They say it's your birthday...

[Levi Xu]

This had taken a lot of planning. Levi still wasn't allowed off-campus alone--and Sam did not count as a good chaperon--so he'd had to give very specific instructions to the pyrokinetic about what to get, prepare it, and then had to sneak it into his room without Evan noticing. Fortunately, the older boy was in basketball and art club and did things after classes, instead of going back to the dorms to hide. (Though often enough, Evan would come back and they would do homework together or watch a movie before heading down to the cafeteria to have dinner together.)

He'd never had a friend like Evan, who looked out for him so consistently. (And didn't abandon him in a place he hated.) So he had to do something special for him for his birthday.

On the morning of the 14^th, early enough that no one else in the suite was up yet, Levi gathered his supplies and snuck out of his own room and into Evan's. It was Monday, so they were supposed to go to classes later, but he figured he'd budgeted enough time to convince the older boy that turning seventeen was the perfect reason to skip. Just outside the phaser's door, he pulled out the matches he'd swiped from Vincent--doing the rest of the school a favor--and lit the single candle in the center of the tray of cupcakes. (He'd made them himself.)

He pushed the door open, willing it not to squeak, then put the tray down on the older boy's desk. Levi grinned and looked over at his friend, who looked pretty peaceful, tucked into bed.

Then he took a running leap onto Evan's bed, and consequently, Evan. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

[Evan Brackett]

Content to sleep until his alarm went off, Evan didn’t stir as the other boy entered his room. Of course, being pounced on did wonders for pulling the birthday boy out of dreamland. Evan gave off a groggy moan as he sat up in his bed, his blankets falling off him to expose his bare chest as he did so. “Nnng?” the disgruntled teen questioned with a yawn. He stretched and ran a hand through his gravity-defying mess of hair before he finally opened his eyes to look at his friend with blurry vision. “What? What’s going...” It took him a moment to realise that it was Monday morning. Monday the 14th of March.

Happy birthday?

Oh, right! He gave his friend a satisfied smirk, “Thanks.”

Still not quite awake, the brunette rubbed the drowsiness from his eyes before looking over at his candle. “What time is it?” He glanced at his alarm clock and was surprised to see it was still long before sunrise. “Whoa, Levi. It’s still earl-”

Hold on. Evan didn’t own a candle.

“WHAT IS THAT?!” Evan wiggled his legs out from under the other boy, clumsily fell out of bed, and scurried over to his desk. Grinning as he looked over the display, he picked up one of the cupcakes and examined the spider on it. He was a little confused about why Levi would make him cupcakes decorated with spiders and webs, but chalked it up to Spider being recently confiscated. The icing colors also happened to match the flannel pajama bottoms he was wearing, but obviously that was just a coincidence. “You made these for me?”

[Levi Xu]

Levi bounced a little on the bed, straddling Evan's legs. It was rare that he was up first in the morning anyway, so he wasn't surprised that Evan was a bit out of it when he woke up. Almost-subtly, he eyed his best friend, remembering again that he was Spider-Man, and while he usually looked a little dorky...

Yes, he could believe that Evan looked pretty good in his spandex suit.

Of course, it was ridiculously early, but it wouldn't have been the same kind of surprise. "I know, but it's your..." Levi's grin grew wider as Evan noticed the candle and the cupcakes. He scrambled off of him so the birthday boy could go inspect breakfast. (Yes, this was going to be breakfast. Cupcakes totally counted on birthdays.)

"Yeah, I did. Sam helped me get the stuff, but I made them myself. Chocolate." Because birthday cake has to be chocolate. "But the candle's melting. So make your wish!" He flopped down across the bed and propped his chin up on his hands. Levi didn't care what Evan wished for. He didn't believe in the superstition, but this was something you were supposed to do on someone's birthday and since the rest of the plans for the day included skipping classes and hanging out--he was going to convince Evan it was a good idea--maybe the only thing he wished for was that they wouldn't get in trouble.

[Evan Brackett]

The boy grinned at Levi as he set the cupcake down. “Awesome.” Evan wasn’t a big fan of chocolate cake--or cake in general, for that matter--but nobody had ever baked him anything for his birthday before. Well, his mom had made him cakes (even though he insisted that he preferred pie), but that wasn’t the same. These were cupcakes made by his best friend. Totally different, and totally awesome.

“Right,” Evan said with a smile before looking at the candle. There was already a relatively large pool of wax forming under it, so he quickly closed his eyes, made his wish, and blew out the flame. He then proceeded to pull the candle out of the cupcake and lick the frosting off of it, because that was definitely the best part of birthday candles.

After setting that aside, he picked up the cupcake he had pulled it from, peeled off the wax, and went to sit next to Levi on his bed. “This is amazing,” he cooed between bites. Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration considering that Levi wasn’t a master baker and Evan didn’t even like cake, but what made the cupcake amazing was that it was made special for him by his best friend. In this case, he approved of cupcake breakfasts. "Have you tried one yet?"

