Tide opened his eyes gingerly. Most of the nausea seemed to have thankfully subsided with his nap. He realised that he must have missed the gas station stop when he caught side of the snacks piled on Forest’s fold down table.
“Hungry, huh?” Tide grinned as Forest took out his earphones with a sheepish smile.
“I thought you might like something when you woke up,” Forest said quietly. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want though…”
“So you bought the entire store?” Tide laughed, his eyes catching on something red and shiny. He fished out a heart shaped chocolate lollipop from under a bag of caramel popcorn.
“Oh,” Forest swallowed thickly, his cheeks blushing the same colour as the heart. “They gave you one of those free if you spent over a certain amount.”
“I see,” Tide chuckled, “well then do you mind if I have it? I’m craving some sugar.”
“Of course,” Forest nodded, “I got it for you anyway.”
Tide frowned, “I thought you said –“
“How are you feeling?” Forest interrupted, loudly opening a bag of pretzels and spilling some of them over his lap.
“Much better,” Tide admitted. “I’m really sorry about earlier.” Tide tried to busy himself with peeling the red foil off of the chocolate, lest he lose himself to the embarrassment of having acted so pathetically in front of Forest.
It hadn’t exactly been the cool and carefree image of himself that Tide had wanted to project this trip. He cringed as he remembered how Forest had gently rubbed circles on his back as Tide had hunched over, moaning and green.
“It’s absolutely no problem,” Forest insisted kindly, “we’re nearly there now.”
“Thank god,” Tide grinned, taking a bite out of the heart and enjoying the creamy sweetness flooding his mouth.
“I, um, I drew some sketches of you like you offered, thank you,” Forest paused, rubbing his thumb over the frayed edge of his sketchbook’s faded black cover.
“May I see now?” Tide asked, hoping he didn’t sound too pushy.
“Yeah,” Forest smiled whilst still looking down and opened the book on a page with some illustrations of Tide’s face and shoulders.
“Oh wow,” Tide’s mouth dropped open. “These are so good.”
“Thank you,” Forest sounded pleased.
“Oh, what’s this one?” Tide asked, gesturing to one of the sketches that was in a very different style to the others.
“Ah, I was just trying out something more stylised, it’s more illustrative whereas the others I was aiming for realism,” Forest told him. “I guess I haven’t really found my preferred style yet, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing…” the younger boy trailed off looking worried.
“I don’t think so,” Tide replied, “I think it’s really cool having all these different styles on one page – it makes it more interesting.”
“Yeah?” Forest looked up, his brown eyes slightly crinkled in a smile. It made Tide happy that Forest was taking his opinion seriously.
“Tide Serrano?” Mr. Milano was stood in the aisle with a pack of stapled booklets.
“That’s me Sir,” Tide nodded, holding out his hand to receive one of the trip schedules.
“What’s planned?” Forest asked excitedly, putting down his bag of chips and sucking the spicy smelling seasoning off his fingers. Tide gaped as Forest’s lips closed fast around his digit and his cheeks momentarily hollowed.
Tide wrenched his eyes away and instead tried to stare at the document binder on his knees. He gritted his jaw and willed himself not to think about anything that would make his crush even more pathetically obvious.
Uh Tide? Is it that bad? What have they got us doing?” he heard Forest ask cautiously a moment later.
“Huh?” Tide snapped his eyes back up in surprise. “Oh, the schedule – I’ve not looked yet.”
Forest gave him a look of slight confusion as Tide thumbed the document open and began to scan down the timings.
“Trip to the funfair tomorrow!” Tide grinned widely at Forest.
“Really?” Forest asked, leaning forwards to look over Tide’s shoulder. Tide tensed as the familiar scent of peppermint mingled in with the chocolate from his heart.
“We’re going straight to the cabins today,” Tide noted, “learning how to set up campfires and doing some trust exercises.”
“That doesn’t mean anything scary does it?” Forest frowned as Tide turned to him with a small smirk that he was honestly trying to reign in. An adorable crease had appeared between Forest’s eyebrows.
“You don’t like scary?” Tide asked.
“I hate scary,” Forest huffed, pushing his glasses back up his nose as he slumped back into his own seat. “They better not make me climb any trees.”
Tide laughed, “What did you spend your childhood doing if not climbing trees?”
“Sitting under them and drawing stuff,” Forest giggled, it was a wonderful sound, like skittering ocean waves. “It’s generally much safer.”
“Okay, well if we climb any trees I promise I’ll stand underneath them to catch them if you fall,” Tide winked, hoping that didn’t sound too cringe. Tide groaned as he pulled out his phone a moment later and found forty-eight unread messages. Most of them were from his friends and group chats but there were also quite a few flirtatious sounding ones from various cheerleaders, scolding him for missing Ashley’s big party.
“That’s a lot of friends,” Forest murmured, his eyes wide as Tide looked up in surprise at him. Forest seemed to have realised what he had said a moment later and flushed scarlet, looking away and down the aisle of the coach.
“I guess,” Tide admitted, not sure what he was meant to say. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I mean I’ve only got a few really close friends, ones I truly trust, you know?”
“Oh,” Forest replied, chewing on his lip.
“The kind you’d want to go to an arcade with and just chat about life with,” Tide added. This time it was his turn to look away as he felt Forest’s deep brown eyes jerk to fix on him. “Oh look,” Tide cleared his throat, “we’re coming up to Lakesville.”
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