#every group needs the token straight friend to hold their bags at pride

[skipar00]

Revolutionary Sabo spotted at pride

(thank you @crybabykolby for ur wonderful brain baby)

[thewarlocksbitch]

Gay Camp ch3

malec gay camp chapter 3

word count - 4k

thank you to Sen for beta editing!

read my other fics here

hope you like it!!

________

 Magnus supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that, excluding Alec, the other boys at football camp had very limited knowledge of classical literature. He had survived the first week of camp by sheer willpower and by staying close to Alec. Alec was an easy person to become close to, he’d realized. Magnus liked how Alec spoke. He liked how he considered his words so carefully before he chose them, and how he was more emotionally observant than any of the other boys. The week before, Magnus had anticipated at every conversation for Alec to say or do something that would force Magnus to acknowledge a brutal truth; that boys who were pretty and interesting and not straight could never be found at a high school football camp. He was amazed that Alec kept him optimistic. Magnus had fewer complaints about camp than he’d expected. The food narrowly toed the line of being edible. Magnus spent more time drenched in sweat than he did dry and he was outdoors more often than in. The camp-issued blankets were thin, scarcely thicker than a sheet of notebook paper. The most glamorous things Magnus had worn since arriving were black nail polish and black grease – the latter of which he painted across his cheeks daily in the name of visibility and manly spirit. Many other travesties occurred daily, though, and Magnus strived to forget them. But what he hated most of all was the siren that he woke to every morning. But on Saturday, instead of waking up to a blaring siren, Magnus was stirred from sleep by Alec’s finger tapping his shoulder. For the second time that week. Alec really needed to learn that some people just weren’t equipped with the skill-set to socialize immediately upon waking. “Hey, good morning,” Alec said, as Magnus tried his best to appear dignified with bed-hair and half-dead eyes. “We’re free until practice tonight. Want to go to the library?” Alec’s eyes were clear and his hair defiantly messy despite its short length; Magnus swore it’d grown an inch out of spite. Alec wore a customary camp hoodie and this close Magnus could smell the forest on him, the dampness of moss and fog. Magnus slowly sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He stole another glance at Alec, peeking through his fingers, and then slumped back down and buried his face in his hands so Alec couldn’t see him blush. This really was ridiculous. Nothing about ugly hoodies or the inability to maintain inch long hair should have been attractive. Magnus needed to get hold of himself, or kiss Alec. Whichever came first. “Did you go running?” Magnus asked.

“Um. Yeah, we did, with some guys Ryan knows.” Alec said, his voice shy. Magnus dropped his hands to look at him as Alec intently wound the string of his hoodie around his finger. “I thought you would want to sleep in.”

Magnus hoped that extra sleep had at least done something for his appearance. The past week had left him feeling much too productive and busy. He wiped at his eyes again and ran his hands through his hair. “My lazy, inactive self thanks you.”

“Show us some of that appreciation and get up,” Colin said behind Alec. He’d been watching Magnus’s sluggish ascent to consciousness and, by the look on his face, was unimpressed. “We’ve been waiting for you to eat.”

Magnus slipped off his bunk and held a hand to his heart. He tried to ignore that he immediately felt lightheaded and sore. “Aw, you guys. You shouldn’t have!” He said.

“Asshole,” said Ryan, rolling his eyes. He was already dressed, his hood pulled up to almost completely cover his wide-awake eyes. He tossed a hoodie at Magnus without looking where it hit. If Magnus were Colin or maybe even Alec, he would have mimed catching a football and said something lame like, “Touchdown!” Since Magnus was not Colin or Alec, he bent down to pick up the hoodie from where it fell on his socked feet and pulled it on. He lethargically began searching for his sneakers.

The second his laces were tied Colin ran for the door, with Ryan on his heels. Alec was slower to get up, and instead he fell into step beside Magnus. “Colin’s just really excited about the microwaved pancakes,” he said.

