A/N: So I wrote this in like literally two days even though its about 4.6k words and good GOD has it been a busy week but happy new year to every Bean! ;/////; to more ice cream flavours and braised chicken ahead. 

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[Vanilla]

It had been thirteen hours and approximately forty-seven minutes since Leroy and I had fallen into the pool and done a terrible job of recalling the need for oxygen even above water. I blame the idiot, as I always do, who appeared to have eliminated breathing from his list of necessities in life and replaced it with any word representative of 'lip-locking'. The moment resembled some sort of break in his religious fasting, in which Leroy had experienced a lifelong hunger and starved himself to the ends of the earth until the, um... well, the thing.

Naturally, I'd never had the time or proper mind to be fantasizing about any sort of first kiss—let alone my own—and still, should some fortune teller have decided to warn me of something that long or intense of a festival, I would have politely dubbed them insane.

Either way, I had been mildly disappointed.

Leroy's hand-bound recipe book had fallen to the side of the pool during the entire fiasco; back cover thoroughly soaked beyond recognition but fortunately sacrificing itself for the rest of the inner content. Thank goodness I'd come up in time to save the rest of it and mind you, that was after I'd experienced nearly five full minutes of a certain someone pulling me back into his arms for yet another one of his attacks every time I tried to reach for the side of the pool.

"So you guys kissed fourteen times in total," Si Yin was back to exaggerating the very next day only because I hadn't the sanity to keep this inside and stay calm like Leroy obviously could. He'd acted so normal afterwards that I was pretty sure no one else could tell what we'd been doing moments before while they were away. Si Yin, who'd spent so much time with myself, was the only one who noticed my flushed cheeks.

"That is not—! There was no calculation of... I couldn't possibly count the number of times he'd, well I... goodness, I can't think." I stared down at the textbook on my desk and registered the buzzing chatter of our classmates before homeroom. "You don't think romance could have multiple side effects on one's mindfulness?"

Si Yin opted for a reassuring pat on my shoulder. "I'm pretty sure it does. Are you feeling stupid already?"

"More by the minute, yes."

"That's the way," she slapped this right across my back and I positively froze. "Is this a secret, by the way? I'm so bad at keeping secrets but I'll try. I'm having lunch with Nabila and Rosi so this is going to be harder than that product knowledge test by Marseille. Do you want to come and keep me in check?"

I told her that it wasn't all that big of a deal but inside, I was practically quaking. "That is quite alright. You have my complete trust and faith. Also, I've made arrangements for lunch with Leroy. Well, we never really established if it was public in any manner but that's probably because we never got to establish if it was a thing at all. Him and I are dating, a-and... and, um... i-it doesn't... there isn't a... u-um... dear god there it is again. Contagious stupidity!"

My best friend was quick to point out the clear tendencies I'd seemed to have developed all of a sudden: nerves absolutely fried whenever it came to speaking about Leroy and our current relationship. Not a single moment of clarity was involved in a conversation with his name in it.

"Back to your seats." Chef Palmer made her entrance seconds after the bell, meeting my gaze briefly as she crossed the room towards the instructor's desk. "I've got an announcement to make."

The shuffling of feet and dragging of chairs across the floor had begun pretty much before Chef Palmer's words and Si Yin, who'd only just gotten herself comfortable on the edge of my desk, was obliged to return to her seat. Granted, I hadn't the best gut feeling about this sudden 'announcement' that likely involved my sorry self, deduced from the look of reluctant expectation Palmer had given me as she made her way to the front of the class and cleared her throat.

"Thanksgiving is a couple of weeks away and we all know that the school's yearly food market festival's always held the day before. Registration has started and in order to submit our class's participation form, I have chosen a temporary class representative for the overseeing of this event." Her gaze swept the class before meeting my own. "White. Come up."

The consensus was a trepid silence, or so someone as socially inept as myself could tell without looking around to know that all heads were turned and all eyes, fixed upon the epitome of plain and boring. In an attempt to remain as inconspicuous as possible, I'd stood carefully and as quietly as possible before gingerly making my way up front.

Si Yin was clapping; that much, I could register. Other background noises included a slow, unimpressed echoing of palms coming together and an occasional, non-committal snort.

"For the next couple of weeks, you guys will be reporting to White, especially anything event-related. After we decide on the theme of our booth, preferably by today, we'll move on to assigning roles for finance and logistics." Chef Palmer handed me a piece of chalk and a clipboard with a to-do list attached to it, gesturing to the blackboard behind me. "I'll let you lead the discussion."

