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Virgil shuffled as he leaned against the column, subtly turning up the volume of his mp3 player before switching back to the game he had been playing. The usual suspects were gathered in room 77 once again, because Charlie had been hard at work after another set of sleepless nights with all the ideas buzzing around in his head. The only thing was, nothing was happening. Charlie managed to misplace something between the time he and it had been roughly ten minutes since he had frantically started turning everything over looking for it. Despite several attempts to weasel the information out of him, Charlie still hadn’t told them what he was even looking for.
So he and Zeke had been left to fend for themselves. They were staving off the boredom of waiting, Virgil with music and Zeke with assorted odds and ends that might make a
They were camping out since they figured it would be a while until Charlie either found the missing item or took a moment to breathe. It had, Virgil glanced at the time on his music player, already been another five minutes with his recollections, giving them a grand total of fifteen thus far. He forcefully blew his bangs out of his face and shifted again. Already having lost the fight, he looked around the room, wondering what Zeke was up to. He found him to his left, fiddling with whatever pet project he had scrounged together this time. Craning his head around to get a glimpse, he heard a small clanging sound and a quiet, “shit,” from the ear with no bud in it.
Zeke pushed his project to the side as he leaned over the table, and Virgil realized that he must have just pushed a part of it into the small gap, AKA the Void, between the edge of the table and the wall. He felt sympathetic for him, but that was life, my dude. Zeke tightened his mouth as he considered what to do and Virgil had just about redirected his attention back to his mp3 player when Zeke got on the tips of his toes and stretched the length of his legs. His jaw didn’t drop but it felt like it still might. Fingers discreetly in place to ensure he didn’t slip up, Virgil kept his eyes on Zeke.
More like, Zeke’s legs.
Virgil swallowed hard. He knew he should be looking away.
But, he reasoned to himself, it wouldn’t hurt anyone if he took the next few seconds to appreciate how nicely those jeans emphasized Zeke’s, well, how nice they emphasized Zeke in general. Especially today, he mused to himself. What exactly about today made it different? His eyes widened with realization, but he didn’t get a chance to confirm it.
He forced his eyes back to his phone when Zeke seemed to be getting up, scrolling through the feed on his screen. If anyone was paying attention, they’d know immediately that he was going too fast to actually be looking for a new song.
As it were, no one was paying attention, and so Virgil was in the clear. His disinterested, private facade was working in his favor as per usual. As long as he didn’t draw attention to himself intentionally, no one would notice what he was doing. Especially when Charlie was nearby blabbing on and on about the latest machine.
“Oh no, this really isn’t going to work without it!” Charlie wailed. “Virgil, Zeke, we need all hands on deck to find the extension cord!”
Virgil cocked his head to the side. “Uh, an extension cord like that?” he inquired as he pointed to a cardboard box haphazardly pushed along the wall that happened to be overflowing with them.
Charlie rolled his eyes. “No, Virgil! I should have figured you hadn’t been listening to me earlier. Yes, it was like those extension cords but I had altered it to be more energy efficient and cause less power surges. What’s the point of rigging this machine up if we can’t power it?”
In the distance, Zeke looked over to them with a slight smile, dropping it when Virgil caught sight of it. What was he smiling about?
“So, uh, we need to find a particular extension cord among all the extension cords here? And how will we know we found the right one?” Virgil questioned the anxious boy.
Charlie froze with a blush forming on his cheeks. “It may, uh, well, it’ll stand out for sure.”
“Come on, Charlie. Gotta do better than that.” Virgil exasperated.
“Well! It-”
“It’s got bird stickers all over it, because Charlie worked on it when he was hanging out with Jeanette.” Zeke was as blunt as ever, and Virgil took his raised eyebrows from the silhouette of the broody teenager back to Charlie, who was somehow even more flustered than before.
“And who was married to science again?” Virgil teased.
Charlie became indignant at that. “I still am. She will forever be my mistress. I meant it then and I-”
Virgil held his hands up. “Hey, you don’t need to justify yourself to me. I’m just happy for you. So I’m looking for bird stickers, huh?”
Charlie imploded yet again but much more silently this time. Virgil left him to his internal suffering and took on the mantle of seeking the lost treasure.
