Chapter 17: Derek and Joshua and advices
The Minor teenager could feel them all. All those stares on his back, and he could see the hungry eyes of the MAJORS before him. It took all he had of willpower to not shirk and try to run for the doors. He was a shut-in, at best he had become used to deal with less than ten MAJORS in the same time, either relatives or friends of the family. And now, he was facing hundreds of them, unstable and dangerous… He shouldn’t have had accepted Shannon’s offer, he should have remained in Old Creek, he should have…
“Should I stay half naked or can I at least put my shirt back?” he asked on an impulse, trying to drive away his mounting fear. Better to talk to someone than to let his mind wander unchecked.
“Oh, herm, you can certainly put your clothes back. But if you have difficulties with your jacket, surely…”
The colossus’ voice trailed off, and he turned slightly as if to ask permission from the Headmaster, who simply nodded.
Alejandro craned his neck, trying to gauge the reaction of this Elias guy, but he had to admit that it was kind of hard when his mind couldn’t help but focus on his massive muscles. The Minor was more or less eye-level with his upper-tights, which were massive, to say the least. Even Alaric, who was his reference when it came to muscular MAJORS, looked somewhat less impressive than this man. Then again, he was probably a teacher and thus had had a lot more years to develop his physique, while his twin had just left the house, where their father had always set stringent limit to the amount of time his brother and sister could spend working on their bodies instead of their minds.
“Thanks” he managed to mutter when his eyes finally met the puzzled gaze of the giant before him.
The young man rushed toward the older students and, once the teacher presiding over the ceremony had his back turned toward him, he stopped dead in his track and begun to put his shirt back. It wasn’t an easy feat, in spite of the two-time too large size of the cloth, which had been bought by Shannon and that he had chosen precisely because it was too big for him. He usually didn’t care at all about his look anyway, so the baggy style didn’t bothered him, and it helped conceal his physique from the inquisitive eyes of the MAJORS around.
“MILTON NADIA!” roared the blond giant, calling in another Minor, no doubt.
Having just managed to put his prosthesis into the left arm of the t-shirt, Alejandro resisted the impulse to turn around and watch one of his kin having to expose herself to the leering and lecherous high-schoolers gathered here. Plus, “Milton” already, just after “Ferrand”… it’s disheartening, to say the least, he couldn’t help but thought.
Obviously, he knew very well how numerous MAJORS were compared to Minors, but this sudden reminder was somehow harder to cope with, for no reason that he could understand. Perhaps he was simply far too nervous, and hiding this as best he could was so taxing that he couldn’t prevent bad thought from sneaking up on him. Or perhaps he wasn’t made of as stern a stuff as he had started to believe and too many changed too fast were finally taking their toll on him.
Whatever the reason, he disliked it, and tried to block the sound of the ceremony behind him. He didn’t want to learn about this Nadia, or any other Minor after him like that. He wanted to talk to them, to make friends, to discover who they were, why they had chosen to attend school, all those precious moments of life which made peoples worth knowing. He also tried his best to pretend that it wasn’t his shut-in habits who were already trying to force him to establish a barrier between others and himself.
“I thought I had the hang of it figured out, at the very least… Turns out I’m not so sure anymore…” he muttered to himself.
It was something that neither his family nor Shannon had even hinted at acknowledging, and he hadn’t wanted to make them worry more than they all already did so he had tried to put a lid on it, but he was kind of an agoraphobic. They were all so focused on the fact that he had been the sole Minor in Old Creek and how it made it hard for him to be around MAJORS that they had also failed to notice that he wasn’t used to being surrounded by so many peoples. That he barely reached the chest of the shortest around wasn’t helping much. In fact it was probably detrimental.
“Over here. Hey, over here buddy!” he heard as he was still struggling with his shirt and his dark thoughts.
Looking up, he saw a black teenager with long braided hairs waving at him, and behind him, Derek Matthewson winking. Alejandro only hesitated for a second before walking toward them. While he didn’t want peoples to now right away that he was with Shannon, if only because he assumed that it would drove others to pester him even more than they probably would, at least he knew off Derek, and if what Alaric had told him a year or so ago, he was trustworthy, something he would probably need a lot at school.