Fed to the wolves right off the bat! I'd thought nearly at once, swallowing upon the observation of cold, hard expressions coming primarily from the back of the class. They appeared openly offended and were the perfect description of everything my godfather's husband encompassed whenever they were apart from one another. Others remained visibly neutral or indifferent to Chef Palmer's announcement, as though it was really none of their business and not worth that bit of their attention.

I gave the list a quick scan. "So um, I would like to think we're all familiar with what a food market is, so I'll skip the general description of that and move on to the possible ideas we can, um, hopefully come up with by the end of class..." Silence never did bode very well for class presentations. It reminded me of the time I was passionately breaking down the science of mushroom-caramelizing in front of thirty-odd seniors five years older than myself.

No one was listening.

"According to the suggestions by the school, street food stalls are a safe and popular pick. They get relatively easy approval by sponsors as long as it is sufficiently endorsed by one of the non-profit organizations on the list and, judging by the list here, I'd say we'd have a good time choosing Southeast Asian cuisine since most of the recently-sourced organizations support cultural promotion of countries in that area.

"That aside, previous committees have approved of themed cafés and pop-up restaurants, depending on feasibility, budget, and quality of the proposed idea. Artisanal products like jams, self-brewed beer or any form of alcohol are subject to strict policies.

"So, um," I looked up hopefully, scanning the class for raised hands or lightbulb faces. "Would someone like to start off with a suggestion...?"

The long pause that ensued was one that I had no doubt expected to receive. In fact, I had been bracing myself for a moment like this and preparing several suggestions to start the ball rolling. "Alright then, I suppose I could—oh. Si Yin?"

Her hand was raised. "I vote butler café," she said at once and those around her laughed good-naturedly. Ariq was one of them. Several at the back were rolling their eyes.

I scratched this down as our first option on the blackboard before turning back to the class. Thankfully, several hands were up.

"Butler and maid café." "Halloween café. Spooky stuff. Haunted mansion theme." "Wine tasting." "Riverdale theme!" "Ew, Riverdale?" "Korean cuisine café where we can blast K-pop all day." "That Japanese lazy egg character. We can make it an egg café or something." "That would have copyright issues."

Naturally, I was doing my best to pen every suggestion down and keep up with wave after wave of café ideas whilst trying to evaluate the feasibility of every single one of them in my head. Oddly enough, everyone seemed invested in the idea of setting up a themed café. As soon as we hit the mark of twenty suggestions, all in hopes of some kind of café, I decided to offer my opinion on this.

On hindsight, this probably wasn't the best idea.

"Um," I'd raised my hand in front of the class. "If I may... there have been rumours about the class next door, 1A, doing a café as well. There might be unnecessary competition, if we'd like to be avoiding that. Our ideas may overlap, and we may be accused of copying someone else's original work... just, um, a word of caution."

"Who cares?" At the back, Li was frowning and turning to the one beside him, Meyers, with a laugh. "Just accuse them of doing the same thing. It's not like they have copyright on an idea."

"But isn't Violet in 1A?" The girl seated behind Si Yin and in front of myself turned to the boys at the back. "We'll just lose if we go up against them, especially if she's representing their class while we're stuck with him."

Oh.

The great, fearful pause that trembled in the air had seized the rest of my nerves for a moment of dawning and the light, soft and dusty, had crept inside to settle there. I hadn't anticipated such words. Although now, they seemed almost humiliatingly obvious.

There had been no name to the 'him' in her sentence, or any sure tone of hostility or purpose in such a claim but it was precisely such a nature that revealed the truth of her feelings and perhaps a reflection of what several others in class were thinking as well. Everyone was oddly silent.

"Why's he leading the discussion in the first place?" Li directed this to Chef Palmer, who'd looked up from her laptop at the silence. "It's boring and we're literally not getting anywhere with this."

"What! Hello, we have twenty ideas up on the board can't you see?" Si Yin turned around to say and if I'd felt like sinking into the ground earlier on, this would have been my cue to retreat further into myself and disappear.

Chef Palmer rose form her seat and slammed her fist against the blackboard, jolting the class into paying her their full attention.

"Is it so hard to keep your mouths shut for ten minutes?" She narrowed in on Li, Meyers, Si Yin and the girl seated behind her. "Are you eight-year-olds in high school or is this actually kindergarten, huh? Why can't any of you be cooperative for once and listen to your representative when he has something to say because I'm not going to repeat this again: you, report, to him."

Our class instructor returned to her laptop screen after giving the entire class a sweeping glare, daring someone to speak up against her. It was then—when she was distracted by movement and going back to work that someone seated at the front row all the way on the other end of the class had whispered the words I'd oddly come to fear. I think it was elementary school when I first heard of the term.