In his peripheral, he thought he saw a bright, yellow sticker. You know, he pondered to himself, those colors kind of reminded him of the canary that was emblazoned upon Jeanette’s binder.
He bent down to pick up the extension cord that Charlie had been clamoring about, looking forward to moving onto the main event.
“Ahh!” Virgil panicked as he saw an unanticipated figure in very close proximity to his own. It wasn’t until he straightened himself out that he realized he was looking at a mirror.
“Oh! Hahahaha, you really got me there!” He jokingly motioned a friendly punch at his reflection when he saw another figure, except this one was very clearly not his reflection. Man, he really wished it had been.
Instead, he saw Zeke leaning against the same pillar that he had been previously, and it was at that moment he recognized that he was currently at the table Zeke had been assembling his pet project.
“Not so slick, are you, hot stuff?”
“You think I’m hot?” Virgil jokingly responded back to him, trying to play off getting caught getting scared by and subsequently goofing around with, well, himself.
“Not as hot as you find me, apparently.” Zeke responded back just as casually, and it took Virgil a moment to realize what he had meant. He turned his head back to the mirror and back to Zeke leaning against the column.
Oh, he caught him checking out his assets. Maybe, Virgil prayed to whatever would listen, this machine will have memory erasing capabilities, intentionally or unintentionally. He was willing to take that chance. On Zeke, of course.
Zeke bit back a grin. With a playful lilt to his voice, he continued. “Next time, take a picture?”
The embarrassment was immediately replaced with confusion in its stead. Zeke laughed as he slapped him on the back. The sheer force stung on his back and sent him forward at an alarming rate. He caught himself on the edge of the table and flipped around to find the other teen had already left with the cord in hand. When did he pick that up?
“Hey Charlie! We found it. Virgil was sitting on it.”
“Sitting on it? Oh no, I have to make sure it still works. It might have broken under the weight.”
He shook himself out of the confusion. He could worry about this interaction later when he had the liberty of free time to think about it. For now, he pushed himself up and went to reclaim whatever was left of his dignity.
“Hey! I didn’t sit on it.” He defended himself.
He added on thoughtfully. “I did just drop it though. I’d still check that it’s okay.”
“You what? Virgil!”
Virgil laughed at Charlie’s further histrionics, and his eyes flickered up to Zeke who was also laughing. He started at the eye contact, not expecting Zeke to be looking in his direction as well. He quickly looked away to the side, his face slightly more red than it had been a moment before. Zeke hummed as Virgil cleared his throat. The few beats of silence that passed was enough for Virgil to decide that he couldn’t do it right now.
“Hey Charlie,” he stepped away from the table to go seek out the kid among the piles of rubble.
“Can I help you with that? I’m feeling a little bad that I bro-,” he corrected himself, “I mean, possibly broke your cute extension cord.”
“Uh? Yeah, here. Hold this.” Charlie had missed his attempt to instigate him and merely motioned for him to hold his arms out palms facing up, and Virgil did as he was bid. For his efforts, he got one end of the cord placed in his left hand and ordered him to not let go or slacken his grip on the section of the cord that Charlie carefully placed in his right hand.
“I mean it, Virgil. If it loosens up, we’re doing this all over again.” Charlie warned him again.
“Yo comprendo.”
“Perfect, thanks. You’re of great help.” Charlie began twisting the cord again as Virgil held it in place, and it seemed like the process was going much smoother than before. Kind of wishing he had put his music in before he offered his help, his eyes darted around the room again feeling quite a lot safer now that he knew he wouldn’t incidentally gawk at Zeke again like he had minutes before if the other male was behind him. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
He thought he saw something move to his right and turned his head. He cringed as he closed his eyes in an attempt to will away the offending object. The movement had been Zeke reflecting the ceiling light onto the handheld mirror in his hand onto the larger one propped against the wall. He kept shifting it so the beam of light would hang dangerously close to his eyes. He squinted shifting his head a little to avoid the beam. He stifled a sigh as the beam just moved with him.
“A lot of mirrors here, aren’t there?” Virgil coolly stated aloud.
“Huh? Yeah, I guess so. I’ve scared myself a few times when I was here alone on late nights.” Charlie mumbled around the fasteners he had in his mouth.
