50Welcome to my Life
By arcangelic-the winged
And Esquirella
Disclaimer: This story was invented and written by arcangelic-the winged and Esquirella. It's our way to tinker with real life a bit. The story has two alternative endings written in the epilogue, and Arc and Esq each will have a different epilogue. We leave it up to you to guess which ending is the real one…
Chapter One – The miserable life of Arc
Arc glanced at Dick. He was two or three inches taller than Arc, his hair had been bleached by the relentless summer sun and was now almost platinum blonde and he had beautiful blue eyes.
He was slender to the point of being skinny, but he was still very strong. Arc suppressed a sigh. Dick was his best friend and had been for two years, but somewhere in these last few months Arc had managed to become attracted to the blonde.
Well, not somewhere in these last few months exactly, since he had always been attracted to Dick. He had even had a real schoolboy crush on the blonde three and a half years before, but that had past and had been replaced with the kind of love you felt for a friend. Or in this case, a best friend.
But somewhere along the line, that love had turned into something else. At first Arc hadn't noticed, but he had been painfully confronted with it when he and Dick both graduated high school and went off to college.
Arc had always dreamed of studying medicine, and he had devoted himself to it. So when the time came, the University of Rotterdam accepted him and he went to study medicine there.
Dick hadn't known what to study for a long time, and Arc had always tried to convince him to study something they taught at the University of Rotterdam. But Dick chose history and got accepted at the University of Utrecht, forty-five minutes away by train.
That had been when Arc had realized that he was in love with the blonde, really in love. But he was too scared to tell him, since he was a little confused about the young man.
There were times he could swear the blonde was giving him signals, coming on to him, while sometimes Dick could be ever so demeaning about gay people without knowing how much he hurt Arc. So Arc kept his love to himself and waited for a clearer signal from the blonde.
Dick looked at Arc and smiled, and Arc's stomach did a back flip for the umpteenth time that afternoon. He had asked Dick to help him train for a big tennis tournament that was coming up, and the blonde had agreed.
Though the blonde was good, Arc was even better. But the blonde had still managed to give Arc an incredibly hard time on the court today, walking around on court as if he was at a party and not letting anything drive his good mood away.
And he had been like that all day, and though it had rubbed off a little on him Arc was beginning to wonder what had brought this on. They went up the stairs, onto the train platform and rounded the corner of the oversized ticket booth to sit down on a bench while they waited for the train.
"Hey, Arc, there's something I need to tell you. It's good news, or at least I think it's good news and I'm hoping you'll agree with me," Dick said, and Arc became interested. He had never seen the blonde act this way.
"Remember how I told you about that party I went to a few weeks ago? Well, I kind of left out that I had met somebody there who had asked me my number. We went out a couple of times and…" An ominous feeling crept up on Arc, and his heart skipped a beat.
Dick looked Arc in the eye. "We're officially going steady. I have a boyfriend!" Arc's heart stopped beating completely, and he felt he was about to faint. The ominous feeling, which had settled in his stomach, suddenly felt like a ton of bricks.
He saw Dick looking at him with a questioning look in his eyes, and he figured the blonde was still waiting for a response. He didn't even notice the tears running down his face until one of them fell on his hand.
"Arc? Are you…why are you crying?" Arc tried to suppress it, but a small sob escaped his lips anyhow. "I'm sorry," he said, trying to get a grip on his emotions. "Arc, what's going on? Tell me!"
Arc knew he had no choice, and it was killing him. "I…I'm crying because I…I have always hoped that you would see me one day, Dick, see the way I feel about you. I always had this crazy thought that if you would ever be with a guy, that it would be me."
"What are you saying?" Arc looked Dick in the eyes. "I'm saying I love you, Dick. I always have." Dick had an incredulous look on his face. Arc sighed. Now that he had finally told the blonde how he felt, he knew their friendship was over.
On a whim, he leaned in and pressed his lips against the blonde's.
As soon as his eyes opened, he snapped them shut again. He tried to stay asleep to prevent the overwhelming sadness from washing over him again, and to try and let the dream end differently this time.
It hadn't worked yet, and it didn't work now either. The sadness washed over him anyway, and the dream ended the same no matter how much he tried to change it.
Every time, he would kiss Dick. And when the kiss ended, the blonde would have a look of extreme confusion on his face. Arc would get up and walk to the stairs, and Dick would grab his arm.
Arc would tell him to let go and that it was the end of their friendship, just as the train would arrive. Arc would free his arm out of Dick's grip and run down the stairs before the mass of people going to same way, effectively separating himself from Dick.
Arc knew he couldn't change what happened in the dream, because he couldn't change what had happened in real life. That fateful day on the platform had been five weeks ago, and since then almost everything that could've gone wrong had.
Dick had called him about two hundred times or even more since then. Arc had answered the first few times, and the blonde had told them that he didn't want to lose their friendship and that they would find a way to deal with this.
But Arc had stopped believing in happy endings that day, and after a week he just stopped answering when he saw Dick's number. Unfortunately for him, and that was the second thing that had gone wrong: his mother had realized something was off and had confronted Dick about it.
His homophobic mother had kicked him out of the house immediately but thankfully his father, who lived in a different country, sent him money each month for him to pay the rent for the two-bedroom-apartment he had been lucky enough to find.
Not that his father was very supportive about his sexuality, but he didn't want his son to be homeless either. So the old man agreed to help him pay for his apartment until he had a job and could survive on his own.
Arc got up from the bed and walked out of his bedroom. Just then, his cell phone rang. Arc ran to it and picked up. "Hi. I…I just wanted to see if you were alright," the female voice on the other end said.
"I'm fine, Angel," Arc answered. "Well, good…I'm glad…Bye." Angel hung up, and Arc was just about to put his cell back on the nightstand when it rang again. He checked the caller I.D. and switched the phone off when he saw it was Dick.
T.B.C.