Title: Little Conversations

Author: Hawk Clowd

Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing and I want nothing. I think these boys would cost me too much money in condoms and lubricant, quite frankly, if they didn't run me dry from with the beer and cigarette runs. Also? Don't own the limerick. I just modified it.

Blood Type: NyQuil

Warnings: sleep-deprived insanity.

Part: Six

Author's Notes: Yuck. I slept like crap last night and I think I'm coming down with something; my throat's been sore for days! The good news is that another chapter of "Little Conversations" came out of it, so I guess that's all right. Please excuse my horrible attempts at humor.

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"That's not a poem," Eiri said. "That's crap in written form."

Tatsuha rolled his eyes. Despite being a jerk over Tatsuha's cell phone bill, Eiri continued to not only pay the bills but also call Tatsuha on a fairly regular basis, especially when he was tired, procrastinating, or very, very drunk. Eiri had called an hour or so before midnight and Tatsuha had taken advantage of his brother's sudden interest in his life to ask some advice for a school assignment. A poem.

"It's not that bad," Tatsuha argued.

Eiri pretended to think about that. "Mmm... No, I'm pretty sure it is that bad. It doesn't even rhyme."

"A poem doesn't have to rhyme," Tatsuha protested. "I don't even think we're allowed to rhyme."

Eiri scoffed. "It's still a crappy poem."

"Like you could do better?"

"I could."

"Fine." Tatsuha leaned back in his desk chair and doodled on the corner of his notebook. "Do it."

Eiri paused. "Right now?"

"Right now."

"Ah."

The resulting silence lasted almost two full minutes, during which Tatsuha fiddled with the various things on his desk, bent the corners of notebook paper, and doodled idly. Then, at last, he grew bored and spoke.

"Well?"

Eiri's scowl was almost audible. "Fine." Eiri cleared his throat. "There once was a hermit named Ken, who kept a dead whore in his den. It smelled like shit and was missing one tit, but think of the money he... saved," he recited, pausing at the last line and, failing to find a rhyming word, substituting something just as good. "There. How was that?"

Tatsuha tried not to laugh. "That's not a poem," he said. "You're a nasty, dirty pervert!"

"It rhymes," Eiri pointed out. "That makes it more of a poem than yours. Rhyming makes it a poem and that makes it beautiful, not crude. Artistic, at least. Interpretive."

Tatsuha scowled at the wall. "If you were here, I'd hit you. I'm telling you, a poem doesn't have to rhyme."

"If a poem doesn't rhyme, it just means the poet isn't trying hard enough," Eiri decided. "Only lazy poets don't bother to rhyme."

"That's not true!"

"Which one of us is the published writer? Remind me."

Damn him for using his job in an argument. "You are," Tatsuha admitted grudgingly.

"Right." Eiri sounded smug. "So don't you think that maybe, just perhaps, I know what I'm talking about?"

Tatsuha gaped a moment. How did his brother's mind think like this and not explode? It didn't make any sense. "Fine," he said at last. "But you're still a pervert."

"A poetic pervert," Eiri corrected. "And your crappy poem still isn't a real poem."

"Argh!" Tatsuha hit his hand, palm-down, against the desk. "It doesn't have to rhyme in order to be a poem!"

"Yeah, if you're lazy."

Tatsuha scowled. "Will you quit saying --"

"I have another poem for you," Eiri interrupted. "There once was a man from --"

Tatsuha hung up.