Stickers and Scars

Tits. Hundreds and thousands and millions of tits. This is how most of Alex's nights went. Big tits, small tits, round tits, depressed looking tits, midlife crisis plastic tits. Alex had seen more tits than a girls locker room, however all of them were fake. Not fake in the sense that they were put there on account of low self esteem, fake in the sense that every single pair of tits he had ever seen, excluding his mother's during infancy and the ones he had seen the time he walked in the wrong changing room at the community pool, were just a collection of pixels on his laptop screen and ink on the pages of magazines. So what if Alex wasn't exactly a twenty-first century Casanova, he had all the girls he wanted with a couple key words and a few clicks. He could thoroughly amuse himself, well, his right hand could thoroughly amuse himself.

Alex scrolled down the white page full of videos, searching for the one that would get him off the quickest, he clicked on a box that featured four gorgeous blondes and got up to draw the curtain at the end of his bedroom while the video loaded, he didn't want to mentally scar the lady that lived next door, who's window conveniently faced his. She seemed cool enough, but if she were to look outside at the wrong time, Alex didn't think he could ever face her at a block party again. With the room considerably dimmed, Alex sauntered back over to his bed, unbuckling his jeans in the process. Tapping the play button he crammed his hand down his pants with some effort, his taste for skinny jeans being both a blessing and a curse. The video faded in from black to reveal the four blondes all smiling and waving at the cameras, introducing themselves and promptly making out with each other.

Alex let out a sigh of disappointment. Three of the four girls were named after cars and they were all obviously being paid copious amounts of money to pretend to be into each other, that was the downside of porn to Alex. Everything was so obviously set up, none of the actors actually wanted to fuck each other, and none of them were very good at feigning like they did. Admitted, there were some very good actors, but Alex always knew, through some sort of perverse sixth sense, when somebody was faking.

The moans these girls were letting out got more and more whiny and ridiculous as the miniskirts and tube tops came off. Alex had definitely not used good judgment in his choice today, yet he still drove on. Hand moving rhythmically up and down, up and down, up and down. His muscles flexed and he let out a small gasp as he began to ignore the phoniness of the girls in the video. He picked up pace and felt that warm tingle in the base of his stomach that he had grown so accustomed to. He felt himself get closer and closer, and just as he was about to let himself over the edge, he heard the front door slam downstairs as his mom came home from work. He clapped his left hand over his mouth to silence the filthy noises he was making and quickly closed the video, saying goodbye to the nice blonde ladies as they snapped off of his screen. Zipping up his jeans, he opened up Wikipedia and typed in the first academic thing his sex-distracted brain could conjure up. He looked down at his pants with horror as he heard his mother's heels stomp up the stairs, his erection was anything but discreet. He grabbed his acoustic guitar that always at by the side of his bed and threw it into his lap at light speed as his mother opened the door and poked her head in to check on him.

“Hello sweetie, how was your day?” Her smile was dazzling.

“Great mom, you?” Alex sputtered as he tried to muster up the best I-was-not-jacking-off expression he could.

“Work was work, the boys down at the office are so dense sometimes. You need anything dear?”

“Nah mom, I'm fine, glad you're home.” Alex was doing the best he could to usher her out of the room. His mother's neck craned to look at the screen of his computer and she squinted as she caught the title of the Wikipedia article Alex was apparently reading. Her face grew stiff and she quickly excused herself from the room, quietly shutting the door on her way out. Alex turned to his laptop screen and he felt the color from his face drain and his heart sink into his stomach. BDSM of all things. “Sorry mom.” Alex thought to himself, dinner tonight would be awkward.

Seeing as it was starting to get late and Alex had school in the morning, he finished up his homework. Chemistry was damn near impossible, Algebra was a bore, English was hardly work at all. He had always had a flare for the language arts, his English teachers always adored him because of the somewhat nontraditional, but elegant way he wrote. Alex was pretty sure he could take a shit on his essays and they would still fawn over them. He closed his books and picked up his guitar again. He loved his beat up old acoustic more than life itself, the nicks and scratches on the body were testimonials to the blood sweat and tears he had put into learning how to play it. However, aside from the wear and tear it had accumulated over the years, there were no stickers or patches. He simply couldn't bring himself to intentionally change his guitar, he felt it was a blank canvas that would be decorated with the songs he played, not stupid stickers he would probably come to hate after a while.

