Hunt Me Down {boyxboy} ✓

Chapter 23

Nathaniel’s POV

All the anxiety about our one-on-one study session left me once Hunter opened the door to his bedroom and my eyes landed on table with a large aquarium on top complete with what looked like a turtle playground. I gasped and approached it to take a closer look. The glass was crystal clear – just as the later it held – and I could see everything inside it.

The bottom of the aquarium was covered in small rocks of grey and brown shades. There were plenty of plants too – some real, others fake – scattered haphazardly and creating a tiny forest. Larger rocks were set up in two formations – three of them like a cave and the rest building a staircase which led to a clear plastic platform. Three more stairs – plastic like the platform – led to the edge of the aquarium and a second platform, this time on the outside. When the lid was up, the turtle could go out and even slide down a plank which Hunter had provided for it; the upper side was leaning on the platform, the lower one was placed on a flat green cushion to soften Raphael’s collision with the ground. Around the landing spot, there was a two feet fence. The whole contraption – the table with the aquarium and the space surrounded with a plastic fence – took almost a third of Hunter’s room.

My eyes went back to the inside of the glass structure in search of its four-legged inhabitant but the only leaving creatures I could see were a bunch of tiny snails.

“Where’s Raph?” I asked, turning to my host.

“When I’m at home and can keep an eye on him, I let him wander my room,” he replied, lying on his stomach on the floor to look under his bed. “Here’s the little rascal,” he said, pulling his hand from under his sleeping place with the pet in his grasp. “Time to go back to the enclosure,” he declared, placing the turtle in the middle of the fence. “Be right back.”
I nodded and peeked inside the plastic circle. Raph was making his way from the end where Hunter had placed him to me. He seemed a great deal healthier and his shell was shinier than before; I thought he’d even put on some weight.

“Here we go.” Hunter was now standing next to me and leaning down to place some fresh dark green lettuce next to his pet; I could still see droplets of water from when he washed the leaves.

“Hunter, what you did for him is amazing,” I couldn’t help but exclaim.

“I try,” he shrugged. “I originally planned to put the aquarium on the floor but then I read red-eared turtles liked to sunbathe so I got that table from a garage sale. Then I equipped the tank with the filters and lights and the cave. I added the inner and outer landings and the plastic stairs after that and when I realized he enjoyed sliding some of my things, I placed the plank over there and got some more plastic for a makeshift fence; that way, he can stay out of the aquarium even when I’m not at home.”

I smiled as I listened to him narrate all that, his eyes lighting up while he was explaining it.

“I’ve never seen you so enthusiastic about anything before,” I admitted and he turned to me with a raised eyebrow. “You sound so… indulgent.”

“I can be indulgent to those I care about,” he murmured, taking a step towards me. My breath caught as he reached up and stroked my hair. Anxious, I was about to pull back, telling him I had a girlfriend and what he was doing was inappropriate but he retracted his hand, a dark blue thread in it.

“You don’t want that in your hair, do you?” He asked, rolling it up in a ball and throwing it in a small trash been next to Raph’s mansion.

So he had not been stroking me after all. I should be glad about it; he wasn’t doing anything inappropriate.

“So… erm… the homework,” I muttered. “What’s the topic and do you have a required word count?”