Sweet As The Punch

Sweet As The Punch
Chapter 3

Oh how Adam hated Monday mornings.

The urge to kill everything in his path took over again, as he made his way to the kitchen in order to grab breakfast. At least Anna was gone, and that meant he'd spend less time fighting with her. He had to admit that it was good stress relief... although he didn't need it yet.

He quickly ate bacon and eggs, then grabbed his backpack and headed outside, without forgetting to feed the fishes in the aquiarium near the front door. Since the weather was still relatively warm, he decided to walk to the bus stop instead of taking his car – and there would be no parking fee once at the university.

As usual, the 7:30 bus was beyond crowded. Adam rolled his eyes at the masses of students in the bus and groaned as he had to stand up, squeezed between an overweight woman in her late fifties and a twelve-year-old kid. The woman's perfume was way too strong and the kid's music was loud. It was hip-hop... and he hated hip-hop.

The subway wasn't better; he had just missed the one going in the university's direction. He cringed and sat on a bench after grabbing the daily subway print – Métro – and began to read as the people headed outside of the station. Slowly, he made his way down, and walked to where the second car would stop. This way he'd be right in front of the stairway at Côte-Des-Neiges, his stop.

The rest of his travel went without problems.

At Côte-des-Neiges, there were even more people, scurrying left and right to either get to different wings of the university or taking the bus going downtown. He was glad that he didn't have to go downtown, as the first bus filled almost instantly – so did the next two, and the third one was half-full.

Then began the 10-minute walk to the university wing where his Japanese class took place. Why couldn't the class be in the wing closer to the subway exit like the Literrature class, or the student union? It bugged him.

At least he'd get to see Raelene. It would be worth it! The vision of Raelene's hair floating in the wind as she walked by the street was quickly put to end; someone just clinged to his arm and kissed him on the cheek.

Who the fuck...

He turned his head slightly, but he had to admit he wasn't surprised. Mitch stood beside him, grinning – as usual. Adam stood there blinking for a few seconds before putting an arm around the blonde man's shoulders. The things he'd do for a girl's attention...

"Sorry Mitch, I'm still half-asleep" he said. It was a partial lie; he hadn't seen it coming at all, but he was somewhat still tired. "How was your night?" he asked, letting go of Mitch's shoulders and putting his arm around his waist. "I will not go any lower! I will not go any lower! I will not go any lower!"

"Was fine. What about yours?" Adam felt Mitch's head resting on his shoulder.

"We must look so awkward. Or just typically gay, I don't know..." "Mine was okay. I woke up a few times though. If it wasn't because of the goddamn class this morning I'd still be in bed."

"Would you be thinking about me?" Mitch inquired with another grin. Adam had no choice to chuckle at that; it was childishly adorable.

"Of course." He did the unthinkable, and turned his head around in order to kiss Mitchell's forehead. "What the fuck am I doing?!?!"

Then another "unthinkable" event happened. Behind him, he could hear a few girls giggling. He turned his head the other way and noticed Raelene. The dark-skinned woman had a bright smile all over her face and her eyes were shining. To him, there was nothing better to describe this than with "an anime moment."

"It works! God, it works! It fucking works!"

"Mitch, that's your new boyfriend right?"she asked. "You two are so cute!"

Adam, even though he had kept a cool face, was exploding inside. "It works, it works, she finally noticed me. Oh God it works. It works!" "Yeah, I'm Adam."

"I'm Raelene!" The woman sounded so cheerful, just what he wanted. "I've never seen you around, are you in Eastern-Asian studies too?"

Adam had been right all the way. She had never noticed him before and deep inside, it bothered him. "Yeah, it's my first year. Not my last, I can guarantee that."

Mitch butted in. "If this is his last year, I guarantee there won't be any sex for him." He saw Adam going blank and elbowed him as the women's pace grew faster. "I'll catch ya in class after!" As they were further, he burst in laughter and broke off Adam's grasp. "Should've seen your face. You know I could never deny you sex!"

"Because there's not even gonna be any in first place." Adam chuckled at the answer and wrapped his arm around Mitch's shoulders again, forcing the slightly smaller man to rest his head on his left shoulder. He then rested his own head close to Mitch's. "See that? She noticed me....!" he whispered to the other man.

