Fic: In Our Room (The Fosters, Brandon/Callie) PG-13
Title: In Our Room
Author: iridescentglow
Fandom: The Fosters
Pairing: Brandon/Callie
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3,736
Archived: AO3
Summary: Brandon and Callie begin sharing a room. It’s completely innocent… well, it’s mostly innocent.
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In Our Room
Callie showed up at Brandon’s bedroom door with Sharpie swirls on her face. In addition to the new face art, she wore a sardonic smile.
“So I had a fight with Mariana…” she said.
“Yeah, I kind of overheard that,” he said, leaning against the door jamb.
“It got pretty ugly.”
“I see that.”
“Can I hide out in here for a while?” Callie asked, casting a look over her shoulder at Mariana’s closed door.
“Sure.”
Brandon stepped back to let Callie inside his bedroom. He grabbed a tissue from the box and leaned over to wipe the pen off her face. His thumb brushed her cheek momentarily and he thought better of it. Awkwardly, he handed her the tissue instead and turned away, clearing his throat.
Callie used the tissue to rub vigorously at her face, which only succeeded in raising a red mark on top on Mariana’s anger-induced artwork.
“This isn’t coming off, is it?” she asked with a sigh.
“Nope,” Brandon replied. “Don’t worry about it. It’s-” Cute. “Alternative.”
“Alternative,” Callie repeated, smiling to herself.
She hesitated and then took a seat at Brandon’s desk chair.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Oh, y’know, just-”
-checking Facebook and being annoyed at humanity.
-thinking about jerking off.
-trying to get an idea for a new song out of my head - using a hack saw, maybe.
“-reading.”
“What are you reading?”
Brandon grabbed the book from his bed and handed it to her. Then he sat back down in the ass-shaped hollow on his bed.
“A Game of Thrones,” Callie read off the book’s cover. “What’s it about?”
“You never heard of it? Never even saw the TV show? With the. Dragons. And the.” Don’t say butt sex. “Sword fights.”
“I don’t know. The name’s sorta familiar. But my last foster father used to watch Monday night football and that was about it.”
The reference to the past caused a ripple to pass between them. Brandon could almost sense Callie closing up, retreating inside herself.
“I… could tell you about it,” he said.
“How can you tell me about it if you’re only”-she checked the page marked with his bookmark-“fifty-three pages in?”
“I’ve read it before. The whole series.” Six times. “Just once or twice.”
“Okay,” she said. She pulled up her legs and tucked them underneath herself, leaning comfortably on the arm of his desk chair. She swivelled once, experimentally, and then stilled. “Tell me.”
*
An hour and a half later, Callie’s yawns had begun to grow longer and more frequent.
“Sorry,” Brandon said ruefully, “I’m boring you.”
“No, I’m just tired…” she said, raking a hand through her hair and yawning once more. “Okay,” she relented, “you may have lost me a little bit with all the family histories. How many characters does this series have?”
“A lot,” he said. “I guess it makes our family look small and-straightforward. Normal, even.”
“Well,” she said, standing up. “To be continued, I guess. I’m beat. Gonna go to bed. Or. The sofa, anyway. If I sleep in Mari’s room, I’ll probably wake up with horns drawn on my face.”
“You could sleep here.”
He wanted to slap himself as soon as he said it. But he also didn’t want to take it back.
“I mean. I have a foldout bed.” He scrambled off the bed and opened the closet to show her the cot, folded neatly in half and stowed beneath a rail of shirts. “I used it when I was a kid. For sleepovers.”
“Well.” She paused to consider. “Your couch is hella uncomfortable. No offence.”
“I take no offence whatsoever,” he said. “Even if you did besmirch the good name of my couch.”
They grinned at each other for a moment. Then he reached into his closet and pulled out the cot. It dislodged a pile of old board games, which fell with a clatter. Callie moved to help him. Together, they managed to open out the narrow bed, but it took a couple of sharp yanks before it stopped trying to snap closed again.
“Phew,” Callie exhaled, flopping down onto her new bed. The exertion had raised a pretty pink flush in her cheeks.
Brandon, too, felt his cheeks flush with warmth. Probably the exertion. He saw that a lock of hair had fallen across Callie’s face and he found his fingers itched to lean close and push it back behind her ear.
Brandon ignored the urge. Instead, he reached way back into his closet and extracted a spare set of sheets and a pillow, which he handed to her. Then he sat back down on his own bed, which was several inches higher than Callie’s foldout bed. With the logistics out of the way, he realized that there only remained the small matter of…
Sleeping.
Together.
In the same room.
“Uh, so I guess I’ll go shower,” Callie said.
“Yeah!” he replied. “You should. Go get. Clean.”
Callie padded out of the room, leaving Brandon alone to mouth oh my god, moron to himself.