He halfheartedly plucked at a couple of strings, nothing really speaking to him at the moment, he started strumming some forced melody that sounded sort of musical in his head. He was getting irritated. Alex had been so uninspired lately, the most he could muster was a scale and basic chord progressions, it was disturbing seeing as his head used to run wild with notes and melodies; it was full songs a few months ago, dammit. He felt the urge to create something, anything, but wasn't able because of his own lack of ability and inspiration. It was was like being stuck in a cage he had built himself, it was so frustrating. He put his guitar back beside his bed, pretending as if it was his loyal guard dog that refused to leave his side, and shuffled downstairs to get some food.

After a long and uncomfortable dinner with his mother and father, Alex practically ran up the stairs to get back to the solitude of his room. He flung open the door and found his room to be near black, seeing as he still had his curtains closed from earlier and all the lights were off. He flipped on the lamp that sat on the table next to his bed, illuminating the faces of the band members on his posters that decorated the dark blue walls of his room. Alex paced around his room for a while, simply because he didn't quite know what to do with himself. His homework was done, he didn't feel like playing his guitar, and he didn't have the heart to pick up where he was interrupted earlier that afternoon. Alex, out of ideas and feeling all around defeated by the events of the day, got ready for school in the morning, showered, and flopped into bed.

Alex woke up suddenly to the sound of “Feeling This” blaring from his alarm-clock radio, there was a sour taste in his mouth and his sweaty boxers stuck to his legs. Rubbing his tired eyes he willed himself to get out of bed and stumbled over to the upstairs bathroom, tripping over his own two feet in the process. He washed his hands and looked up to find himself staring back in the mirror, Alexander William Gaskarth, 17 year old English boy growing up in Baltimore. He studied his reflection as he haphazardly threw water on his face. He didn't consider himself to be too unattractive, he was no model material but he certainly wasn't that ugly. He got by in just about everything in his life, his looks, his social status, his intellect. Alex wasn't anything exceptional but he was doing just fine overall. He grabbed a brush and tried to tame his brown mess of hair into something that resembled his signature look, a heavy side part and long bangs. He wasn't quite sure why he liked his hair this way so much, why he refused to just get it cut short like most of the other guys at his school, maybe it made him feel important, like he was somebody who had done enough exciting things in his life to be bold enough to wear their hair like this.

Alex wandered through his morning routine like he always did, brushing his teeth and throwing on whatever was clean in his closet, which today was one of his many pairs of plain black skinny jeans and a plain t-shirt. He threw on a hoodie and a pair of Chucks, grabbed his backpack, said goodbye to his parents and got in his car. The drive to school was always a little stressful, seeing how his beloved car was as old as dirt and threatened to give out at any moment, always stalling and making noises he assumed no fully functional car made on a daily basis. The air conditioner was broken and the windows only rolled down half of the time. The one thing that did work was the stereo and he was constantly thanking God that the stereo was the one chosen appliance.

On this particular morning Alex decided to pull into a cafe on the way to school, he wasn't really a breakfast person and it took a couple hours to wake up in the morning before he actually wanted to eat anything, but today his stomach was screaming in protest, begging for food. He half walked half ran into the cafe, because he didn't think he could hold out much longer if he didn't get a cup of coffee and something to eat. Alex flung open the door to find a near empty coffee shop, an oddity this early in the morning. The bell on the top of the front door went off and the girl running the store ran to the front to see just who was here. She was cute, Alex admired her round face and short blonde hair as he ordered the cheapest pastry in the glass case and a cup of coffee. The casual conversation she struck up while she was getting his things was nice, she was sort of funny and they made each other laugh a little bit, Alex grabbed his coffee and his breakfast, said a prompt thank you and made his way back to his car.

As Alex pulled up into the school parking lot he turned his coffee cup to find the girl had scribbled her name and number on it. Shoving the blueberry muffin into his mouth, he punched those hastily written seven digits into his cellphone, deciding he would call her after school, who knows, maybe it was love at first sight, he definitely though she was cute. He heard the warning bell go off and made his way to his first period,coffee cup in hand and extra confidence in his step from his little encounter this morning “I'll have to eat breakfast more often.” he muttered to himself as he walked in the door and made his way to his desk at the back of the class, yet another day to get through had begun.