"Teacher's pet."

*

It had ended on a stalemate, the rest of the discussion did. Chef Palmer had announced a further continuation of it on Thursday afternoon after responses began to slow and dry out. Worse, my mind had refused to sit and rest for I continued to notice all the possible issues and problems every suggestion could run into before the execution of plans—very much including the fact that we weren't necessarily appealing to any of the non-profit organizations on the list.

Simply put, I was in a poor mood.

The entire discussion had been a major form of discouragement and a clear demonstration of my classmates' disapproval of Chef Palmer appointing me as representative. In fact, I'd felt so lonely and apart that I found myself hoping to see a certain someone as soon as I could. Here I was, standing outside the student commons and staring at my phone, willing him to turn up just as we'd arranged.

From: Just Let Me Impress You

Where u?

I was about to comment on his grammar when his silhouette—now all-too-familiar—emerged from the corner of my eye and I looked up to meet his gaze; only to notice he wasn't alone.

"O-oh. I, um. I thought it was just..."

"Ay, that's the guy!" I was at once surrounded by second-year culinary students who had the fortune of height, peering down at myself. "Didn't he bite his tongue on the first day or something?"

My mind, fazed by the surprise and sudden circumstance of having to interact with strangers, failed to come up with a proper response in time before Leroy cut in between me and the others. As far as I could tell, he didn't appear very pleased with his company. "I'm leaving."

"No, Cox, come on man," someone else had reason to hold him back before Leroy could turn and address myself. "We already said he could join us. You know the girls won't let us sit with them unless you're there."

Leroy made no effort in his expression. "I care?"

They wouldn't let him off. Already, my companion was making his way past the doors and signalling for me to walk alongside him but the group of sophomores, likely his classmates, continued to follow close behind. This very naturally became a cause for concern. Not because I had intended to spend some selfish time with the idiot whose stupidity was contagious, but because he was increasingly negligent of the people around him so much so that I began to fear the prospect of conflict.

"Another day?" I suggested, peering up at him but he shot me a look and I nearly rolled my eyes. "They don't seem very keen on backing down."

"You're not leaving. There's no reason for me to be here if you do," was all he said, handing me a tray as we joined The Line that snaked around twice. The beginning of lunch period was nearly fifteen minutes ago but the entire cafeteria had its tables mostly full by this point in time. There were little remaining seats left. "Fucking idiots wouldn't stop following me. Sorry."

"I see you're quite the human magnet," I put forth quietly as a joke, to which he snorted and rolled his eyes, reaching down to flick my forehead. "It's not your fault. Contrary to popular belief, I feel the same way."

He blinked, moving up in the line as I did. "Feel what?"

"Drawn to you, idiot," I'd responded under my breath whilst refusing to look at him and already, I could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Someone's honest today," he pointed out dangerously close to my ear and on instinct, I'd scooted away. Being next on the first station made it so that I could ignore his embarrassing comment and occupy myself with lunch choices. Today was particularly difficult given the favourable menu, and I found myself having to pick between the herbal wolfberry chicken and pork sinigang.

"Leroy, could you pick the wolfberry soup?" I said to my companion queuing right behind. "I'll pick the other one so that we can share and have a taste of both. A reasonable solution to bouts of indecisiveness."

He snorted, musing to himself. "You forgot to call me 'husband'."

"You forgot your common sense." I caught myself thinking I could get used to such an exchange of words. "Perhaps you'd left it at the bottom of the pool last evening." Waving at the student on duty, I pointed at the pot of sinigang and placed my tray on top of the glass casing. "By the way, that table before the juice counter has been looking our way for the past couple of minutes. You might want to give them your attention before their eyes turn red."

My companion did not bother following my gaze. On the other hand, his classmates behind were taking turns glancing over at the table of girls.

"Doesn't matter." He got the wolfberry soup and narrowed in on whatever was up next down the line. "What are you getting next?"

"The tomatoes and eggs, I suppose. Then, the olive fried rice."

He nodded and as I requested for the dishes mentioned, proceeded to get whatever other option he thought would taste as good. His choices were unfortunately spot on and I couldn't exactly raise an objection to something I was quietly pleased he did, a-although it did cause quite the embarrassment in my heart.

"Hey."

Someone had come up to us as soon as we'd emerged from the line with our lunch and utensils. It was one of the girls who had been seated in front of the juice bar. Leroy on the other hand, had nearly missed her greeting in looking out for empty seats had she not left her hand on his arm.

It was an odd gesture that had stirred a startling drop of green in my cup otherwise clear of such emotions.

