Moved In With Matthew and Clyde

Clyde scoots into the corner of Matthew's bed, the flat black of the paint on the wall marred with a fist-sized hole from the last time Matthew punched a wall.  The old house - the old farmhouse the boys grew up in - had spells over it's woodworking to knit magically back together when it was shot or punched or exploded into chips of plaster and splinters by the perils of being an endless god trapped in the disappointing body of a boy.  Gray House doesn't.  Gray House is fire-retardant and proudly scarred.  

Clyde is barefoot and in black jeans, faded and slack at his waist.  The waistband is still rolled where it once was forced to straining under his stomach, but now he's lost 40 pounds and the jeans of the last 10 years all fit the way they were meant to.  They are spattered with either blood or hot sauce, I can't tell.  He scoots to the corner to make room for me to hang above the bed a heavy chain of Matthew's gears on a white ribbon.  

"Took a nap," he explains of himself and Matthew, who is showering in Room 12.  His hair hangs in a heavy curtain over his eyes.  His voice is broken from sleep, and he is upset at having been woken.  

His broad hands cup his knees, and he stares straight ahead, ignoring that I am walking on the bare mattress, and the sound of Matthew re-entering the room.  I know we're encroaching on some sacred post-nap time for him where he is trying to exit his dreams and enter reality, and the more I ignore him, the better he will feel.  

Matthew wipes the insides of his ears with a beige towel, the gap in his front teeth adding shadow to his grin.