Procrastination

In theory, Vic knows from experience that procrastination is bad. Every time a new project is assigned, he tells himself he’s going to start working on it right away. Every time a test is coming up soon, he insists that he’s going to study every single day. And every single time, he’s wrong.

This time, though, Kellin’s in the wrong, too, because apparently, he’s just as bad as Vic. They’ve been assigned as partners for a presentation that they had a week to do, and they worked on it together a little bit, but somehow time got away from them, and now it’s three in the morning and the presentation is supposed to be done in about five hours. They’re fucked.

“You’re terrible,” Kellin says as they’re staring at the PowerPoint open on Vic’s laptop screen. “Who uses that font? We’ve gotta make it look pretty. We’re not basic.”

Vic makes a face. They’re sitting together on his bed, the computer on his lap and Kellin leaning over with their shoulders pressed together. “Judging by how shitty this entire thing looks and how much we’re going to fail it tomorrow,” Vic says, “I’d say we are pretty basic, Kellin.”

“Yeah, but not that basic. Here, let me fix it.” Kellin takes the laptop from Vic and promptly starts going through fonts, making faces that show various levels of disgust for each one. It’s kind of cute.

Vic pushes that last thought out of his brain—where the fuck did that come from? “Um,” he says, interrupting Kellin’s intense font search, “shouldn’t we be focusing less on the font and more on the actual information?”

“The rubric says it has to look neat and colorful,” Kellin replies. “So no. I think I found a good one anyway.”

Vic rolls his eyes. “As long as it’s not Comic Sans, I don’t care.”

Once Kellin has the font changed to his liking, he hands the laptop back over to Vic. “There. Now. What are we missing?”

“Like, everything.”

“Are you serious?”

Vic shakes his head, laughing a little and rubbing his eyes. He’s seriously going to hate himself in three hours. “No, I think we’ve got most of it done. But now we have to figure out what we’re going to say, since we can’t just read what we have on the PowerPoint. We have to have an oral part to it, too.”

Kellin snorts. “Ha. Oral.”

Vic smacks him lightly, trying not to laugh again (and failing). “You’re gross. Now come on. I already have a C in this class and I don’t want it going any lower.”

—

The presentation isn’t the best thing either of them have ever done, but they get a decent enough grade on it. “It’s a lot better than I expected,” Vic says, nodding in approval at the comments scribbled in pen on their rubric.

“We should work together again sometime,” Kellin replies. “If we get the chance.”

Since they’ve actually become something close to friends, the two end up hanging out with each other quite a lot, often sitting near each other and pairing up with each other in classes where neither of them have any other friends. It’s their system, and Vic would love it if he weren’t constantly thinking about how funny and adorable Kellin is. That’s a bit of a problem. High school crushes are the last thing he thought he’d end up worrying about.

“Why does that Kellin guy always come over?” his brother, Mike, asks one day after school as they’re walking home. “And why does he sleep over sometimes? And why do you sometimes leave and sleep over at his place sometimes? You better be using protection.”

“Mike!” Vic protests. “We’re not even dating!”

Somewhere in the distance, he hears a familiar laugh, and he turns around to see Kellin walking behind him.

“Kellin,” Vic calls, stopping in his tracks and laughing a little in embarrassment. “What are you…?”

Kellin shrugs a little as he gets closer to Vic. “I usually hitch a ride with Justin, but he had to do something, so I thought I’d come over to your house and surprise you. I wanted to see how long it would take you guys to realize I was following you.”

“Stalker,” Vic teases.

Mike glances over his shoulder at them. “Alright, lovebirds, we get it. Now let’s go. It looks like it’s about to storm and I am not getting caught in the rain just because you two want to kiss.”

Kellin flips him off, and Vic just blushes, unsure how to react. He’s not sure if Mike has picked up on his crush on Kellin, but he wouldn’t be surprised. Mike seems to know everything, always.

“We better get going, then,” Vic says to Kellin, turning around and picking his pace back up. “Don’t we have a history test to study for?”

—

“I don’t care how many wives Henry VIII had,” Kellin groans a few hours later, flopping down onto his stomach on Vic’s bed and burying his face in Vic’s bed. “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. Someone please kill me.”

It’s around eleven o’clock at night, and they’ve only just gotten started on their studying. They were planning on doing it as soon as they got to the house, but then Mike challenged them to a game of Mario Kart, and, well, they couldn’t ignore that, could they? (Vic and Mike’s team beat Kellin’s by two points on team mode, but then Kellin made up for it by winning first place on Rainbow Road and gloating loudly while Mike threw a controller at him.)

“Are you gonna text your mom and tell her you’re sleeping over?” Vic asks as he flips through his incredibly disorganized notebook.

Kellin waves his hand in a vague gesture. “Eh. I texted her earlier and told her I was going to your place. If I don’t come back, she knows what it means.”

Vic just shakes his head, staring at his notes and trying to figure out how to read his own sloppy handwriting as he’s sitting on the floor next to his bed. Kellin lifts his head back up and switches his position so that he’s lying sideways across the bed, his feet hanging off one end and his head resting at the other, looking down at Vic and biting his lip, like he’s thinking about something.

Vic looks up, narrowing his eyes. “What?”

Kellin shakes his head. “Nothing. Let me see your notes.”

Approximately four hours later, it’s once again three in the morning, and both of them are ready to pass out. (Or die.) They’re pretty sure they know what they’re doing, but this is a big test, and neither of them can afford to wing it. At this point, though, they’re not really studying anymore and are instead just fucking around and telling dumb, sleep-deprived jokes.

“I once saw a little comic strip on the Internet,” Kellin says. They’re both on Vic’s bed right now, leaning against the headboard with their notebooks in their laps. “It was George Washington talking to Jefferson and Adams. And he goes, ‘Jefferson, Adams, I’m leaving. And while I’m gone, no parties.’”

It takes Vic a moment to get the pun, but when he does, he snorts and laughs maybe a little bit too loudly. It’s really late, and he’s really tired, and for the past hour or so he’s just really, really wanted to kiss Kellin.

“Shouldn’t we be studying?” he says, staring down at his notes. Studying is the last thing he wants to do.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Kellin says, a strangely excited, daring look in his wide yet equally sleep-deprived eyes.

“What’s with that look in your eyes?” Vic teases, because really, teasing is the only thing that’s going to keep him grounded and stop him from kissing the shit out of this guy. “You look like you’re about to suggest that we go on some sort of adventure.”

Kellin leans forward, and God, he’s so close. “Nope. Better.” Then, as if it’s as easy as breathing, he kisses Vic on the lips.

It’s soft and slow, almost as if he’s hesitant, but when Vic kisses back, it gets a little bit more intense, in a weird way. It’s not as smooth as in the movies, though, because it’s three in the morning, and this kiss is tired and inexperienced and sloppy, but overall, it’s nice. It’s really nice.

“Wow,” Vic says when they pull away, simply staring at him in disbelief. “Yeah. Okay. That was good. We should do it again sometime.”

Kellin laughs and tosses his notebook to the floor, crawling underneath the covers of the bed. “I would, but I’ll probably fall asleep right in the middle of it and that would be awkward, so I’m just gonna sleep in your bed with you, if that’s cool.”

He says it so casually, and Vic just laughs and follows his lead. At this point, he’s too tired to argue.