Author's Note: Okay, I just love Rogice. What else can I say?
Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Flies.
Telephone
On a completely normal day in the Dessner household, the phone rang.
This was a normal occurrence. Often it was just a relative calling to say hello or check up on how Roger was doing, perhaps suggest a therapist despite the fact that it'd been two years since he'd been on that blasted island.
He really wished people would just forget about it. Really, it hadn't been such a big deal. All he'd done was kill a fat kid with a rock and throw some stones at annoying little boys. Alright, fine, maybe it was a big deal, but there was no cause to constantly bother him about it as though it was a recent event.
Really, it'd been two years. Jack and Roger still found it extremely awkward to talk to each other about anything, but that didn't mean that it'd happened recently and he still needed Grandpa Nicky telling him how brave he'd been and how proud he was of him. Grandpa Nicky had Alzheimer's anyways.
Roger didn't feel like pulling himself off the couch, so his mother went over to the phone. "Hello?" She nodded at whatever the caller had said. "Roger, it's for you. A boy called Maurice."
A look of horror passed across Roger's face. Not that Maurice. The one who he'd smashed a bunch of littlun sandforts with and thrown some stones with just because it was fun. "Roger? Do you know this boy?"
"No, Mom. Tell him to go away."
She spoke into the phone. "Roger says he doesn't know you." There was a long pause, Maurice was presumably babbling on and on about something, and then Roger's mother said, "Roger, he was on the island with you and wants to talk to you."
"I don't care." He could just imagine Maurice making a begging face, blue eyes wide, and sighed. "Fine. Let me talk to him."
His mother handed him the phone and he immediately heard Maurice's hyper, much too happy voice. "Hi, Roger!"
"What do you want?"
"To have a conversation with you. Duh." The strange thing about this was that Roger could picture all the expressions Maurice would be making were they having this conversation in person.
"But why?"
Maurice giggled. "Do I need a reason?"
"Yes." Roger rolled his eyes. "Give me one good reason to talk to you or I'll hang up."
"I just haven't seen you in like, two years! I missed you!" He could hear Maurice's big, goofy smile through the phone. "I was just thinking about you. I didn't want to call Jack because he's boring."
Roger sighed. Maurice, despite his annoyingness, was very, very hard to get rid of. There was something about his stupidity that just compelled you to keep talking to him. "What did you want to say?"
Maurice paused for a minute or so. "Well...uh...I don't know. Hi. How's life?"
"It was good until you interrupted my TV show." There were a couple minutes of silence, and Roger felt a little bad. "Okay, fine, I missed you too."
"Really?"
"God, you know how much it annoys me when people ask that!"
"Really?"
"Oh no."
"Do you want to come visit me sometime? I don't live too far away."
Roger's eyes bugged out. "You know where I live?" This would only mean trouble for him. He could just imagine Maurice at his door, coming into his room whenever he felt like it.
"Yeah, I looked it up. Why?"
"That's creepy."
"You're one to talk." Roger couldn't help but laugh. "I mean, we kinda stomped on some little kids' dreams on the island, right? And you looked so creepy with all that facepaint on!"
Roger would have glared at him, but then he realized that this was a phone call and not a real life conversation. And he was sort of beginning to wish that it was a face-to-face conversation. It would be far more fun to talk to Maurice in person. "You just looked like you'd eaten something really gross and it got all over your face."
"I ate a pig's foot. Or at least I tried to."
Roger almost gagged. "Too much info, Maurice."
"Anyways, wanna come over to my house on Saturday?"
"And do what?"
"I dunno. Talk."
"About what?"
"Why do you ask so many questions?"
Roger snorted. "Speak for yourself." If he had a dollar for every time Maurice asked a question, and then ten dollars for every time it was an extremely stupid one, he would be rich and able to pay for retirement and proper healthcare far into his future. Unlike Grandpa Nicky and his late grandmother who had gotten hit by a bus.
On the other end of the line, Maurice was trying not to giggle. Roger hadn't changed a bit. He was still unable to take a joke and thought that he asked too many questions. "It'd be fun. I haven't had a friend to talk to since like, forever."
It was true. He hadn't made any friends in school. Unlike in Roger's case, no one really cared that he'd survived being on an island with a bunch of savage boys, witnessed two murders, and bullied a bunch of little kids. They just barely acknowledged it and some congratulated him on getting back alive.
Roger felt a bit bad hearing this. Maurice, for all his idiocy, was a nice kid. He would have expected him to have maybe a few friends. He'd probably had some before the island, but then again, being on an island and coming back covered in warpaint and half-naked probably didn't make the best impression on the normal-ish students.
"Okay, fine, I'll ask my mom about it. But I still don't get what we're going to do."
Maurice shrugged. "I don't know. Stuff."
"How specific."
Then, out of nowhere, Maurice asked. "Do you have a girlfriend?"
He turned red. "Why would you ask that?"
"Roger has a girlfriend, Roger has a girlfriend," teased Maurice in a sing-song voice. Roger felt his cheeks redden even more even though he did not, in fact, have a girlfriend.
"No, I don't have one."
"That's good," said Maurice cheerily.
What Maurice had said took a few minutes to register in Roger's brain. "Wait...what?"
.
.
.
I hope that was at least tolerable. This is somewhat dedicated to Nightkill because she writes awesome Rogice and mentioned me in one of her fanfictions. If you have not already, check out her Rogice fanfiction because it's amazing.