 ________

 Colin brandished a steaming bag of pancakes at Magnus and let his tray clatter to the table, knocking over Ryan’s orange juice. Ryan’s indignant grumble was drowned out by Colin shouting, “Twelve hot mini pancakes! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?”

“Actually, I have. Many times,” Magnus said, while Alec helped Ryan mop up the collateral damage with their napkins. Ryan continued to grumble, his thin lips turned down in annoyance, though his eyes on Alec were grateful. Magnus stirred his oatmeal, then immediately lost interest and propped his chin in his hands, hoping Alec still had some Oreos hidden away. “For example, one time my cat stole my dad’s burrito and I found it under my bed a few months later. That was much better than this.”

Colin ripped open his pancakes, rolled his eyes, and sighed simultaneously, a feat Magnus could only respect. “Whatever, man. Hey, you know where the syrup is?”

Magnus vaguely waved an arm towards the cafeteria line. “Over there.”

“Get me more orange juice while you’re up there!” Ryan shouted after Colin.

There was a moment of silence before Alec scooted closer to Magnus. “So,” Alec prompted, “Achilles and Patroclus.”

“Yes,” Magnus said. He’d been waiting for Alec to bring them up.

“They were lovers, right?” Alec asked, and Magnus didn’t miss the way he cautiously lowered his voice. “I mean, hearing that Patroclus died is what finally stopped Achilles sulking about Briseis. He cared more about avenging Patroclus’s death than his pride.”

Magnus very suddenly did not care that the other boys seemed to know nothing about classical literature. He turned to Alec fully, straddling the bench they were sitting on. “Yes,” he said again. “And don’t forget them putting their ashes together and Achilles ripping his hair out. It’s obvious-”

A voice across from their table spoke up. “That’s pretty gay, dude.”

Ryan looked up from his cereal. “How? It’s art.”

“Well, I don’t know, Ryan, maybe he has a point.” Colin said. He turned to the boy, brow furrowed. Colin was a short guy – taller than Ryan, but still short – that Magnus had come to think of as the token comedy relief friend of their group, naturally excitable and unable to be in any situation without making it better, but for a quick moment, he looked intimidating. Leaning over the table, Colin went on, “Could you please explain, in detail, why one of the most famous literary works in history is gay?”

“Only chicks and gay guys read that crap,” the boy said, glancing at Magnus. He didn’t seem to realize how quickly Magnus was becoming annoyed. “It makes you-”

“Actually,” Magnus spoke up, “If the Iliad reflects the reader’s sexuality, then my copy would be bisexual crap. Not gay crap. The more you know.”

The boy’s mouth slowly closed and his face went blank. Magnus stared at him, waiting for him to say something that ended up with Magnus possibly punching the ignorance out of him, but the boy just shrugged and turned back to his friends. Huh, Magnus thought. Interesting.

“Woah,” Colin said, reverting to his true self. He made a flailing motion that upset Ryan’s bowl of cereal. Ryan pressed both his palms into his eyes and took in a very large, very loud breath. “Woah,” Colin said again. “You’re bi?”

Now Magnus was waiting for his bunkmate to say something offensive. “Yes. Does that make you uncomfortable?” He was hyper-aware of Alec going still beside him.

“Well, heck,” Colin said in a harassed tone as he tore apart a miniature pancake, “you saying it like that makes me uncomfortable. You sound like my mom. Don’t make it weird, dude.”

Magnus grinned and held his fist out, his annoyance effectively dissipated; Colin was good for weathering things out. “You’re a good straight.” he said.

Colin bumped his fist against Magnus’s triumphantly and went back to his pancakes. Magnus cast a quick glance to Alec; he was sitting very still, and his eyes were averted from the boys sitting across from him. Magnus scooted an inch closer to him as he said to Ryan, “What about you?”

Ryan had stopped trying to push his Colin-shaped headache out with his palms and was contemplating the ghastly remains of his cereal. He rolled his eyes at Magnus. “If Colin is a ‘good straight’, then I’m a great one. Are you going to eat your oatmeal?”