Faintly, Brandon heard the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. He busied himself with mindless jobs: setting up his phone to charge, powering down his computer, filling his backpack with tomorrow’s textbooks. When he ran out of things to do, he stripped off his clothes. He undressed rapidly, till he stood in his underwear. He felt inhibited suddenly, even though he was alone, the door was closed, and he could still hear the shower running.
A pressing concern occurred to him. He usually slept in boxers and a t-shirt. But, with Callie here, they needed to be clean boxers and a clean t-shirt. He crossed the room to his closet to confirm his suspicions: the only clean boxers he had were decorated with tiny saxophones, for reasons best known to his mom, who’d bought them for him.
Suddenly, Brandon realized he could no longer hear the shower. He stopped breathing, listening intently. He heard footsteps in the hallway, followed by the familiar creak of the floorboard right outside his room.
Brandon sprinted across the room like an action movie hero and flipped the light switch. The room was plunged into darkness. He leaped into bed, pulling the covers completely over his head.
“Oh,” Callie said when she opened the door.
He listened to her shuffle across the darkened room. He heard the squeak of the cot as she lay down. He didn’t dare peek out from under the covers, so Callie was reduced to sound and smell and nothing more. She gave a little sighing breath and Brandon heard the whisper of sheets as she arranged her body. A damp, perfumed smell rose up off her, filling the room.
Brandon clamped his pillow over his head and tried to sleep. It didn’t come easy.
*
The most ridiculous thing about Callie moving into his room was that no one noticed.
As always, there was a lot else going on in the Foster household. Mariana wasn’t just fighting with Callie - she was fighting with everyone. Something about a bust-up with her hipster boyfriend - or non-boyfriend, as the case seemed to be. Mari was ignoring their moms, so there was no one to mention to Stef and Lena that Callie was no longer sleeping in her room.
Meanwhile, Jude had been cast in the school play - Romeo and Juliet by a bunch of sixth graders, since Anchor Beach thrived on a certain level of pretension - and he needed Moms to sew him not one but two costumes. “Houseful of women and not one of you can sew worth a damn,” commented Jesus, earning him a lecture on feminism and the job of sewing Jude’s tunic.
It was easy, therefore, within the everyday noise and chaos, for Callie’s new sleeping arrangements to go unnoticed. The only real difference was that now, when Brandon slipped away to hide in his bedroom, Callie usually went too.
Their evenings together were uneventful - peaceful. They did their homework, or Brandon practiced his piano pieces and Callie made up guitar melodies to match. Most of the time, though, they sat and read. Brandon had skipped to Book Three of A Song of Ice and Fire, so that Callie could borrow Book One.
(“You’re sure you don’t mind?” she asked. “I can wait till you’re done.”
“No, Book Three’s the best one, anyway,” he said.
“…So why don’t I just start with Book Three?”
“Because you have to read them in order!” he exclaimed heatedly, which made her laugh for some reason.)
They read together in a companionable silence, punctuated by occasional questions from Callie about the book (“so how is he related to her…?”). After the first evening, Callie migrated from sitting in the desk chair to lying on Brandon’s bed. The cot had to be packed away every night, because there wasn’t really enough room for it, which left the bed as the only comfy place. Brandon usually lounged against the pillows, while Callie lay sideways across the foot of the bed.
Callie was a fidgety reader, though. The deeper she got into the book, the more she seemed to forget herself. She’d huff out little sighs and shift her body restlessly. Brandon pretended not to notice when she’d roll over or swivel around, accidentally encroaching in his personal space.
Once, she ended up next to him on the bed: on her front, propped up one elbow, her head level with his abdomen. Eyes still glued to the pages of the book, she inclined her head, half-resting it against his body. She stayed like that for several minutes, one restless leg tapping a steady beat, up and down against the comforter.
His own book long forgotten, he watched her, working up the nerve to act. He reached out a hand and, featherlight, stroked it across her hair, his fingers coming to rest in the nape of her neck. She stirred, but didn’t react. Using his thumb, slowlyslowly, he drew a line down the back of her neck to the place where her sweater fell across her shoulder. He thought he could feel his thumb tingle where it touched her skin.
They stayed like that for a long moment. He, with his thumb resting in the hollow of her shoulder. She, with her breath coming in shallow sighs, like she was afraid to disturb the air.
Then he withdrew his hand and they both pretended the moment had never happened.
*
After the awkward first night, they’d quickly established a pattern to their night time rituals.
At 10:30 p.m. exactly, Brandon usually made a show of yawning ostentatiously. That gave him an excuse to grab the bathroom first. He made sure he had a good, non-embarrassing pair of boxers and a t-shirt to wear and returned nonchalantly to his bedroom.
