brooks & hale - Chapter 7: Chapter 7

BROOKS WAS TRYING VERY hard to listen to Calla, to be the best friend he should be, but it suddenly became increasingly more difficult when Hale appeared at the end of the hallway. What was wrong with him? Hale talked to him a couple of times, flashed him that heart-stopping smile like it was nothing, and now he had taken permanent residence among Brooks' thoughts. Like a brain-eating parasite. A really hot and funny brain-eating parasite.
Get your head out of the gutter, he advised himself, knowing full well it was advice he would never take.
"Brooks?" Calla's brown eyes were earnest and expectant. "What do you think I should do?"
Great, now he was a terrible friend. "Sorry, I zoned out for a moment," he said apologetically, dragging his gaze away from Hale. He hadn't even noticed him, or if he had, he hadn't glanced this way even once. "You were saying?"
"Hale," she sighed, and he froze. "We talked at Will's party, sure, but not since then and that was last week. And people are saying he pulled someone else. Should I try and talk to him or just leave it?"
Brooks breathed a small sigh of relief. She wasn't on to him, she had no idea he was basically betraying her with his thoughts about her crush. "I honestly don't know, Cal," he admitted. "You're asking the wrong person. I have zero experience when it comes to love, remember?"
"You have Bellamy," Calla pointed out.
Brooks winced. "Please don't remind me."
He had been studiously avoiding Bellamy as much as humanly possible for the past week, and so far, his plan had been successful. She was always surrounded by a flock of girls and he was always notified of her presence a minute before she arrived by the distinct cloud of perfume that preceded her everywhere. It was easy enough to hide his face in a book, or slink around a corner, whenever he spotted her.
"I'm just worried Hale might forget about me if I don't make a move soon," Calla continued, toying with a spiral curl near her face. "He always has so many girls after him, and Cassidy told me he's never actually been in a relationship before, just small flings. What if he just isn't the boyfriend type? I might be wasting my time, but I also don't want to..."
Calla's voice faded away as his attention strayed back to the person he was supposed to be ignoring, and ironically the subject of Calla's fangirling. Hale had his locker propped open and was leaning against the wall, talking to Will and a girl in Brooks' English class, Elsie Bishop. Brooks thought it was both impossible and enviable that he managed to make their bland school uniform look good.
The plain black trousers and white shirt, paired with a navy jumper, was a boring ensemble on anyone else. It certainly was on Brooks. Maybe it was that Hale had ditched the school tie in favour of an unbuttoned collar. More likely, he was just attractive and could make any article of clothing look impressive.
Hale's dark eyes met his gaze across the corridor and his mouth quirked up in a crooked smile that made Brooks' heart race. Holy shit, it should have been illegal for someone to smile like that. It was pointless to pretend it didn't affect him, because he could feel that his face was getting warm and his heart rate picking up. This was just when Hale looked at him. What would happen if they ever talked again?
"Oh my god," Calla hissed, "he's coming this way."
And Brooks saw she was right, that Hale had flicked his locker shut and was sauntering towards them, the stroll that spoke volumes of confidence and ease. Confidence and ease that Brooks didn't have much of anyway, and severely lacked whenever he was around Hale. "Act cool," he said stupidly, a thought he hadn't meant to voice. Calla shot him a funny look.
Hale was wearing his usual carefree expression when he reached them, and it only made him more nervous. "Morning," he said, his gaze lingering on Brooks before flicking towards Calla. "We have chemistry together now, right, Brooks?"
"Uh, do we?" he said, wishing he didn't blush so bloody easily. It was all he did these days, look like an idiot and turn red. "Yep, sounds about right."
Calla saved him from figuring out what to say next. "I haven't had a chance to speak to you since Will's, Hale. Did you have a good time?"
"Hm? Oh yeah, sure. So much fun," he smirked, and Brooks had the distinctive feeling there was a jab directed at him hidden in there somewhere. "Nothing like drunk people walking into doors to brighten up your Friday night."
Yeah, that was definitely directed at him.
"You had fun?" Calla's eyebrows furrowed and subtlety was thrown out of the window. "Just out of curiosity, did you...you know? Get with anyone?"
Brooks tried not to look as interested in his answer to this as he really was, and wasn't sure whether he was successful or not.
