Demeter's Tempest

Tina's view was that these girls were Kevin's orchestra friends (and... other friends he'd not mentioned?) and arts people were always huggy types.

From Demeter's point of view, watching the goings-on, things were falling into place, and every close contact between Kevin and his lunch companions built a closer web, a better setup for fixing that which was deeply broken. Her odds in general were not good, though, and Kevin wasn't the only mortal she had more-or-less simultaneously commissioned. She was still worried.

The grape stomping had always been a metaphor for her real tasks.

Econ and Culinary

Kevin's next class was AP Econ, an odd class Kevin felt a little swamped in. The book threw a bunch of equations in for no good reason, he thought, and it was all so vague It seemed like someone had made it up at the last minute before the textbook went to print, instead of having a real job.

Equations should describe objects falling or spinning or being zapped by something. Equations that included how much to pay for one soap vs. another? That just felt like jocks bragging about knowing what an equals sign looked like.

Frankly, for the whole class, Kevin didn't know whether to believe the teacher or not.

Econ was his one class definitely overpopulated with guys, albeit some of the smarter ones he'd crossed paths with. Peter was going to be valedictorian, for sure, and Mitch would be happy to take the title from him if given half a chance and the academic-metaphor equivalent of a sharp knife.

During his freshman year, Kevin had taken German, on the presumption that it might be useful sometime, but instead Mitch was there making everyone else feel stupid because he'd lived in Germany for a couple of years with his parents and spoke fluently. Mostly he wanted the easy A.

The econ class lesson for the day was how every decision people make is a trade-off between competing wants. Either they wanted a car or a vacation, they would spend the money where they would maximize the 'utility' of their money to buy happiness.

In line with Demeter's warning about the environment, Kevin's hand was up first with questions most of the class period. By the end, everyone in the room not only shared Kevin's concerns about global warming and biodiversity, but had gotten reading lists for how to analyze the topic from a sheer economics perspective.

The infectious quality of the questions wasn't lost on his teacher, who was confused (but happy) about Kevin's newfound confidence in engaging with the subject material.

== ==

Eighth period, Kevin walked into the Culinary Arts room (up a winding staircase from the auto shop) and found it empty. The blackboard said, 'class next door / room 3'.

Coming out of the room, he ran FULL INTO another latecomer, _Kasey_!

She tripped, and he tripped. Kevin had been preoccupied and believed he was totally in the wrong, and tried desperately to hold her up and catch her, but in the end he just fell first, painfully. His attempt to save her failed so she ended up falling on him to add to his pain.

This chivalry was definitely noticed by Kasey, who had dropped a book just before she got to the doorway so she was distracted, too.

Sacrificing oneself for the sake of another earns points, not just in Kasey's mind, but in other ways. His arm hurt, but he felt her lying on him, her breasts pressed up against his chest. They both lay there a moment before Jordan, a tan and curly-haired runner, came up out of the stairwell and saw them trying to get up, and heard their words.

"Kevin, you saved me!"

"Uh..."

"I was totally going to fall on my face, and you... dove to save me. That was... brave, I can't... thank you, so much!" They were standing, blocking Jordan's way, but Jordan smiled and waited, too amused at the obvious sparks that were flying between the two.

Kasey hugged Kevin again, and kissed his cheek.

There was power in that kiss, a tingle that went both ways between them. Jordan, just standing there watching, got turned on by it and suddenly had to rub the back of her upper arm.

Kevin stepped out of the way, the narrow hallway constricting choices, and it looked like Jordan would walk by. Instead, Jordan stopped and asked, "So... Do I get a rescue and a kiss, too?"

Her flirting wasn't normal behavior for anyone in his circle. Usually, being too fat and thus clumsy meant getting snide, hurtful comments, not coquettish rejoinders.

His hands were still out from having held Kasey and he shrugged with them. "Uh... Yes? Um... yeah, uh, beautiful... I mean, uh... Anything you need, Jordan."

Jordan, inspired by his word-salad compliment, felt pulled in, magnetically, to him, and put an arm around his waist and by the small of his back. Being shorter than him and thin, she didn't weigh much comparatively, but she felt his power as he hug-lifted her.

