SATURDAY: All The Corners That Are Left

[rokofages]

It's one of those quiet afternoons that Brian hasn't had with someone in a while. The random chill music playlist he pulled up an hour ago is still running low and inconspicuous in the background, and dusk happened so subtly that they haven't gotten up to turn on any more lights. Just the desk lamp and the one on his nightstand are lit, creating

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[detentionkid]

AJ shrugs. "It's been a while." He watches as Brian turns back to his notebook, and flips through a couple more pages. It's strangely intimate - he's never shown this to anyone else before - but AJ's not thinking about that. Brian looks up when AJ doesn't go on, raises an eyebrow in an impatient little and? gesture that makes AJ almost crack a smile. He rolls his eyes instead. "Middle school, I guess, I don't know." Things were bad at home, and he'd just figured out that there were books they didn't have in their own library. That the same words could be put together in different ways and come out on the other side meaning more. "I was in the library a lot."

[rokofages]

"I don't know if I can condone vandalizing library books," Brian remarks, grinning lightly as he comes across another taped-in page with rip marks along the side. "I bet the copier was just despairing at you from the corner, all, 'I'm right here, use me!' Poor copier. Poor books."

[detentionkid]

AJ gropes around in his backpack for his pen so he can chuck it at Brian's head. "Uh huh, because you've only used the library for reading and research."

[rokofages]

Brian laughs, ducking away from the attack. "Touché," he says happily, turning to another page. "But no innocent books were harmed in the process."

[detentionkid]

"Teenagers," AJ scoffs, but he's smiling just a little, and Brian hasn't stopped. AJ runs two fingers along the grain of the wooden floor panels. "That the only thing you've got in your provocative poetry arsenal?"

[rokofages]

Brian shakes his head. "I see London, I see France," he sing-songs quietly, trying to stop his smile spreading from ear to ear.

[detentionkid]

AJ busts up in incredulous laughter, can't help it, and presses one hand over his eyes when he can't stop. "That is so fucking awful."

[rokofages]

There's a bubbly sensation in Brian's chest as he pushes back up on his elbows, just so he can watch AJ like this properly. "Excuse you, it's a classic."

[detentionkid]

Brian looks soft and warm and faraway for a second, and when their wrists bump it's only half on accident. Brian looks up then, and AJ murmurs, "Surrounded by all your boy scout badges," without any sting in it. They're so close AJ can see the laughter lines by Brian's eyes crease when he smiles. "Very e e cummings of you."

[rokofages]

Brian's gaze flickers over AJ's face, taking it all in. He doesn't think AJ has ever looked as good as he does right now, curled up in Brian's bed and sharing stories about his life like it's nothing. It's astoundingly simple, and yet has been so impossibly hard to get here. He looks at his hand, lingering so close to AJ's own. Slowly he reaches to trace the seam of AJ's shirt sleeve with his thumb, just barely grazing the skin at his wrist. "Maybe I have what it takes to be a poet," he murmurs. "No one's rhymed 'dove' with 'glove' before, right?"

[detentionkid]

"Think you'd be the first," AJ says gamely, resolutely not thinking about other words that rhyme with glove and dove. Brian's skin is so warm, and there's a sudden, sharp spike of anxiety in AJ's stomach where there wasn't before. He wants to move away. He wants to be closer. He lets out a breath and stays put. He's not - it's been almost a week, he'd thought -- he usually has it under control by now.

[rokofages]

Brian's not blind. He smoothes his thumb just one more time over AJ's wrist, unhurried, because this isn't regret, and he's not making an escape plan. He puts his hand back down on the bed, and sends AJ another small, easy smile. "Tell me about the first play you were in?" he asks, keeping his voice quiet.