super seniority [closededed]

God, what a lowlife. He had to be joking. Yeah, maybe bumming off the free boarding and easy classes was better than busting your ass off every day just to pay off your rent, but you were supposed to do something with your life outside high school. A part of her wanted to slap him upside the head, but she just laughed into her hand instead. "Most people would call that being a fucking loser." Fucking pathetic, but if he left, when he left... Well, fuck, she guessed she'd just have to get by whenever that came. For now, she'd take these stupid days wasted on the couch while she could. "But I guess you're not wrong. You're just an idiot." Would his family be all that thrilled?

Preston said nothing, smile persisting through as he had a bite of the chocolate treat, although he was right in that he'd had his fill for the evening. But maybe if he had it for himself, she'd want it back. Reverse psychology and all that. The stupid thought didn't occur long to him. Instead, his grin continued to grow. How long had it been since he'd heard her laugh, he wondered. It was a nice change of pace. "Good thing I don't give a shit about most people then," the young man yawned.

Some games or something sounded good then, anything to add a little atmosphere to this dark, dreary room. He found himself sliding off the couch and lazily onto the floor, not even bothering to lift his own weight for the most part. As he got comfortable on the carpet, the cushion lifted behind him unnaturally, wedged between the sofa and his back. He set the cake back on the coffee table and kicked it away, another oh-so genius striking him as he did so.

"Do me a favor," the Autumn said quickly, shooting his ocean-like eyes back around at her. "Move your ass down here?"

Man, pathetic. "Amen," she muttered, running her fingers through her hair. Agh, fuck... She felt bald without that stupid cap. It was still sitting on her desk, untouched since she'd gotten back. No matter how she thought about it, she should've just thrown the thing out, but she'd put it off every day for the past month and it still hadn't moved from where she'd left it a month ago. Kayla looked at him from the corner of her eye, watching him slide to the floor and taking the cushion with him on the way down.

Kayla raised an eyebrow as he kicked the coffee table away. "What? On the floor?" Well, fuck, if he was going to ask. She followed his lead and let herself slip to the floor beside him, crisscrossing her legs and balling her hands up in her lap. Alright...

The young man thankfully slid onto the floor with little issue as he worked, making his life that much easier. He turned and started shoving the coffee table around, pushing it horizontally towards the edge of the couch and looking around, plotting out the rest of his creation in his head before he dared to make his next move. Preston made quick to pick up his cushion then, propping it up on the table, grabbing the one Kayla had been sitting on not moments before and setting it beside it. The third free cushion took up a large space at the end of the table, mushed between the stained wood and the television set.

"Roommates won't be missing their pillows, right?" The Autumn stood, a childish grin on his face. Shit, she would probably think this whole thing was stupid, but fuck it - whatever. It was his God Damned birthday, he'd do what he wanted to. Finding his feet again, he flew the door to his room open, grabbing the large comforter off his bed, his pillows, his pokeball blanket he kept stashed in the corner - barely managing to fit them back through the doorway as he dragged them all out.

Huh? The question had been on her mind, but when he started rearranging the furniture, and then started ripping up their couch, she couldn't help but tilt her head. "What the fuck are you doing...?" she muttered under her breath, but he'd already slipped off with that same old childish smirk on his face, leaving her alone on the floor, closed in from almost all sides. When he came back out with a heap of blankets and pillows bundled up in his arms, the gears in her head began to turn. "Oh Jesus," she said, standing up and stepping back, a grin flashing across her face. Fuck, she hadn't done something like this since she was a little kid. "Are you fucking serious?" Kayla jumped, pushing off the edge of the couch and vaulting clear over the sofa to where he was walking back. A stupid Pokéball blanket, of course... "How old are you turning again?" she asked, eyebrows cocked, leaning against the back of the sofa.

He was beaming then, unable to think of a single time in the past few months that he'd felt so enthralled. Preston caught a good look of the girl's smile as he waddled on by, keeping his enormous mountain of bed-ware balanced just long enough to make it to the couch, stepping around her and letting all fall atop sofa where the poor cushions has been stripped away. "You're never too old for shit like this," Preston answered back, his tone hard and blunt, the stern illusion easily broken by his goofy grin.

His arm nudged her lightly on the side as he quickly moved again, heading towards a few common storages. "You gonna fucking help or not?" Normally, whenever he took it upon himself to create the greatest fort that ever stood, there was a strict 'No Girls' rule applied. That was just common sense. His private haven away from his annoying sisters up until he'd finally found a new home within the school. Although the circumstances were different now, he figured she'd have to do something to earn an exception. And he couldn't very well just storm into her room and take her blankets, tempting as that was.

