One

My brother and I had had our arguments. William was the first-born, so by default he tried to command respect. Me, being the third one down the line with ten years of difference between us, had made his life miserable. And total truth be told, I have taken pride in that. Bringing my oldest brother to his knees, which were threats against my face in front of family, made me feel superior. And those little boosts of self-esteem are more important than anything else in my life.

Anyways, William never understood that respect is earned, not by default, but by giving it. Sure, talking with me is harder than with other teens, and that has taken a toll on him, a larger one that I had anticipated. Last year at Christmas dinner we didn't talk at all but for one “conversation”, if you could even call it that. The chatter had switched from the apocalypse to the alarm at our old house, where we had all lived once. My mother, being the natural sweetheart of the family, said it was nothing to worry about; it might just have been one of my street cats looking for me where I would usually find them. William said it was more likely to be a small lizard, since those were not an unusual sight around the house. And I had to open my mouth.

“Why, yes! A little lizard, no bigger than this -" ,I made a circle with my fingers in the air, “activated a twenty-year old alarm, which usually doesn't even detect me.”

My dearest brother looked at me with a stern, cold face. “Talk to me one more time, and I'll hit you in the face in front of Grandma and Mom.”

Silence took over the table like a chilly wind, killing any sort of mood, until Grandma chimed in: “Don't be like that to your little brother, he didn't do anything.” And the conversations started flowing again. I took my leave for a little while to drink whisky in the kitchen, in the warm silence of the night, which occasionally gave in to the cat fight club that happened over the next building in our yard.

As stated before, I took pride in causing a commotion at dinner with a single sentence, but never had the thought of this happening ever crossed my mind. I assumed my brother would control himself and keep his threats to a ‘shut up' or ‘whatever', so I started thinking back. This year hadn't been amazing to William: some workers had sued him for no reason other than wanting money. Lies were told at court, some so stupid and blatant that they are not worth mentioning here, but they were the usual that workers would say about their employer to get what they wanted. Moreover, some settlements had to be made as carrying the defence would be more expensive that what they asked for, so that meant my brother had to take money from his savings to help pay. Worse part about his year was probably that, but me coming out as gay to my family must have made him feel bad, especially if he found out with a suicide text I was writing. That year hadn't been amazing to me either.

So you can see why William and I don't get along great, so the car ride to the airport was silent, except when my mother would tell William now much he'd miss us, and to remind him that our dog needed food when the maid wasn't there to give him some. All these questions were answered with a ‘yeah', ‘sure', and ‘uh-huh'. This was customary by now: he'd take us to the airport, have uninterested conversations with Mom in the progress, drop us off and go wherever to spend the rest of his night. Apart from that, our nightly voyage to the airport was silent, and the only conversation that was new in any way was the group of people near the airport racing in Vespa motorcycles.

Our country's airport isn't anything special: a sizeable building with plenty of parking place, most of which is already taken, a bust of the first person in the country to make a plane, alongside a bad replica of it carved under his short but insightful biography, and the usual herd of taxi drivers looking for passengers as eagles look for prey. The only aspect that made it slightly more interesting was the Tesla car that usually drove around for reasons unknown to me.

So we had arrived at our drop off, and our car trip and all it's demoralizing silence had ended, and we got out to start our journey to leave the country for the usual eight day vacation my mom and I have. William didn't even get out of the car to say goodbye to our mother, and drove away as soon as he saw that he wouldn't cause any accidents near the taxi station. Again, this was custom to us by now, but every time it felt like we were less of a family every day that passed. I had stopped feeling like we were a family a while back, and it is a wound that still has to heal. Then again, I reminded myself that feelings are not facts, that no one won anything for feeling sad, and told my mind to look forward to all the beautiful bodies I'd see on the cruise. But then it all shattered when I tried to reach for luggage's handle and found nothing there, and that there would be no pulling the luggage with it's wheels but rather having to actually lift and carry it wherever I went. A promising start to a journey I looked forward to.