Most of the time, he managed to avoid agonizing over what he wore to bed. Although, on one occasion, he had to give his reflection in the bathroom mirror a longish pep talk. The pep talk ended with, “It’s just clothes. And. You’re a guy. So. Snap out of it.”
Unfortunately, when he opened the bathroom door a moment later, he found Callie standing right outside. She stood waiting with a smile on her face.
“Is talking to yourself the first sign of madness?” she asked. “Or is it further down the list?”
Without waiting for a reply, she slipped past him into the bathroom.
*
It was on the fourth night - a Thursday - when Callie returned from her shower, wearing… his t-shirt.
It was a big, gray, UCLA t-shirt that had been laundered so many times it had softened and thinned. It fell to mid-thigh on Callie. She was wearing underwear underneath, right? She was probably wearing underwear. But she definitely wasn’t wearing a… bra.
Talya, on the rare occasions when they got to actually sleep together, had always worn elaborate lingerie with bodices that squished her boobs up and together. Callie’s boobs beneath his t-shirt looked loose and… free. And, okay, he really needed to stop thinking about her boobs.
Evidently, Callie noticed Brandon looking at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “I grabbed your t-shirt out of the closet. I only have one pair of pajamas. Usually I borrow something of Mariana’s while they’re in the laundry, but.” She paused. “If you’re weirded out, I can take it off.”
Horror (mixed with horrible, horrible levels of arousal) must have registered on Brandon’s face, because Callie’s voice changed, a note of amusement rising to the surface.
“I mean,” she said. “I could change into something else. In. The other room.”
Oh yeah, she was definitely amused by him.
“It’s fine,” he muttered, reaching for his book so that he had something to do with his hands.
That night, he found it particularly hard to get to sleep. Hard, ha ha ha.
He wasn’t like some people (cough, Jesus, cough) who jerked off twenty times a day. But he had… needs. And he had to admit that his sudden lack of privacy in his bedroom had impinged upon his ability to take care of those needs. And, oh god, the thought of Callie’s body inside his t-shirt… The thought of her breasts pressing against the soft fabric… The thought of the hem riding up, twisting between her legs…
If Callie heard him get out of bed at midnight to spend a suspiciously long time in the bathroom, she didn’t mention it the next day.
It was with some relief (and not a small amount of disappointment) that he saw Callie appear wearing her usual flannel pajamas - demure and floral - at bedtime on Friday.
*
Brandon awoke slowly, fitfully, thinking it was morning. When he managed to prise open his eyes, however, he saw that it was still dark in his bedroom. Groggily, his mind groped for the source of the noise that had woken him up. It sounded like there was a small animal trapped in his room. His sleep-stupid brain was trying to work out how a racoon or a squirrel had found its way into his bedroom, when he remembered-
Callie.
He rolled over, peering over at the cot where she slept. He watched as she thrashed wildly, her breathing reduced to sharp, squeaky gasps. She clutched at the bed sheets like she was about to be dragged away. Brandon could feel the fear rise off her like a fevered heat.
“Callie…” he whispered. “Callie, wake up.”
He climbed out of bed, kneeling in the narrow gap between his bed and hers. Closer now, he could see that her eyes were screwed shut. She made another full-body jerk, flinching away from invisible assailants. Brandon reached out to her instinctively, but he stopped short of touching her.
“Callie,” he said, louder now. “You’re dreaming. It’s just a nightmare.”
All of a sudden, Callie’s eyes flew open. She scooted backward across her cot, colliding with the wall. “No, no, no, no, no, no,” she chanted, with eyes wide and fearful.
“It’s me,” he said. “It’s Brandon.”
“…Brandon?”
Callie’s eyes scanned the room rapidly, as if looking for someone who wasn’t there.
“Yeah, just me,” he said.
“…Oh,” Callie said in a small voice. She drew in a gulping breath. “Okay.”
Brandon’s hands were still extended toward her and now he placed one on each of her forearms. She flinched slightly at the touch, but didn’t pull away. They sat like that for a long moment. Brandon listened to Callie’s breathing as it evened out.
“Are you… okay?” he asked at last.
She shook her head, a single jerk to the left.
“Do you… want me to go sleep downstairs?”
She shook her head again.
“Do you… want a snack?”
Callie’s hiccupping burst of laughter took them both by surprise.
“A snack?” she repeated.
“Because of all the… you know. Movement. I thought you might. I don’t know. Be hungry.”
They both laughed then - not just at the absurdity of Brandon’s question, but also because laughing made the dense air feel just a little bit lighter.
“No, I don’t want a snack,” Callie said at last, a real smile slipping out of her subdued expression. “But thanks for the offer.”
“You’re… welcome,” said Brandon. “I guess I should-” Awkwardly, he withdrew his hands from where they rested on her arms. “Let you-”
“Brandon, stay with me,” Callie said in a rush, stumbling over the words.