Something else was there... something, more in the front, than she had seen at first, but she definitely felt it against her abdomen.

Mostly it was her hugging him, but he tried to reciprocate just the same amount, to be polite. As they released, her face was close to his. She just had to turn her head, slightly, and there it would be, an option, a possibility -- she did -- and he did -- and they kissed.

It wasn't a deep kiss, but what it lacked in open-mouth action it gained by languid, sensual tenderness. This wasn't what she was expecting, and her breath caught, her knees buckled slightly, and he caught her in a hug again.

Breaking it, their eyes scant inches apart, he asked in a low tone that went through her center core, "You All Right?"

That statement wasn't a question, to her. It was a clear commitment of caring attention, a moment of savory yummy better than any stew or casserole they made in culinary. It was a comment that said, in her mood and right there with him fully present, "I want to be a Part Of You" and that's not the sort of thing a girl walks away from easily.

Somehow, she breathily replied, a catch in her throat as she answered: "Yes."

Kevin caught the meaning of that word. It wasn't if she was 'all right'. It was, "Yes, I will Follow You. I will be WITH You." The full emotional commitment of that filled them, so briefly and quickly made, but with the kind of total commitment that comes from Certainty about someone being Of Good Character.

Behind them, the other classroom had been filling up. The teacher, Carol Abernathy, called the class to order, audible to Kevin and Jordan, so they had to get a move on.

With an, 'after you', Jordan went first. It was just as well. It meant everyone didn't quite immediately see the giant tent-pole in Kevin's sweatpants, for the umpteenth time that day.

The teacher, Carol (she insisted they call her that), was standing around with them, her all senior and almost all-girls' class, in front of some wide tables. The room was normally a store-room kept locked most of the year, filled with clothes. This was the one day a year she opened it for the students to see what older styles of clothes were like, to inspire them to maybe sometime attempt another kind of domestic art, sewing.

She started with, "Each of these was of a style worn by scullery maids, cooks, housemaids, patisserie chefs, chocolatiers, waitresses, footmen, horsemen, chambermaids, or just housewives and husbands while at home. Some of them have specific functions as garments. These frilly dresses [she pointed] are for serving afternoon tea -- NOT high tea, mind you, that's Very different -- and have many different levels of difficulty in putting them on."

She paused, scanning her students. She did this every year with this class, and every year they loved it and talked later in their yearbook notes to her about how much it was one of the favorite things they did. This year, it wasn't bad.

She only had two male students, and only one of them was straight (Kevin). _Greg_ was gay and most everyone knew it from the pride flags on his clothing and backpack and attitude and his manner of talking, so mostly as a teacher her question was how Kevin was going to deal with a few patches of bare skin.

"As you've probably heard from previous years, this is the dress-up class. Everyone, pick a costume, and you can put it on, and then we'll walk back and forth between the kitchen to make things, then back here to change to another item. Please do be careful, some of these clothes are two hundred years old. If something rips or is about to rip, stop. Not everyone is a size zero. First, ask someone near you for help, and take it off again very gently. Then, pick something more your size."

Kevin didn't quite know what to do. Jordan and he had ended up in the last row.

"Kevin, and Greg, " Carol called from the front, "You can change behind that oriental folding divider. There are men's clothes near you. All of you, remember. Unless you want to let Kevin and Greg see your naughty bits, keep your underwear on. It's no worse than being at the beach. Swimsuits cover far less than most underwear, so you're fine. Anyone not wanting to take things off, that's fine, just be careful if you wear a t-shirt that you don't snag it on the hooks in the clothing."

They walked around, looking at the items and choosing what they wanted to wear. Kevin and Greg both found some tux-looking suits so they went behind the divider.

Greg hadn't regarded Kevin as being much of anything to look at, and he had Definitely Formed Opinions on who was and wasn't worth looking at in his classes. This version of Kevin (he must have lost weight?) was different from his memory but in a very good way.

There was no doubt Kevin was straight. His boner on coming into the room didn't escape Greg's gaze, though he didn't have any hopes of being able to do anything about it. 'Oh well,' he thought, 'eye candy it is.' And, 'maybe one of those gals will fall all over him and get her floppy boobs in his way, might be funny'.

