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Reggie was out of breath. He hadn't been running here but he might have been walking too fast for his own good. The faster he got away from home, the better. He couldn't wait until he could leave home. It had been two years now since his brother had moved out and even though Reggie was happy for him, he missed him a lot.
He took a few seconds to catch his breath and then rang the doorbell. Alex' father opened the door and welcomed him inside.
"Alex, your friend is here!", he yelled into the house while Reggie took his jacket off and hung it on the coat rack. Alex came down the stairs but Reggie met him halfway and they went up to Alex' room. As soon as the door closed, Alex let out a small breath.
"Hi" He smiled. Reggie liked when Alex smiled.
"Hey! Ready to study for 3 days?"
Alex groaned. "Don't remind me. Thanks for helping me with math but I wish we could just enjoy the long weekend without having to worry about school."
Yeah, Reggie agreed. He wasn't too worried, though. He liked to be optimistic. "I'm sure we can find time to have some fun. It's three days. Where should I put my bag?"
They got settled in. Alex let Reggie take the desk and situated himself on his bed, taking a big book as a writing surface. Reggie admired his selection of pens. He had three different colors of highlighter: classic yellow, neon pink and pale blue.
Reggie himself had three pens. Total. A clickable black pen, a fountain pen he'd kept from elementary school and a red pen he wasn't allowed to use in school. The teachers forbid them to use red because that was the color they marked mistakes in. It also happened to be Reggie's favorite color. Which was a bummer.
"Wait." Reggie said. "Can we put on some music to study? I can focus better that way."
"You're asking right when I got comfy?" Alex sounded annoyed but he was smiling softly. He made a show of getting up the most dramatic way possible.
"Is The Beatles okay? I could put on my dad's Please Help Me cassette."
"Yup, anything is fine really, I just need some noise."
Alex put on the music and settled back in and Reggie got to work. I Saw Her Standing There started playing.
He sped through math while Alex was doing his English homework. They were covering linear equations in math right now and it was super easy. It was actually fun.
He hummed along to the Beatles and finished up math, then turned to check on Alex. He was chewing on his pen and his eyes were narrowed in confusion.
"You okay, Lex?"
He looked up from his paper, took the pen out of his mouth and sighed.
"It's math again. Can you help?"
That was what Reggie liked to hear. He jumped up and made himself comfortable on the bed, pushing about 12 pens aside to sit next to Alex. "What do you need?"
Alex had gotten through a few of the problems on his own and it all looked pretty good so far but he probably got in his head about the rest. Alex leaned his head on Reggie's shoulder and let out another defeated sigh. "I don't get it. Why does subtracting both sides just move one thing to the other side?"
Reggie looked at the equation.
Solve the following equation.
6x + 29 = 74
It looked simple. 74 minus 29 was 45, divided by 6… 7… 7.5? Okay, how to explain that.
"Okay, look. Can I have a pen?"
Alex held out his chewed pen and then blushed. "Uh, yeah, grab one from the pile. You probably don't want my chewed one…"
Reggie took a pencil and leaned in to write on Alex' paper.
"If you subtract 29 from the left, you're just left with 6x, right?" He crossed out the +29 on the left. "And if you subtract 29 from the right, you're left with, well, basically '74-29'. Make sense?"
He wrote down -29 next to the 74 and looked at Alex.
"Yeah, okay, but why do we need to subtract 29 anyway?"
"Well, cause you wanna basically group all the numbers with x and all the numbers without x together. Cause at the end you just want something like x equals some number, right? That means, x on the left, non-x on the right. You're just sorting the numbers. And that's how you do it!"
Alex looked contemplative. "Okay, that makes sense." He calculated 74-29 and wrote down the next line.
6x = 45
"And now I divide, right?"
"Yup!"
x = 45/6
x = 7.5
"Good job!" Reggie hugged Alex from the side. Alex smiled to himself and then leaned his head against Reggie's softly. "Thanks, Reg."
"Do the next one!!"
"Okay, okay."
5 + 10x = -15
"Wait, do I subtract or add the 5 to the other side?" Reggie was about to explain, when Alex continued.
"Oh, wait. I got it. They're interchangeable."
10x + 5 = -15
10x = -15 - 5
10x = -20
x = -20/10
Alex looked at Reggie for confirmation when he wrote down and underlined x = -2.
Reggie was so proud. "Yes!! See? You did it!"
"Thank you again."
Reggie watched as Alex did the rest of the problems, sometimes checking in with Reggie when he was unsure.
He hummed along to Twist and Shout when Alex put his homework on the nightstand and held open his arms in a silent invitation. Reggie put his head on Alex' chest and snuggled into him. It was something he did with all of his boys. He just liked being held, okay?
