A.J. was bored. Bored, bored, bored. So he tried to think of some of the things he could do. Let's see. He still didn't have an invention for class; he could work on that. He still hadn't finished reading that book Beauty gave him forever ago; he could read that. He technically hadn't finished his dresser project; he could finish that ( Read more... )

Spending the day drinking too much coffee and handwavily picking through the junkyard for materials for his dresser project was all well in good; A.J. was feeling like he even effectively hid the fact that he was just trying to get his mind off things when he was talking to Ino earlier at the Perk. He knew he probably should take more time to ( Read more... )

Yeah. So....this morning was... interesting to say the least. A.J. though maybe, just maybe, he could have shaken it off with some work, but only spent the whole time just staring at a canvas, because...dude. Man. That...Realizing the futility of trying to distract himself, A.J. shuffled back into the room and crashed, face first, onto the bed, ( Read more... )

There was the call of an alarm clock, an obnoxious but steady throbbing beeping sound. Normally, this sound in all its annoyance would be immediately silenced and the instrument making the noise would possibly be shoved off a bedstand to ensure that it didn't happen again. Normally. But the groan escaping the lump of blankets and hair from A.J.' ( Read more... )

A.J. was just on a roll today. Creative all day at work, and now again as he went back to the room and was churning out just page after page of demos for the graphic novel. He'd gotten so many more character designs done that he could start drawing these personas with his eyes closed. In his sleep, maybe. And, he had to admit, while he felt ( Read more... )

By this point, A.J. would need to replace the new sketchbook he'd just bought. Not because he was feeling particularly inspired this evening...he'd spent most of his creative energy earlier at work...but merely because he was trying to keep himself busy to keep from brooding. It wasn't working. His sketches in his book were getting progressively ( Read more... )

There were two very good benefits to having angry boyfriends coming to punch your lights out at work when you worked in a diner, A.J. had discovered. First off, it wasn't a roof. Secondly, the swelling in his black eye wasn't all that bad, since the clobber had been quickly treated with one of the steaks from the freezer ( Read more... )

A.J. really had all the reason in the world to just hole up in his room all day, so it was no surprise that, not long after getting out of his shop class, he'd had half the room covered in paint covers and had a whole section of the wall whited out. He sat on the floor with a can of paint in his folded legs, mixing it, mixing it, just sort of ( Read more... )

A.J. had the one of his large sketchbooks out, and he set it on the floor, laying on his stomach with a bucket of pastel colors, even if the only ones he was using were dark earthtones, some black, and a lot of red. He worked diligently, mouth slightly open with his lips pursed in concentration as he moved in quick, broad strokes, mostly circles ( Read more... )

So. There they were. Two boys, squeezed into an alcove, escaping a dinosaur. It was like a sitcom or something.

A.J. shifted a little in an attempt to get more comfortable, but realized that he'd only gotten more uncomfortable. "Well," he said, turning his head toward his roommate because he didn't really have the room to do much else. "That ( Read more... )