Twas the night before testing, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even Brett Clouse.
The books were piled by the table with care,
With the hopes that the markers would be kind and fair.

The pencils were chew-ed or dug in to heads,
While scratchings of hydro-carbons ran from their leads.
And Calley up to mischief, and I in my cap,
Had just mettle'd our brains for a long mental lap.

Then out from the rows there came just a smatter,
I swear it was there a wave of quiet chatter.
Away to that book row she flew like a flash,
Tore Owen a new one that old miss Boedash.

"I can't think of any more.." Cafas put down his pen and observed his work. Still eleven other verses to fill. "Still, it beats study." He smiled, even though he knew he really should be working. he was in the Library with Calley, and they were indeed supposed to be studying for a test. They sat perhaps slightly closer than the other groups of people working together, though it was purely a coincidence.

This study is BOOOOOOOORING

Why did he even need to know any of this, he was only taking the class because it seemed like it would be something interesting to do. It turned out he was wrong on that. Still he got to study with Calley, who was close enough to feel the warmth that came off him, and he got to improve his knowledge of... wait, what subject was it again? he had lost track of that about the time he has started re-doing Clement Moore's poem.

That reads miserably, I can do better...

"Where were we up to? I kind of lost track... Does it smell really good in here or is that just me? Man I'm hungry." This was the usual study pattern by now, study for an hour, get distracted by how good Calley smelt, do something unrelated for a few minutes, snap back to reality and realise study made him hungry. It worked, clearly, his marks reflected that.

Temptingly close Calley, is that hand meant to be held or is it simply a co-incidence? Or perhaps even a trap?

Should all equations be forgot
And never used in life?
Should SOHCAHTOA be mis-spelt
Then Sine is opposite Cosine.

With stalkers sitting next to you,
Writing out their poems,
We'll glare just slightly to the left
For pink-haired Aussie boys.

They do not help your bio or trig
And keep sniffing your clothes
This test has put you on the edge
As he should clearly know

The hand is not a trap, my dear,
But violence would ensue
If fingers were to come too near
And dare to distract you

"It's just you," Calley said, the fingers of one hand drumming slightly next to Cafas' poetry as his other hand worked its way into his hair. The pink dye was almost all out; just a half-inch or so left of the color, perched riotously atop his usual dark brown. Something was wrong on his paper: something very, very wrong.

"Ugh. Let me borrow your eraser." The shifter unceremoniously leaned against Cafas' shoulder, aiming to pluck the poet's pencil right out from his fingers.

This was not mixed signals: this was math.

HEY! That pencil had been his! Just because Calley had already worn his eraser down to nothing did not give him permission to be stealing Cafas'. Apparently though, in Calley's mind, it did. Cafas slumped in his chair, pencil-less and glared at the maths work with his arms folded. "First of all, yes, go ahead, no really, it's no trouble at all. Secondly not only have you twice now managed to forget that Sine is opposite and hypotenuse, whereas you are trying to use tangent, further down in your proofs you are attempting to divide by zero. That should be a seven and you will never prove it for all cases because it isn't true for all cases." He was not just a pretty face, he was also a blacksmith.

Snatching like a child and leaning all over me to do it.

A hungry Cafas is never a happy Cafas. He almost told Calley where he could shove the damn pencil. He could keep his damn hand too! "You lost the seven about two lines into the working, just left it out and it never came back." His own work was looking slightly better in that regard, but only because it was his third photocopy of the original and second draft.

I'm gonna need a new one thanks to that poem too...

Cafas picked up a pen, of the Parker variety, to keep going now that that draft was ruined anyway. He made it about a line further before everything was obscured by liquid metal, which he tried to solidify but ended up evaporating, leaving only the plastic cartridge slowly pooling ink onto his work and the desk, and a piece of paper he didn't recognise.

Damn it all!

Loss of control, hungry, grumpy and tired, yup, all were there, recipe for the disaster that just happened. While attempting to clean it up he managed to get ink up to his wrist. it refused to come off his work, or his hands, and when it dripped onto his jeans that was the last straw. "FOR @#$%'s SAKE!" The paper was shredded and left to pool in its own ink puddle as the librarian lectured Cafas on both his use of language and his outburst.

I'll say what I like, get out of my face I'm a grown damn man!