When the lunch bell finally decided to ring Alex nearly sprinted out of his fourth period class, he hated science with all of his being and was convinced he would suffer a stroke if he had to sit one more minute in that bullshit excuse for a class. On the way to his locker, Alex spotted his friend Rian out of the corner of his eye. Rian was a good guy, they had been thrown together on account of their shared interest in bands and playing music and had been pretty close ever since, he would go over to Rian's all the time and they would jam, but it was pretty hard to make anything that sounded really good with just a drum kit and one guitar, nevertheless they had fun.

Something was different about Rian today though, he was talking to some other guy the Alex was pretty sure he had never seen before, he only caught the back of his head, but Rian's friend Zack definitely didn't have hair like that, and there was no way in hell that was Casadee, but Alex did admit the mystery guy did have a pretty girly firgure, he chuckled to himself. “Maybe Rian's playing for the other team now.” Alex thought as he quickly shoved his Chemistry book in his locker and grabbed the things he needed for fifth period after lunch was over.

“Hey, Alex.” He heard Rian's familiar voice call out and felt his fingers tap a little drum solo on his back to get him to turn around. Alex closed his locker and spun to face Rian, and there he was. Alex nearly puked as he was faced with about six feet of whatever the hell kind of Greek god this guy was. Every stupid love song he had ever heard came flooding into his head as he stared Rian's new friend in the face, his somewhat stubbly, chiseled, perfectly tanned face. Alex's heart stuttered as he looked a little closer and decided that his new favorite color was whatever kind of brown this stranger's eyes were, and that the crappy bleached patch in his spiked up hair was the way he hid his halo while he was down on Earth. All of a sudden Alex saw the new guy's face contort with pain as he let out a cry of “Oh fuck!”
The three boys looked down at the ground to find that Alex had let go of his books and they had fallen on the tall brunette's foot.

“Oh Jesus fuck! Oh my god I am so sorry” Alex yelled, near hysterics, as he bolted to the ground to pick his books back up. Rian, watching Alex stutter and flail in horror, was trying, and failing, to suppress giggles as he introduced the two of them.

“So anyways, Jack, this is my friend Alex Gaskarth. Alex this is my new friend Jack Barakat.”
Jack Barakat, Jack Barakat, Jack Barakat. Alex though to himself over and over, he rolled the name around in his brain, letting it get stuck in every cave and crevice. Jack Barakat. That was kind of name a guy could spend the rest of his life with. The kind of name that could make a guy forget to grow old. The kind of name Alex could bone the shit out of.
Alex rose from his knees, books held firmly against his chest, blush steadily creeping its way across his pale face. He couldn't look Jack in the eye but he stuck out his hand and shakily said “Nice to meet you Jack Barakat.”

“And you, Alex Gaskarth.” Jack said, a chuckle making it's way out of his mouth in the process and a smirk establishing itself on his face. Alex was taken aback momentarily by Jack's voice, it wasn't at all what he had expected him to sound like, however the boyish, quirky tone that Jack had only made Alex sink deeper into the quicksand that was physical attraction. Alex couldn't take it, he felt his brain slowly turning into jelly and dripping out of his ears with every second he spent in the presence of this stunning boy. He had to get away for a second before he did something even more embarrassing, he needed somewhere to sort himself out and gather all of the intense emotions that were running rampant.

“So anyways,” Rian said to interrupt the silence that was becoming just a little too long. “Jack and I were gonna go get lunch. You should come with us Gaskarth.”
Lunch with Jack sounded amazing, he saw himself sitting next to him in the cafeteria, talking about something as tedious as the weather, laughing at some hilarious joke Jack was telling, wiping a bit of stray food from the corner of Jack's mouth as they parted ways and walked back to class. But he couldn't, not like this.

“Thanks, but, uh, I need to go study for a test next period. Thanks though, I'll see you around.” Alex let out a forced, uncomfortable chuckle. “Okay bye.” He blurted out as he started speed walking in the opposite direction toward the school library.

Alex found his moment of solitude among the 200's in the library. Leaning back against one of the shelves and slowly sinking to the ground, Alex clutched his books even tighter to his chest. He let out a sigh and hung his head to the ground. Letting gravity pull him down just like it pulled his books down on the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. He was acting like a dumb teenage girl, but he couldn't help it. Alex had never felt anything close to the wild, intense attraction he felt when he saw Jack. His heart was still beating like he had sprinted a marathon and he was sure his face was the color of a tomato by now. “Fuck.” Alex whined under his breath. “I'm so fucking fucked.” Alex had heard about love at first sight ever since he was a little kid, but he felt as if lust at first sight would be the one to do him in this time.