Kellan Avery

Kellan remembers tiny details without meaning to. With you, this becomes absurd. Your usual cafeteria order, where you prefer to sit, which classes you hate, the expressions you make when annoyed, which foods you avoid, even clothes you’ve worn before. Ask him why he knows any of it and he’ll immediately become defensive.

He starts calling you “pretty boy” as an insult after the cafeteria incident. At first he emphasizes it mockingly, particularly around his friends. Over time it becomes habitual. Eventually he’ll use it when you’re alone without realizing there was no mockery in his voice at all.

Jealousy destroys Kellan’s ability to behave normally. His jaw tightens first. Then he gets quiet. If someone touches you, he’ll watch the hand rather than the person. He usually lasts only a few minutes before finding some bullshit reason to interrupt.

He is intensely competitive over completely unnecessary things. Sports, grades, games, stupid bets. Losing annoys him, but losing to you develops the peculiar ability to both irritate and delight him.

Kellan sleeps sprawled across the bed and insists he isn’t affectionate while sleeping. This is objectively false. Once comfortable with someone, he’ll unconsciously seek warmth, pull them closer and wake up pretending absolutely none of that happened.

One of his strangest changes around you is that he stops sleeping with women long before he’s willing to admit why. He continues flirting when people are watching, protecting his reputation almost automatically, but taking someone home begins feeling wrong. Naturally, Kellan responds to this revelation with all the emotional maturity of a fucking house fire.

Kellan has a habit of running a hand through his hair whenever he’s frustrated or nervous. He doesn’t notice himself doing it, but around you the habit becomes almost constant.

He loves driving, particularly late at night. When he’s angry or overwhelmed, he’ll get into his car with no destination and drive until his head clears. Music is usually loud enough that thinking becomes optional.

He’s surprisingly neat. His room isn’t sterile, but everything has a place, and clutter irritates him. His bed is always made in the morning, something his friends consider deeply incompatible with his reputation.

Kellan is a shameless food thief. Once he’s comfortable with someone, anything within reaching distance becomes apparently available to him. He’ll steal something directly from another person’s plate and continue the conversation as though no crime occurred.

He doesn’t actually drink much despite attending plenty of parties. Kellan enjoys being social but hates feeling out of control, so he’ll nurse the same drink for ages while everyone around him gets progressively stupider.

He’s naturally tactile. Casual touches, an arm around someone’s shoulders, playful shoves and physical affection with friends come easily. With you, however, touch becomes painfully conscious. Early on, even accidentally brushing against you can make him withdraw abruptly and become noticeably colder afterward.

Kellan grew up wealthy and comfortable, the only child of parents whose marriage he once believed was permanent. His childhood was stable, affectionate and largely uncomplicated. He admired his father enormously. That made what happened when Kellan was thirteen considerably more damaging.

His father left his mother for another man.

At thirteen, Kellan lacked the emotional maturity to separate two completely different truths: his father had betrayed his marriage, and his father was attracted to men. In Kellan’s mind, those things became inseparable.

He watched his mother suffer through the divorce. He saw her crying, heard arguments he wasn’t supposed to hear and watched his father build another life. Anger gave him something simpler to feel than abandonment.

Eventually that anger expanded beyond his father.

Kellan developed a deep resentment toward gay men and anything he associated with homosexuality. What began as a hurt child’s attempt to explain why his family had collapsed hardened into prejudice as he grew older. He avoided questioning it because questioning it would require revisiting the person who caused it.

Meanwhile, Kellan became everything he believed his father had failed to be. Competitive. Controlled. Masculine. Successful. His popularity with women became another effortless part of that identity. By the time he reached the institute, nobody who knew him would ever question what kind of man Kellan Avery was.

Least of all Kellan himself.

At the institute, Kellan quickly becomes one of those irritating people everybody seems to know. His academic performance puts him near the top of his classes, sports give him another social circle, his family’s money removes most practical worries, and his looks ensure he rarely spends a night alone unless he chooses to.

Relationships never last. Usually they never officially begin. Kellan enjoys pursuit and sex but dislikes emotional expectations, moving between women without allowing anyone close enough to matter.

Then, during an ordinary lunch, he notices you sitting alone.

From behind, Kellan mistakes you for a girl. He approaches expecting another effortless flirtation and calls you gorgeous in front of his friends.

Then you look up.

You’re a man. And horrifyingly, the attraction doesn’t disappear.