The airport had not changed at all since we were there last year: same people doing the same jobs at the same place with no intent to make the lines go any faster. All I wanted was to go in the Gold room and wait until they announced that our flight was ready, and thankfully it didn't take longer than it always did. I was not happy to know that the precious Gold room hadn't changed either: the amount of children physically incapable to be quiet or still was stupid. The Gold room had been branded as a quiet place made for resting before going in flights that left at three in the morning, and these children were making that impossible. But it can't be all blamed on the children, I especially hated them for simply being children. I saw the as vermin, poisoning the peace of adults and rational teens that delighted in silence over anything; little trolls made of pure potential to ruin anything one enjoyed, being too efficient at fulfilling that task. Add that to their somehow booming voices when something did not go as they planned, which would make you think that they were made to cause stress, and that any rational adult wouldn't want one if they wanted a life with peace.

Regardless, I had remembered that this was what awaited me here, so I had packed my earbuds to listen to my favourite show. Little did I know that they stood no chance against the cries of those little stress-causing balls, and the adults that just shove anything technological in their faces to shut them up. Those were the rare few times where I pitied the children causing me stress, but they did shut up so there wasn't much to complain about, and I had waited far too long to watch my show.

**

The flight had been short since we were neighbours with Brazil, just two hours filled with the usual people, apart from the lady in front of me ordering food while taxiing to the runway, which I found interesting. These people were fun to observe, and I wondered what else she'd do, but then he came in. Not the him as the prologue Him, mind you. This teen was beautiful in his own way, and I had to make an effort to not look at him, but since he sat in front of me there was not much I could see, and so the interest faded; and it was aided by me seeing that he had a chat with a girl with hearts at the end of the name. I wouldn't say my soul felt destroyed at it, since these things were about as usual as they'd get in a Catholic country with heavy conservative standards, but I did feel a little sad knowing how much more harder it'll be for me to get in a room at night with another teen on the cruise.

Oh that's right, I had come here with one clear objective: I wanted to have my first love experience with another gay teen on the ship. I wanted to have a night to remember, one which I could look back when I felt sad because I was single, or when the little depression attacks came to say hello, or when I'd see a teen gay couple on Instagram and the blues hit me. A night like this would make all those feelings go away as quick and easy as seagulls after catching a fish.

This goal was set in the car on the way to the airport. I had been craving an experience for a long time, at least since I came out to myself a few years ago. Since then I put myself the idea of getting in the shape I'd like my boyfriend/hookup to be like. So I started going to the gym, and it paid off. My biceps and triceps had gained the shape and muscular size that I wanted, but the main problem has always been my front area. As a kid, not much care was taken with what I ate, so a lot of it went to my chest and hips, and these were my main enemy. I had lost the fat under my arms with a few weeks worth of weights, but the chest and love handles were far more resilient to any sort of exercise. Little did I know then that the gym was to give shape to the muscles, not to burn fat, that is what cardio is for. But week by week and exercise after exercise, my muscles burned and the muscle formed, but was all under a small layer of fat.

As a result, I didn't quite have a chance with most of the teens at the cruise. But I had lost enough weight so that I could wear a tight shirt without worrying about my physical shape as much, but still had to use my shoulders a fair bit to hide what could deteriorate my image and thankfully, my shoulders are absolutely huge for my age. And being almost six feet tall at age sixteen did also help. Basically, I was a tall teen with huge shoulders and a wide build on my body, but the height gave me a balance which was quite enjoyable, as long as I didn't relax my muscles. But then came my face.

Having Italian descendants was pretty interesting, but that gave me a nose which I dislike. Long and wide, it resembled a mountain, and I had taken to call it Mount Everest. My family had a history with acne, and since my nose was a mountain, it decided to put most of the settlements there. Poor choices led to scars that are visible to this day, and that don't help my personal look at all.

Having Argentinian descendance meant that I had a voice which was very high-pitched at childhood, so most of my teen years were spent making it as deep as I could. However, once mastered, this voice could be quite amazing. It also meant that I had the typical brown hair, eyebrows, and eyes. This are the strongest of my looks. I have been complimented so much on my eyes for years, and they are my safe refuge whenever a mirror is close. The wide eyebrows over my eyes, and the left one which had a scar made by a fun errand, were seductive. I learned to match people's gazes when talking, and my eyes did a lot of the work, for as advanced as my speech patterns may be, I am an incredibly dull person. I don't find myself interesting in any sort of way, or at least until I've had a few drinks and they make the shyness go away. But until that happens, I believe people can get lost in my eyes.

Maybe that's a thing Him and I have in common.