"Captain Obvious is awake though" Mitch replied, smirking. "You'll get her."

And so they walked to the building where they both had classes. They agreed to meet at the cafeteria after their respective class, and they split up after Mitch gave him another quick kiss on the cheek.

~ ~ ~ ~

Busy day at the cafeteria – some classes had started at 8:30AM while Adam's was at 9AM. Most of the 8:30 students, by now, were sitting at tables. They were filling over ninety percent of the cafeteria.

His class had been hell, he barely understood anything due to his fatigue, but he had hopes Mitch wouldn't mind explaining the lesson to him. After all, he had gone through it as well.

Mitch was the first of his friends he spotted – Jakob being the second. He was eager to talk about how well his plan worked and how he was happy he had been introduced to Mitch. He'd make sure to thank Jakob for that. Adam dumped his bag on the chair at his left and kissed Mitch, who turned around and smiled. "Hey, didn't even seen you coming. I got my lunch today so fuck cafeteria food. My mom's homemade lasagna owns every single other lasagna in the world."

Adam chortled and wrapped his arm around Mitch's shoulders, once again, dragging him a bit closer. "Just putting my stuff here, I want pizza. Anyone want anything?" he asked, getting a few orders of beverages and pizza slices. Even Jakob, who had eaten the cafeteria lunch – lentil soup, chicken skewers, pilaf rice and a bowl of Jell-O – asked for two slices of all-dressed pizza.

Five minutes later, Adam came back, carrying a tray full of drinks and pizza. He almost had to order a full 12" one... maybe that's what he should have ordered. If Gregory hadn't ordered a veggie one, he'd have had a full pizza right in his tray.

"So Adam, how was the class? Jakob asked, biting into his pizza slice. If he remembered his own class a year back, it wasn't easy for beginners.

"Meh, so-so" he replied, not sounding too enthusiastic about it. "I'm so used to respectful Japanese that I have a hard time with familiar..."

"Well, that's Mitch's department! And grammar. And Kanji. And vocabulary... just ask him and he can help you. "

Mitch looked around frantically at the sound of Jakob's voice. He had been completely out of it for a second, as he was focusing on his food and his food only. "Huh? What? Oh... Japanese. Yeah. I can help you out, hun. Since we're seeing each other it shouldn't be so hard eh?"

"Indeed. Hey, I have my own personal teacher. I can kiss him and no one will mind!" He forced himself to kiss him on the cheek again – he didn't dare going for his mouth yet – and messed his hair in a playful manner.

"Oh by the way Adam, learning familiar Japanese after you've learned the polite forms is nothing compared to learning the formal Japanese... and then the uber-formal one" Mitch added, certain to strike fear in his "boyfriend's" heart.

As predicted, the other man's brown eyes widened in fear. "Don't. Even. Start." Let me deal with familiar right now. Ima... boku wa tabeteiru. I'm currently eating. Is that right?" Adam asked to the table. He was the only one in first year of their friend circle, one was bound to know if it was right.

Helena answered between a sip of her apple juice and a pizza bite. "You can drop the boku wa, it's been made so the Latin-language-based people aren't fucked up by the lack of subject. Ima tabeteiru works just as well, is shorter, less repetitive and used more."

"I suck." He was expecting a comment from Mitch on this one.

And he was right. "In a good way!"

"... That was so predictable" he added, rolling his eyes.

And after several minutes, Adam got up; he was now done with all his food. "I'm gonna put the tray back."

"Be back soon, love!" Mitch told him.

The next thing he knew, Mitch's hand was on his ass. His normal reaction would have been a loud "What the fuck?!" but he had to suppress it! Instead, he winked at the blonde man. "Keep that for the bedroom, hotstuff."

~ ~ ~ ~

The worse part of having a lover who had an afternoon class was waiting for him. Adam was bored beyond belief, and there were few people that he knew around. However, once he spotted friends from his own classes, he went and sat with them.

Amongst them, one Asian man kept staring at him. He couldn't guess his name from the only class he knew him from, but it surely wasn't a French or English name.

Not being too shy, Adam went straight to the point. "I know it's gonna sound stupid, but since I remember you from the Litterature class... and we all know how good the teacher is with our names, what's your name again?" The sentence was drowning in sarcasm.