"Hi," she repeated, flashing a smile. "We have seats over at our table. Come join us."

This, although thoroughly unprecedented, was not entirely unwelcome. Her table of friends had been kind enough to make space enough for six people to fit in when, moments ago, the space had appeared far more occupied than it was at present. Looking around, we didn't have much of an option. Leroy turned to see how I felt about this and I obliged with a nod. We made our way over.

Somewhere along the way however, the sophomore classmates from before tagged along in a hurry and the table of girls, visibly startled and uncomfortable, found themselves having to accommodate more than they'd hoped for. In total, the six of us joined them for lunch.

"Kurtis." One of girls had hissed under her breath, glaring at the guy who'd first spoken to me earlier by the entrance. They appeared to be acquainted.

"Hey Farah. We're with Cox. Didn't see you there."

The girl named Farah folded her arms in the seat beside Leroy, rolling her eyes and ignoring the male student seated on Leroy's other side. I on the hand, sat quietly across him as he disregarded them both and cracked open his can of coke. The two of us found ourselves sandwiched between the group of boys and group of girls; which wasn't too bad of an idea since, technically, everyone had their fair share of wishes granted.

Classmates landed themselves a table with the girls and girls had themselves a Leroy and Leroy had himself a me and I, a him. I-if that was how the final part worked, that is. I couldn't be so sure.

"Anyone started on the assignment for 3001?" Halfway through, Kurtis brought up something to talk about, but the girls on the other side didn't appear to be listening. "Some menu design."

"Cultural cuisine? Yeah I'm done with that." His friends were the only one responding. "Kingston's the kind that checks in before the deadline."

"Warren though." Kurtis had an odd way of speaking that sounded entirely different from his demeanour from before. It was lofty; almost arrogant. "She's cute."

"Isn't she a TA?"

The one who brought this up seemed fairly nonchalant. "I know someone who's hooked up with a male TA. She had him take off his ring and finger her in kitchen nine or something."

"Oh. Georgina, right?"

"Nah, Gina fucked up with Ryan so she moved on to Caleb and Justin the night after her birthday. She was this close to blowing the same TA I was talking about though, so I get why you had them mixed up."

By the time I was able to finally make out what exactly it was the group of guys were talking about, I'd nearly had my entire face burning in flames of embarrassment and, unable to stomach my lunch any further, proceeded to lay my chopsticks aside.

"Wait. Isn't Justin dating some other senior in his club?" Someone else had to continue this line of conversation and I found myself clearly uncomfortable. "He fucked Georgina?"

"Just a one-night-stand, man. Doesn't count as cheating, right?" This was Kurtis. "I mean, I fucked Gina."

If this wasn't enough to send me spiralling into a furious abyss of nerves and discomfort, I wasn't sure what else could. Disturbed, I peered up from my plate and caught a glimpse of Leroy piling pieces of curried eggplant onto my bowl of rice whilst swapping out some of my broccoli. He'd also given me a good portion of his herbal chicken even though he'd only taken a small bit of pork from my sinigang. Clearly, he hadn't been paying them any attention.

"Yeah but she's easy like Eli and that other guy, Harris something. The one with the brown hair and blue eyes... everyone's having sex ed at fifteen or sixteen and there they are correcting the teachers. Lmao."

"Like which condom feels better and what lube to use when?" Kurtis went on with a horrid smirk on his face. "Heard that one last week."

"No, like, the Harris dude said something about which position felt best. Sideways or something."

"Oh yeah," the awful creature was nodding and I felt sick in the stomach just hearing him speak. "Agreed. Sideways is great 'cuz you get the control and the underside of your head gets all the way deep. Angling is important."

I had been staring down at my lunch tray, refusing to appear like I was in any way involved or part of this terrifying conversation when all of a sudden, there was a pregnant pause and the thing I feared the most proceeded to unfold.

"Hey, hey. Look at him," someone who wasn't Kurtis was saying and almost immediately, I could hear that he was looking at me. "That's a crazy blush you've got there. Must be a little virgin boy. So innocent."

"He's a first year, come on. Can't expect him to be experienced."

I retreated further into myself and Kurtis, seated beside me, had the gall to reach over with a hand and forcefully bring it down the top of my head like it was a basketball to be dribbled.

"Innocent, huh? Good little boy. Kinda like those trashy chick flick novels where the main character's all 'innocent little girl' type. Like a virgin at twenty-one or something and then gets all up in some alpha dude's pants. Then he finds out he's her first and they fuck happily ever after or something. What was it called... fifty shades of, what?"

