After Lover for Pay: ONESHOTS

Scar Tissue Pt1

"Sing me a song," Daniel's voice came through clearly.

The screen of Henry's laptop held nothing but a blank icon, Daniel's name at the top of it as they skyped one another. Since the other boy's camera was broken, Henry couldn't see anything on the other end, but he knew Daniel could see him perfectly. He was sitting at his desk, pencil in hand as he finished up the rest of his assignments that were due in the morning. He knew damn well he should have finished them about five days ago, but procrastination was a straight up bitch, and Henry lost to it all the time. So here he was, thirty minutes to 12:00am putting in all the work he could dish out at this time of night. "Sing you a song?" Henry chewed thoughtfully at the end of his eraser, "How's about no?"

"Ooh, someone sounds rather sassy tonight," Daniel snickered. "Why don't you want to sing me a song, though? I did buy you lunch today and that RPG bundle you've been crying over since it was released. I think I'm a little deserving of a nice song."

A smirk tugged at Henry's lips and he set down the pencil in hand, "I was one of those kids who made it possible to fail choir in middle school, and I really think it was because my voice was a piece of shit. Trust me, you don't want to hear this guy try to hit a note."

"Would you sing me for me if you could...?"

Able to hear the slyness in Daniel's voice, Henry could already imagine the expression on the other boy's face. "Maybe," he said, "But since I sound more like a dying, agonized cat, I'll save you from the ear-piercing torment of my voice and dedicate a song to you instead of butchering it. How does that sound?"

"Speaking of dedications, don't call me a loser, but I made a playlist on my iPod with songs that remind me of us. There's about a hundred of them in it."

Henry stood from his desk and crossed the room to his backpack. After grabbing out his calculator, he sat down and got back to work. As much as he would much rather throw the unfinished assignments in his backpack, he tried to convince himself that they were a priority tonight. "Loser," he said, "Tell me a song that's on it."

"Umm," a small laugh of embarrassment came through the speakers of his laptop, "You have to promise not to make fun of me first."

"I promise, but you know I enjoy laughing at you so..."

"Jerk," the other boy laughed, "The first one I put it in has to be one of my favorite songs in the entire world. It's called Firefly by Ed Sheeran."

Henry rutted his brow, jotting down the answer to a question on his paper. "Who's that?" he asked.

"What!?" Daniel exclaimed, and then he lowered his voice in case his parents wondered about what got him so worked up suddenly and so late at night. Bringing his voice to a whisper, he said, "You're telling me you listen to the boyband One Direction and you don't even know who Ed-freaking-Sheeran is? He wrote a couple songs for them!"

"Hey, I'm not too far up their asses or anything."

"Ed Sheeran is only one of the greatest lyricist on the planet right now."

"Oops."

"Hopeless, you're a hopeless fool Henry Dawncraft."

"Yeah, but you're obsessed with this hopeless fool so...who's the real hopeless fool here?"

The two talked for a while longer until midnight came around. Then the boys said goodnight to each other, Henry promising to "research" everything Ed Sheeran before the weekend was over. When they ended their skype call, Henry changed from his day clothes into baggy pajama bottoms, his black hair a slew of tresses down a small ways passed his shoulders. As he lay in his bed with the lights off, he could hear footsteps just outside his door for a second, likely London finally getting Ozzy to bed since the little bug always fought the Sandman to stay awake. With his phone in hand, Henry opened his YouTube app and typed in 'Firefly by Ed Sheeran'. When a whole list of lyric videos popped up, he clicked on the first one, and listened as the soft strum of an acoustic guitar started to play out tenderly from the small speaker in his phone.