“You need help with that shirt?” asked the other Minor once he had reached them.
His voice was soft, not at all what he had expected. That guy was large for one of their kind. Not really buff, or even tall, but definitively big and not all of this was fat, so he had expected a deep and powerful voice, but it was rather higher-pitched than his own, and he spoke really low, even if it could have been to avoid attracting the attention of the teachers. Perhaps the other students too, but when it came to the MAJORS, it was already a lost battle. A quick glance had proven to Alejandro that they couldn’t even been bothered with pretending that they weren’t listening on them.
Several of them were turned toward them, some going as far as leaning in their direction without a shame in the world. Had it been one or two, he would have probably tried to mock them into giving him the space and privacy he wanted, but there were a dozen nearby doing it, and probably even more behind them. The teenager felt a lump forming in his throat, making it hard to breathe, and he tried to take deep and slow inspirations to calm himself. He focused entirely on his t-shirt and finally managed to cover his torso.
“Hey, everything’s fine?” asked Derek once he noticed Alejandro’s tension.
“Yeah… Sorry, yeah” said the Minor from Old Creek, his voice croaking horribly, even to his ears.
“Doesn’t sound like that… but then again, you did some crazy shit just right now, I can understand that you’d be… tired” whispered Joshua, a bright smile on his face as he clasped Alejandro’s shoulder.
“Uh? What do you mean? I just told them the truth.”
“Yeah sure…” replied the black teenager, looking at him with obvious doubts. “Are you trying to tell me that you didn’t want to… you know?”
“I’m afraid I don’t” said Alejandro, who felt a sudden sense of dread coming over him. What have I done wrong? Surely nothing to dire, right? He tried his best to keep a calm face, but he was prancing from on foot to the other.
“Well, you just said to them all, our big, sexy, potential, lovers, that you were searching for a serious bond mate and all.”
“WHAT!” yelled Alejandro, immediately drawing the attention of everyone around him, even the teachers who had at least tried to pretend that he wasn’t talking.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know that it was what you were doing!” urgently whispered Joshua, looking absolutely stunned.
“I just told them that I didn’t want to be bonded to anyone, and that I wanted to be respected. What’s wrong with that?”
“You just told them that you wanted all of them to chase after you my man…” tried to explain Joshua, almost fervently. “Everyone our age knows that acting like that around a MAJOR is the best way to make him go wild, because he’ll think you’re just playing hard to catch. In any case, it wasn’t exactly a brilliant move. Oh come you didn’t knew that?”
“I told you that he was the only one of you guys in Old Creek” intervened Derek Matthewson, his voice deep, powerful and yet barely above a whisper, drawing the attention of both Minors.
Alejandro and Derek’s eyes met and to his surprise, the older teenager noticed that the young brother of Shannon seemed really worried. He wondered if it was because of what he had just did unwittingly, because he may have given the impression that he was dropping Shannon and, considering what had happened when the young billionaire had been upset by their mother, the Minor guessed that Derek was worried about him, a somewhat refreshing reaction coming from a MAJOR who wasn’t family, for once.
“Yeah, you told me that but… come on, the only one?” replied Joshua, clearly having difficulties admitting this simple fact.
“Well, it’s true… But come on, you’re both kidding me, right? Surely no one could hear what I said and understand the exact opposite!”
The two black men exchanged a glance which was eloquent enough, and Alejandro discovered that he could still feel more afraid of the days to come than he already was. His hand was sweating abundantly and his brow furrowed as he focused on his breath to calm himself down. It just like you, you stupid moron! he chastised himself. You had one job to do, avoid troubles and all you would have had to do was to ask Shannon or even Jim what to do and not do, or even Mom and Dad… But no, you knew better than that, and now you’re in a lot of troubles…
“Now, don’t go all brooding champion” said Derek, interrupting Alejandro’s mental monologue. “I know it’s probably looking quite bleak and all, but Shannon truly got better during last year. I’m sure that neither you nor anyone else is at risk of incurring her wrath. Well, I hope.”