Hale lifted a shoulder in an unconcerned shrug. "A girl from Woodway. It's granted nothing more is going to happen there, though."
His definite tone said there was more to that story, and Brooks curiosity almost caused him to blurt out, "Why?" The bell dashed his chance for answers, a reminder that they had to get to chemistry. Calla gave Brooks a hug goodbye and looked as if she was contemplating extending the same courtesy to Hale, but he was already walking to the labs, looking expectantly at Brooks over his shoulder.
They entered the lab and Brooks dumped his bag at his usual seat, at the front of the class. He didn't look up to watch Hale continue to the back of the room where he sat with his friends, the ideal spot to spend the hour texting and talking and generally doing no work. He had just dumped his textbook onto the desk when the chair beside him was pulled out, and Hale dropped onto it.
Brooks gaped at him. "What are you doing?"
"I believe they call it sitting," Hale said, arching an eyebrow. "Sitting in English. Sentado in Spanish. A concept I'm sure you're familiar with."
"You don't sit next to me," Brooks blurted out, which was as redundant a comment as it was obviously not true. Here Hale was, sitting next to him. "I mean, you always sit at the back," he gestured to where his friends were sat, frowning at Brooks for stealing Hale from them, "and I always sit at the front. It's the unspoken law. No one challenges it."
"How many of those shitty American high school movies have you watched?" Hale scoffed, leaning back and folding his arms behind his head. "It's a free country, and anyone can sit wherever they want. Plus, I need you to cheat. Kidding," he added with a grin, at Brooks' unimpressed expression.
"Fine," Brooks said, shrugging like it wasn't a big deal and his heart wasn't pounding a furious rhythm against his ribcage. "Sit wherever you want. Just don't start complaining because I'm not as interesting as your buddies at the back."
Hale tilted his head. "Says who?"
Brooks was rendered speechless at his curious look, as if he was asking a genuine question, and had to look down at his textbook to remind himself how to breathe. Mason, his usual chemistry partner, walked through the door and blinked at his replacement. Clearly, Hale was also the last person he'd been expecting to be sitting there. He shot Brooks a questioning look, as if to say, what the hell is going on?
Brooks offered an apologetic shrug in response meant to say, I have no idea.
Mrs Mulligan marched in and Mason had no choice but to find a new seat. "Alright, settle down," she commanded, her voice carrying over the chatter of teenagers. "Let's continue where we left off, shall we? Halogens. Who can tell me all the trends?"
There was one key difference between Mason and Hale, beyond the fact that Brooks found the latter's presence significantly more distracting. Mason was like Brooks; he wanted to do well in school, and that meant he always paid attention in class, always did his homework, always did well in tests. Hale, however, didn't seem too fussed on the doing well aspect. Or the paying attention aspect.
He spent the majority of Mrs Mulligan's lecture texting under the desk, and when it came to doing the questions, he was better at finding excuses not to do them than the questions themselves. While Brooks worked through them, Hale tapped his pen against the table and whistled random tunes under his breath and eventually resorted to doodling in the margins.
Finally, it got too much for Brooks when they were halfway through the lesson and he'd barely done half of the first question. "Are you ever actually going to write something?" he wondered.
"Oh, but I have." Hale pointed to the top of the page, where his name was scribbled. "It was very exhausting. I need a break."
Brooks rolled his eyes. "Surely actually doing the questions has to be less boring than just sitting there."
When Hale didn't reply with a smartass comment that he always had ready, Brooks glanced at him from the corner of his eye. The pen was sitting still between his fingers as he stared at the questions displayed in the textbook, as if expecting the words to leap off the page and bite him. A furrow appeared appeared between his eyebrows as he frowned at the textbook, his dark eyes bright with frustration. Whatever he was seeing seemed to be genuinely bothering him.
"Hale?" Brooks said quietly. "What's wrong?"
His eyes darted up, as if he'd forgotten about Brooks. "Nothing in particular," he said breezily, and he was back to twirling his pen idly as if nothing had happened. "Just that chemistry sucks."
"I can help, if you want. Which bit are you stuck on?"
Hale pulled the textbook closer towards him only to flip it shut with a devilish smile. "Let's do something else," he suggested, and Brooks' eyes widened at the innocent remark. Innocent, jeez, nothing more. "How about we go back to the questions game?"
Brooks shook his head in bemusement. "What is it with you and your never ending supply of questions?"