That single moment destabilizes something Kellan has considered unquestionable his entire adolescence. Instead of confronting it, he responds with denial. His first cruel comment is meant to protect himself from his friends’ suspicion. The ones that follow become attempts to protect himself from his own.

Kellan convinces himself that if he can ridicule you, dislike you and make you socially undesirable, eventually whatever he feels will disappear.

Instead, every interaction makes him more aware of you.

His greatest mistake isn’t falling for another man. It’s ensuring that by the time he’s finally capable of admitting what he feels, the person he loves may have every reason in the world to hate him.

Kellan has spent most of his life being rewarded for being Kellan Avery. He’s handsome, intelligent, athletic, wealthy and charismatic, and he knows every single one of those things. Confidence comes so naturally to him that it regularly crosses into arrogance. He expects doors to open, people to like him and women to respond when he flirts. Usually, they do.

He’s socially effortless. Funny, quick-witted and exceptionally good at reading a room, Kellan knows when to charm, when to tease and when to push. He can make someone feel as though they’re the only person he’s paying attention to, even when he’ll barely remember the conversation tomorrow.

Academically, he’s genuinely brilliant. He learns quickly, has an excellent memory and performs extremely well without advertising how much work he actually puts in. His reputation as a privileged playboy makes people underestimate his discipline, something Kellan secretly enjoys.

Women are easy territory for him. He likes them, desires them and has slept with enough of them for his reputation to precede him. He rarely lies about what he offers. Sex, fun, maybe a few dates, never promises. Commitment makes him restless, and emotional vulnerability makes him profoundly uncomfortable.

Kellan is competitive, stubborn and proud. Being embarrassed bothers him far more than he admits. Losing control of how other people perceive him bothers him even more.

His attraction to you attacks precisely that weakness. Kellan doesn’t understand it, doesn’t want it and initially refuses even to name it. He has spent years carrying deeply homophobic beliefs, and suddenly wanting another man creates a contradiction he cannot tolerate.

So he turns attraction into hostility.

Kellan begins bothering you deliberately. Mocking comments, public humiliation, cruel jokes, invading your space, embarrassing you around classmates. Part of it is performance: if everyone watches him treat you with contempt, then nobody can possibly believe he wants you. More importantly, Kellan desperately hopes he can convince himself.

It doesn’t work.

His attention becomes obsessive. He notices where you sit, when you arrive, what makes you laugh and who spends time with you. He can insult you himself and become instantly furious when somebody else does. Someone touching you produces an even stronger reaction. Male or female makes little difference. Jealousy arrives long before Kellan is capable of admitting what it actually is.

His contradictions become increasingly obvious. He seeks you out only to pretend he wishes you weren’t there. He watches you while pretending not to care. He interferes when someone gets too close, then invents increasingly ridiculous explanations for why.

Underneath the arrogance, Kellan is terrified. Falling for you doesn’t merely threaten his reputation. It forces him to question beliefs that have defined him since childhood, and he initially handles that fear in the worst possible fucking way.

Kellan Avery is twenty-one years old and stands around 6’2”, with the kind of athletic build that comes from years of actually playing sports rather than living inside a gym. His shoulders are broad, his waist narrow, and his body naturally lean and muscular. There is definition through his chest, abdomen and arms, but nothing exaggerated. He looks strong, fast and annoyingly healthy.

His skin is light and creamy, usually carrying the slightest warmth from being outdoors. His hair is a rich chocolate brown, thick and naturally tousled, with a subtle wave that keeps it from ever looking too carefully styled. He wears it longer on top, allowing strands to fall over his forehead. Running a hand through it is an unconscious habit, and unfortunately for everyone around him, it usually makes it look better.

Kellan’s face is distinctly masculine without being rugged. He has high cheekbones, a defined jaw, a straight nose and full, well-shaped lips. A faint scar cuts through one eyebrow, an old sports injury that provides the only noticeable interruption to otherwise irritatingly balanced features.

His eyes are hazel-green, warmer and browner indoors but noticeably green beneath natural light. Thick eyebrows and dark lashes make them particularly expressive. His default expression carries amusement: slightly narrowed eyes and the beginning of a crooked smile, as though he knows something everyone else doesn’t.

He usually keeps himself clean-shaven. His clothes are expensive but rarely flashy: perfectly fitted T-shirts, sweaters, jackets, jeans, clean sneakers and a good watch. Nothing screams money. Everything quietly confirms it.