Disclaimer: The only thing I own is the story idea and only some of the witty remarks. I own so little; so please don't steal.
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Naturally
Leper leaves himself alone in hopes that other people would leave him alone too. He does nothing to draw attention to himself, aside getting caught digging outside in the rain because he heard Phineas say the worms were going to experience a salt shower if they didn't get off the pavement. He keeps to himself and says even less; to get by ordinarily is fine – to become well-known is a death sentence.
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When he leaves the windows to his suite open so the ivy on the brick walls outside can creep in during Summer Session, Leper finds himself confronted by a disgruntled maid – actually, he walks into her trying to rip them off the wall and exerts authority he didn't know he had to stop her. "I just want to study them," he says honestly and she storms off in a huff. Surprisingly, she did not report him and the ivy is left alone to explore the interior of the Devon School dorms.
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When Leper leaves the woods with the small box he carried in muddier than before, Finny takes Gene along and asks if there's poison ivy in the box, and if so, could he borrow it to make Mr. Patch-Withers's day a bit more exciting? Leper studies him with eyes of a scientist and opens the box to reveal fresh dirt and trails of slime. He sees Gene cringe and Finny feign interest in the slugs so recently moved. Eventually, Leper whisks them back to his dorm room, because Finny had started talking about how he was going to nick one of the salt shakers from the dining room.
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Winter Session starts, along with longer, duller church sessions. Leper presses his glasses further up his nose and tries to focus on Father but the season has changed and he wonders how the caterpillars are faring, the ones he hid behind the gym. He has sketched images of them all, and as the weeks pass, they seem not to change at all. During one chapel, Leper absentmindedly lets his pencil scratch over the notebook he snuck in, half studying the curled shape of one caterpillar he found in the corner that morning. Gene leans over from the seat next to his and whispers, "Whose butt are you drawing?"
Leper flushes because although he wasn't intending to draw someone's behind, the thought of doing so is embarrassing in the first place. He shakes his head and says, "I'm not,", but he knows Gene does not believe him because he is given that sympathetic, silly look teachers give him when he explains why there is dirt smudges on his papers. Furthermore, Finny comes up to him afterwards and says, "If you want to find a good specimen, I'd recommend Brinker but you'd better be discreet about it!" and Leper flushes again because he does not want to be a voyeur. And of course, Finny interprets this as Gene did before him: wrong. He claps him on the back and rushes off to find Gene again and all Leper is thinking is thank God I'm older than him.
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Because of Session dorm changes, Leper is moved to a forgotten room near the gym, near the trees. It's a welcome change from the ivy, because although he loves ivy, he would prefer trees. He was quite busy during Summer Session, he realizes, because when he tries to clean out the suite for the next boy, he keeps finding things that he has already forgotten about.
"What're you crawling around the floor for?"
Leper looks up, clutching the box of seeds (so that's where his collection went, behind the cabinet) close in case it's someone who wants to confiscate it. But it's only Brinker Hadley, standing with his stuff packed in the doorway. Leper blinks, but it's only Brinker and he goes back to trying to pick the pages of pressed leaves up from the crack of the wardrobe where they fell through.
"I guess I'll come back later." It's the voice of someone who can't be bothered, and Leper turns to see him go, drop his belongings in the hallway outside, and seek out someone to amuse him until his room is free. Finny was right, although Leper couldn't imagine Finny noticing something like that (unless it was Gene?), but he draws nature, not body parts.
The perfect shape in nature is the spiral because it can be found anywhere. It is circular, like the cycle of life, and many other cycles that exist. Leper finds his thoughts straying and busies himself with vacating the room before he can dwell upon what they mean.
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He's known Brinker for a couple of years now, although they aren't friends or schoolmates – just strangers. But whenever he passes Brinker the hallway, Leper finds his eyes following him until the last possible moment before they snap back to attention to the front. He is used to staring; he has watched birds and bees before. In midst of thoughts of wind and air quality, he finds thoughts of Brinker, which baffle him slightly as they have never inhabited his head before. He tells no one because no one wants to listen to him in the first place and he wouldn't tell even if they begged.
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It is around this time when Leper realizes he can't find a roll of film full of pictures of the river that he hasn't developed. He uses his skill of deduction to conclude that he must have left it in his old room and forgotten to pack it. He walks down that familiar hallway again, not stopping to say anything to Finny and Gene (Finny says happily, "Hey, Leper!" and Gene just nods at him) and stopping in front of his old room. The door his slightly ajar but he knocks anyway to be polite.
Brinker answers, looking briefly surprised before an expression of disinterest settles on his face. "What do you want, Lepellier?"
Leper points into the room. "I think I left someone in there."
"Hell you did. I keep finding all sorts of dirt all over the place. Did the maids rope off your room? Be quick about it."