She leaned forward. Her hands crept up his body, arms around his neck, as she pressed herself into a hug. In turn, he wrapped his arms around her. Her warmth seeped into his bones and he wondered how he could ever bring himself to let go of her again.
In time, she drew him down onto the bed and they lay like that, arms tight around each other. The narrow cot was scarcely wide enough to sleep one, let alone two, but Brandon barely noticed. With Callie warm in his arms, sleep came naturally.
*
Brandon woke up to buttery morning light and the warm weight of Callie pressed against him.
It took him a moment to get remember where he was. His surroundings felt like his bedroom but also not at all like his bedroom. He wasn’t in his own bed, for one thing. But the sensation went deeper than that. He felt that he might have, during the night, slipped through into an alternate universe. A universe where waking up with Callie in his arms was normal.
He couldn’t see his clock from this vantage point, but he remembered vaguely that it was Saturday. He wouldn’t be inclined to get out of bed even if it was a school day. The realization that he hadn’t slipped through into a different universe was slowly dawning on him. And getting up would mean letting go of Callie - letting go of her indefinitely.
Brandon watched as Callie stirred. She opened one eye and then closed it again. She twisted in his arms, turning until she faced him. Her eyes opened into slits and she gave him a scrunchy-faced smile.
“Hi…” she murmured.
“Hi,” he replied, feeling his heart beat in his throat.
He couldn’t really say who kissed whom, but just like that, they were kissing. It felt natural. Natural as breathing. Natural as sunlight.
“Brandon?”
His mom’s voice. Footsteps on the stairs. Both sounds took a moment to penetrate his bubble of warmth and kissing and contentment.
“Brandon!”
He sat up suddenly, breaking his embrace with Callie.
“BRANDON!”
Stef’s voice was right outside his door now. Brandon tried to scramble out of bed, but he got tangled up in the sheets. As a result, he half-fell onto the carpet. His eyes flew to Callie, who’d also sat up in bed. Her pajama top - not so demure anymore - had fallen down off her shoulder, revealing the first swell of her breast. Her hair was mussed, her lips were kissed - and he knew that he must look the same way.
To anyone who saw them, they would look… like two people who had just slept together. The fact that it was just sleeping seemed academic at this moment.
Brandon waited for the door to fly open and his mom to appear in the doorway. Instead, there was only a knock.
“Brandon, your dad’s here,” Stef called through the door. “Don’t be long.”
He listened to his mom’s retreating footsteps, which sounded considerably quieter than the hammering of his heart.
He looked over at Callie and saw in her face… resignation. Her expression showed sadness, hurt, anger, but the sharper emotions were overridden by a quiet recognition that this was how it had to be. He reached for her hand, wanting a point of contact, but she shook her head and turned away.
How far away from him she seemed now, when just moments before, he’d felt so close to her.
He forced himself to get up and go downstairs to greet his dad.
*
When Brandon returned from a Saturday spent with his dad, he found that Callie had moved out of his bedroom. To anyone else, the change would have been imperceptible - her guitar was gone; a few of her clothes had been removed from the closet; his copy of A Game of Thrones had been placed carefully on his desk - but Brandon felt her absence acutely.
She’d shared a room with him for not even a week, but she’d left a mark. The room felt wrong without her in it.
He kept himself busy with homework and mindless chores. As he roamed the house, he passed Callie sitting in the living room. She was chatting with Mariana - friends again, apparently; Sharpie warfare forgiven - her fingers busily sewing pieces of Jude’s costume. She smiled at him and he smiled back, but the whole exchange was utterly hollow. He felt like he was looking at her through a thick pane of glass.
The next day, he went looking for her in Mariana’s room. The two girls were seated together on Callie’s bed. (Callie’s bed? Yes, of course, this was Callie’s bed. The cot in his room was just a foldaway bed, a relic from childhood sleepovers.)
Mariana and Callie were talking intently and, when he entered the room, Mari gave him a pointed look to show that he was intruding.
“Hey, you forgot your book,” Brandon said to Callie. He held out the copy of A Game of Thrones, still marked with her place. “Let me know when you get to the end.”
“Right,” she said stiffly, reaching out to take the book. “I guess I’ll need to borrow Book Two.”
“Right,” he said.
There was a beat of silence, and then Mariana piped up.
“Oh my god, stop inflicting your weird, geeky obsessions on her, Brandon. You don’t have to read that trash, Callie,” Mari said dismissively.
Brandon rolled his eyes and took it as his cue to leave.
*
Despite Mariana’s advice, Brandon hoped that Callie did take the time to read to the end of the book. On the last page, in pencil, he’d written a note for her.
Dear Callie,
The same way I want to believe in dragons and heart trees and magic, I want to believe that there’s a way for you and me.
Even if it’s in another time - another place - I think we’ll find a way to be together. I hope so.