Not a moment was spared in my decision to react and though I'd noticed, from the corner of my eye, a candle bursting into flames, I myself rose from my seat with a mind clouded with smoke and, fuming, paid no attention to my chair that had fallen over from the speed and force at which I stood.

All of a sudden, lunch was a mere thing of noise and out of the window it went—clearing the rest of my head and allowing the words to string on instinct.

"I have several issues with this, thing you have been talking about, if you don't mind. What does it mean when people say 'innocent'? Do they automatically associate virginity with innocence? Does the former somehow find itself under the category of purity?

"Why does the term 'innocent good girl' somehow describe someone who hasn't had sexual intercourse yet? Does the experience of sexual intercourse somehow relate to our personalities? Can a person who's had sexual intercourse be pure and innocent still? Because I can think of many people who fit in that category and henceforth your definition is invalid.

"In fact, does someone who hasn't had sexual intercourse have zero possibility of being corrupted and immoral? Just by rationally thinking about these things, one can come up with all sorts of people who beat this depiction we have in our minds and, really, all we have to do is think.

"Why is it somehow wrong or rare to be a virgin at, say, twenty-one? Is sexual intercourse such a central part of life that everyone must necessarily experience it before, I don't know, a certain age?

"I'm fifteen, for goodness sake. But regardless, is being a virgin something that must be 'revealed' and not just stated outright like the fact that it is, independent of embarrassment? Why should people be embarrassed to be a virgin and, especially, men?"

"What—are they somehow not entitled to be proud of it? I mean, while everyone else is going around boasting about how many people they've slept with, I've used that time to, I don't know, do something meaningful like helping my nephew with his homework.

"Next time you want to be proud of something, think about what it implies. Using your brain wouldn't hurt."

==============

[Leroy]

He was leaving the commons before I came to and by the time I got up to go after him, the rest of them were laughing. Something about him not making any sense and being too much of a nerd and a virgin to be mature. Just laughing like they were high on drugs. I stared.

"He's a fucking kid!" "Oh my god I've never seen anyone react like that. Did you see how he was trembling? Like talking about sex was a crime." "He think he's Gandhi. Or what, a monk? A nun?" "Ah, virgins. Fucking hilarious."

They felt young. I never noticed; I hadn't seen the point in listening or hanging out with people like that. It was like hearing a bunch of fucking foetuses foaming at their mouths. Wasn't hard to identify once they began talking so I really should have stopped him from meeting them in the first place. They were still laughing, so I continued to stare. Waiting.

They began to notice, one by one. The last one who sat beside him and touched his head stopped only after a good minute. After he had the attention of girls.

"Ah, fuck. Cox, can't believe you hang out with a kid like that. Watch out before you catch his virgin IQ, man." He was laughing again. This time, no one joined him. Because I was standing.

And finishing my drink; grabbing my bag, standing. I was thinking. He'd made points I never thought about, after all. I don't listen much, and that makes me part of the problem. They talked like this all the time. In locker rooms, at tables, after school. Not realizing or telling them off was wrong. And I did that. And here he was, calling them out. First time they ever met.

Something else was important. The thing about shaming virgin men. That it was embarrassing, both to be one and to be with one. I never thought about it; why the girls who confessed or asked me out all seemed to lose interest after a month or two. So it was because I didn't touch them. Eventually, they left.

I downed the rest of my drink and dropped the can on the tray, bag over shoulder.

"Never had sex," I told him. Stared straight into his eyes. "Know why?"

He was slow to react. Slow, in general. The smirk on his face faded and he paused.

"Too busy fucking everyone else over on the bell curve." I shoved my chair in. "Including you." 

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A/N: There is most definitely some social commentary in this one, because it's been something I felt strongly about for such a long time. 

It's funny how a virgin male has it so much harder than a virgin female, and a female experienced in sex has it so much harder than a male experienced in the same thing. I hope it provokes some thought. 

I've always found it hilariously idiotic whenever female leads in romance novels 'reveal' to their love interest (or their love interest finds out) that they are virgins. And like it's some label attached to being a virgin, they are immediately dubbed 'innocent little girls'. The one that got me fuming the most was probably fifty shades. I read the summary of the first book and positively went crazy with laughter. It's intellectually disabled, that is. 

Innocence, as a word, does not in any way refer directly to sexual purity. Just because someone hasn't had sex doesn't mean they are 'innocent' or 'little'. Just because someone has had sex doesn't mean they aren't 'innocent' any more. Chip is a good example. Io is a good example of the former; he isn't innocent or naive, but he certainly is a virgin. 

I hope you will have the courage to correct someone with a flawed perspective in the near future <3 Just don't use violence lol. Words are enough.

-Cuppie