Magnus shook his head and pushed his bowl across the table. Ryan gladly accepted it, and his face fell as he got a closer look at the contents inside.

“Anyways,” Magnus said to Alec, pointedly turning to face him again, “the whole thing with Achilles demanding their ashes be placed together.”

Alec didn’t quite meet Magnus’s eyes. “Let’s just talk about it in the library later.”

 ________

 They did not, in fact, go to the library after breakfast, because it had flooded. Along with the football field and half of the dorm rooms.

“Go get your crap and then come back to the cafeteria,” Boune droned, the better part of his pants soaked and the entirety of his expression something Magnus could only describe as pissed off.

The dread in the air was tangible as Magnus walked with his three roommates and the other camper’s downstairs to their dorm hall. A boy at the front opened the door and leaped back as water rushed out to soak his feet.

“Shit!” he shouted. “It’s like The Titanic in here!”

Ha, Magnus thought dryly, and he bent down to take his shoes and socks off and roll up the pants of his sweats. He looked over to Alec just as water began to creep over his toes; Alec was staring down at his own sneakers as they were soaked, his hands limp at his sides. Sensing Magnus’s gaze, he looked up. “It’s kind of cold,” he said.

Magnus lifted his carefully arranged shoes and socks in a what can you do? gesture and Alec shrugged. His shoes – along with the other campers’ – made disturbing squelching noises all the way down the hall. Magnus had half-feared some boys might take the flood as an opportunity to drown the weaker of the group, but everyone was already wet and miserable enough; Magnus made it to his room almost completely dry.

Colin was the first to enter the room, and he immediately let out a shriek of horror at what he saw. He ran to the side of his bed and dropped to his knees, ignoring Ryan’s hissed, “You’ll get soaked, idiot,” and thrust his arms under the waterlogged bottom bunk.

“What’s he doing?” Alec asked, and Magnus slipped past him to gather his things. Alec continued to mumble worry over Colin as Magnus pulled Alec’s blanket from the lower bunk. He turned back to Alec. What he had intended to be a friendly toss turned into him gently settling it over Alec’s shoulders – Magnus may or may not have let his fingers linger over Alec’s neck a few seconds longer than necessary – and Alec cut off mid-sentence and blushed.

“Why don’t they just let us sleep in here?” Magnus picked up for him, trying not to smile; it was childish, really, this joy over rendering Alec nonverbal. “We could just double on the top bunks; I know we’ll suffer either way” – this was a lie, as Magnus could barely contain himself thinking that he might bunk with Alec – “but it’s stupid to cram us all in the cafeteria.”

“Yeah, but think about it from their perspective,” Ryan said slowly, wringing out an athletic shirt he’d found floating in the water; it didn’t look worth saving to Magnus, but he decided to keep his opinion to himself. Ryan set the shirt over his shoulder and bent down to grab another. “Letting us stay in flooded rooms is probably violating a bunch of health codes and what not. Plus, if we get a cold or foot flu from the water we can’t do shit, and then Coach would cry.”

“Boune would cry.” Colin corrected, finally emerging from under the bed. His dark cheeks were flushed and his clothes were clinging to him in a way that should have been distracting to Magnus, but Magnus found he didn’t really care. He tried to remember if he’d ever felt that way solely because his affection was focused on someone else already.

He quickly tired of thinking and stared at Alec’s profile instead.

Colin thrusted the package of Oreo’s he’d grabbed at Ryan, who immediately let them fall to the water. They made a soft plop and threw droplets of water over his already soaked shoes.

“Why did you drop it?” asked Colin in dismay, though he made no move to retrieve the forsaken cookies.

“They’re all wet.” Ryan said. “Did you think there was any chance they’d still be good?”