Alejandro’s eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. Of all things, he hadn’t even considered Shannon’s reaction. Despite all her reassurances, he couldn’t picture Shannon actually willing to let other MAJORS having a chance to snatch him from underneath her very curvaceous shadow… And he had apparently given the signal for the Great Minor’s hunt, quite unwittingly. And it was probably something that even she hadn’t foresee or was willing to accept, because he knew all too well that overeager MAJORS meant a lot of manhandling and possible bruises, or worse. Izzellah had talked a lot about some bad experiences with giants and giantesses too lost in their certitudes that the Minor they were toying with was appreciating the whole ordeal to notice the harm they could do.
His left arm suddenly itched like crazy, as it hadn’t done so for months now. He absentmindedly scratched his prosthesis, somewhat terrified by the prospect of having to duke out of hands from those guys. Izzellah had told her a vivid account of her “game” of hide and seek with half a dozen of them, and how it had down south really fast. MAJORS, even the younger one, who should have known better, had really a hard time understanding that Minors could have an agency of their own and that it sometimes –often, in his case- wouldn’t align with their own.
“A word of advice” offered Derek, during a particularly noisy Presentation, of a certain Zigman Sorah, the sixth and last Minor, who was, apparently, a cutie with fairly large breasts if what the MAJORS around them were screaming about. “You’ll have a hard time driving all the would-be suitors off your back if you’re… well, your usual self. You may want to make clear that you are off-limit, if you will.”
“And what exactly is my usual self?” asked a wary Alejandro, looking gloomily at his shoes. “And I did just that, I told them that I wasn’t interested in the slightest in a stupid bond or anything of the like, and you just told me that it would just make all the MAJORS around here crazy. You included I guess.”
“Nah, you don’t have to worry about Derek buddy” said Joshua, giving his massive boyfriend a bright smile. “I’ve got this one wrapped around my fingers real tight, he won’t try to get his hands on you, if he knows what’s good for him.”
“Yeah, of course, it’s because of you and not my sister’s…” begun Derek before course correcting awkwardly when he saw Alejandro’s worried face, “character. She would kill me if I ended not with one but two Minors in my bed.”
“Yes, I’m sure that it’s what worrying you” replied Joshua, winking at the Minor from Old Creek. “But just for your information, you wouldn’t get two Minors, I would drop you.”
“You wouldn’t!” gasped the little brother of Shannon, just as silence had returned, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Oh, I would surely make you sit the first match of the year, Mr. Matthewson, despite your sister’s… impressive arguments!” barked Elias, turning to face them and drawing a massive fit of laughter at Derek’s expense.
Usually, Alejandro would have enjoyed a moment of embarrassment for a MAJOR, but right now, he was drawing almost as much stares as Derek, and all of them seemed, in his eyes, to be full of lust. He shivered a little, wondering if coming to school was such a bright idea, in the end. Perhaps he should have selected a place where he would have had friends and guides to help him navigate this new and foreign part of his life, someplace like Winton Height. It’s too late to think that, that ship has sailed and now you’re here, with just Lindsey, Derek and possibly Joshua as helpers. What could go wrong, right?
“Anyway” mumbled Derek, his dark skin even darker now. “You should tell everyone that you belong to…”
“I belong to no one but myself” interrupted Alejandro angrily, drawing even more stare, more than half of which were clearly condescending.
“Sheehs, I had forgotten how sensitive you were about it, champs” grumbled Derek. “And anyway, with the shit you pulled, I guess that you and Sh… her are not together anymore.”
“Why would you think that?” asked a surprised Alejandro.
“Well… surely she wouldn’t have been tone deaf enough to not warn you about those kind of behavior if you had told her what you had in mind, right?”
“Herm…”
“Jesus Christ” muttered Joshua. “You didn’t talk about it with your bond-mate? How did you even manage to keep it a secret anyway?”
