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poptod · 1 year

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I Blush Better Than Blood (Kenny al-Bahir x Reader)

Description: You're the new, incredibly intimidating kid in class, but apparently you get really good grades in biology, the class that Kenny is currently failing. You're also really, really handsome.

Notes: request from someone who's got the kenny brainrot! there aren't any pronouns used but you are called a boy because kenny is gay. Taglist: @carlthebarl

WC: 3k

Kenny liked to think of himself as observant. He wasn't, but he liked to think he was. He recognized all the faces of his classmates in every period, knew where they sat, and expected this to remain the same throughout the year. Change was not his strongsuit. Life is rather fond of change, however, so one day, halfway through the year, Kenny noticed a new person he hadn't seen before.

There was no way he could've glossed over you––you sat in front and to the right of him, clearly visible from the corner of his eye. Your hair was spiked taller than the heads around you, and the spikes on your jacket almost reached your ears. He grimaced, holding his pencil tighter. Your boots were bigger than his head.

"(L/N)?" The teacher called, and your eyes flickered to the front. "Spikes are not allowed in school. You'll have to take that jacket off."

You stayed silent for a moment.

"You're not going to like what's underneath very much either," you said flatly.

"I'll decide that for myself. Now take it off, you can get it back at the end of the day," she said, weaving through the desks to stop at yours. You craned your neck up to meet her eye.

You sucked in a sharp breath and unzipped the leather jacket, shrugging it off your shoulders and down your bare arms. Kenny's eyes widened as the black leather revealed the tightest-fitting shirt he'd ever seen on a man. It had no sleeves and was cropped at the base of your ribs but reached up around your neck, and though he couldn't see the front of it, he assumed something inappropriate was there based off Mrs. Ander's reaction.

"You need to go home and change," she said sharply, earning subdued chuckles from the surrounding students.

"I'm not doing that," you said, and shook your head. "I can turn it inside out if that makes you feel any better, but I have a concert, like, right after school."

"Fine. Just make sure no one can see all that… graphic print," Mrs. Ander said with a near shudder before she returned to the front.

Then, in front of a class of 30, you took your shirt off, turned it inside out, and put it back on. Kenny was too busy staring at your back muscles to notice if anyone else was staring.

Mrs. Ander berated you, again, for stripping in class.

Generally speaking, Kenny was an incredibly good student. Most of it came from pressure from his parents, always pushing him to get the best grades, and often to the diminishment of his own health. Because of this, most of his teachers favored him in some way. He could never decide if he enjoyed or hated that fact. But Mrs. Ander's class was biology––specifically the biology of the ocean, and currently the ocean's carbon cycle––and science was not Kenny's best subject. He stayed late after school in her class getting tutored in hopes of raising his grade, but most of the time it just made him exhausted and he absorbed very little of her teachings.

"I can't stay late tonight, I've got a bit of an emergency at home," Mrs. Ander said as she threw on her jacket, her words shaking with the swiftness of her movements. "Shouldn't've gone to school today, honestly, but it was so last minute, there weren't any substitutes really available."

"But – there's a test on Friday!"

"My suggestion?"

Kenny nodded.

"Go find (Y/N), they've got.. fantastic marks, somehow," she said, waving her hand about. "If you walk with me I'll introduce the two of you––their jacket is still here."

"Um…" Kenny chuckled nervously, high-pitched and bereft of humor. "Um, not to say that – that's a bad idea, but, uh, are you sure I'm not going to get punched if we're alone?"

"Kenny," she rested a hand on his back, "if they try anything, they're expelled."

"I'd rather just not get punched in the first place if that's possible."

"You don't have to study with them, you know. It's just a test, it doesn't add too much to your overall grade."

He remembered his parents and the yelling fits that had come from a single bad grade on a test; bad quantifying as anything below an A.

"No, no," he finally relented, submitting to his fate. "I'll… go with you."

He followed Mrs. Ander like a kid being pulled by their ear through the hallway. Thankfully most everyone had left, and few people were left at their lockers to see him pass by. When they got to the front doors of the school, you were standing right outside, leaning on one of the loadbearing beams as you drew on yourself with a marker. When the door shut behind him, you looked up. Your shirt was still inside out.

"(Y/N), your jacket," Mrs. Ander said, extending a straight arm to you with the jacket in hand.

"Thanks Patricia."

"I told you not to call me that during school."

"I thought we were out of school," you said, fumbling to pin the jacket to the wall with your hips as you took your shirt off once more. Kenny, standing partially behind his teacher, stared at you again, willing away the heat in his face.

"Still on school grounds. And I have a student here, he could use your help studying for your next test. He's very polite," she explained, gently pushing Kenny forward.

You looked him up and down thoroughly as you pulled your shirt over your chest, situating it perfectly around your torso. On the black fabric had been painted, in bright, bold letters, "MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR," with an image of a man on his knees, his face conveniently cut off in front of the hips of another man, whose pants were down at his ankles. Based on the background, they were in a bathroom stall. Kenny's eyes nearly fell out of his head. Behind him, Mrs. Ander sighed again.

