"Bruno, please!" Boots begs, body heavy from exhaustion and the weight of the strings of rubber cement that are stuck to every inch of his person. "Focus! This project is due in three hours, one of which is English class!"

"Pig War," Bruno snorts, making no move to help assemble the scatter of papers on the foamboard, but merely glaring at the whole mess with loathing. "I feel that our academic time could be spent on learning far superior to this!"

"You picked the topic!" Boots shouts, cursing the day he dared go to the nurse's office to lie down for one period after defusing the "SAVE THE MARMOSETS" parade Bruno had accidentally set off in the hall.

Bruno picks up one printed out photo and caption, and Boots' heart leaps for a split second before Bruno tosses them back down with disgust and says, "We should write our parents! They'll be very distressed to hear what their hard-earned money is getting in return. And the deadlines around here are totally unreasonable."

"We had two weeks!" Boots wants to take the foot long, neon pink pig they have printed out and rubber cement it to Bruno's big stupid face. "Two weeks to make a poster. We had three full class periods to work on it!"

"I was researching," Bruno sniffs.

"You were READING HUSTLER WITH SID!" Boots roars, climbing to his feet to loom over Bruno from amidst the sea of things that must be affixed in some sort of coherent order to the posterboard. "Now you listen to me, you double-talking bastard! You are going to pick up that cement and you are going to cement these pictures in order and you're going to do it right fucking now or I'm going to take your big fucking head and—"

Boots cuts off when Bruno's eyes go wide and his cheeks flush pink, because when normal people do that it means they are scared or cowed, but when Bruno does it, it means that he is about to reach up and grab Boots by the belt loops, and Boots' socked feet will slip on the papers and send him crashing down onto his tailbone, and then Bruno will somehow be straddling Boots' hips and grinning down at him like a maniac.

"Maybe if you weren't so fucking cute when you give orders," Bruno says, and Boots' clean-burning rage abruptly uses his dick to convert itself into irrational lust, "we could get something done around here."

Boots would scream with frustration, or maybe more lust, but Bruno's mouth is covering his roughly, and his hand is up Boots' shirt pinching a nipple, and Boots can't seem to do anything in response except slide his hands down the back of Bruno's jeans and clutch at his ass so tight that Bruno moans and leaves off with the nipple to go for their zippers instead.

******

"I hate you," Boots hisses the next day, because the judge of the history fair is only two tables away down their row, and they are still surreptitiously gluing captions and photos to their poster with the nub of a glue stick.

"Relax, Melvin," Bruno hums, looking just as pleased with himself as he had when Boots had pushed him down on his back, half their project crinkling underneath him, and returned the favor very thoroughly. "You've got glue in your hair, you know."

"I've got glue in lots of less pleasant places, thanks to you!" Boots snaps, then turns red when the boys on either side of them start to snicker.

"Do you mind?" Elmer asks from the next row over. "I'd really rather the world of room 306 did not become my world."

"There," Bruno says, sticking the last caption on with a look of satisfaction, ignoring Boots' spluttering. "All done."

"Oh no," Boots pales, "we're missing the caption where the pig gets killed!"

"Eh?" Bruno peers at the poster. "How about that?"

"There's eighty captions on this poster!" Boots seizes the front of Bruno's shirt and shakes him hard. "How could you possibly lose the one where the pig gets killed?!"

Bruno reaches up to scratch his chest, then wrinkles his brow a little when it crinkles. He reaches under his shirt and tugs something free, then pulls it out to find a slip of paper reading, "That crisis came on June 15, 1859, when an American settler named Lyman Cutlar shot and killed a pig belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company because it was rooting in his garden."

"Here you go," he said, casually reaching over to slap the paper onto the poster.

"What are you boys doing?" asks the Fish from in between the two judges. Boots freezes, still holding Bruno up on his toes by his shirtfront and in the act of deciding whether he is going to kiss Bruno or kill him violently.

"Re-enacting, sir." Bruno smiles, and Boots settles for letting the fatigue come crashing down over him at last and collapsing to the floor as the sweet, quiet darkness washes over him.