Greg was not very subtle.

What also wasn't subtle was the size of Kevin's schlong, freshly emerged from under sweatpants and Utterly NOT properly constrained by his very loose tighty-whitey underwear.

Kevin glanced over at Greg and said, "Kinda... got worked up in the hallway. Oops."

Greg saw this for what it was, embarrassment at about-to-be-seen by girls. It wasn't, in a frankly surprising thought, anything to do with Greg. A guy, getting undressed near Greg, and they didn't even in a small way mention the gay thing?

Greg kvelled!

This was a person, Kevin, who had a heart, who didn't give a damn about Greg's difference. He only acknowledged a common problem they both might have, and wasn't concerned otherwise.

Greg wondered if there was some way in which he could help Kevin out. Sometimes guys were pretty clueless, and it might be that he could help.

Kevin, dressed then in a chef's diagonal-button jacket and loose pants, announced to the room, "Okay, I'm ... about to walk out, but I'll look at the wall, okay? So, no worries."

This announcement immediately went to the girl's heads (some of whom, like Greg, had seen his hard on and proximity to Jordan). They heard it as, "I totally want to see you naked, but man enough to deny myself that joy and pretend with you."

Suffice to say, as Kevin came out from the curtain with a hand over his eyes, one girl after another shook their boobs at him and did a mock-mini-scream of, "Weeeooooooo!!!", then laughed.

Back down the hall in the kitchen area, Kevin joined Carol and those who'd dressed quicker, a girl named Sura who wore a hajib / Islamic headscarf (but not over the face). She was sitting next to Carol.

Sura thought dress-up was fun, but she'd never do it if a boy could see, it was too far beyond her sense of propriety.

Secretly, Sura desperately wanted to play along, but at the same time, her conservative nature, plus the fact that her mom had heard about this happening from her older sister, made the possibility zero that she could do anything about it. Sura was no good at lying to her mother, and they both knew it.

More girls showed up, then, and the pots were started on the cooktops to make tea, roll bread dough, or other various assigned tasks on index cards by their stations.

Not all the buttons were done properly. Not all the garments were fully "on". The idea was, according to previous years, to see how many different dresses you could get into. The game was dress-fast, check food, run-to-change, lather-rinse-repeat.

Kevin had heard about this.

Greg and Jordan both dragged him back to get another outfit and they tried again. This time, as Kevin was changing, the movable partition got moved slightly, and then was bumped again as one of the girls or another came back to see what Kevin was dressing in.

As this progressed, the sexual tension in the air racheted up. The next time, not 2 minutes later, when Kevin went back to change again, the partition was MISSING.

One of the girls had put it in a closet as a joke.

Deciding to be fearless, Kevin stripped off the too-large suit jacket and started to pull on leiderhosen, a set of shorts with a t-shirt and suspenders, over his baggy tighty-whitey underwear.

This was funny, and half the room was filled with girls giggling at his attempt.

On a physiological level, it's fair to say the combination of his magnetism and their humor acted like alcohol to their brains.

The first girl to pull her bra off in order to make a shoulder-less dress look nice gave Kevin a clear and unhurried view. He noted, staring with interest, her large nipples, small areolas, upturned on medium-sized breasts.

He had tried not to look. He failed. The other girls noted his looking, but also his nodding appreciation and warm smile. To them, this meant he was acknowledging beauty where he saw it, not gawking lewdly. His gaze was a compliment, and they wanted compliments, too.

Another girl did the same lose-the-bra routine. Then another, and another, and soon, no girl in the room had a bra on. Such was the power of people-in-crowds.

The panties were next, though not universal.

Kevin had to go in and come out to check on his pasta water, but that wasn't a tough task, and changing took time.

Both Maria and Marie, fellow Latina students who paired up so they could speak Spanish to each other, were right next to Kevin's changing area.

Clearly his underwear was tented out with a giant boner. This had caused some significant murmuring. It wasn't a real secret what was under the fabric since his underwear wasn't exactly new. It was white, but it was worn.

Marie and Maria were talking in rapid-fire clearly-audible Guatemalan Spanish, isolated from the room by the different language so their mood was casual and unguarded. What they didn't know was that Kevin had no trouble understanding completely what they were saying. Some of the references to a pop singer weren't familiar, but he completely understood them.

