Work Text:
It was a project night in the lab, Rain and Sky and most of their class pulling long hours at the drafting tables as they finished up final edits on their work. Rain had been hunched over his desk for hours, being so good and so focused and wrapping up most of his work before the need to shake things out had become unignorable.
Sky was nearly done with the window calculations for their joint project, mentally calculating the final distance between the window and the ceiling, floor, and ends of the wall, when Rain tripped over his own feet and into Sky’s lap.
“Rain!”
Rain cringed, looking up at him in realization.
“You lost it.”
Sky looked down at Rain, supremely unimpressed.
“Well, we lost it.”
“You lost it, for the both of us.”
Rain scratched at the back of his head. So maybe he was feeling a little restless. Maybe he was having trouble holding still. But in his defense they’d been in the lab for hours at this point, and it was late. He wasn’t built to be so chill and focused for such long periods of time! He’d been good for so long! He needed room to move. Was it his fault that he’d been very responsibly getting his wiggles out, up and away from the project, and just happened to trip while he was making a lap around the desks?
Well, he thought, eying Sky’s vengeful expression. Maybe it was his fault. A little bit.
-
Ten minutes later found him on his knees, nose just touching the side of the drafting supply cart beside Sky’s desk.
“Skyyyyy,” he whined. “How much longer?”
“How are your knees?” Sky asked, not bothering to look up from his drafting.
Rain shifted back and forth a little, testing. They were okay, maybe just starting to get sore. He thought about lying, about telling Sky that he was hurting, or loosing feeling in his shins.
“They’re fine,” Rain said, pouting cross-eyed at the white plastic in front of his face.
A pile of fabric landed next to him as Sky pulled Rain’s sweater off the back of his chair.
“Pad them,” he said, dispassionately. “You’re down there until I finish this diagram.”
Noooooo. Rain squirmed unhappily, sulkily folding his sweater double before shoving it under his knees. After half a second of discomfort he reached down and straightened out the fabric so he wasn’t kneeling on a crease and wouldn’t actually block a blood vessel or something. The pins and needles were already going to be bad enough.
Rain made it, by his count, another million years before shifting, restless. He side-eyed Sky as much as he could without moving his nose from the plastic and, finding him still focused on the draft, shifted his weight quietly to one knee. When it seemed like he’d gotten away with it, he shifted slowwwly to the other. He started to sway, back and forth, shifting from knee to knee, feeling like a pendulum, or a metronome, or one of those strings he liked to dangle for cats in the alley behind the race track when-
Sky reached out to lay a hand over the back of Rains neck.
“Settle,” he said, absently.
Rain whined quietly again, pushing his nose so hard into the plastic tray that he though he was probably printing its pattern onto his nose.
Sky’s hand tightened on the back of his neck, pinching him like a kitten in it’s mothers mouth, and he finally turned to behold Rain in all his squirmy, pouty glory.
“Do you need help being good?” he asked, shaking him very gently by the short-and-curlies.
Rain’s shoulders hiked up to his ears, but he didn’t shrug Sky off. His lip bulged out farther as he pronounced his pout. He was restless and fidgety and unsettled and annoying and annoyed at how he knew he was being annoying, but completely unable to stop it. Knowing he was itchy and stopping himself from feeling itchy were two different things.
He did need help being good, probably. He did not want to ask for it.
That was okay though. Sky knew when to stop asking.
“Turn towards me and hold your hands out. Keep kneeling.
Rain wondered what Sig and Ple and the rest of their classmates thought when he and Sky did stuff like this as he shuffled around on his knees, holding his hands out flat towards Sky. They’d gotten a few odd looks the first time or two that they’d done this in the lab, but no one really seemed to bat an eye anymore.
Before Rain could interrogate how he felt about that, Sky was dumping the contents of his drafting tray into Rain’s hands.
“You’re going to hold these for me. Close your eyes, and keep your hands flat. I’ll tell you if I need anything else.”
Oh, a task, Rain loved a task, he could do a task.
Keeping his hands flat took a surprising about of focus. If he stopped thinking about it or stopped paying attention, his fingers would start to curl and his knuckles would tip up, threatening to roll everything in his hands down his wrists and into his lap. He kept trying to look through his eyelashes, evening out his hands, getting a feel for the position.
“Close your eyes,” Sky said, gently admonishing when he saw Rain peaking at him.
Rain took a deep breath and closed his eyes, letting the world disappear behind his eyelids and settling on his knees. There was just the weight of the tools in his hands, the strain in his knees, and the sounds pencils on paper throughout the room.
Rain fell into a sort of meditative daze, focused on keeping his hands flat, listening to the soft scritch-scritching of Sky’s pencil. Every so often, Sky would reach over and exchange his pencil for an eraser, which Rain would hear him use for a bit before he exchanged them back.
It was nice, relaxing. His knees were starting to burn the way that meant he’d be feeling this tomorrow, and holding his hands like this was building a similar burn in his forearms that was almost pleasant. And Sky had asked him to. He liked doing things for Sky.
Before Rain knew it, Sky was collecting all of his writing utensils from Rain’s hands and loading them back into his pencil case. He blinked slowly, refocusing as Sky zipped his bag closed and turned to look at him.
He dropped a hand onto Rains head.
“Well done,” he said, ruffling Rain’s hair. “We can go home now.”
Rain hummed, pleased, and stretched his arms above his head, leaning side to side to work out the kinks. He felt very calm now, settled.
Sky helped him up, swiping his sweater off the floor and tugging it down over Rain’s head.
“You okay to drive? Or should I call P’Pai?” Sky asked, allowing Rain to knock into Sky’s collarbone and roll his forehead across the bone there.
“I can drive,” Rain said, still enjoying the sensation of his body aching softly. “Just give me a second.”
Sky huffed at him fondly, ruffling his hair again and letting Rain push into him like a cat.
“Mkay,” he said at last, levering himself away from Sky and snagging his backpack. “Let’s go.”