By the glory of god, Zeke got bored of that almost right away and went back to his tinkering. By the siren call of the Devil, however, he had turned his back to the mirror and was focused intently on his tinkering. Virgil thought he’d learned his lesson, and he had. Kind of. This time his eyes seemed to rest on the expanse of his shoulders instead of his legs like he’d done before.
Whoa, wait, he thought to himself. That’s still a little weird, dude. He forced his eyes away, and he came back to Charlie analyzing him.
“Dude,” Charlie questioned him, his concern very apparent on his face. “Are you sick? Don’t tell me you aren’t, you’re bright red right now. We can always test this another day.”
God bless Charlie and his obliviousness.
Virgil nodded. “Yeah, that might be a good idea.” He noticed that Charlie had already finished repairing the cord and handed it back to him. Charlie immediately stored it safely next to the new and mysterious machine in his attempt to avoid this particular setback in the future.
“Alright Charlie, then we’ll test this sucker out after school Monday?”
He just got a thumbs up as his response as Charlie pulled out a different set of blueprints to review.
Virgil finally reached his backpack, and when he made to grab the straps, another gloved hand beat him to it.
“Hey, I got it.” He frowned at Zeke who still had that teasing look in his eye from earlier.
“I mean, thank you for the offer, but I think I can carry my own-”
“Hey, Charlie. Bird girl is here.” Zeke called over to Charlie, cutting him off.
“Thanks, Zeke, for that uncharacteristically loud announcement! Hey chickadee! How’d it go?” Jeanette had popped her head into the frame but stepped inside the room when she saw Virgil’s nauseous expression.
He nodded and gave her a thumbs up when she mouthed ‘are you okay’ at him. She seemed to protest as he tried to move past her, but Virgil stopped her.
“Hey, I’m alright. Besides,” he clapped Zeke quickly on the shoulder before letting go, “Zeke’s taking me back home.” She paused and considered that with an unusually thoughtful expression on her face. She nodded slowly.
“Okay, I hope you get better soon, Virgil.”
“Thank you, J. Will do.”
When they were a comfortable enough distance away from Room 77 with no one in sight, Virgil softly kicked Zeke’s heel.
“You're the worst,” Virgil insisted. Zeke merely laughed in the usual low tones, and Virgil really wished then they still had that time machine. He thought it would have been great to save himself some unnecessary embarrassment and newfound confusion.
“I mean it, you know.” He repeated his sentiments as he chuckled.
“Are those stretch jeans? They’re lethal, man, in more ways than one. You might not be able to have kids later on if you keep wearing them.” Zeke paused and looked at Virgil, who stopped along with him. They both just laughed harder as they made their way to the parking lot.
Once they reached Virgil’s car, Virgil insisted that he recovered and was well enough to drive. After tossing a spare coin Zeke had handy, Virgil won and the pair made their way to Zeke’s house first. Criticizing the other’s taste in music had made the twenty minutes pass by like a breeze.
“Alright, here we are,” Virgil braked the car in front of the house.
He looked over to Zeke. “Should I get out, so we can hug it out?”
“Is that an offer or a threat?” Zeke scoffed.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he smiled at him. “Have a good weekend. See you Monday.”
“Thanks. You too.”
Virgil nodded in acknowledgement to Zeke’s farewell as he redirected his attention to fixing his radio stations after someone, Zeke, reprogramed them all to his favorite channels. His finger hovered on ‘3’ and pulled it back. Actually, that one could stay. He’d just say he forgot if Zeke questioned him on it later.
Tap, tap. Virgil looked up, startled to see Zeke on the other side of the glass. He rolled the window down with a smile.
“Hey, did you forget something?”
Zeke shrugged. “Kind of. Hand out.” Virgil obliged him, and Zeke dropped the penny they’d flipped earlier into his palm.
“Uh, thanks for the fare?”
Zeke rolled his eyes at that. “I dropped that behind the table on purpose. Make of that what you will.” Virgil just stared, not quite processing what he meant. Zeke smiled, shaking his head.
“Well,” he slapped the roof of the car and backed off. “See you Monday, you dork. Get home safe.” With those parting words, he went into his house.
“Wait- what?” Virgil replied dumbly a little too late.
He undoubtedly had an exponentially harder time focusing in the next ten minutes as he drove to his house than he had in the twenty to Zeke’s.