They were next to Kevin and were openly glancing in ways that made it obvious they were trying to discern his attributes through his threadbare underwear.

Vatsana, an emigree from Laos, saw some of this and didn't approve. She muttered something, and the air was just still enough that Kevin caught it.

Kevin's righteous temper flared at Vatsana.

He turned to her and said, in perfect Laotian, "Vatsana woman-friend. You insult good people who are curious. There is no harm in nakedness, not badness in love. Love is good! Love should share and join and create. Please fill them with polite-happiness. Help them, new to this country. Help them to have fun and happy lives. Eyes-touch them, give them spirit-burden sharing, beg their help."

The translation of this is more literal than Kevin meant it; to him it was a set of phrases that just seemed right for the occasion. The fact that it came out in that dialect of formal Laotian?

Vatsana perceived the accent and grammar to be from a person of great refinement and stature, highly ethical and proper.

However, Vatsana had not heard Lao spoken by anyone at school before, and precious few times recently except when her father admonished her to find a boy of Laotian heritage who he could dream about as son-in-law.

She stopped, as the room stopped on hearing Kevin speaking. Her mouth opened and her eyes teared up to cry. These were not tears of shame as much as tears of joy.

Sure, she'd messed up by saying bad things about those girls, but that was small compared to finding this ... man... this perfect Laotian speaking man, right there! He was an American! She could be herself with this man, and her father could have no say in her life. She would be loved and would find acceptance, for once in a long, long time.

She spoke back to him in Laotian, "Kevin, respected man-friend, please forgive me for insulting you and acting badly to Maria and Marie. I acted badly." She walked closer.

At no part of this time did she consider the fact that she was topless with only thin white panties on. On the plus side, they had a cute bow in the front but definitely made a camel-toe of her cleft, and they had already started to get wet.

Her body was visible in that moment, but the other girls' perceptions of her changed, too, to that of a vibrant youthful sexy womanhood, a happy woman rejoicing at speaking with Kevin.

One other problem with her panties was that she had a significant bush puffing it out in front. This was not thought of as an embarrassment by those that saw her, but as a reference to her inexperience, her want in the face of not getting-chances, chances that were NEEDED.

Kevin's eyes shifted as she walked, trying to choose between staring at her small-to-medium sized dark-nippled breasts bouncing, her clearly-revealed cleft, her bush puffing out slightly, or her eyes which gazed into his with large and blatant affection.

They settled on her eyes, oddly. As she came around the corner of the table, he said in English, "Do not apologize to me. These two deserve your true feelings."

To Marie and Maria, he said, in Guatemalan Spanish, "Vatsana is a respectable woman, a fine and upstanding woman I've seen be kind in other ways. Just now, though, she saw you and said impolite things. I asked her to respect your curiosity as good and ethical humans, to find no harm in nakedness, and to be nice to you. Please grant her your pardon if she asks?"

Consuela (the class was half foreign students because cooking doesn't require much English) heard this and inhaled as well, being startled at how fluent and beautifully accented Kevin's Spanish was. Of course, asked by Jenny, she translated his phrases to English for the room to hear and understand.

Maria, just before this started, had knelt to get near the floor to undo a button. This left her there, squatting on the floor, and as she turned to see movement, her arm came up and rested on Kevin's hip, right near the waistband of his underwear.

Just then, Vatsana came up to them and knelt next to Maria. She also looked up at Marie, saying an apology in broken English, and asking for their favor and excusing her rudeness.

They immediately were happy to forgive and make-friends, as it were.

Kevin's eyes were smiling at all this, and his mouth, too, feeling the caring that went between them.

More importantly, that smile of his, that intercession to prevent a wrong, evoked new ground on which they were planting a friendship.

Enjoined by this planting, Demeter's gaze poured into their hearts, her half-smile one of proud satisfaction at having chosen her squire well.

The girls smiled at each other and tipped to embrace, but in doing so, Marie's fingers, then leaning on Kevin's waist, became caught in Kevin's waistband. That pulled the underwear down, ripping it as Marie fell backwards into Vatsana's arms, a squeal on her lips.