“I’m not sure that I like how eager you sound to learn that Josh” grumbled Derek, earning a mocking chuckle as an answer.
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“FERRAND LINDSEY!” thundered Elias, finally calling Alejandro’s little sister forward.
The small teenager moved his weigh from one leg to another. While the calling of the Minors had been quick, the MAJORS had passed one after another at a sluggish pace. Each and every one of them spent at least five minutes bragging about his successes since kindergarten. It was so boring that the young man had been afraid of falling asleep standing if it continued without something remotely interesting happening. Hopefully, Lindsey would manage to wake him up enough for him to endure the long drag to the very end of the alphabet.
“You’re 12 years old, right kiddo?” asked the blond giant, his voice as steady as if he hadn’t spent an hour and a half barking questions and roaring names. Alejandro felt a little infuriated at the MAJOR’s vocal cords ability to endure such strenuous day without even noticing it. If he had tried to do a quarter of what the teacher was doing, he would already have a sore throat and no voice for the next two days. Strangely, it were those mundane differences which truly made him realize how weak and inferior he was, physically speaking. All he had was his will and it wasn’t a weapon of choice, apparently, to fend off MAJORS hungry for a bond.
“Almost thirteen sir” replied Lindsey, standing extremely straight, showcasing her massive size, for someone so young.
Alejandro was used to it, but it was only when she was alongside MAJORS her age that he realized that at 2m53 (8f3), she was extremely tall for her age. The average girls near her were closer to 2m15 (7f) meaning that she was towering above her. It was strange, because in Old Creek, she had seemed rather… average. Then again, looking around, he noticed that the peoples of his hometown somehow seemed taller than the MAJORS in New Orleans, at the same age. It was quite strange, he wondered why it was so, but his attention was refocused on his sister when Elias spoke once more.
“What do you want to achieve? Why should be help you along the way?”
“I want to become a geneticist, like my mother” replied Lindsey, provoking a lot of whispers, surprising many MAJORS. “I want to be able to understand our genome better, and the one of Minors too. I want to find why we have begun to grow so much after the Dark Age and why there is so many differences between humans today, between us MAJORS and the Minors around us. And I want to see if there isn’t a way to make sure that the number of the latter may grow back to healthy proportions!”
Alejandro knew very well that the last sentence was for him, and him alone, but he had barely heard it. The students had erupted into heated discussion as soon as Lindsey had begun explaining that she wanted to work not only on the MAJORS “superior” genome, but also the one of their smaller cousins, and clearly not everyone was agreeing with it. More than once, he heard “another Equalist nutjob, wonderful…”, “I bet she want to do that because the want to equalize us all”, “unnatural…”. They weren’t all talking like that, but there were numerous enough to make his skin crawl with disgust and his hand clutch into a fist.
“Ignore them buddy” whispered Joshua. “Most of the students are on-board with Derek’s sister campaign, the other are just very vocal about how it’s unnatural and shit, or against their constitutional rights, that kind of bullshit.”
“Okay…” replied Alejandro between barred teeth. “But I still want to punch them all in their pretty stupid faces.”
“Silence! SILENCE OR YOU’LL ALL GET DETENTION!” roared the Headmaster, immediately cowing the uproar to a mere whisper and then absolute silence. “That’s better. I would like to remember everyone here that all political opinions, as long as they remain peaceful and aren’t expressed beyond some good old fashioned fist-fights, are accepted on Benjamin Franklin’s ground!”
“He’s kidding right?” fervently asked Alejandro to the two black teenagers near him. “He can’t condone violence among students.”
“He doesn’t. Just among MAJORS” explained Joshua.
“It’s not as if he could prevent it anyway” added Derek. “Better to let us get a little rough from time to time… well, twice a day, really, than to let pent up aggression reach a critical point. I’ve heard that of schools who tried a total ban of violence on their grounds only to devolve into chaos and anarchy as peoples battled each other with clubs, chairs, doors, anything, really.”
“Well, it is certainly refreshing to learn that I’ll spend my school year alongside overgrown Neanderthal” sighed Alejandro, just before Elias pressed on Lindsey to continue the ceremony.