I hope.
Brandon
Author: iridescentglow
Fandom: The Fosters
Pairing: Brandon/Callie
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 3,736
Archived: AO3
Summary: Brandon and Callie begin sharing a room. It’s completely innocent… well, it’s mostly innocent.
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In Our Room
Callie showed up at Brandon’s bedroom door with Sharpie swirls on her face. In addition to the new face art, she wore a sardonic smile.
“So I had a fight with Mariana…” she said.
“Yeah, I kind of overheard that,” he said, leaning against the door jamb.
“It got pretty ugly.”
“I see that.”
“Can I hide out in here for a while?” Callie asked, casting a look over her shoulder at Mariana’s closed door.
“Sure.”
Brandon stepped back to let Callie inside his bedroom. He grabbed a tissue from the box and leaned over to wipe the pen off her face. His thumb brushed her cheek momentarily and he thought better of it. Awkwardly, he handed her the tissue instead and turned away, clearing his throat.
Callie used the tissue to rub vigorously at her face, which only succeeded in raising a red mark on top on Mariana’s anger-induced artwork.
“This isn’t coming off, is it?” she asked with a sigh.
“Nope,” Brandon replied. “Don’t worry about it. It’s-” Cute. “Alternative.”
“Alternative,” Callie repeated, smiling to herself.
She hesitated and then took a seat at Brandon’s desk chair.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Oh, y’know, just-”
-checking Facebook and being annoyed at humanity.
-thinking about jerking off.
-trying to get an idea for a new song out of my head - using a hack saw, maybe.
“-reading.”
“What are you reading?”
Brandon grabbed the book from his bed and handed it to her. Then he sat back down in the ass-shaped hollow on his bed.
“A Game of Thrones,” Callie read off the book’s cover. “What’s it about?”
“You never heard of it? Never even saw the TV show? With the. Dragons. And the.” Don’t say butt sex. “Sword fights.”
“I don’t know. The name’s sorta familiar. But my last foster father used to watch Monday night football and that was about it.”
The reference to the past caused a ripple to pass between them. Brandon could almost sense Callie closing up, retreating inside herself.
“I… could tell you about it,” he said.
“How can you tell me about it if you’re only”-she checked the page marked with his bookmark-“fifty-three pages in?”
“I’ve read it before. The whole series.” Six times. “Just once or twice.”
“Okay,” she said. She pulled up her legs and tucked them underneath herself, leaning comfortably on the arm of his desk chair. She swivelled once, experimentally, and then stilled. “Tell me.”
*
An hour and a half later, Callie’s yawns had begun to grow longer and more frequent.
“Sorry,” Brandon said ruefully, “I’m boring you.”
“No, I’m just tired…” she said, raking a hand through her hair and yawning once more. “Okay,” she relented, “you may have lost me a little bit with all the family histories. How many characters does this series have?”
“A lot,” he said. “I guess it makes our family look small and-straightforward. Normal, even.”
“Well,” she said, standing up. “To be continued, I guess. I’m beat. Gonna go to bed. Or. The sofa, anyway. If I sleep in Mari’s room, I’ll probably wake up with horns drawn on my face.”
“You could sleep here.”
He wanted to slap himself as soon as he said it. But he also didn’t want to take it back.
“I mean. I have a foldout bed.” He scrambled off the bed and opened the closet to show her the cot, folded neatly in half and stowed beneath a rail of shirts. “I used it when I was a kid. For sleepovers.”
“Well.” She paused to consider. “Your couch is hella uncomfortable. No offence.”
“I take no offence whatsoever,” he said. “Even if you did besmirch the good name of my couch.”
They grinned at each other for a moment. Then he reached into his closet and pulled out the cot. It dislodged a pile of old board games, which fell with a clatter. Callie moved to help him. Together, they managed to open out the narrow bed, but it took a couple of sharp yanks before it stopped trying to snap closed again.
“Phew,” Callie exhaled, flopping down onto her new bed. The exertion had raised a pretty pink flush in her cheeks.
Brandon, too, felt his cheeks flush with warmth. Probably the exertion. He saw that a lock of hair had fallen across Callie’s face and he found his fingers itched to lean close and push it back behind her ear.
Brandon ignored the urge. Instead, he reached way back into his closet and extracted a spare set of sheets and a pillow, which he handed to her. Then he sat back down on his own bed, which was several inches higher than Callie’s foldout bed. With the logistics out of the way, he realized that there only remained the small matter of…
Sleeping.
Together.
In the same room.
“Uh, so I guess I’ll go shower,” Callie said.
“Yeah!” he replied. “You should. Go get. Clean.”
Callie padded out of the room, leaving Brandon alone to mouth oh my god, moron to himself.
