Chapter Text
Knox sighed as his head hit the wall behind him he could practically feel charlie’s eye roll at the spiel that was about to begin.
“I just don’t know what I’ll do when I fall in love again Charlie. I know I messed it up with Chris-”
“No shit Overstreet” Charlie met his eye but he plowed on.
“I don’t wanna make the same mistakes again! But how am I supposed to know if a girl likes me back and how do I show her that I care about her without-”
“Kissing her like a rapey Prince Charming?”
Knox sighed but he knew he couldn’t deny it. When he had gotten back from the party, split face and all the poets had piled into his room to ask about what was clearly an eventful evening he had got a different reaction from his friends than expected.
He was extremely butt hurt at the time and explained how Chris hadn’t liked him as he had thought.
They all gave him sympathetic yet unsurprised looks at this.
He then went on to tell them how he had seen her sleeping on the couch and decided to give her a goodbye kiss- to commemorate what could have been and was about to go into Chet’s neanderthal attack when Neil cut him off from his seat on the edge of his desk.
“-wait she was asleep?” Neil’s eyebrows scrunched together
“Ye-”
“-and you knew she didn’t like you?” Charlie tacked on, his face pinched the same way it was when Cameron would start talking.
“Yeah” he had said arms spread in a question, not getting what they were getting at
“Then why would you kiss her if you knew she didn’t like you and she was unconscious, that’s pretty creepy Knox.” Pitts had aimed up at him from his place by Meek’s feet on the floor.
“It wasn’t creepy! It was a silent gesture of my love, she wouldn’t even have known if Chet hadn’t attacked me like a madman!” He started pacing the room while looking across the faces of his friends for some kind of understanding.
Meeks met him with a face of disagreement. Neil and Pitts had both raised their eyebrows at him in disbelieve at his speech. Cameron’s eyes kept darting between Knox’s and the door clearly regretting ever asking how his night had gone; Charlie-
Charlie looked absolutely disgusted.
In a last-ditch attempt to find some support he looked to Todd. He was sitting on the chair at his desk in front of Neil, eyes focused on his feet and face carefully blank.
“Todd! You’re a poet! You get it don’t you! I was commemorating a gesture of love!”
Todd's head had jerked up as soon as his name had been said and tensed immediately. Neil leaned forward as if to intervene when Todd cut off whatever he was going to say
“I don’t- I don’t think it was a good idea, Knox.” He got out quickly and surprisingly firmly.
“Why not?” He was desperate for an explanation
“Well if you- If you loved her like you said you did...Then...you wouldn’t want to make her uncomfortable or-or hate you right?”
Todd was finally meeting his eyes for probably the second time in the school year, and they held a rare determination in them that he couldn’t interpret as if he was desperate for him to understand.
It was this look that made him realize that his friends were right, Todd was right.
He sighed and slid his back down the door to sit on the floor.
After he had admitted to the defeat of what he now knew was bullshit logic and swore to be better the Poets had dispersed with encouraging pats on the back.
Now here he was a week later with Charlie still at a loss of how to be better.
Charlie meets his eye from his perch on the window, cigarette in hand. He smirked to himself and walked over slapping Knox on the knee.
“Maybe you should read a couple of those skin novels, huh? read up on the subject. Do a bit more studying before ya hit the pavement again Romeo?” He breathed a laugh as he sat on the bed opposite him.
Knox ran a hand through his hair sitting forward a plan forming in his head causing a smile to spread across
“That’s brilliant!”
Charlies put out his cigarette on the bedpost
“I know I a-wait what”
“I’ll study love! I’ll, I’ll find some lovers and I’ll learn their ways” He stood up as his declaration, a finger pointed in the air in determination.
Charlie smirked at his rapid movement.
“And who exactly will these lovers be Knoxious?”
Their eyes met
One pair frantic with desperate excitement the other gleaming with mischievous when two names immediately came to mind that they spoke in unison.
“Neil and Todd!”