By the time she left Cafas had the blue from the ink in his hair, and on his face, making his weeks worth of facial hair a nice patchy blue-brown scraggle. "&%#@$... Sorry, just... I dunno... urgh." Head desk into papery ink puddle... He didn't even bother to move. His bad mood from all day continued, and it didn't help that Calley was in one too.

"I didn't lose the seven, it's right there... no, right there. See? What, now your making jokes about my handwriting? Our did you think I was one of the special kids who puts ones in front of their x's because they can't remember that one x is 1x? And I wasn't trying to prove it for all cases, I wasn't even trying to prove anything at all, that's problem thirteen. I'm on problem twelve. I was just... just using that space as scratch paper. And of course you can divide by zero, it's a number, not a magical robot unicorn that turns the numerator into puppies. Anything divided by zero is zero, because any part of nothing is nothing. Like if you don't have a pizza, and you try to take three slices—that just means you suck at life, and you still don't have any pizza."

That sucking at life. Cafas sure was exemplifying it, as his pen peed itself in silvery streams down his hand. Calley hadn't even gotten to the part about Sine yet, in his eloquent and library-appropriate-volumed spiel when the Math Masticator brought down the Wrath of the Librarian on their table. Amazing what she could say at appropriate volume levels. Truly, Calley was in awe.

>> "&%#@$..."

Face plant.

>> "Sorry, just..."

Pathetic, wimpy, lame-sauce face plant.

>> "I dunno..."

Directly into pen pee.

>> "urgh."

Very attractive.

Calley smirked, and planted a reclining elbow in Cafas' hair.

"Hey, Blue Beard. I'm hungry. Let's take a break and get something to eat."

----

It was Manly Movie night. This was not a spectacle for mere boys: such high doses of explosions, carnage, and completely heterosexual make-outs required a certain testosterone quotient. You had to be have this much manitude to ride this adrenaline coaster, kiddies. Hells to the yeah.

The popcorn was done, the stupid mouse jokes were over with shut up, the Skyrim crowd was evicted from the lounge TV, and the DVD was locked and loaded. Man up, men, for the manfest of your manhood.

The shifter tucked his feet up on the couch, leaned against his mancushion, and hit play. Heck yeah. Heck—

—I used to wonder what friendship could be
Until you all shared its magic with me—

"...What."

Calley shut his mouth, belatedly realizing that he... hadn't said that. Someone had beaten him to it.

"You guys aren't even making me work for my punch lines anymore," the ass shifter said, as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic continued its damning onslaught of adorable equines.

The lounge-room had been empty, he could have sworn that, all of a second ago there had been only Cafas, Calley... and a donkey that had been standing very still. Cafas sighed. "You know, I think I liked you better as a piece of Taxidermy." It was true though, it was as if they were trying to give him ammunition. My little pony? Seriously? He gave Calley a quizzical look. he had been promised Testosterone driven action packed adrenaline inducing shooting with explosions and punching from well muscle men... Which honestly made him question his own sexuality when it was put like that.

Eh, maybe it's a decent show?

All the same Cafas felt he may need to move out from under Calley to avoid any further loudmouthery.It didn't help.

"Smile Bronies!"

The flash was slightly painful, the fact a picture had been taken of the moment was slightly more painful though. Cafas laughed, and extended his hand. "Hey is that the iPhone 4? I was thinking of getting an iPhone, worth it? The ass-shifter was having none of it, after very slight hesitation he retracted his phone.

"Like I'm letting you delete this!"

"Whatever." Cafas walked over to the DVD player, pulled out the disk and looked at it. "This is why we don't download and burn movies to disk. Property of..." Cafas looked up at the ass shifter, smiled, and dropped the disk onto the table. He pulled out another case, inspected the disk, and dropped it into the player and sat back down, next to Calley. "You know the best part about this movie? The main chick gets her top off." MANLY MEN! Who watch manly things, despite the snickering of certain people who knew what bronies were and who he imagined wanted that disk gone fast.

He would let Calley lean on him more though, if he wanted. It was manly to be comfortable enough with your sexuality to recognise that movies are best viewed from the exact angle of head on shoulder.

Main chicks getting their tops off. There was only one thing cooler than that. Fortunately, this movie had all their man-bases covered.