Pres pulled open one of the smaller closets between their rooms, extra pillows stored inside, all freshly washed. Instead of saving them properly for laundry day, he began yanking them all down onto the floor, one by one.

Help? Damn, she couldn't even think of the last time she'd thrown a pillow fort together, back home, with... w͘i҉th... Kayla swallowed, pushing away from the couch as he dumped his load and stretched out her arms. "Bitch, I'm a fucking pillow architect," she snapped back, cracking her knuckles. "Let me show you how it's done." Back h͘o̶me҉, when they... when she never had anything better to do, it was an easy way to pass the time, during rain storms and snow days. You could get lost building your own little castles, working with what you had, and you had to get creative unless you wanted to make the same thing over and over. Not to brag, but she knew what she was doing. She'd outgrown them quick, but... Agh. Kayla winced against the static in her ears, padding off toward her room while she ran her fingers through her hair. Fuck, where was she going with that?

Oh well. It probably wasn't important.

She pushed the door open, rapping her knuckles against the wood and letting it ring through the darkness. Kayla frowned, at the dark shape of her burned out hat, the charred pinball glinting in a half-open drawer, the torn and patchy clothes strewn across the floor, the holes in the drywall. She shook her head, slinging a threadbare plaid blanket over her shoulder and tearing the comforter off her bed, packing the pillow under her arm as she stepped back out. With a lazy grin, Kayla tossed the pillow over with an underhand throw, doing her best to try and nail him in the head before throwing the blankets over the edge of the sofa where he'd left his own 'materials.' She dipped back in to rip the sheets off the mattress—who'd miss it, anyways?—and walked back out to set it down. They'd need tacks, chairs, maybe some shoes or textbooks for stakes, and then the interior... Her grand vision was already coming together. After that, she had no idea. Jesus, why was she building a fucking pillow fort?

An architect, he thought again to himself, openly scoffing just to get under her skin. He might have dared her to make her own damn fort then, but it was his fucking birthday and Preston didn't want to share the precious resources. As soon as all the pillows and sheets were down and out, he began to kick them into their own pile back behind the couch. Concentrated in his work, he hadn't begun to notice the pillow aimed flying straight for his head.

"Hey!" He was knocked over ever-so-slightly to the side, the cotton bouncing harmlessly him and plopping to the floor. Pres darted his gaze her way. "Bitch." He'd get her back for that.

But for now, there were priorities. He grabbed a small box out of the closet, rattling it to make sure it was good and full before shoving it into her good hand. "I'll believe it when I see it," He smirked, stepping back towards the dining room and dragging what chairs in he saw.

Ah, now that he thought about it, they didn't have much to eat other than leftovers. But they didn't need anything fancy, did they? Shit, so long as they had a bag of popcorn, they were practically golden already. He paused, dropping off a set of chairs by their massive pile.

"Oh, you'll fucking see it," she promised, draping the sheet over the new pile he made on the floor. He had some real genius on his side for once, so he just had to watch and learn. Kayla snatched the box as he shoved it her way, rattling it around with a satisfied grin. Perfect. She could feel the minuscule vibrations of the tacks through the container, like tiny pinpricks up her fingers. It looked like they were on the same page, at least. She hopped up on the arm of the couch, crossing her legs and leaning back with the box clinking around in her hand. "So you have a plan for this thing?" Starting with a 'no girls allowed' sign, maybe?

A plan? Not exactly. He'd always had vague blueprints from bored evenings on the couch, but he hadn't the slightest clue where to start exactly. It was a 'spur of the moment' castle in progress. "Of course, I do." Preston scoffed, completely bluffing. With a smug, he stepped around the edge of the couch, shoving lightly against the girl's good shoulder and tipping her backwards. His eyes flickered around, pulling together what elegant bull he could.

"This shit is gonna be huge," He said, pulling a blanket and stuffing a corner under one of the sofa's legs. "Around the couch. Behind the TV." In his grand mind, it'd take up most of the living room. "Can you handle hanging a few sheets, at least?" The rest of the pillows and blankets would cushion the indoors. He was gonna make this fucking count.

That was a better start than what she had, but she couldn't let him just boss her around. She wasn't a construction worker. Kayla opened her mouth, ready to shoot some barb or another his way, but it all went rushing out of her head the moment he touched his fingers to her shoulder. "Wh—whayyy...!" she blurted, spilling back onto the pillows and sheets with her feet kicking into the air. "Asshole," she said, just taking a moment to sprawl out across the couch, electricity snapping around her fingertips.

