"You're not doing it right."

Mark looked up to glare at Roger. Physics projects with him always turned out like this, with Mark doing all of the work and Roger simply sitting there making sarcastic comments. Why he still picked Roger as his partner every time was beyond him. "You know, I'm the only reason you're not failing this class. Do you want to build the catapult?" he asked pointedly.

Seated cross-legged on Mark's bed, Roger grinned at him. "Yes, actually."

"Oh. Well… no." Mark sighed and returned to duct-taping a large wooden ladle to the "arm" of their catapult. Pathetic and piecemeal it might be, but it should work, provided that his mother didn't notice he'd taken one of her spoons without permission and took it back.

Roger smirked, with the arrogant expression he well knew made Mark want to smack him. Not that Mark ever would… Roger twisted around so that he lay on his back on the bed, watching Mark as he hung upside down and half-off the bed. "We should have made a giant slingshot."

Mark stared at him. "A giant slingshot?"

"Yes."

"Do you realize how juvenile that is?"

Roger quirked an eyebrow in what Mark thought might be a mocking look, though it was hard to read his expressions when he was upside down. "A slingshot's juvenile and a catapult isn't?"

"Shut up," Mark muttered and finished his adjustments to the catapult. "There. It's done."

Roger kicked his feet against the wall and rolled off the bed, while Mark winced and resisted the impulse to tell him not to put his feet on the wall or he'd leave scuff marks. Roger would just tell him he sounded like his mother. "So," Roger said, "let's see it fire."

He walked across the room to stand by Mark, who kneeled on the floor next to their catapult. Mark sighed and obligingly picked up the tennis ball that sat on the floor next to him, fitted it into the "cradle" of the catapult (meaning the end of the ladle) and pulled back the arm. When he released it, the tennis ball flopped forward pathetically, traveling less than a foot, and Roger nodded sagely. "Told you. Slingshot."

Mark sighed and got to his feet, half-glaring up at Roger in frustration. "You know what?" he snapped almost combatively.

Roger smirked down at him and shifted a little so that he and Mark were almost nose-to-nose, almost but not quite. "What?" he said with a deliberate air of cockiness.

Mark never could quite breathe with Roger that close, and he didn't dare meet Roger's eyes, or look at that damnably arrogant (and charming) smile that somehow made him flush simultaneously warm and cold, a hot blush on his cheeks and a chill down the back of his neck. "Um…"

Roger grinned even broader. "Yeah, I thought so," he said smugly, and in a moment took a step back after playfully ruffling Mark's hair. "Now let's do something more interesting, alright? Before I die of boredom."

Mark couldn't come up with a response, at least partially because he couldn't help thinking that for in instant they'd been almost close enough to touch. Close enough to kiss. Almost.