Faintly, Brandon heard the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. He busied himself with mindless jobs: setting up his phone to charge, powering down his computer, filling his backpack with tomorrow’s textbooks. When he ran out of things to do, he stripped off his clothes. He undressed rapidly, till he stood in his underwear. He felt inhibited suddenly, even though he was alone, the door was closed, and he could still hear the shower running.
A pressing concern occurred to him. He usually slept in boxers and a t-shirt. But, with Callie here, they needed to be clean boxers and a clean t-shirt. He crossed the room to his closet to confirm his suspicions: the only clean boxers he had were decorated with tiny saxophones, for reasons best known to his mom, who’d bought them for him.
Suddenly, Brandon realized he could no longer hear the shower. He stopped breathing, listening intently. He heard footsteps in the hallway, followed by the familiar creak of the floorboard right outside his room.
Brandon sprinted across the room like an action movie hero and flipped the light switch. The room was plunged into darkness. He leaped into bed, pulling the covers completely over his head.
“Oh,” Callie said when she opened the door.
He listened to her shuffle across the darkened room. He heard the squeak of the cot as she lay down. He didn’t dare peek out from under the covers, so Callie was reduced to sound and smell and nothing more. She gave a little sighing breath and Brandon heard the whisper of sheets as she arranged her body. A damp, perfumed smell rose up off her, filling the room.
Brandon clamped his pillow over his head and tried to sleep. It didn’t come easy.
*
The most ridiculous thing about Callie moving into his room was that no one noticed.
As always, there was a lot else going on in the Foster household. Mariana wasn’t just fighting with Callie - she was fighting with everyone. Something about a bust-up with her hipster boyfriend - or non-boyfriend, as the case seemed to be. Mari was ignoring their moms, so there was no one to mention to Stef and Lena that Callie was no longer sleeping in her room.
Meanwhile, Jude had been cast in the school play - Romeo and Juliet by a bunch of sixth graders, since Anchor Beach thrived on a certain level of pretension - and he needed Moms to sew him not one but two costumes. “Houseful of women and not one of you can sew worth a damn,” commented Jesus, earning him a lecture on feminism and the job of sewing Jude’s tunic.
It was easy, therefore, within the everyday noise and chaos, for Callie’s new sleeping arrangements to go unnoticed. The only real difference was that now, when Brandon slipped away to hide in his bedroom, Callie usually went too.
Their evenings together were uneventful - peaceful. They did their homework, or Brandon practiced his piano pieces and Callie made up guitar melodies to match. Most of the time, though, they sat and read. Brandon had skipped to Book Three of A Song of Ice and Fire, so that Callie could borrow Book One.
(“You’re sure you don’t mind?” she asked. “I can wait till you’re done.”
“No, Book Three’s the best one, anyway,” he said.
“…So why don’t I just start with Book Three?”
“Because you have to read them in order!” he exclaimed heatedly, which made her laugh for some reason.)
They read together in a companionable silence, punctuated by occasional questions from Callie about the book (“so how is he related to her…?”). After the first evening, Callie migrated from sitting in the desk chair to lying on Brandon’s bed. The cot had to be packed away every night, because there wasn’t really enough room for it, which left the bed as the only comfy place. Brandon usually lounged against the pillows, while Callie lay sideways across the foot of the bed.
Callie was a fidgety reader, though. The deeper she got into the book, the more she seemed to forget herself. She’d huff out little sighs and shift her body restlessly. Brandon pretended not to notice when she’d roll over or swivel around, accidentally encroaching in his personal space.
Once, she ended up next to him on the bed: on her front, propped up one elbow, her head level with his abdomen. Eyes still glued to the pages of the book, she inclined her head, half-resting it against his body. She stayed like that for several minutes, one restless leg tapping a steady beat, up and down against the comforter.
His own book long forgotten, he watched her, working up the nerve to act. He reached out a hand and, featherlight, stroked it across her hair, his fingers coming to rest in the nape of her neck. She stirred, but didn’t react. Using his thumb, slowlyslowly, he drew a line down the back of her neck to the place where her sweater fell across her shoulder. He thought he could feel his thumb tingle where it touched her skin.
They stayed like that for a long moment. He, with his thumb resting in the hollow of her shoulder. She, with her breath coming in shallow sighs, like she was afraid to disturb the air.
Then he withdrew his hand and they both pretended the moment had never happened.
*
After the awkward first night, they’d quickly established a pattern to their night time rituals.
At 10:30 p.m. exactly, Brandon usually made a show of yawning ostentatiously. That gave him an excuse to grab the bathroom first. He made sure he had a good, non-embarrassing pair of boxers and a t-shirt to wear and returned nonchalantly to his bedroom.
Most of the time, he managed to avoid agonizing over what he wore to bed. Although, on one occasion, he had to give his reflection in the bathroom mirror a longish pep talk. The pep talk ended with, “It’s just clothes. And. You’re a guy. So. Snap out of it.”