"It's just that we barely know each other," Hale shrugged. "If we're going to be chemistry partners, I need to know more than your name is Brooks and you have an unhealthy love for school."
Brooks barely acknowledged the teasing comment; he was more fixated on the part before it, which Hale had casually brushed over. If we're going to be chemistry partners. That meant he saw this as a permanent fixture, and it meant Brooks had an excuse to speak to him, and to secretly stare at him when no one was looking. He had to bit his lip to stop a goofy smile spreading across his face.
"I guess it would be helpful to know more than the fact your name is Hale and you have an unhealthy hatred of school," Brooks said with nonchalance, hoping his faked indifference wasn't as transparent as it felt. He rubbed his sweaty palms against his knees and took a deep breath. "Shall I go first?"
Hale grinned. "That's the spirit."
"What..." His mind blanked, and he blurted out the most obvious thing that came to mind. "What's your favourite colour?"
He expected Hale to laugh and demand a proper question, but he seemed to consider it seriously, tapping the end of his pen thoughtfully against his lips. "Orange," he finally said.
"Orange?" Brooks said, a little incredulously. "You were meant to say blue, or green, or something like that. Who's favourite colour is orange?"
"What's wrong with orange?" Hale looked amused as he pointed his pen at Brooks with accusatory intent. "You, Brooks, are racist with colours. Colour-ist. Orange is a nice colour and totally under appreciated. What does Brooks even stand for?"
Brooks blinked at the sudden change. "Huh?"
"Brooks," he repeated, and Brooks' skin tingled at the familiar syllables rolling off Hale's tongue in a completely different way. There was a lilting melody behind it, something warm and soft that somehow made his name seem like the nicest sound in the world. "Is it short for something?"
"Oh, um, yeah," he said. "It's short for Brooklyn, but no one calls me that except my parents. I was supposed to be a girl and my mother was set on the name Brooke, so when I came along...Brooklyn was a compromise. People started calling me Brooks way back in primary school and I guess it just stuck."
"You don't look like a Brooklyn," Hale said thoughtfully, tilting his head as he regarded Brooks. He felt his face turning warm under the intensity of Hale's dark gaze and just about resisted the urge to glance away. "But Brooks suits you. Okay," he continued, before that properly registered, "it's my turn now."
"No way, you just asked your question."
"What?" He looked indignant. "That wasn't a proper question. It was just a side thought."
"Nope, it was definitely a question," Brooks said decidedly, unable to keep the grin from creeping onto his lips at Hale's sullen expression. For someone who acted like hot shit all the time, he could be pretty childish too. "Which means it's my turn again, and I want to know...why did you sit next to me?"
That wasn't the question Brooks had been expecting to come out of his mouth, and Hale looked a little caught off guard by it. Brooks had been meaning to ask something generic about animals or food, but this was a question that been bugging him for a while. Hale's phone buzzed on the table, but he didn't even glance at it, his gaze fixed on Brooks.
"Have you ever talked to Elliot?" Hale gestured to the guy sitting at the back of the class, sniggering over some video on his phone and blatantly not doing his work. "The idiot is the biggest distraction ever. Now I have your genius brain to somehow scrape a pass for this class. A very smart plan, if I do say so myself."
Except it wasn't working very well, because Hale had made no more progress than he would have at the back of the class, and he didn't seem even remotely interested in talking to Brooks about chemistry. In fact, Hale was the one who changed the topic when Brooks offered to help him, and was more of a distraction to himself than anything. Brooks could have pointed this out, but something in the too lighthearted tone he used suggested it wasn't something Hale wanted to talk about.
"I'm honoured that my genius brain is so sought after," Brooks said, interrupted when Hale's phone gave another insistent buzz. It was followed by more buzzing which Hale ignored, even though it seemed like the person on the other end was pretty desperate to get through. "Um, don't you want to look at that?"
Hale flicked the buzzing phone a cursory glance. "Not really."
"Why?"
"It's just Will and the others being annoying fucks about clubbing this weekend," Hale said dismissively, as his phone continued to vibrate obnoxiously. "They want to have prinks at my place, but there's no bloody way any of them are coming near my house with alcohol. Will, maybe, but not Alec or Elliot."