Leper finds the roll of film safely tucked into a nook of the desk drawer, one he notices that neither Brinker nor his roommate Brownie Perkins has bothered to use. He takes it out, flashes it once in front of Brinker to say, 'I've found it' and makes to leave. He feels Brinker's watch on his back and turns, startling the other.
"Get out of here, Lepellier. You've got your own room." Leper closes the door behind him, feeling passively triumphant as he pockets the film and walks out, almost feeling good enough to say something to Gene when he passes him on the grounds.
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Fall became colder and as Leper collects leaves on the football fields, he realizes he doesn't have the book he usually uses to press leaves, a lengthy tome his father gave him last summer. He searches his room, under his bed where he last remembers himself putting it after he was done during the summer and it is empty. So he pays Brinker another visit; this time, Brinker sighs exasperatedly and lets him in without asking.
He checks Brownie's bed first, because there are two beds in the suite and he can't remember which one he put the book under. He feels for the rough hardback book and pulls it out from a space under Brinker's bed. He sits and looks at it for a moment, relief flooding through him because he is sure his father would not be pleased to know he lost a gift. Brinker is leaning against the doorway.
"So you slept in that bed. I wondered why it felt so grainy." Leper doesn't know how to respond to this, because he knows the maids, although now far and infrequent, have changed the sheets many times since he's left. He takes his book and breezes past Brinker to the hallway. Brinker gives him a 'get lost' look and Leper does just that, since the colored leaves are already drying and if he is too late, they will break when he presses them.
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Brinker is in many clubs. Leper is just poking around the bushes near the school to find the last of the fall ladybugs and sees Brinker speaking in a classroom surrounded by a small pack of boys. He himself was never much of a great debater. But when he sees Brinker talking effortlessly, he wonders if it is really so hard. But then again, what could he say that would hold everyone's interest like that? Perhaps it was Brinker himself that was keeping everyone's eyes on him, including his own. Leper is not eager to find out what the topic of conversation is so he doesn't bother to strain his ears, but he gives Brinker one last look before disappearing into the shadows again to the task at hand.
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Finny has stopped saying anything to him in the corridor, since he is there so frequently it's as if he had never left. Leper keeps misplacing his books, his jars, his boxes, his collections and they all can be found in Brinker's room. He never comes at a time when Brownie is there – partially because Brownie preferred to give Brinker his space in case he needed it – which is good, he supposes, because he doesn't want to explain himself to someone who doesn't already know.
He rarely sees Brownie in the room, so Leper is surprised one afternoon to see the antsy boy rush out, looking almost apologetically in his direction before running down the hallway. Brinker spots him at the door and watches him curiously. "What're you looking for this time, Lepellier?"
Leper stares back at him. "Notebook. It's got my notes in it." All his notes, stemming from the beginning of summer to the end of it, all written in his messy handwriting. He has no more explanation and wanders about the room, noticing first time of all these visits that the ivy has been removed from the walls. All dust motes had been cleaned up. He shouldn't be surprised at all; after all, any normal person would have removed these eyesores. But the fact that he hadn't noticed it yet, that he had been too preoccupied to realize his summer's work vanished…
He retrieves the little black notebook from the topmost shelf of the closet and as he straightens up, Brinker closes the door. "Perkins told me something curious just now."
Leper looks at him, asking him soundlessly to continue.
"He told me that you would be around to look for that black notebook. I asked him why and he said he saw you putting it in the room after last period." Brinker watches Leper squirm, inching toward the door with his notebook in his arms. "So that's why you kept finding things in here. I was wondering if you'd really forgotten all that."
Leper wants to say no, that he hasn't been sneaking his own items into his old room but he doesn't speak all that often and he's not a good liar anyway. Brinker senses his intention to flee and steps forward, pushing Leper further into the room. His foot catching on a loose article of clothing on the floor, Leper trips backwards, landing with an ungraceful crash on the hardwood floor. Brinker is on him in a second, sitting on his stomach to stop him from fleeing.
"I always thought you were a crazy kind of kid," Brinker sniffs, before going down and kissing Leper, knocking the glasses helter-skelter across his face. Leper wonders if this is how every other species feels at intimacy, the breath knocked clean out of you, even when they broke away for a moment for Brinker to snatch the bothersome glasses off his face and say, "No wonder why no one wants you." They kiss again, delicious weight as Brinker shifts on top of him to avoid the notebook from pushing into his chest. "But at least I don't need to worry about competition."
Competition is a healthy part of nature, Leper wants to say, but he smiles instead.
End
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Note: I'm sorry John Knowles. William Golding will understand. I actually wanted to write a Finny/Gene for my first SP fanfiction, but they're canon and I sort of wanted to explore these two. Cute little Leper. Review, please.