Kayla rolled onto the floor, pulling herself to her feet with a sigh, shooting him a quick glare out the corner of her eye. "Whatever." If he wasn't careful, she'd hang him with the sheets. She snatched up her sheet again with a smile returning to the corner of her lips, rattling the tacks again. Sheets worked better as ceilings than blankets, and it'd be a simple enough job to drape it over a chair or pin it to the wall; they just had to figure out how to put it together.

Preston snickered and turned his head away to hide most of his laughing, if such a thing were possible. A few stray pins he found on the shelf rattled together in his pocket. He grabbed the corner of one sheet, glancing back her way for a split second before climbing atop the entertainment center, narrowly dancing around the television and reaching up around. "Don't fall off the couch. I'm not catching your ass." The young man called. The very moment he'd finished talking, he'd leaned a bit too far pulling out a tack, stuck wavering with the horrid choice of eating his own words and knocking the television over.

With what little grace he had left, Pres narrowly managed to regain himself and fell back off the entertainment center on his own feet - instead of on his own ass. Before she so much as had a chance to react well or get a word in, he muttered "Shut up." Immediately after, he pulled himself back up onto the thin wooden table and got back to work.

After what could have been more than an hour, they'd managed to hang the sheets up - or perhaps she had on her own for the most part whilst he retreated to the kitchen for minutes at a time. The only thing left then were to stuff in the blankets and cushions.

All she could do was snort and roll her eyes. If he'd fallen off, she would've laughed her ass off, and he would've thought twice about talking shit again, but she wasn't that lucky this time around. Oh well. "Uh-huh, smartass," she sounded, getting to work on their fort.

It was a lot of work, and a lot of time, too much work and time that someone their age should've spent on something like a fucking pillow fort, but she was able to get through it with a few laughs and just a few scrapes after an hour or so. Trying to pin up sheets and move around furniture was a project by itself with one hand, and it didn't help that Pres slipped off every few minutes and into the kitchen. She couldn't see what he was doing there, or guess what he was making, but by the time she'd finished draping the last of the sheets, she was wishing she'd eaten more of that cake when she'd had the chance.

Now though, she could stand back and admire their handiwork. Or crouch back. Sheets curtained most of the room, draped from wall to wall, hung over chairs, lamps, the couch and the tables, a mismatched canopy from above with undefined shapes poking out like mountain peaks, a maze below, pinpricks of light shining through where they could. Cozy, if she said so herself, but that was just half the battle. Kayla sunk to her knees and started packing pillows down as padding, laying a few blankets down over the carpet for good measure, and propping up cushions as artificial walls to block it all off into parts. A few of the spare bedsheets, in her particular stroke of genius scoffscoff, hung down like tent flaps, screening it all off from the outside world.

Her old pillow forts from back home felt like trailer homes compared to this. Kayla sat back for a moment, drinking it in. "Huh? What do you think, eh?"

In his time in the kitchen, when he had a moment to spare, he found himself lingering in the doorway - glancing over and watching as his roommate balanced precariously on the back of the sofa, reaching up with one arm and hanging the sheets best she could. Despite his snarky comment, he made a note of keeping an ear out for her. The last thing the either of them needed was her breaking her good limb. If she ended up in the infirmary again, it'd be nothing less than a shit storm, he was sure.

There wasn't exactly much in the pantry he had to work with, but Preston was making due with what he could. Ice cream, baked potatoes, popcorn, brownies, whatever he could manage; although he wasn't sure how much of it would be actually eaten, the longer he put himself to work, the more his appetite worked itself back up. The young man had just clicked the oven off once she had sounded victory from their new fort.

Preston patted his hands off on his shirt and stepped back into the living room, raising his eyebrows. She worked fucking fast, he'd give her that. "Shit," He smiled, tearing his gaze away from her and letting it roam. Good thing their roommates hadn't exactly stuck at home lately. The fort took up the whole damn space. "It's alright," he crossed his arms, his eyes glinting teasingly her way. "I think it'll do." His grin grew.

"Bullshit you 'think it'll do,'" she scoffed as he stepped out of the kitchen, sitting back and running her fingers through her hair. A smirk touched the corner of her lips as she crossed her arms. "It's a fucking masterpiece, just admit it. You don't have to hide it." He'd helped here and there between his kitchen breaks—he was allowed to take a little credit for the whole thing. Besides, he's the one who got it started. Kayla glanced up at him, sparks crackling down her neck. "Are you going to help me touch it up or not?" She'd started pulling it together, but the inside still needed work. "This was your dumbass idea."