the beach altogether. Of course, a more immediate consequence was he found himself staring into the pretty-boy's eyes.

Fuck this...getting pummeled to a pulp is less humiliating than this!

Tanya was probably the first to take notice of the situation, which elicited a giggle.

Bobby rolled his eyes in exasperation at Troy's obstinacy. For crying out loud, he'd just said he knew they were trying to go after him, why did Troy insist on saying that it was Bobby who was in the wrong here?

"Just keep talking Troy. Every word you say and I'm that little bit closer to laying the smackdown on you," this was quickly becoming monotonous, back and forth, back and forth. Maybe this little confrontation had reached the point where he ought to just back away and leave the whole damn incident behind...

***

Still searching out whatever alcohol he could find, Chris was surprised to see something of a... well, something going on near to the cooler. Looks like somebody has skipped straight to the making out bit of the party, and it looks like they've got company. As Chris went a little closer out of curiosity, he noticed something very strange. Wait a sec, aren't both of those guys? Chris let out a rueful sigh, then grinned. Those two would receive no end of crap if someone discovered who they were, Chris took out a beverage of some kind out of the cooler then watched the proceedings in an interested fashion.

The boys' eyes were glued to one another, and Andy was having trouble thinking of anything other than how pretty the other's were. A giggle from nearby caused his train of thought to break and with it, his eyes left Eduardo's. Snapping out of his momentary brain fart, Andy immediately let go of the boy's crotch, flailing his hand as though he had been burned. His hair was now shagged, having been blown skyward by the wind as he propelled forward towards his doom. Still blushing, the blonde began wiping away the sand from his face and clapping his hands together to rid them of the salty grit. His clothes weren't nearly as dirty; there were only a few bits of the stuff clinging to them. As he cleaned himself off, Andy didn't dare look around. He knew eyes were on the three who had engaged the awkward situation: Elizabeth, Eduardo, and himself. Plus, he could only imagine what the Latino was going to say once he stopped being flabbergasted and found words.

'What if he thinks I like him? Wait. What if everyone else thinks I did that on purpose?' a voice in Andy's head squawked, asking questions that the boy himself had no answers for. That would suck for him. His popularity could be completely ruined if word got out that he was trying to get with the lamest boy in the senior class. He would just have to pretend as though the incident had never happened, especially since he had enough of a time with homophobes at Southridge to begin with. 'What a wonderful way to start off my senior year,' Andy thought angrily, cringing as he turned to face the onlookers and the boy he had just been groping.

"Look, I really didn't meant to crash into you, but there was a freakin' snake coming towards me! It was slithering along all icky like, and I was so not about to get bitten," the boy said to Eduardo, looking away and blushing even more profusely, "So... yea. I'm sorry I banged into you. And for other things," Andy trailed off as he remembered just what he had been clutching previously. Thankfully his own "problem" had been easy enough to control, but it seemed as though the other boy was having a bit more trouble adjusting to the situation. Turning towards Elizabeth, Andy decided to thank the redhead for her warning, however accidental it may have been.

"Thank you so much for saying something about the snake! You might have just saved my life from being poisoned. Sorry about dragging you along and causing you to trip, though. Just a reflex move, I guess." he breathed thankfully, acknowledging the girl's oblivious heroism. Mechanically, Andy's hands traveled to his blonde locks, brushing them back to their flattened position. He waited for a reply from the two of them with his eyes glued to the sand at his feet, seemingly fixated on particularly pretty grains.

"Hrrrgh...fucking maricon, you don't need to pull that snake shit on me. Just get the fuck away before our lives get any worse than this," Eduardo growled...despite the fact that he found Andy's blond locks a bit...mesmerizing. Still, he shook that off like he did with the rest of the sand. Once he could get most of his bearings back - and the activity down below started to subside just a bit, he took a look at the girl who'd also crashed into him. She was quite the looker.

"You're damn lucky to have a guy like him..."

===

"Like I said, I don' wanna be the one to start this," Troy replied, his confidence starting to shake just a bit from Bobby's voice, "but if y'all still wanna bring it, then bring it."

If anything, his situation couldn't possibly end up as worse as that guy who'd just started screaming from the sand a distance away.

Elizabeth heard some other girl giggle. Well, at least she had been more tactful. Although, if she thought about it...The girl burst out laughing at the two boys. It was like something out of a dollar-store romance novel! Well, those generally weren't in English, but most of the dialogue here hadn't been either; and, they were on a beach.

The two got themselves apart, and Andy started babbling. To be fair, although Eduardo wasn't babbling, that "fuck you" attitude was probably why he wasn't at the top of the social food chain.

"Oh, there was a snake. Cute li'l guy after I saw what it was, actually. Sea snake, all yellow and black, really can't do much out of water, though." She turned to Andy and said "I guess you really don't like snakes?"

