When he woke up the next morning, Rex was alone in bed. He could hear plenty of noise from downstairs which meant that everyone else was awake. It was 7am. He sat up and looked about the messy room. It was small but he didn't have to share it with anyone else (except Weevil). You could always tell what stuff was Weevil's because he put everything away neatly whereas Rex just kind of dumped it wherever - hence the food wrappers and such laying around.

Swinging his legs out of bed, Rex ran a hand through his hair. The faded blue walls and dinosaur bedsheets made the room look like it belonged to someone much younger but if you looked closely you could tell that it was usually inhabited by two teenage boys.

As he picked his way across the room Rex wondered if Weevil would remember last night and still be mad. He really hoped not.

Oh my God, thought Rex as he stepped into the hall, it kind of sounds like we had sex last night or something. At that thought he went bright red and buried his face in his hands, too embarrassed by it to even process it properly. As a result, he didn't even think to knock on the bathroom door and just walked right in-

On Weevil with his shirt pulled up, inspecting a huge bruise on his side.

For a second, neither of them could move. For a split second, Rex could only stare at Weevil's chest.

Then Weevil was scrambling to pull his shirt down and Rex was taking two steps into the tiny bathroom to grab his wrists. He pulled them away from the other boy's side, where he was attempting to cover the bruise, so he could inspect the injury.

It covered the entire area from his hip to just below his ribs and, if the colour of it was any indication, it was clearly pretty old. Rex wondered why Weevil hadn't told him about this, or how he hadn't noticed it himself.

''Let go! Get off!" Weevil shouted as he tried to pull his wrists free. Rex frowned- Weevil was being unusually touchy about this.

"I just want to see it!" But Weevil wasn't having any of it and he continued to try and twist free.

Weevil wasn't a strong boy but neither was Rex, really, so they ended up in a wrestling match in the tiny bathroom. Rex was trying to be careful in case he hurt him more but Weevil had no problems kicking and elbowing where he could.

They wrestled for a few minutes, neither gaining the upper hand, until Rex's mother shouted up the stairs, telling them to be quiet and hurry up and get ready for school. Weevil took advantage of the lull in the fight to slip free.

Rex stared at Weevil from across the room but Weevil wouldn't look up to meet his eyes.

"What was that?"

"None of your business." Weevil brushed past Rex and started heading for the stairs. Rex stood in the doorway and wondered what he could do.

"That's what you said last night! You can't use that excuse every time. If someone's picking on you again, just tell me," Rex shouted after him.

"And you'll do what?" Weevil paused at the top of the stairs and sneered. "Your life is pathetic enough without adding my problems on too."

And with that, he stormed downstairs. If his family hadn't been downstairs, Rex would have chased after him and they would have fought some more. As it was, he had to make do with stomping to his room to get ready for school.

As he was getting ready, Rex tried to get a handle on his anger. It was hard though, because he had just been trying to help. Add that to the fact that his mother would have heard the yelling and Weevil was no doubt downstairs right now telling her whatever twisted version of events would make him look good. It was no wonder the guy didn't have many friends, really.

Well, if there's one thing that fight told me, thought Rex, it's that this thing with Weevil is worse than I thought. Which means it's probably not going to go away on its own.

He didn't even know why he was so worried. Weevil got bullied every day at school- just because he had a worse bruise than normal, didn't mean it was anything serious.

But bullies at school didn't cause him to stop going home or get abnormally defensive about bruises. Rex sighed and banged his head against the wall. Since they first became friends, there had never been a time when Weevil refused to tell him he was being picked on.