Hopefully you enjoy this, it was entertaining to write. I don't know if I really got Jay down at all though but I tried not to make the representations too atrocious.
-
It was a quiet day in town for Charles, eyes barely moving to regard the squeaking blue jays outside his window. No schemes that he could delve into the making of came to mind as he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, nor did any already in the running that could use some tuning up surface. He was certain something would come to him in time as his eyes rested on the bright square numbers across the room: it always did. But it was already past ten on a Saturday morning and if there was one thing that helped the time along, he was certain at this point that it wasn't waiting.
As amusing as being a tyrant Gandhi was, Civilization was starting to lose his attention after the seventh victory in a row doing all the most absurd things he could manage to do while just barely managing to win. Checking his e-mail found mostly spam (some which he suspected a certain [i]friend[/i] had signed him up for), so he went through his bookmarks cleverly hidden away in a 'research' folder that he saved for special circumstances. He had been slightly surprised and silently amused when Metis thought for at least a couple weeks that Jay had been the one to sign him up for women's lingerie offers, even more so since Jay was still clueless to his friend's suspicions as far as he knew. It looked like his ruse was up, but that did not mean the battle was over. Checking his online list to make sure neither were up yet, Charles smiled to himself as he signed up his 'not emo' friend for several presidential candidate newsletters.
Satisfied for the time being, he cracked his knuckles over his head and stretched his neck to the side. Nobody he knew well was online and he hadn't had anything to eat yet, so he went to grab himself some cereal. Flipping through the newspaper with his free hand as he ate, the sardonic youth browsed over the police log to see just what lengths of stupidity people went to this week. Somewhat disappointed by the lack of interesting accidents this time around, hearing the phone ring off in the kitchen was a welcome sound. Chances were it was either a telemarketer he could mess with or someone calling for his mom, but it was better than staring at the ads for people selling their bikes or houses for ridiculous prices.
"Hello?" he greeted absently, grabbing an unused magnet off the refrigerator beside him.
"Hey, is Charles there?" came a familiar voice. Charles shifted the magnet around in his palm, brow raising when he heard his own name. There were only two people who would be calling for him, and Metis refused to even rise from bed before the clock hit noon on the weekends.
"What is the nature of your call?" he asked, feigning a haughty British accent. Before the project, he and Jay normally only spoke at lunch and occasionally during the few classes they shared. Since the project started he had started calling Jay to meet up and organize things related to it, and that would drift to casual conversation. Jay would occasionally call with a few questions or confirmations but on average seemed to keep to himself.
He could hear Jay click his tongue and there was a hint of exasperation to his tone. "Are you busy today?"
"Aside from counting ants?" Charles asked in an overly contemplative voice. He figured it had something to do with the project again, but anything was better than whittling his weekend away with boredom. "No."
"Good," Jay shortly responded. "Meet me at the park around three o' clock then."
While Charles considered himself decent at reading people, Jay was a lot less predictable to him than Metis was. Normally his invitations were more explained and explicitly related to the project, so the vagueness of this one made him wonder what was going on. "Wait, should I bring the project folder?"
"Nah."
Unpredictable situations were things that he tried to approach with much caution, but between being stuck inside all day and risking being the butt of a joke between Metis and Jay he decided that the latter was the lesser evil. He'd just have to keep his wits about him. "Three o' clock it is then. You owe me a Coke."
"Hey-!" started Jay, but Charles hung up before the other could start to protest. If he was being set up, a Coke didn't seem like too much to ask for his presence. On the off chance that he wasn't, it was a free Coke and probably getting bummed into buying the pretty boy a shake in the near future. It sounded like a win-win situation to him.
***
"Why do I owe you a soda just for showing up?" muttered Jay, rubbing one temple with his hand in agitation.
"Long walk," Charles answered easily, hands stuffed in his pockets and idly trying to count the loose change through the lint.
"Ugh," groaned his project partner. "You could have taken the bus."
"And you could have just came to my house," he countered, trying not to look too curiously around. He'd been expecting Metis to be there too, so it struck him odd that his friend was nowhere in sight. "Is Metis coming too?"
Jay shook his head and tucked a strand of long hair behind his ear. "Well... no. He had other plans." Shrugging a shoulder, he waved for the other to follow him down the street. "Come on, I've got an appointment to meet."
"Appointment?" Blinking in confusion, Charles kept any other inquiries to himself for the time being. Picking up his pace to keep up, he wondered just what he'd gotten himself into by not asking questions before agreeing to this.
When Jay started to slow down as they approached a salon, the misfit unabashedly stared at him as realization dawned. "You're dragging me to a hair appointment? You owe me a two liter now."
Jay smiled to himself and shrugged. "Hey, at least I don't have to watch you dip fries in your ice cream after."
He'd trudged out this far and it wasn't as if he was missing anything otherwise, so he reluctantly followed the quieter boy in and went for the magazine table. They'd arrived a little early and the place was busy, so the first half an hour passed in awkward silence between them. Charles had sat through many a rant of Metis' on Jay's hair obsessions, but he'd never expected to be the victim of an appointment himself. He would have kept pretending to be interested in the pet magazine he randomly grabbed if it hadn't been for the arrival of a certain jock he expected to be the cause of many more serious rants on the part of his best friend.
Eyes focused on Josh in a manner he knew to be about as friendly as a pit bull, he forgot why he was even sitting there as he visualized all the gruesome ways the football player could die by his hand. Josh seemed more intent on staring at the ceiling and his gaze had only landed on Charles for a split second before darting off elsewhere. It almost seemed as if he were avoiding looking at him, and he allowed himself a malicious little smile at that thought. When he felt a hand tap his shoulder he glanced quickly over his shoulder and raised a brow, trying to pretend he hadn't just been chopping the guy across from them to bits with his mind.
"See the girl with the pink streaks," whispered Jay as he leaned close to Charle's ear in a discreetly conspiring manner, "doing the old lady's hair?"
A brow raised in question, but he slowly nodded.
"She's great," he continued in hushed tones. Before the other could draw all sorts of conclusions from that comment, Jay gave a sly smile. "How do you think he'd look with pink streaks?"
Charles yet again stared blatantly at his
acquaintance, wondering just why he didn't know the
other better. With a scheming smile, he decided he'd
have to tag along with him more often.