Teenage Baby

Chapter 20

Chapter 20:

They'd stayed outside for an hour or so, then the captors had brought the boys back in and cleaned them up.

And now Aaron was stuck in the playroom. Again.

  "Come, Aar. Read with me." Leo picked a book from the shelf then lay down on his stomach and opened it in front of him, his legs swinging excitedly as he waited for Aaron to join him.

Excitement. Aaron was glad Leo retrieved that factor in his behavior; he hadn't been particularly sad after what'd happened in the pool, but he also hadn't been necessarily happy. Timid, tired, oddly empty. But now Aaron could see the liveliness slowly return through the way his legs were swinging with restless energy. So Aaron didn't reject the offer, and he approached then sprawled down next to Leo on his stomach as well.

  Leo stared at the picture dominating most of the page in awe, then quickly flipped to the next, unrelenting to the small texts at the bottom. Aaron assumed he'd read it quickly at first, but then Leo kept doing that: going through the pages fast, only letting his eyes linger on the pictures, ignoring the texts.

  "Leo, wait." Aaron slapped a hand down on a page before Leo could flip it over. "You're not reading. You're just looking at the pictures. Trust me, you'll find them a lot more interesting if you know what's going on."

Leo shrugged one shoulder. When he tried pushing Aaron's hand away but failed, he whined. Softly and desperately. "Want to see, Aar!"

Aaron removed his hand and watched as Leo continued doing that. He really hoped that Leo just didn't have the patience, that the case wasn't that he'd been brainwashed enough to forget how to read.

  "Aar, look!" Leo pointed at a picture of a cat with her kittens cuddled up against her. "She has kids!"

Aaron peeked at the picture, smiling at how fascinated Leo was: completely enraptured, eyes wide and curious as they shifted between the edges of the picture.

"Do you know how she got the kittens, Aar?" Leo asked, but it sounded to Aaron more like a rhetorical question, one which he expected no answer to and had prepared one of his own. Then the actual question set in, and Aaron frowned, flustered and unable to speak a word. He wanted to put it out in an innocent childish way for Leo, but he'd already begun explaining how it worked on his own: "Maybe cats get married too. Maybe they sign papers like people. Isn't that how people get married, Aar? Mommy told me. Then maybe, God sends a kitten to her stomach."

Stomach. This had Aaron chuckling. Then, as the laughter petered out, he looked at Leo again, sighing as he took in how confused he seemed. Too innocent, way too innocent. Leo's perspective of things was probably the most weirdly amusing thing Aaron had ever witnessed.

"You're too pure for this world," Aaron mumbled, ruffling Leo's hair. He took the book from Leo's hands, then turned to the shelves and placed it back in, his eyes briefly flitting among the other stories. One of them was clearly astronomic and it caught his attention within a second, but as he reached for it, a white box pushed against the corner of the shelf distracted him. "What's in this?"

Leo didn't move, too deep in the comfort of his position on his stomach, but he lazily glanced at Aaron. "For the drawings, Aar."

  Aaron pulled it out then placed it on the rug. He removed the lid and shuffled through the masses of papers inside, each with a painting, pointless yet cleverly colored.

Among them, there was one with a familiar set of blue eyes drawn on it. And regardless of how many blue eyes were out there in the world, the astounding amount of detail specifically in that one made it clear that they were Leo's. The gold flecks, the precise shades of blue that mixed together, their variance in the position implicitly like Leo's. Then there were faint freckles splattered beneath, and at that Aaron let the paper down and peeked at Leo, frowning when he noticed that he actually had freckles, sprinkled faintly over the bridge of his nose and under his eyes. Barely even visible. Aaron would applaud the artist for catching this detail, except...