"I hear in the blooper reel, the main chick and the main villain chick make out." Clearly something he was looking forward to seeing. Because when it came to the womenfolk, homosexuality was awesome.

"Oh hey," he said casually, using Cafas' conveniently located shoulder as a place to look back at the ass shifter from. "You know what's inside of brand new iPhones? Metal."

You know what Cafas could turn into metal vapor? Metal.

"Might want to delete that pic on your own. Free up some memory space," the Italian helpfully suggested, after giving that a moment to sink in.

To which the ass shifter could only clutch his shiny new gizmo protectively, and give a quick: "Whatever." When he left the room, the My Little Pony disk mysteriously vanished with him.

By that time, there were enough explosions that Calley could graciously pretend not to notice.

The room shook violently, briefly lit, a ghostly scene, gone with a rolling boom. Cafas was having trouble sleeping past it. Maybe he ought to close the window? Too far to walk. He was huddled under his covers reading by torchlight. The lights were out. It was nothing new.

He wasn't so much reading as watching a movie in his head. The words on the page registered to his eyes, but didn't make it much further, his mind took them, and shaped them into a scene. The content wasn't important though. It was the meaning behind the content. The futility of war, the horror of families divided, brother killing brother, and the deep sorrow that the author couldn't reconcile herself with the loss of her identity as the pills took more and more of what she was, and eradicated it.

This time it was a whip, not a bomb, that cracked above his head, though it could have been inside his very essence. The outsides of the sheets briefly glowed, faded once more. Only the drums were left now, the endless rolling snares and toms outside his window and on the roof, and the lonely, howling breath of some unseen singer, the unearthly melody setting glass rattling.

I suppose Calley could use the door for once...

He swung closed the window, and the song lulled ever so slightly, leaving him there, standing at a window, staring into the deep eyes of the night, until, swinging the latch on the window shut, he turned away and returned to his pondering of the authors self-loathing, stemming from the lack of self, and the paradox it formed.

Birds. Birds weren't meant to fly in storms. Sparrows and pigeons roosted together when the sky broke open; hawks and falcons huddled alone or in pairs, on high ledges. Ducks tucked their heads under their wing and let their water-resistant feathers do all the work. Water and wind broke apart his pinions, and left him grounded.

Dogs. Dogs smelled even worse when they got wet: it would be days before the stench wore away, and innumerable human-type showers that would leave his cat-type skin all dried and dandered.

Toads were like frogs, except that frogs liked water.

Seals and lobsters preferred more water.

Armadillos were desert creatures.

Foxes were fire types.

And cats? Cats were too smart for this. His whole being revolted at the idea of subjecting one of his feline forms to... to this. To this proof that Hell was not bathed in fire, but water; to this ocean that some idiot had put in the sky, and gravity was rapidly bringing back to earth.

It was a very wet un-shifted shifter who climbed his way up the tree. He didn't even think to use the door, because Cafas' window was always open.

...Except, apparently, tonight.

Calley huddled in the tree like a bedraggled bird; wet as a dog, as set in place as a toad. But the eyes that glittering at the closed window were definitely that of Felis letmeinsoicandefenstrateyoutious.

No, Calley could not use the door for once. Doing so did not even cross his mind.

Did you know, that our ability, as humans, to notice movement, is in fact its very own sense? Well it is. So when something moved outside Cafas' window that dark and stormy night, a certain part of his brain told another to tell his eyes to look at it. It did so. Nothing. Paranoia setting in? Doubtful, more likely he had actually seen something. He swung the torch to focus out the window. Ah... He was going to pay dearly for this one...

Cleaners did it... No you open it every other time why would this one be different.

Cafas stood up, dropped the book, and approached the window. Now might be a very good time to point out that it had not yet been a year since the last time he had found himself out that window at the hands of Caleb. He wasn't particularly hopeful that this would not be his second less than graceful trip to the ground. He hoped he could increase his chances by grabbing a clean towel. Cocoa fixed everything, so that would likely be his next step. He pulled the window open.

"Hey, what're you doing out in this? Everything okay?" This wasn't exactly Calley's favourite weather. The last storm Calley had been out in, from memory, had been quite the traumatic day for all involved. Cafas offered the towel, keeping it just inside the window, to avoid the icy nails pouring down. Also it kept him safely away from the window. If one thing was certain, it was that his weight trumped Calley's, and likely his wrestling prowess. Though He was fairly sure Calley could become a tiger at will...

