AGALMATOPHILIA

_-:26:-_

"We never used to be like this you know," Brendon calls out, rummaging around the closet.

Tyler idly taps a foot against the hardwood floor, arms folded across his chest.

"It's funny really, our lives were so simple before all this,"

"And yet you do it why?"

Brendon scoffs, then chuckles.

"Tyler, I could spend all week telling you theories about how we both snapped, what drove us to be how we are, I could spend that week explaining every detail of my life and even then, even then, I wouldn't know why,"

Tyler nods, taking a subtle step back as Brendon approaches with a large cardboard box clutched tight between both hands.

Grunting as he sets it down, Brendons hand fly to his hips and stick there as he observes the plain box before him.

Tyler only shuffles from one foot to the other, glaring at the box.

"So this is all my old clothing that I had with me, there's probably some old relics of my past in there,"

Now stepping forward with curiosity, Tyler opens the box slowly.

Atop the heap of belongings sits a tiny, perfectly smoothed wooden bear clutching a red crystal heart with the words "love me back" carved into it.

Brendon carefully picks it up, rotating it in his grip before setting it down on the mattress in front of Tyler.

"Josh made that for me," he points to the ornament, sighing. "He gave it to me two days after we had met, and I guess that's one of the reasons I stay,"

Tyler shoots a glance to the man beside him, watching as he blankly stares down at the bear.

"He likes to spoil me, it makes me feel like he actually loves me back,"

Deciding not to put his two cents into that throw away comment, Tyler reaches inside the box, grabbing ahold of a decent pair of dark skinny jeans.

"Oh my god no way!" Brendon snatches them from his hands and Tyler angrily glares for a brief moment.

"I haven't seen these in years! I wonder if they still fit?" Holding them up to his waist Brendon pulls the waist of the pants taught against his abdomen.

Tyler rolls his eyes, once again reaching inside the decrepit box, a tshirt within his hand.

The logo on the front is messy but the words along the hem at the back hits Tyler hard.

"Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman. That is detestable. -Leviticus 18:22."

"What that old scrap of fabric you've got?"

Tyler looks up, Brendon now wearing the jeans instead of the pale pink skirt which sat crumpled beside the box.

"Just some weird church shirt," Tyler tosses it away, hugging himself tightly in defence.

He had heard that part of his scripture many times, his father would often repeat it to him and his brother.

"Oh yeah, Josh bought that as a joke, he wanted me to wear it while he bent me over the kitchen table, it's actually really funny, see he was fucking me from behind-"

"BRENDON." Tyler wails, pushing his companion harshly in the shoulder.

"What?!"

"What an uncomfortable conversation you just whipped up? I don't want to know about that!" The younger boy complains, Brendon bewildered by the fact.