The boy on the ground spoke again, to her this time. She may have blushed a bit, but it was dark now anyway. "What? Oh, no. Nothing like that." From what she'd heard, she was far too female, anyway. Considering that, she hoped not too many people had seen that incident, surely the two would be massacred come Monday. Oh well, let them deal with it. Elizabeth stepped over to him and held out a hand, "Want a hand up?"

Looking directly at Eduardo for the first time since the two had been separated, Andy actually cringed at the sneer plastered onto the boy's face. It wasn't like any of the incident was his fault. If the darned snake had just stayed away from him to begin with, then it would never have caused him to run away and crash into the Latino. Plus, it was totally Eduardo's fault that his hand had ended up in a place it shouldn't have been in the first place. If he had just remained calm and hadn't started jerking, Andy would have gotten up without any of the insanity even happening. The blonde was more than a little bit confused. Just what the heck was the Latin boy playing at? If he got hard when a guy touched him, that wasn't Andy's fault. Maybe he was scared that it meant he was gay or something?

'Idiot homophobe,' thought the blonde, his eyes narrowing as Eduardo dismissed his explanation and apology as some sort of lying cover-up, 'He's being such a dick right now.' At Elizabeth's confirmation of his previous story, Andy gave her another look of thankfulness that quickly changed to a look of horror at the very thought of more snakes.

"Oh God! I hate snakes. They're like, really scary and all slimy and just... ick," the boy explained his distaste for the reptiles, shivering from the images flooding into his head, "Why, do you like them?" The entire idea was ludicrous to Andy. Eduardo spoke up again cutting off her next reply, this time addressing Elizabeth. Wait. Did he think that they were together? Thankfully the redhead dismissed the notion as completely false seeing as most people knew he found vagina to be the unspeakable evil. Andy was even more surprised when the girl offered Eduardo a hand to stand up.

"So what do you think now, hot shot," the boy asked Eduardo, smirking slightly in spite of how the boy was looking, "Can you accept my apology without being such a jerk about it? Oh, and just what does maricon mean?" Andy was still idly fingering his long locks, thinking about how much he wanted a new look for the year. Maybe he should cut his hair... The brown eyed androgyne would be no more. His hair was the one thing that made him look so insanely feminine. If he got rid of it, he might be considered a tad more masculine; not that he cared all that much what others thought about his sexuality or anything like that. That was why he founded the GLBTS Alliance at Southridge to begin with, so that people would stop making such an insane deal out of nothing. 'Unlike Eduardo, apparently,' he thought, awaiting a response.

If too many people saw what Eduardo had been doing with Mr. (or was that Ms?) Popular on the beach, massacre would be an understatement to him. Holocaust would come pretty close, though. He looked around again though, and not many people had seen this go down. A few were actually more focused on that super-poser from his math class about to get his ass handed to him in a more immediate manner. Still, here was a guy with an androgyne's hand pressing down on his crotch. What man in his right (and non-maricon) mind wouldn't want to try to escape instead of sit there and enjoy that?

But his thoughts were digressing. He sighed and tried to focus before he got to a more familiar instance where he did enjoy that.

"No thanks," Eduardo replied to the girl in a retorting voice that sounded almost convincingly polite, "I can help myself up." In a slightly awkward way, he did eventually get up, brushing the sand from his clothes and readjusting his headphones. Curiously enough, he hadn't been paying attention to the fact that his constantly-shuffling media player had been playing house music for the past few minutes. It was more humorous to him when Andy gave out that little ick at the thought of (literal) snakes. The only time a man would be afraid of snakes would be when two snakes met, and the pain of that would be only second in degree to the potential humiliation of the moment.

"And no, you were the one who crashed into me. Of course, if I told you what maricon means, your girlfriend wouldn't want to hang around you anymore," Eduardo replied with a smirk. "I think I'll call it even at me keeping my mouth shut," he added with a brief chuckle. Sexuality wasn't something that the blockhead-of-gray didn't consider much either, straight or gay, the only thing that mattered was how tender(ized) the meat would be at the end of the day. Besides which, Andy's "look" was the "in" thing of the year. Exactly why the measure of a man's femininity would be directly equal to the ability to pick up girls was still beyond Ed.

She really couldn't say that she was surprised when her offer was refused, but she did think that she was perhaps watching the cattiest fight between two guys she'd ever seen. She really didn't see why, either. So there was a human collision; alcohol seemed to be heavier in the air than oxygen, surely that wasn't the only fall. So Andy's head landed pretty much on Eduardo's crotch; laugh—it's funny. So there were issues with trying to stand up: again, alcohol. It wasn't as if anyone was paying attention to them other than the oddball girl nobody really bothered with that much anyway, especially not enough to ask anything about the party. What was the problem?