Act casual...

Suffice to say Cafas was worried for the both of them. He would do his best to hide it though. Also do his best to have Calley ignore the welcome mat he had put just inside the window, because he found it amusing, though whether Calley would or not remained to be seen. The look of murderous anger in the shifter's eyes somehow didn't inspire much hope...

There was a flashlight beam shined in his eyes. Unlike a true cat's, his didn't shine back red. Then again, unlike some people, his eyes didn't color-code their sentiment.

The shifter did not immediately answer. In fact, by the time Cafas had gotten his Australian Outback out of bed and to the window, the shifter was gazing sedately off into the torrential evening.

"Who, me?" He asked, returning his gaze to the window—the newly opened window, he did not fail to note—with a distracted blink. "Oh, everything's fine. Lovely night, isn't it? I just thought I'd stay out here a little while longer." He casually ran a hand through his hair, slicking its drenched curls out of his face for a few seconds before the runlets of water cascading over his face tugged them back.

"Why don't you just go back to—" He wiggled his fingers absently. "—Whatever it was you were doing. Oh, and feel free to close the window. Wouldn't want you to catch a cold waiting up for me."

The aggressive was very passive, and the Cafas was tired, and sick of living in a room that was at the mercy of the weather twenty four hours a day. He was worried for his life and limbs, that remained, it was simply joined by a certain measure of angry. That, with a dash of worried for the idiot shifter about to find himself locked out all night if he didn't watch out, brought out a side of Cafas had been previously unaware of, paternal caring.

[rant]

"Get your sodden ass inside. Right. Now. It's late, it's cold, and it's raining cats and dogs. Do you have the vaguest idea of what it's like to sit up all night waiting for someone you're not even sure is going to turn up? I have better ways to spend my time than worrying that you've gone and gotten yourself in a mess you can't shift your way out of. I'm running on three hours sleep a night Calley, between work, school, this, and the X-men I'm becoming a god damn emotional and physical train wreck! So get your ungrateful behind in this window before you catch your death, or so help me god I will come out there and drag you in myself!"

[/rant]

Cafas stood in the window, a fatherly glare upon his face, and caught his breath. He knew that, more likely than not, this would lead to either an escalating argument, or Calley simply saying something snide and disappearing into the night; That was pretty much par for the course when it came to yelling at Calley. Gusting wind was showering Cafas with wet leaves, twigs and icy bullets of rain, which really only served to make him slightly madder that Calley had not simply come inside in the first place. Or used a door.

Calley was inside by "god damn emotional and physical train wreck."

He was just as surprised as Cafas.

Seeing that he had nothing to apologize for, though—he was barely a third of the Aussie's problems, as had been clearly listed—the wet Italian... redirected. With a grin.

"Well who could say no, when you went to all the trouble of laying out such a nice... welcome... mat..."

With paw prints. And a catch phrase that someone probably thought was witty.

...He could maim someone just as well from inside the window. Possibly better.

--------

Calley had come to a realization. Their bathroom wasn't the stuff that horror movies were made of. Nay: he'd had it wrong all the time. It wasn't a magnet for health inspectors, nor the inspiration for Swamp Thing, either. It was, simply, eco-friendly.

It was a showcase on urban composting. It provided habitat. Everything in it was, in a word, green.

And a little fuzzy.

He was standing on a towel, and that was the end of that: he did not need to look down, because he was standing on a towel, and curiosity had never been noted for its beneficial effect on cats. Especially not this early in the morning. The Mansion cleaning staff would get to it, eventually: until then... there was a reason most of his baths were taken as a cat.

Calley was at the mirror, staring back at his own bleary baby blue eyes. He was just getting over a cold. A cold that was no way linked to torrential nights and sitting outside, he would just like to note: he had been a little sniffly before that. ...And a lot more sniffly after.

He took his toothbrush out of the cabinet, and pawed around for the tube of bubblegum flavored toothpaste that went with it. By the way, pink toothpaste? While it makes a clever gag gift in a room of pink-haired boys, it really gets old fast. He never, ever wanted to scrub his teeth with gritty, pasty bubblegum ever again.