"Couldn't leave it in the car and change after school?" She asked.

"Have you seen how sexy I look in this shirt? No way," you laughed, your gaze flickering from Kenny to her. "What do you need help with?"

"Marine carbon cycle," Mrs. Ander said.

"Oh. That's pretty easy. Um, I'm driving like an hour out of town to see a show, like, right now, so we can technically do right now but you'd be coming to a metal show with me. Not sure that's really your scene. Plus I'd be driving the whole time."

Kenny's heart lurched in his chest. Alone in a car with you for an hour?

"Why don't you just do tomorrow?" Mrs. Ander quickly suggested.

Kenny nodded rapidly.

"Uh… yeah. Sure. I'll meet you here after school, 'kay?"

Kenny could barely nod again before you were walking away, shrugging on your leather jacket. Mrs. Ander patted his shoulder.

"Are your parents picking you up from school?" She asked.

"No, I'm uh, driving home with a friend. Um, thank you for your help, Mrs. Ander," he said, offering a small wave before he headed off to where he always met his friend. They had a lot to talk about.

The next day, Kenny both dreaded and anticipated the end of school. You were incredibly attractive, but you also looked strong enough to beat him to a pulp, which might've been more attractive in a different situation. But you both were in high school, and he was one of those kids who gets beat up a lot. Part of him held hope that you were nice; you weren't overtly rude to the teacher or him. You still terrified him, though.

By the time he was walking to the school doors at the end of the day, time was slowing down, and his fists were clenched around his backpack straps. He hadn't seen you in any of his classes today––what unbearable thing would you be wearing now?

Oh.

You were wearing the same thing as yesterday, but this time your makeup was smudged and your hair was a scraggly mess on your head. You hadn't noticed him yet, so for a moment he stood in the open doorway, staring at your black patchy jeans and platform boots.

"Um… (Y/N)?" Kenny asked gingerly, instantly earning your attention.

"Oh, good. You're here. You wanna head to my house or yours?"

There was no way he was telling his parents he was taking tutoring, and there was no way he was introducing you to his parents otherwise when you looked how you did. There was also no way he was going to your house where he could possibly get kidnapped and tortured.

"I was thinking we could go to the library…?"

You blinked.

"Sure," you said after a moment. "Your parents strict?"

"No!" He answered a little too quickly.

You stared at him again, raising your brow.

"A little," he mumbled.

"It's cool, I get it," you said, fixing your cuff absently. "Let's just go. You drive or..?"

"Can I just drive with you?"

"That's fine," you said, and led him to your car.

He half expected a massive van or a sports car, but instead you clambered into an ancient Honda parked crooked in the parking lot. For a second he stammered, but quickly regained himself and rushed to sit in the passenger's seat. There were coffee cups, cans, and loose papers everywhere. His backpack nearly didn't fit beside his legs. That said something, considering his legs were pressed tightly together in his anxiousness.

You pulled out and headed off on the road, messing with a few of the car dials before the radio turned on.

"So… carbon cycle?" You said as some sort of screaming music came on.

"I – I, I'm more of an, um, a literature person," he said, chuckling nervously. "I get really good grades on, like, essays, and in math."

"That's cool. I always get shit grades in English, that's more 'cause I don't know what the fuck a past participle is," you yelled over the music.

"Oh, it's a um, a type of verb that –"

"I'm gonna be honest with you right now, I don't want to fucking learn what it is either, I could not care less," you laughed. "I can, like, write good if I want to, but I don't know anything about proper grammar titles and names. Barely know a noun from a verb. I can tell you anything about the ocean, though."

"Really?" Kenny chuckled sheepishly, hiding his smile behind his hand. "What's your favorite fish?"

"Um, I don't know. There's a lot. Maybe the dragonfish or black swallower."

Kenny had no idea what either of those were, but pretended that he did.

"Nice," he said. "Kinda creepy."

"I mean, a little. I think that people do deep sea fish dirty. They're not ugly, they're just really well evolved." You took an extremely sharp turn, tossing Kenny up against the door. "Once you learn all those weird traits are evolutionary genius, it kinda becomes beautiful. Brilliant, anyway. Way better evolved than we are."

Kenny giggled again, mostly because he couldn't think of something to say in reply. You had become, in nearly an instant, incredibly friendly.

"Sorry, rambling," you said after a minute's 'silence'––silence being objective since the punk music was still going. "What kinda stuff do you like to write though? You said you're good in English."

"Um.. a lot of poetry, actually," he said quietly, hoping you wouldn't hear.

"What?" You yelled.

"I - it's not important," he chuckled sheepishly, shaking his head.

"No, c'mon, I wanna know," you laughed, and reached over to punch his shoulder.

"I just - I write poetry," he finally said.

"Oh, cool! I'd love to read some of it sometime, if you're up for that."

