Skittery lounged back on the bed, looking bored and put upon. An open notebook lay haphazardly on the messy sheets in front of him, half a page covered with spikey scribbles and dark doodles. He was sulking. Half an hour of waiting on a phone call, he felt like such a girl. How long could it really take to figure out movie times?
In reality, he knew exactly what was going on- his best friend had decided to get ready before calling. A safe option, because it took Skittery five minutes to throw on a decent shirt and liner. It took Dutchy an hour to get his hair right. And, it all fairness, three fourths of that hour would be spent with his best friend in the next room whining at him to hurry up. Not that Skittery actually whined, of course. At any rate, he was giving himself every right to be irritated.
When the phone finally did ring, however, Skittery barely gave the first echoing notes time to die away before he'd snatched it up. All gloom had vanished immediately- it was a mark of their friendship.
"About time, blondie," he began casually, ignoring the tradition of beginning a conversation with "hello."
Dutchy sighed, the sound a soft rustle over the phone line. "Seven is the closest," he said boredly, continuing the train of ignoring transitions.
"Are you done yet, or should I wait for the straightener to warm up?"
"I'm going to kill you."
"Promise?"
Their banter was meaningless and well rehearsed. Neither of them was really giving it any thought, attributing it mainly to the small comforts of age old companionship. The two of them were, at surface value, as different as night and day, but they knew each other better than anyone else, and that sort of affection didn't need the same attention a newer love might. They had the comfortable give and take of an old married couple.
In the end, it took the two of them roughly five minutes of chatting and arguing before they agreed on the seven o'clock time and got off the phone. It took Skittery five more to be dressed and ready, and another fifteen to be sitting outside Dutchy's house impatiently honking his horn. By the time Dutchy had gotten out to the car, they were ten minutes late, but neither boy actually cared. They'd seen it a week ago any way. The whole thing was an unspoken excuse for the both of them to get out of their houses and away from the psychopaths they both referred to as parents. Loosely. Of course, that's not to say Skittery didn't miss out on the chance to rib Dutchy terribly for making them late; and drone on about how they'd missed the beginning of it last time and he was never going to fully understand the plot now thanks to him. This was the opening for Dutchy to insist that if Skittery didn't stop whining he would start going to these things with someone else and then where would Skittery be? Alone and friendless, like he should have been all along. He should count his blessings that he got to spend so much time with Dutchy. An empty complaint fueling an empty threat. It was how they thrived.
The two spent the movie in the same way as always: whispering back and forth, texting repeatedly to see how badly they could screw up the screen, and otherwise making life difficult for the other moviegoers. By the time they'd gotten out of the theater, they had resolved to buy tickets for the same movie just two nights later, and this time, they resolved to actually watch it.
Skittery dropped Dutchy off at his house half an hour later with a promise to meet him in three hours at the park, knowing full well it would be closer to four, and spent his own drive home wondering what to do with himself in the mean time. In the end, he decided to finish up the narrative he'd started earlier, a touching story of a beautiful boy with a charming, awkward smile and bizarre fashion sense. Maybe if he was vague enough he could pretend to Dutchy it was about himself. Maybe the other would play along. At any rate, he had work to do and four hours to do it in. Barely enough time for a masterpiece, but after all, Skittery was used to the pressures of an artistically unappreciative world. As long as he had Dutchy, he could handle them. As long as he had Dutchy, he was safe. Not that it was something he could ever tell him. After all, a guy didn't just talk like that in the real world. That was a phrase used only in the second realm Skittery dwelled in, the realm of his art. But it was alright. It fit, in a way. After all, love was its own form of poetry, and that was a kind all people could understand.