“So, Miss Ferrand. What are your achievements?”
“I’ve been tutored by my mother, Ofelia Ferrand, working at NewGenic Technology as a lead scientist, since the age of five. I have a very personal interest in achieving my goal… as everyone here can guess” she added, glancing at the crowd of older students with to burning orbs of anger in lieu of her eyes. “And I have always been at the top of my classes and aced the test needed to candidate at this school. You can refuse me, but it would be your loss, not mine.”
It was the typical bragging of MAJORS, which made them quite insufferable, most of the time, but when his little sister looked at him, Alejandro knew perfectly well that he was sporting a massive grin on his face. He was proud of her, knowing full well that she had passed all the tests to enter this High School with flying colors. As a Minor, he hadn’t had any, of course, but he had taken her questions and tried to solve them. It hadn’t been great, but it could have been worse. All his results had been between 50% and 57% of correct answers.
Lindsey had pestered him, trying to convince him that he should study more, that he had what it took to have perfect grades, but he wasn’t interested in mathematics, biology, and physics or anything of the like. He just wanted to experience school, in the end, and keep an eye on his Little Lind, just to be sure that some bad influence wouldn’t lead her toward problems which could have been solved easily.
“Well, you’ve got a lot of confidence, little lady” replied Elias, bringing Alejandro’s wandering mind back to the gymnasium and the incredibly boring ceremony.
He couldn’t even tell that he was leering on the women here. Almost all MAJORS women looked the same: tall, lithe and athletic, and anyway, they weren’t facing him but in his back, looking at him, their gaze melting holes in his skin, or so it seemed. Hopefully, the ceremony would end soon enough and he would get to return to his house – as strange as it still felt to refer at it like that- or some class, even if nothing in the paper he had received hinted at the later.
“Indeed I have, teach” boldly replied Lindsey, her lips forming a cocksure smile.
“Then why don’t you show us that you’ve got what it takes to back it up, lass?” asked Elias, amused.
He had barely finished his sentence that Alejandro’s sister literally sent the school’s jacket flying and was out of her t-shirt and in her bra in seconds. Gasps and cheers greeted the muscular nakedness of her body, and Alejandro’s face turned bright red as she unclasped her bra and let it fall on the ground, proudly protruding her chest forward, as if to compensate for the minuscule breasts she had. It wasn’t the first time that he had seen her like that of course. In fact, more often than not, she managed to convince him to let her help during his showers and she dropped all of her clothes, “for fear of wetting them” as she said. But it was just the two of them then, here she was before hundreds of people.
“Oh man… good thing I’m gay, because otherwise, in one of two years, I could have had to sneak past you, Champion” whispered Derek.
“Classy” said Joshua, shaking his head with an amused smile on his face. “But a word of advice man. Heck, several of them, in fact. First… you should tell the whole school that you’re with… with you know who. In any case, if you don’t, I will. Then…” he pressed on, lifting on hand to silence the other Minor, “you better take care of your sister. She’s got the brains and the looks to reach the upper strata of BFHS little cliques, and most of them are real nasty, despite what good old Mr. Gordon our dear Headmaster may think. Finally… when she’ll be wanting to get laid, don’t try to put yourself between her and her mate, you could be seriously hurt.”
“She wouldn’t hurt me… and she wouldn’t turn into a nasty bitch, if I get what you’re implying right” mumbled Alejandro.
“Well, I sure hope you’re right man, but you can never be sure with MAJORS. They are unreliable like that.”
“Oh come on” said Derek, passing his fingers in his lover’s hair, “we are extremely reliable. It’s you the little guys who are hard to read and harder even to understand, despite the bond. One day you like us strong and dominant, the next not… make up your mind!”
“Well, I sure know how I want you tonight, love” teased Joshua.
“There, you see?” laughed Derek.
Alejandro had stopped listening them, focusing entirely on his sister. Whatever this school had in store for them, they would face it together, or not at all, he was quite sure of that.