He froze up, clenching his cold fingers over his bicep. You'd taken your jacket off even with the windows down, showing off your shoulders right next to his face.

"Yeah, um, maybe someday," he said, still chuckling and scratching at the back of his neck.

The two of you found seats in a quiet corner of the library, setting down your bags and jackets before going off to the science section. There, you pulled down two textbooks and three essay books seemingly written by actual professors. The pile in your hands was composed of only five books in total, but the thickness of each book had it coming up nearly to your chin. They slammed down on the table when you set them down.

"Now, tell me what you know about the marine carbon cycle," you said once the both of you were sat down.

Kenny tried not to visibly sweat, and wiped his palms on his jeans.

"Um… carbon naturally falls into the ocean through, like, rain runoff or something?"

"… generally, yeah," you said slowly. "Is that it?"

"Kind of?" He chuckled in a high-pitched tone. "If you asked me questions I – I might know more, but that's, like, off the top of my head."

"Hmm." You pursed your lips. "Let's talk about why this cycle is important first. Obviously you know about climate change."

He nodded.

"Well the main driver of climate change is methane and carbon dioxide, which is warming the atmosphere, and the ocean helps combat this effect because it's a carbon sink. That means that more carbon goes into the ocean than comes out into the atmosphere."

Kenny perched his chin on his hand, listening intently but absorbing few of your words. The way you spoke interested him––from your flurry of hand movements accompanying your words to the flourishes and excitement teeming on the edge of your voice.

"Hello?" You asked, raising your brow.

"What?" Kenny asked quickly, lowering his hand.

"I asked you to repeat that back to me."

"Can – can we write this down? I'm more of a, um, visual learner," he said.

"Sure. Get some pen and paper out, I'll try and find some graphs in here," you said, reaching for one of the textbooks and rifling through the pages.

By the end of it he'd heard very little of what you'd said, but could comprehend the many things you wrote down for him. Thankfully, he could look back on your one hour lesson when he wasn't distracted by your face and voice. He learned about the fast carbon cycle and the slow carbon cycle, about marine snow that carried carbon through the water column, how that process accumulated sediment on the bottom of the ocean that held gigatons of carbon within it. The details were vague, but he could figure those out later.

What was most important was the he discovered you were a giant nerd and, as far as he could see, completely harmless. At this point he could happily rest his chin on his hand with a warm smile, staring at you shamelessly like you were a work of art. You definitely were, he thought, when your jacket slipped off your shoulders as you pushed the books back into their slots.

Pretty boy, he thought.

He settled back in your car––this time tossing his backpack in your back seat––and watched as you fiddled with your phone, your foot already resting on the gas.

"You need a ride home or do you have a car at school?" You asked, not looking up from your texts.

"Um, usually my friend drives me home. We live right next to each other."

"'Kay. I can probably drive you. How far is it?" You shoved your flipphone into your pocket, starting up the car to pull out of the library parking lot.

"Like ten minutes from school?" Kenny guessed.

"Sounds good."

Kenny gave you what few directions you needed to get into the suburbs, and from there the music blared peacefully between you. There were two different questions bouncing around in Kenny's mind, waiting to be spoken before the moment was over and you were gone.

"How was the, um, show? You said you went to one like, yesterday?"

"Yeah, uh, I lost my fuckin' keys in the pit and somebody threw them up on stage so it took me hours to be able to get back in my car. It was, like, 2 or 3 AM by the time I found them so I just bedded down for the night in my backseat." You gestured behind you with a thumb. "I keep a shit ton of blankets in here so it wasn't too bad. But the band was fuckin' great, great crowd too. Lots of energy."

"Wow. Sounds… fun," Kenny lied.

You laughed.

"You should go to a local show, you might like the scene. And you definitely won't lose your keys," you said, shaking your head with a grin. "I've been to this one place downtown so many times, they're great. Not really any like, super big mosh-pits so there's no danger. I can show you the place if you like."

"Are you asking me on a date?" Kenny asked, surprising himself with his own cheeky smile.

You nearly crashed the car, slamming on the brakes as you swerved off the road. Thankfully, you hit nothing but the curb. Both of you were shoved out of your seats at the impact.

"What?!" You asked in a flurry, your face a dark shade of red.

"I – it seemed like you were into guys," Kenny said hesitantly, suddenly losing his courage.

"I mean, I am, but – b – I didn't think I'd really be your type, I mean, you're such a good boy."

Kenny's eyes widened.

"A what?" He squeaked.

"I mean –!" You slapped your hands over your mouth. "Like a goody two-shoes!"

The two of you sat in silent mortification, both too nervous to meet the other's eye. You remained in that state for a good minute.

"That was… a lot," Kenny finally said, still gripping the seat like it was keeping him alive.

"You're a funny fucking guy, Kenny," you said, chuckling weakly.

"So you wanna hang out again?" He asked with a quick gasp, like it was something he didn't know, leaning over the car's console.

"Hell yeah," you said like it was obvious. "You free Friday?"

"I'm free Saturday," he suggested.