Colin’s sad eyes followed the cookies as they sluggishly bobbed to the other side of the room. “No…” He looked unbelievably defeated, more somber than Magnus had ever seen him. Ryan let this go on for another heavy second before slapping Colin on the back almost hard enough to knock him down. Colin made a concerning noise, and Ryan smiled cheerily at him, then at Magnus and Alec.

“You guys got all your stuff?” he asked. The default expression on his face told people that he didn't very well understand what was going on at any given time, and that he very much didn't care to understand anything. For a second, though, his smile erased that.

Magnus held up the few possessions he’d deemed necessary for the night and Alec shrugged under his blanket in answer. “We’re all good,” Magnus said. He turned for the door, then caught himself mid-step and looked back to his roommates. “Make sure you grab some dry socks; you’ve got to protect yourself against the foot flu.”

 ________

 Concerts were crowded. Buses were crowded. Schools, parks, and parades were crowded. Parties were crowded; in general, Magnus was crowded – he never seemed to have enough space to stick his arms out and spin. Magnus didn’t mind it. He loved being surrounded by people, no matter what kind of people they happened to be. Whether Magnus liked them or not, every person had the capacity to be entertaining.

But the cafeteria wasn’t just crowded; it was a mess.

Unlike a concert, there was no music to drown out meaningless conversations. Unlike a school or park or parade, there was no event nor objective to distract everyone from each other. And unlike a party, no one was having any fun.

Alec plopped down beside Magnus, expression miserable.

“Report?” Magnus asked. He’d sat in the middle of four laid-out blankets on the floor while Alec had gone to figure out what was going on. Colin and Ryan had gone with him, but Magnus didn’t know where they were now.

Alec plucked at his hoodie string; it was fraying at the end. “They’re not going to get our mattresses for us and we’re not allowed in the flooded areas, so we can’t go get them. But they are bringing in air mattresses and we have our blankets.”

“And about practice?” Magnus asked anxiously. It was the weekend and there hadn’t been an announcement of the day’s schedule yet, but they’d skipped – or at least Magnus had skipped – their morning run and drills, and he didn’t like the thought that their coach might consider this reason enough to turn night practice into more of a nightmare than it already was.

“Oh,” Alec dropped the string and looked up at Magnus. “Yeah. Practice is still on. It’s a health code violation to sleep in a flooded area, but we’re allowed to run around in one. And Coach is probably going to double the practice time.”

Magnus wiped away imaginary tears that may very soon become real. “These people should all be in jail.”

“’These people’ are going to kill us if we don’t go get ready.” Alec said, standing up. He smiled, and Magnus wasn't sure if he'd meant it to be reassuring or disabling. Alec held out a hand. “Come on, Magnus.”

Magnus was dumbfounded for one moment, and then it took another for him to tell his hand to grasp Alec’s and another after that for his hand to obey. Alec pulled him up, his thumb pressing to Magnus’s, the tap of his pulse going against the tap of Magnus’s, and then Alec let go and Magnus had to relearn how to stand on his own: the physical contact Alec had so surely initiated and the way he said Magnus’s name were getting to his head.

The rest of the campers were filing out through the cafeteria’s double doors to the field. As they joined the crowd, Alec said, unnecessarily, “Ryan and Colin will probably just meet us there.”

Magnus grinned. Now that Alec’s hair was short, there wasn’t enough of it for him to hide under, and his flustered expression was bare to Magnus. Magnus asked, “Did Colin get new Oreo’s?”

Alec shook his head and laughed. His laughs were starting to come easier, Magnus noticed. “The cafeteria doesn’t sell them. I still have mine, though.”

Magnus leaned into him and lowered his tone in secrecy, “Are you going to tell them that?”

Alec looked startled to be so close to Magnus, but he didn’t flinch away. Something like happiness filled Magnus’s chest. “Never.” Alec said.