[Levi Xu]

Levi wouldn't have believed that his smile could grow any wider than it already was. He was so fucking happy, having Evan eating the cupcakes, and actually enjoying them. (He was no cook, but it was a good effort, in his opinion.) When the older boy sat down on his bed as well, Levi wrapped one arm around his shoulders in a quick half-hug. "Yeah, I have. And the batter too. Ember and Sam helped some, but it was mostly me." Yeah, the older two had helped more than Levi was willing to admit, but it wasn't their idea, and it wasn't them there now.

"I'm gonna have another though." He scrambled off the bed and selected another one of the spider cupcakes before returning to the bed and sitting, cross-legged, next to his best friend. The idea for the spider motif wasn't subtle, but he wanted Evan to know that it was okay to be himself around Levi. "Cupcakes for breakfast. It is an auspicious start to the day. But now we need to plan what else we will be doing today, as you only turn seventeen once." And as it was the first birthday the older boy had since their first meeting, Levi wanted it to be special. "Anything you want to do today is good, but we're having pie with dinner, since it's pie day."

[Evan Brackett]

Evan wasn’t about to let the other boy get away with only a half-hug, and he quickly wrapped his arms around Levi and pulled him into a proper hug. He was equally happy to have been given the cupcakes, even if Levi had had some help in making them. It still counted. “Thank you,” he said before letting his friend go. The words couldn’t adequately express how glad he was to receive the gift or even to have the boy there with him, but it was the best Evan could do.

“I like pie,” he commented with a smirk and took another bite of his cupcake. “But, uh. I don’t know. What we’re going to do after school, I mean.” He hadn’t quite caught on to Levi’s plan of skipping school yet. As for what he wanted, it wasn’t like there was a whole lot they could do. There was still snow everywhere, hanging out at school wasn’t anything special, and Pilot Ridge wasn’t exactly billowing with fun activities. There was also the fact that Evan was bad at coming up with things on the spot, and was struggling to come up with something fun.

In the mean time, he finished off his first cupcake and then picked up another. “We could...go...somewhere,” he stated in a poor attempt to sound helpful. “Oh, I know! We should go see a movie. I haven’t been to the theater in ages.” There. That was a good birthday activity. Not that Evan had any idea what movies were showing in the theater or what he would want to see, but at least it was a start.

[Levi Xu]

Levi grinned a bit more when Evan pulled him into a hug and thanked him. Before he hopped up to get a cupcake of his own, he gave his best friend a quick squeeze and murmured "Happy Birthday, Van." Sam had said something to him a few days ago that had him thinking, but too much thought there, and he'd start blushing again. So, cupcake instead!

Once he was situated again on the bed--licking icing off of his fingers, he'd overdone it a bit--Levi smirked a little and tried to explain. "Weeeeeeell....I was thinking maybe we didn't have to wait until classes were over. I mean, you're a great student, and I haven't skipped anything so far this month, so we could do it." There was the problem of there not being much to do around the school or the town, but they could figure it out. A day without math or science or being forced to read three chapters of a book he had no interest in would be a day off. And that's a good present, right?

"Oh, movies sound good. If we go early, there's not gonna be anyone there." Which was good, because if someone spotted them during school hours, they'd be fucked. "Uh, I think there's a couple of actiony movies playing, and something about people who control fate, and a Disney one with that actor who looks like the drama teacher but he's a lizard. In the movie." It was early still. Don't blame him for his lack of control over English.

[Evan Brackett]

It took him a minute to process what Levi was telling him--it wasn’t his fault it was early--and Evan frowned when he did get it. “You mean ditch?” he confirmed. “I don’t know, Levi. I’ve never skipped a class before.” Then again, he never had much reason to skip class before. It wasn’t like school made him miserable (with the exception of power training), and he was a good student. “Besides, how are we suppose to get off campus without permission? I’m pretty sure everyone who has ever ran away got caught. We don’t stand a chance.” He wasn’t saying no, just that he didn’t think they’d get away with it.

“Okay, assuming we even make it out of here, we can do that first.” Not that he had any other ideas. Or that he had any clue what Levi was rambling on about, but he tried to use the hints to recall what movies were in theaters. Then it hit him. “Hey!” he exclaimed with a grin. “I’m seventeen. That means I can buy tickets to R-rated movies. Legally.” Dork.

Exhilarated by this newly discovered privilege, the phaser leaned against the wall with more optimism than before. “I guess we can pick something when we get to the movie theater,” he decided, “Because then we can see all the posters and stuff. That should help us choose.”

