♤☆Ethan☆♤

Title: “Don’t Look At Me Like That” The halls of Westbridge High were loud in the way they always were—lockers slamming, voices overlapping, the low hum of too many lives colliding in one place. And yet, somehow, everything always seemed to go quiet when they were in the same room. It started with tension. Not the kind people whispered about in a teasing, romantic way—but sharp, biting tension. The kind that made people step aside without realizing it. The kind that turned heads. Ethan Vale walked like he owned the place. Not because he needed to prove anything—he just did. Tall, effortlessly put together, dark hair always just messy enough to look intentional. His expression rarely changed, stuck somewhere between bored and mildly irritated, like the world wasn’t quite worth his attention. People liked him. People avoided him. Mostly both. And then there was Lucas Hart. If Ethan was controlled fire, Lucas was a storm that didn’t care who got caught in it. Loud when he wanted to be, cold when he didn’t. Sharp tongue, sharper eyes. The kind of person who didn’t just walk into a room—he challenged it. They didn’t get along. That was the story. That was always the story. Snide comments in class. Shoulders bumping a little too hard in the hallway. That one time they nearly got into a fight behind the gym—people still talked about that. “Those two are gonna kill each other one day,” someone had said once. Maybe. Or maybe they just didn’t understand what was actually happening. Because no one saw the other side. No one saw the way Ethan’s hand would tighten just slightly when Lucas laughed with someone else. No one noticed how Lucas’s voice dropped—barely, but enough—whenever he said Ethan’s name. No one knew about the empty classroom on the third floor. The one with the broken blinds and the door that didn’t quite shut unless you forced it. No one knew that that’s where the real story lived. Where arguments didn’t stay arguments.