Unfortunately, when he opened the bathroom door a moment later, he found Callie standing right outside. She stood waiting with a smile on her face.
“Is talking to yourself the first sign of madness?” she asked. “Or is it further down the list?”
Without waiting for a reply, she slipped past him into the bathroom.
*
It was on the fourth night - a Thursday - when Callie returned from her shower, wearing… his t-shirt.
It was a big, gray, UCLA t-shirt that had been laundered so many times it had softened and thinned. It fell to mid-thigh on Callie. She was wearing underwear underneath, right? She was probably wearing underwear. But she definitely wasn’t wearing a… bra.
Talya, on the rare occasions when they got to actually sleep together, had always worn elaborate lingerie with bodices that squished her boobs up and together. Callie’s boobs beneath his t-shirt looked loose and… free. And, okay, he really needed to stop thinking about her boobs.
Evidently, Callie noticed Brandon looking at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “I grabbed your t-shirt out of the closet. I only have one pair of pajamas. Usually I borrow something of Mariana’s while they’re in the laundry, but.” She paused. “If you’re weirded out, I can take it off.”
Horror (mixed with horrible, horrible levels of arousal) must have registered on Brandon’s face, because Callie’s voice changed, a note of amusement rising to the surface.
“I mean,” she said. “I could change into something else. In. The other room.”
Oh yeah, she was definitely amused by him.
“It’s fine,” he muttered, reaching for his book so that he had something to do with his hands.
That night, he found it particularly hard to get to sleep. Hard, ha ha ha.
He wasn’t like some people (cough, Jesus, cough) who jerked off twenty times a day. But he had… needs. And he had to admit that his sudden lack of privacy in his bedroom had impinged upon his ability to take care of those needs. And, oh god, the thought of Callie’s body inside his t-shirt… The thought of her breasts pressing against the soft fabric… The thought of the hem riding up, twisting between her legs…
If Callie heard him get out of bed at midnight to spend a suspiciously long time in the bathroom, she didn’t mention it the next day.
It was with some relief (and not a small amount of disappointment) that he saw Callie appear wearing her usual flannel pajamas - demure and floral - at bedtime on Friday.
*
Brandon awoke slowly, fitfully, thinking it was morning. When he managed to prise open his eyes, however, he saw that it was still dark in his bedroom. Groggily, his mind groped for the source of the noise that had woken him up. It sounded like there was a small animal trapped in his room. His sleep-stupid brain was trying to work out how a racoon or a squirrel had found its way into his bedroom, when he remembered-
Callie.
He rolled over, peering over at the cot where she slept. He watched as she thrashed wildly, her breathing reduced to sharp, squeaky gasps. She clutched at the bed sheets like she was about to be dragged away. Brandon could feel the fear rise off her like a fevered heat.
“Callie…” he whispered. “Callie, wake up.”
He climbed out of bed, kneeling in the narrow gap between his bed and hers. Closer now, he could see that her eyes were screwed shut. She made another full-body jerk, flinching away from invisible assailants. Brandon reached out to her instinctively, but he stopped short of touching her.
“Callie,” he said, louder now. “You’re dreaming. It’s just a nightmare.”
All of a sudden, Callie’s eyes flew open. She scooted backward across her cot, colliding with the wall. “No, no, no, no, no, no,” she chanted, with eyes wide and fearful.
“It’s me,” he said. “It’s Brandon.”
“…Brandon?”
Callie’s eyes scanned the room rapidly, as if looking for someone who wasn’t there.
“Yeah, just me,” he said.
“…Oh,” Callie said in a small voice. She drew in a gulping breath. “Okay.”
Brandon’s hands were still extended toward her and now he placed one on each of her forearms. She flinched slightly at the touch, but didn’t pull away. They sat like that for a long moment. Brandon listened to Callie’s breathing as it evened out.
“Are you… okay?” he asked at last.
She shook her head, a single jerk to the left.
“Do you… want me to go sleep downstairs?”
She shook her head again.
“Do you… want a snack?”
Callie’s hiccupping burst of laughter took them both by surprise.
“A snack?” she repeated.
“Because of all the… you know. Movement. I thought you might. I don’t know. Be hungry.”
They both laughed then - not just at the absurdity of Brandon’s question, but also because laughing made the dense air feel just a little bit lighter.
“No, I don’t want a snack,” Callie said at last, a real smile slipping out of her subdued expression. “But thanks for the offer.”
“You’re… welcome,” said Brandon. “I guess I should-” Awkwardly, he withdrew his hands from where they rested on her arms. “Let you-”
“Brandon, stay with me,” Callie said in a rush, stumbling over the words.