Practice was as long and as hard as Magnus had dared imagine, and Alec was so exhausted afterwards that he barely took any time to shower before throwing his sleep clothes on and passing out against Magnus. After the coaches took turns lecturing and praising them, Magnus hauled himself and Alec to their feet. He grabbed Alec’s bagged clothes for him and patted his flushed cheek, and Alec laid an arm over his shoulder and muttered something about hell being preferable to this.

Magnus had noticed before how much bigger Alec was than he, but he hadn’t the chance until now to fully realize that Alec was actually a giant. Alec’s weight – all lean muscle and sprawling limbs – and his height – he was half a head shorter than Magnus, but all that height was legs and torso – had Magnus almost buckling under him. Magnus did not think that he was particularly weak, but he was definitely the kind of person that faked sickness during gym class and lifted at most however much the fridge door weighed.

“We made it,” Magnus said when they reached their spot on the floor.  Two air mattresses had been laid out where their blankets and things had been. Alec's and Magnus's were on one. Colin and Ryan's were on the other. “You hungry?”

Alec loosened his grip on Magnus’s shoulder and let himself fall in a controlled tumble onto their mattress. “I hate running.” He said. He arranged himself so that his legs were crossed and his bag was in his lap, then looked up at Magnus. “I’m eating Oreos. You want some?”

Magnus plopped down beside him. “You’re going to run out at the rate you’re going,” he said, but happily took an Oreo anyway.

Alec popped one into his mouth. “Live fast, die young, or something.” He said, voice muffled.

“You traitors!” Magnus heard Colin shriek from behind. Magnus whirled, but Colin was already throwing himself onto the empty mattress across from Alec, though for once he was careful not to sling his dinner everywhere. With less energy, Ryan lowered himself to the spot beside Colin and wrapped his blanket around his shoulders. Colin shook his head to further assert his unhappiness, spraying the others with droplets from his wet hair.

Colin eyed the box of Oreos in Alec’s lap meaningfully as he took an angry bite of soup. “Never, in a million years,” he huffed, “did I expect this from you, Alec.”

“You can have some,” Alec said innocently, at the same time that Magnus said, “We never said we didn’t have any. We just withheld the fact.”

Colin already had multiple cookies stuffed into his mouth. The smile on his face was wide and disturbingly bulgy. Ryan quietly reached over and took one cookie. “Thanks, Alec,” he said.

“Alec’s my favorite,” Colin said. “No offense to the rest of you.”

“Leave me to scatter flowers and weep,” Magnus said unenthusiastically.

Later, after the Oreo's were gone and the lights were off, Magnus laid beside Alec, not touching but close enough that he could feel his body heat. He'd originally been off put by the fact that he'd be cramped into a cafeteria with the rest of the campers, but sharing a bed with Alec definitely wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to him.

Magnus shifted closer to Alec and wrapped his blanket tighter around himself. It was freezing.

Alec's voice, quieter than a whisper, sounded just across from Magnus's face. "Are you awake?"

Magnus opened his eyes. All the lights were off to dissuade the boys from late night shenanigans, but the moonlight flooding in through the few windows was enough for Magnus to make out the lines of Alec's face. He inched closer. "Yeah," he whispered, "I'm awake."

"Ryan stole my blanket," Alec said quietly.

"Ryan did?"

"I think it was sleep-stealing, so I don't blame him."

"Are you cold?"

Alec let out a little huff of breath, the air warming Magnus’s cheeks. “Yeah. A little."

"I can share my blanket," Magnus offered. "I'm not all that cold anyways."

"No, that's okay," Alec said. Magnus could see his eyelids fluttering in the dark.

"Let me see your hands, then," Magnus said. He felt himself flushing. If Alec could see, he was polite enough to not say anything.

Wordlessly, Alec offered his hands.

Magnus found them in the dark and twined their fingers together. His own hands felt like ice, but that couldn't be helped. He pulled them into his chest, and Alec curled a single finger into the collar of his shirt.

"Better?" Magnus asked.

"Better." Alec told him.

Magnus closed his eyes. Maybe he didn’t have much to complain about after all.