And then Eduardo dragged her into the catfight. Her hands balled into fists and she...bounced.
"You deaf?" she bit at the one boy, "I just finished saying not a minute ago that he and I aren't together. Honestly! He's a cheerleader. How many guys can you imagine are on that particular team and are trying to look up the cheerleaders' skirts?"
She turned on the blonder one then, "You! If it was just an accident, which I can vouch for, why are you getting so snippy? And it's just Spanish, not the lost ancient language of Atlantis. He's calling you a mollycoddle, and he's certainly not wrong."

"Augh!" Elizabeth crossed her arms over her chest and fell into a cross-legged sit, much like a small child. "Boys are so stupid!"

Well, the night was just becoming more and more exasperating for Andy. The one person who had previously been so controlled and happy was now pouting in the sand like a small child. However, he was still a little bit offended that she thought that all male cheerleaders were gay. That was so not true. If it were, he would probably have had a freakin' boyfriend by now! 'Wait a minute... did she say mollycoddle?! Me?! That wench!' But... right then didn't seem like the best time to say anything out of the way to her. Instead, he decided to take his frustrations out on Eduardo, who had said it in the first place. The butthole was the one who kept prodding the fiasco towards a total catastrophe.

"Why are you being such an a-hole," Andy angrily inquired, glaring at the boy, "You've just reduced her to a souring mess, and it's starting to really piss me off! Why don't you get off your low horse and go cry or something?! I've tried to be nice to you, but maybe you just don't deserve the effort. You can take your Spanish crap and stuff it." Ok. So maybe the boy hadn't really been that much of an ass, but the blonde was severely ticked off. Stupid snakes and stupid crazy redheads and stupid emos like Eduardo Trinidad-Villa. They were causing him to get way too flustered. It was disconcerting to say the least that the boy could get under his skin so easily. Perhaps he shouldn't have said that last bit at all. It was a rather biting comment that was sure to hit tender wounds.

'Why do I always end up acting like a bitch,' the boy asked himself, 'Maybe I should just go before things get even more out of hand.' The blush spreading across his face was thankfully invisible in the dim firelight, but nevertheless he was embarrassed by his outburst and definitely regretted it. Andy's eyes were now back to their normal, misted brown, having slitted and darkened greatly as he insulted Eduardo. He noticed Elizabeth still sitting cross-legged in the sand, and extended his hand towards her, silently motioning for her to come walking with him. Flashing the Latino boy a few feet away a look of anguished frustration, the blonde turned away and began walking in the other direction, his long platinum tresses floating with the wind. The night was looking even more dreary with approaching clouds to block out the moonlight.

((Continued in 3rd Period AP Chem))

Somehow, some way, Eduardo managed to straighten his face and keep it straight as Andy launched his insults at him. Most likely it was because he'd received worse verbal abuse, and of course, the old proverb applied when it came to exactly how bad the words were. Besides, what harm could a male cheerleader do compared to the team he cheered for? Social threats wouldn't work on a man who was clearly (socially) dead...although labeling him an "emo" might pique his attention in a negative way. As far as he'd studied the phenomenon, he was nowhere near as close to the "emo" as even his appearance would suggest.

As soon as Andy stormed away, Eduardo sat back down on the sand, and then fell back onto the sand, clasping his hands behind his head and smiling up at the sky.

"Maricon doesn't mean mollycoddle!" he shouted almost sadistically as he stared up into the once-clear sky. The clouds were starting to approach the glowing moon. For some reason, he always felt the most comfortable in a dreary environment. It somehow helped when the MP3 player switched into Kool & The Gang's "Too Hot."

It's a shame he didn't get it...then again Melina got it...I guess I gotta be thankful.

((@Shula: maricon is Spanish slang for "fag."))

Bobby laughed as Troy said to "bring it," whilst obviously having second thoughts about taking him on. This was just boring now, and Bobby reckoned that by now he was starting to waste valuable observation time, which was, in his opinion, never a good thing. The confrontation was difusing moment by moment and Troy was pretty much saying the same thing over and over. Come to think of it he was just saying the same thing over and over. Okay, time to get outta here before everything just collapsed. Bobby had never wanted a fight in the first place, and Troy looked like he might be shaking in his boots by now.

"You know what? Screw this. If you want a fight then I'm in the gym every day, at least five till eight, sometimes more than that. You can catch up to me there and this kind of thing can stay where it belongs; In a ring or an arena, where it's allowed. Troy, if you don't have the guts to do that then you and your lover boy can just stay the hell away from me and leave me to myself,"

Bobby swung round and walked away, moving past Erick and going back down to the water's edge. He sure was glad all of that was over...