She leaned forward. Her hands crept up his body, arms around his neck, as she pressed herself into a hug. In turn, he wrapped his arms around her. Her warmth seeped into his bones and he wondered how he could ever bring himself to let go of her again.
In time, she drew him down onto the bed and they lay like that, arms tight around each other. The narrow cot was scarcely wide enough to sleep one, let alone two, but Brandon barely noticed. With Callie warm in his arms, sleep came naturally.
*
Brandon woke up to buttery morning light and the warm weight of Callie pressed against him.
It took him a moment to get remember where he was. His surroundings felt like his bedroom but also not at all like his bedroom. He wasn’t in his own bed, for one thing. But the sensation went deeper than that. He felt that he might have, during the night, slipped through into an alternate universe. A universe where waking up with Callie in his arms was normal.
He couldn’t see his clock from this vantage point, but he remembered vaguely that it was Saturday. He wouldn’t be inclined to get out of bed even if it was a school day. The realization that he hadn’t slipped through into a different universe was slowly dawning on him. And getting up would mean letting go of Callie - letting go of her indefinitely.
Brandon watched as Callie stirred. She opened one eye and then closed it again. She twisted in his arms, turning until she faced him. Her eyes opened into slits and she gave him a scrunchy-faced smile.
“Hi…” she murmured.
“Hi,” he replied, feeling his heart beat in his throat.
He couldn’t really say who kissed whom, but just like that, they were kissing. It felt natural. Natural as breathing. Natural as sunlight.
“Brandon?”
His mom’s voice. Footsteps on the stairs. Both sounds took a moment to penetrate his bubble of warmth and kissing and contentment.
“Brandon!”
He sat up suddenly, breaking his embrace with Callie.
“BRANDON!”
Stef’s voice was right outside his door now. Brandon tried to scramble out of bed, but he got tangled up in the sheets. As a result, he half-fell onto the carpet. His eyes flew to Callie, who’d also sat up in bed. Her pajama top - not so demure anymore - had fallen down off her shoulder, revealing the first swell of her breast. Her hair was mussed, her lips were kissed - and he knew that he must look the same way.
To anyone who saw them, they would look… like two people who had just slept together. The fact that it was just sleeping seemed academic at this moment.
Brandon waited for the door to fly open and his mom to appear in the doorway. Instead, there was only a knock.
“Brandon, your dad’s here,” Stef called through the door. “Don’t be long.”
He listened to his mom’s retreating footsteps, which sounded considerably quieter than the hammering of his heart.
He looked over at Callie and saw in her face… resignation. Her expression showed sadness, hurt, anger, but the sharper emotions were overridden by a quiet recognition that this was how it had to be. He reached for her hand, wanting a point of contact, but she shook her head and turned away.
How far away from him she seemed now, when just moments before, he’d felt so close to her.
He forced himself to get up and go downstairs to greet his dad.
*
When Brandon returned from a Saturday spent with his dad, he found that Callie had moved out of his bedroom. To anyone else, the change would have been imperceptible - her guitar was gone; a few of her clothes had been removed from the closet; his copy of A Game of Thrones had been placed carefully on his desk - but Brandon felt her absence acutely.
She’d shared a room with him for not even a week, but she’d left a mark. The room felt wrong without her in it.
He kept himself busy with homework and mindless chores. As he roamed the house, he passed Callie sitting in the living room. She was chatting with Mariana - friends again, apparently; Sharpie warfare forgiven - her fingers busily sewing pieces of Jude’s costume. She smiled at him and he smiled back, but the whole exchange was utterly hollow. He felt like he was looking at her through a thick pane of glass.
The next day, he went looking for her in Mariana’s room. The two girls were seated together on Callie’s bed. (Callie’s bed? Yes, of course, this was Callie’s bed. The cot in his room was just a foldaway bed, a relic from childhood sleepovers.)
Mariana and Callie were talking intently and, when he entered the room, Mari gave him a pointed look to show that he was intruding.
“Hey, you forgot your book,” Brandon said to Callie. He held out the copy of A Game of Thrones, still marked with her place. “Let me know when you get to the end.”
“Right,” she said stiffly, reaching out to take the book. “I guess I’ll need to borrow Book Two.”
“Right,” he said.
There was a beat of silence, and then Mariana piped up.
“Oh my god, stop inflicting your weird, geeky obsessions on her, Brandon. You don’t have to read that trash, Callie,” Mari said dismissively.
Brandon rolled his eyes and took it as his cue to leave.
*
Despite Mariana’s advice, Brandon hoped that Callie did take the time to read to the end of the book. On the last page, in pencil, he’d written a note for her.
Dear Callie,
The same way I want to believe in dragons and heart trees and magic, I want to believe that there’s a way for you and me.
Even if it’s in another time - another place - I think we’ll find a way to be together. I hope so.
I hope.
Brandon