[Levi Xu]

Levi just wasn't as good of a student as Evan. He was smart enough, but he hadn't kept up with his studies when he was in the hospital, and his lessons at the compound were pretty irregular. It had been over a year since he'd been in a normal classroom with normal students, so he'd had to adapt back into it, and it wasn't going well. Sometimes he felt like the only things keeping him from going around the bend were his friends. "The people at the front desk don't check schedules. I've seen Sam get away with it a bunch of times. I'm almost off my suspension, so they may let me go if I'm not going alone." It wasn't like he was on suspension for bad behavior; he was just considered a flight risk.

He grinned back at his best friend as he realized that he could buy tickets to R movies. Levi didn't mention that he'd been going to them with Nomi since he was twelve, and had never been turned away. "Or we could look up the times and the shows online. But we could just be surprised." Whatever Evan wanted to to today, even if it did involve them going to classes. "It's up to you."

[Evan Brackett]

As it was, Evan wasn’t bothered by the idea. He just wasn’t convinced that it was a solid plan. “Yeah, okay, but what if they do notice?” The phaser didn’t mind playing hooky on his birthday, but he did mind getting in trouble, and unlike so many of his peers, his parents lived close enough that they could actually get involved with his punishment. Plus, they were already angry with him over the entire Spider situation. Van didn’t want to push his luck. But he also didn’t want his best friend to think he was too scared to ditch, so he added, “Never mind. I guess it can’t hurt to try.”

Clearly Evan didn’t think this movie idea through, or maybe it was just that he was generally bad at planning things like this. “Oh yeah, I kinda forgot we could do that,” he admitted sheepishly. He got up, walked over to his desk, slid the cupcakes aside, and booted up his computer. As he slid into his desk chair, he said, “Nah. If we’re going to do this, we might as well know what we're going to see. We can also go to a later show, and walk around and look at stuff until the movie starts. It’ll be fun.”

[Levi Xu]

"Then they won't let us out. It's not like we're trying to run away." Though the idea of running away was still appealing, and the idea of running away with Evan was even moreso. "We'll be signing out, getting passes, and be back before the curfew." And it was Evan's birthday. Levi wasn't a big believer in the karma or things like that, but if anyone deserved good luck from the cosmos, it was Evan.

"Sweet!" The younger boy literally bounced when the older one agreed to playing hooky. "And lunch is on me. We can find a good place in town." He had saved up and kept most of the money that his family and Mr. Underwood had given him as pocket money. He hadn't had the chance or the desire to spend it before.

Levi followed to the desk--and swiped another cupcake in the process--and hovered around behind his friend as he started up his computer. "And you get to pick the movie, of course." He put his hands on the back of Evan's chair and leaned over, peering over the boy's shoulder to look at the screen as he licked stray icing off of his thumb. "The Adjustment Bureau had a pretty cool trailer, and it has that one guy in it. It should be good."

What was that about Evan picking the movie, Levi?

[Evan Brackett]

Evan wasn’t so much concerned with running away as he was for getting in trouble for skipping classes. “Yeah, okay. You’re right.” They couldn’t get in trouble if the school gave them signed permission, and it wasn’t like getting behind a day would be a problem for the older boy. With all the numerous times he spaced out during class, he had learned how to self-teach himself a lot of the things he missed, and he was a religious studier. He could catch up without a problem.

Levi’s excitement was infectious, and Evan couldn’t help but grin at his bouncing. “Oh, um. No, that’s okay. You don’t have to...” He wasn’t trying to be difficult or anything, he just didn’t want the other boy to blow all his money on him. While Van didn’t get an allowance (and had to spend most of his spending money on pants these days), he still had enough cash to cover lunch and a movie.

“All right,” he said as he opened up the browser. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind as he clicked around the website, however. (He also might have been distracted and was spending more time watching Levi lick icing off his thumb than paying attention to movie trailers like he should have been). When the other boy spoke up, he just went with it. “Definitely. We can see that. The 1:40 show, ‘cause then we can get lunch and stuff before hand.”

With that decided, Evan started picking at another cupcake. "I should probably get dressed," he mused a loud, "It's kinda cold for me to go out in just pajamas."

[Levi Xu]

"I know, but it's your birthday." Levi rolled his eyes, but he was grinning. He wasn't even good at being sarcastic this morning. "It's called a present. They're traditionally given on birthdays, which are annual recognitions of the day you were born." If he had been able to deadpan that they way he wanted, it would have come out really funny.

He wasn't intending to distract his friend; that was just the side-effect of icing being delicious. He grinned, of course, when Van agreed with his pick of movies. (Nothing really good seemed to be playing, so something that looked pretty good was good enough. And they were going together; even terrible movies were funny if he could make snarky comments in Evan's ear.) "Cool. And it'll be before the high school lets out too, so it probably won't be crowded." He'd always loved seeing movies in empty theaters. It made him feel special.

With a last grin, he swiped another cupcake off the desk. "'kay. I'll go get ready too. We can go as soon as you want." Before he left, he ruffled his best friend's fluffy hair, managing to mess it up even more. "Happy Birthday, Van."