"You can call me Aroon. That's not my full name, it's just easier for people who aren't Thai." Oh so he was Thai. It was obvious that he was Asian but Adam wasn't familiar with all countries in Asia. If he had to guess, he'd have said Chinese, Vietnamese or Korean. "But I was raised here. Maybe I'd need an English or French play name."

Play name. First time Adam heard that way of saying "nickname". It sounded cute. He guessed it was another translation for "nickname" in Thai, and his further research – made for the hell of it – would prove him right. "What does Aroon mean, if it even has any meaning?"

"Dawn. I was born at 5AM."

"Ah, I see. Nice."

There was something about Aroon that Adam couldn't grasp. He was a bit cold, somewhat distant, as if he didn't like his general presence. His tone was kind of snobbish. Maybe he was the son of a rich guy, or maybe it was because they barely knew each other.

A girl, whom Adam knew as Julie, sighed. "I don't know how they expect us to keep up, after three weeks I still have problems with hiragana... I keep reading them wrong. Maybe I'm dyslexic in Japanese." She dropped her pen on the table and got up. "I need a break. I'm gonna get a snack."

"I'm having trouble with the familiar, but I'm gonna have Mitch explaining it to me after his class. "

Aroon perked up at the mention of Mitch, and he could see a slight disdain look on his face.

"What's up?"

"... He's your boyfriend isn't he?" The way the question had been asked, it was clearly disdain.

"Homophobe alert..." Adam rolled his eyes and put his pencil down, tilting his head. As much as he was straight per say, he had no problem with gays and failed to see why people had problems with them. "Something wrong with that?"

Aroon's tone was dry. "That's so sick."

The guy beside Aroon, Bernard, quirked his brows. "It's not sick, if they love each other it's all that matters in my opinion." By now the whole table had stopped doing their current task. "Doesn't change a thing..."

"Yeah well that's what you guys think... I'll see you in class." With this, the Asian got up and pakced his things before sending one last look at the table.

"What's his problem..." Bernard added, annoyed. "Raised by a religious family or what? It's not like gays are from a different species..."

Julie came back a minute after the argument; she sat down with her cookie and looked at everyone. "What happened with Aroon? He seemed mad about something."

Adam sighed. "Apparently I'm sick because I'm gay. There's something weird about a minority telling that to another." "And I'm not even gay. So that's even more sick because I pretend to be gay? Eh... don't care...I wouldn't do it if I hated gays..."

The woman agreed with Adam. "It's not sick... it's cute!"

"I think most girls in the program think it is. I don't see why it's cute," Bernard said, shrugging

The woman looked at him as she tied her brown hair into a ponytail. "That's because you're straight. If you were a girl, like me, or a gay man like Adam you'd find it cute too!"

"I'm none of those, but I don't see why it bothers Aroon so much that a classmate of his is gay. You haven't seen me leave the table 'cause Adam likes guys? Seriously... I think he needs to grow up."

Adam found comfort in his friends – they were okay with it, it was all he asked. He didn't see how you could hate someone because they found someone of their own sex attractive. Although this time, he was in the middle of it; these things weren't just happening around him. They were happening to him.

~ ~ ~ ~

Mitch's class finished at 4PM, right before Adam's started. They quickly met up in the hall to discuss what would happen after school. "You wanna come over tonight, at around 7:30?" Adam asked, holding his "boyfriend" close to him. It wasn't extremely different than holding a girl the same way, just that Mitch was taller than his girlfriends had been but not as tall as Adam anyways, and his body was broader.

"Sure, I'll come. Kinda wanna spend time with you anyways, maybe we could eat some Chinese food, I'm dying for General Tao's chicken..." Mitch looked at Adam with a slight pout – that look would melt anyone.

"I'll order some on my way home then, before you come. You're gonna help me with my Japanese too right? I feel so... dumb by not understanding that, especially since it sounds so easy for you guys."

Mitch rested his head on Adam's shoulder, fiddling with his own hands. "It's stuff you get used to, don't worry about it." He paused for a second, closing his eyes and then spoke softly. "I better let you go now. I'll wait for you at the cafeteria going to work on my Litterature assignment."

Against all odds, Adam hugged him tight and kissed his forehead again. Being gay was something hed get used to as well, over time. "I'll meet you over there then."

~ ~ ~ ~