Luke held him tightly, like he never wanted to let him go, like he was the most important person in the world. Bobby's embraces felt secure and safe. Bobby held him like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Alex always held him so comfortingly, like he was about to say Hey. Everything will be just fine. Reggie knew the differences between all of their hugs and he loved them all.
Just as the album ended, Reggie heard Alex' mom yell up the stairs that dinner was ready. They went downstairs and had food with the Mercers. Alex' dad had cooked and it was delicious. It was really nice to be part of a family dinner, actually. That was one of the reasons Reggie liked to stay over at Alex' place. It was so homely. They held hands to say grace and everything.
After dessert, they went back upstairs. Alex had gotten permission to move the VHS player and TV into his room for the long weekend so they could watch movies and they'd been excited for it all week. Reggie went to his bag and pulled out the VHS tapes he'd brought with him, tossing them on the bed.
"So I brought Star Wars…" He anticipated the sigh and didn't let it affect him. He continued. "-but because I didn't think you'd wanna watch it again-"
"-for the third time this week, Reg, no thank you."
"Right. So, I also brought Back to the Future. We could watch the whole trilogy!"
Reggie got jittery again. He was so excited. Back to the Future had kind of consumed him by this point. He knew Alex hadn't seen it yet and he thought that that was a travesty. He really wanted to be there to see Alex' reactions when watching the movies for the first time. He hoped he'd like them.
"I know you haven't seen it, so I thought maybe you'd want to watch the movies together? It could be fun! You'd definitely like Doc. He's like, a mad scientist!! I never know how old he is. Anywhere from 40 to 70?? I really don't know. I think more 40 than 70 but I can't tell- But anyway, he's not the main character. That's Marty McFly. And it's about time travel!! The scientist - Doc Brown - invents a time machine but it's a car, which is literally the coolest-" He was rambling again and he knew it but there were so many words in his brain that he couldn't stop them flooding out of his mouth. He wished he could just implant all of the knowledge into Alex' brain. Then he wouldn't have to talk about it. And, more importantly, he couldn't talk about it too much.
"Reggie."
He stopped talking. He hadn't noticed he'd still been talking.
"I wanna watch Back to the Future with you. Let's just get the mattresses ready."
"Yeah, that's a good idea." Reggie's voice was small. He'd been talking too much again, hadn't he?
He compensated by being extra quiet while they got the foldable mattress from the closet and laid it down on the floor for him to sleep on later. He helped Alex put the sheets on the mattress and then sat down on the bed facing the TV.
Alex put the first Back to the Future tape in the VCR and settled in next to Reggie.
"Wait!" Reggie scrambled back up and scuttled down the stairs. He very nicely asked Mrs. Mercer for some snacks and brought his yield of cut up fruit, leftover raspberry muffins, homemade iced tea and fancy potato chips upstairs.
Alex was laying on the bed like a starfish and looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars above his bed. He'd turned off the ceiling light. Now, the only source of light was his desk lamp, which he had covered with a scarf and which was now giving off a soft pink glow. The TV was paused at the opening frames.
He caught Reggie standing in the doorframe and looking at him. Embarrassing.
Reggie dumped the potato chips and raspberry muffins on the bed and set the rest down on the nightstand, moving Alex' homework on the desk.
Arms now free, he went to close the door before throwing himself on the bed. It was so comfortable. Alex had the best bed out of all of them. No tears in the bedsheets, no stains, and they looked new. The mattress was soft and the bedframe was old but in great condition. Truly a 10/10 dream bed.
Alex sat up to unpause the movie and leaned against the back of his bed, holding his arm open again for Reggie to snuggle into. How could he refuse?
Alex liked Back to the Future, which was great because he usually just liked romantic comedies and creature features. Was Back to the Future a romcom? No, right? It was sci-fi. But it could be a sci-fi romcom. Was it? No, right? No.
They put on the next movie and went back to cuddle as they watched. Reggie was starting to get tired. Alex' chest was so comfortable and he was lazily dragging his fingers through Reggie's hair. Luke had started that trend and now all of his bandmates did it. It was great. It made Reggie a little emotional, actually, to be touched in such a soft way. So gentle, not in anger. They all knew about his parents and sometimes they treated him a little too fragile because of it. When it came to headpats, he was grateful for it. He got too sleepy to be thinking, so he just enjoyed Alex' hands in his hair and the warmth radiating from Alex' chest against his face.
"Mmm, you'relikeahumanradiator." That had not been as coherent as he'd've liked it to be but he couldn't bring himself to care. Alex' chest vibrated. He had to be laughing. Hmm. That was nice. Reggie could stay here for days. Actually, he never wanted to leave.