This morning, it seemed he got his wish: roll and squeeze as he might, there was not a bubblegumy drop left to pink-poop its way onto the bristles of his toothbrush. Thank. God.

Calley leaned back around the edge of the doorframe.

"Hey Cafas. I love you."

Yep.

...Wait, what?

Half awake, dressed in boxers, which you should all be thankful for, Cafas was idly stirring the coffee he had just returned with while staring at the business section in the newspaper. Okay the political section... Fine, it was the headline article. If you must know it was the crossword. Oh screw you it was the comics, are you happy now? Gosh, Waterboard me why don't you?

Calley was in the bathroom, which was a dangerous place to be, even if Cafas had taken to routinely cleaning his room, and actually had an organisational system going that did not include the words floordrobe or "she'll be right mate." For some reason the bathroom just refused to be clean. There were a few moments silence, broken by light chuckling at the antics of Garfield, in which Cafas continued to stir his coffee. Stirring black, sugarless coffee... Because it was still too hot to drink.

Hehe, lasagna.

A certain few words floated to his ears. Was he sure? Should he reply? Well, chances had to be taken in life, in order to reap its fullest rewards. Also he was too asleep to think properly and reflexes are reflexes. "Love you too." A few more moments, this time to contemplate who on earth found Dilbert funny, before his brain did the double take at having just replied with that.

Wait... No, he can't have... Wouldn't have... You're kidding yourself Johnson... No I think he actually did.

Well, at the very least what followed would be funny in a few years if and when his heart repaired itself. Or so he told himself.

Calley ducked back inside the doorframe, safely out of sight, and waited for the inevitable.

And waited.

...And waited, over the space of several stammering heartbeats.

Silence? And... newspaper rustling? And oh, there it was: "Love you too."

Like he really had been commenting about toothpaste. "Hey Cafas. We're out of toothpaste"; "I noticed too."

Not that Calley had meant it, but if he had meant it, that wouldn't be the reaction he'd been hoping for. What, were the comics so funny this morning that the metalmancer wasn't even paying attention? If Calley had made a dramatic and meaningful love-confession—he hadn't, but if he had—would he really have just lost out to Garfield?

The shifter set his toothbrush back in the cabinet. He finished washing his face, and ran a hand over his chin: nope, didn't need to shave. Shifting did weird things for facial hair growth. He draped his hand towel over his bare shoulders casually, walked back into the bedroom, and set his rear on the bed in front of Cafas' paper. The springs creaked.

A hand crept over the top of Cafas' news like it meant business. With a rush and a rustle, said paper was tossed into the air, its pages left to flutter down around all them.

"Let's try this again," the shifter said.

He grabbed the towel off his shoulders, and wrapped it around the back of Cafas' neck: with a tug of both hands, he reeled in the other young man until their faces were a bare inch apart.

"Hey, Cafas," he breathed out slowly, his brown hair brushing against the other man's forehead, just as much as the man's own was tickling his.

"We're out of toothpaste."

What? If love confessions couldn't hold the guy's attention, than Calley wasn't going to bore him with repeats. Instead, he would claim the most quiet, insidious sort of vengeance:

Morning breath.

So, as it turned out, waterboarding would have been preferable to the punishment he received. He wasn't quite sure he deserved this. He hadn't killed anyone... recently. "Oh... Cos I thought you said... and... Yeah I'll pick some up, gotta go into the city anyway. Going with something like mint this time, because that bubblegum stuff is terrible."

Told you you misheard.

Cafas was rather red in the ears, and face, and in general all those places one goes red when embarrassed. "Uh... Sorry, I really did think you'd said it first though... you know, I was just. I didn't wanna make a big deal about it, we both know how that went last time." Calley was awfully close to him. He couldn't move for towel. And then there was that lack of shirt he had going.

Dear god though, some of us need to BREATHE here.

That inch though, somehow closed itself, and Cafas hands found their way to bare back and the back of Calley's neck, and Cafas may or may not have stopped caring about Calley's morning breath. He stopped caring that he had made the same mistake twice, though this time he had thought it safe. He found himself not caring about much at all. Because, well, this made for a nice distraction.

You know you just signed your own death warrant right?