"Sorry, did you just say clubbing?" Brooks said incredulously. "None of you are legal. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're not even seventeen." The only reason he knew this was because Calla had mentioned he had a late birthday in the passing and the unnecessary information had somehow stuck in his head.
"And?"
"And that's illegal," Brooks frowned, knowing that this was a pointless argument to pursue even as he said it. Hale knew full well going to clubs below the age of eighteen was against the law, and this information was clearly of little concern to him. "And that's...I don't know, bad," he concluded lamely. "How do you even get in?"
Hale smirked. "Fake IDs, of course."
"But...you could get in trouble," Brooks said feebly, not sure why the idea bothered him so much. He told himself it had nothing to do with the fact that Hale would be kissing other people and everything to do with the fact that breaking the law was bad. "You're in shit if they figure out you're underage."
"Don't you worry yourself about that. They won't catch me out," he said with unwavering confidence. "They never have before."
Brooks somehow didn't doubt that. Even though Hale was only sixteen, and in fact a few months younger than Brooks, sports and good genetics gave him the broad shoulders and defined physique to easily pass as an eighteen year old. Not that Brooks had been looking at his body. No more than necessary, just the odd sneaking peek for appreciation.
"Anyway, enough about that." Hale snatched up his phone, only to turn it off and tuck it into his pocket. "My turn for a question. What's the deal with you and Calla?"
It wasn't a difficult question, but all Brooks could muster was a blank stare. "Me and Calla?"
"You and Calla," Hale confirmed, suddenly very fascinated by the biro he'd been messing around with for the whole lesson. "You're always together, and I figured you were probably dating. Not that it means anything to me," he added, with an indifferent shrug, "but it'd be helpful, you know, for future reference. When I'm talking to both of you."
"No," Brooks said, with a sinking feeling in his chest. So this was the real reason Hale was talking to him. He was interested in Calla, and just needed to know Brooks wasn't potential competition. "No, we're not dating. She's my best friend and that's all."
"That's all?" Hale visibly perked up and his smile was entirely genuine, brighter than anything in the room. "She's not your girlfriend?"
Brooks stared down at the table. "No."
He knew he wasn't being fair, that he had no right to be annoyed at anyone but himself. He'd known from the start that Hale was off-limits, a pretty straight boy only to admire and not to touch, but he'd let himself slip. He'd been drawn in by sparkling brown eyes and captivating smile, just like all the others, and he was going to be left trailing in the dust when it became apparent Hale wasn't meant for him. He was meant for the glittering golden girl who would eventually steal his heart.
Not Brooks.
"Cool," Hale said, his dark eyes on Brooks even as he refused to meet his gaze. "Okay, your turn. Ask away."
"You know what, I think we know enough about each other now," Brooks murmured, picking up the pen he abandoned. "I need to finish these questions, and you really need to start them. You definitely won't pass the class if you don't actually write anything down."
"Or," Hale suggested, "we could just not do them."
"Weren't you the one who said you sat next to me so you wouldn't get distracted?" Brooks challenged, almost wanting him to admit it had been a ruse to cover for the fact he was just here to talk about Calla. At least then the truth would be out in the open and Brooks wouldn't be able to kid himself anymore. "Well, here you go. No more distractions for the rest of the lesson."
"Not that it's a problem. Mrs Mulligan is easy enough to charm your way out of trouble."
"For you, maybe," Brooks said, a little bitterly. Hale could have charmed a rock if he wanted to and unfortunately, Brooks wasn't immune to it. "But some of us actually have to do the work."
Brooks didn't risk looking at Hale and having his resolve melt away, but he saw him shrug and shuffle his papers from the corner of his eye. He hadn't meant to be so short with him, but it was difficult when the conversation was just a reminder that the further Brooks fell for him, the more painful it would be. To Hale, he was nothing more than the nerd to befriend in order to get to the girl, which he couldn't even call cruel because Hale didn't know what he was doing to Brooks.
Brooks needed to distance himself before he was too hopelessly involved to ever break away. This thing he was feeling, this tangled mess of confusion and happiness, would never be anything more than a futile crush. The only one who would get hurt by this interaction was Brooks and he at least owed it to Calla to be supportive in the relationship, which would be difficult if he was secretly pining over her boyfriend.
Brooks allowed himself one last look at the way Hale bit his lower lip when he was concentrating and then promised himself he would stay away.