#dev hamil

The two sat on Dev’s bed, sharing a blanket and a mountain of pillows. The bed was the first bed that had ever been truly Will’s, situated in the corner of the first room that had ever been truly theirs. When Hanna let Will pick out a bed, they’d decided on a queen over queen bunkbed, the cost of which was covered by a recent heist. They had said they wanted a bunkbed for the inevitable nights when Dev would crash at Hanna’s apartment, but Hanna suspected that Will’s main motivation was that they enjoyed the cave like feel of a bunkbed up against a wall. Something safe and cozy. Regardless, their supposed intention was quickly abandoned, as most nights Dev stayed over, Dev ended up sleeping in Will’s bed with them – unless Will shoved them to the floor for being a pain – and the top bunk became storage for laundry that needed folding, extra pillows, and a cheap carnival stuffed animal that Dev had won at an annual fair.

Will’s laptop sat on the bed between the two teens, playing a Disney channel original movie that Dev insisted Will needed to watch. Something about a Leprechaun. Will had wanted to watch a horror movie, but unfortunately for them, it was Dev’s week to pick the movie, and they’d picked something they’d remembered watching as a kid.

Dev tapped their fingers against their leg, moving just for the sake of moving. Another zap of electricity hit Will.

“Dev,” Will said.

“Sorry, that was an accident,” Dev said, still grinning. Another spark of electricity crackled.

“Mother—that’s it,” Will said, reaching behind them to grab a pillow from the mountain of pillows.

Before Dev could properly fend them off, Will was on top of them, wailing on them with the pillow. It was one of the flat decorative pillows that had a pillowcase to match the comforter and had seemingly no purpose other than that. They weren’t useful for sleeping and would get tossed on the floor or the top bunk, so Will couldn’t figure out why they needed them at all. However, they made for decent weapons in pillow warfare.

“Hey, hey,” Dev laughed, covering their face with one arm. “I said it was an accident!”

Dev grasped blindly at the mountain of pillows, looking for their own weapon, and the smacked it against Will’s side. Will quickly and successfully rent the pillow from Dev’s grasp, but in their attempt to do so, Dev knocked them off balance, making them teeter on the edge of the bed. Dev nudged Will with their foot, which sent Will to the floor. Practice with the team and getting into childhood fights taught Will how to fall without hurting themself, and they were quickly back on their feet. Standing beside the bunk, they swung their arm to the side, twisting their torso for momentum to knock Dev across the side of the head.

“Wait, wait!” Dev said, putting their arms in front of their face as they prepared for the blow. “I won’t do it again, I promise, it was an accident.”

“You promise you won’t do it again or you promise it was an accident?” Will asked, relaxing slightly.

Dev considered the question before saying, “Yes.”

“Hmm,” Will narrowed their eyes. “If it was an accident, you can’t promise that it won’t happen again by accident.”

“I’ll try really, really hard,” Dev said, squeezing their hands into fists and tensing their upper body, as if they needed their entire body tensed up in order to succeed in not sending static currents everywhere.

“Fine,” Will said. “But if you do it again, you will know pain.”

As Will climbed back into bed, crawling around Dev to get to their spot next to the wall, Dev said, “Man, now we have to go back. We missed so much of the movie.”

“Whose fault is that?” Will asked, settling in beside them.

“Yours. You brutally and viciously attacked me without reason.” Dev hit the left arrow on the keyboard, rewinding the movie to where they’d left off.

As Dev leaned back against pillow mountain, their finger hovering over the space bar to press play, a small smile twitched on their lips. There was a spark of static. The reaction was immediate. Will lunged at them.

“It was an accident!” Dev yelled as they tried to jump off the bed. Their leg got caught in the blanket, interfering with their escape. The only made it halfway off the bed, brought down by Will’s tackle. Their head and torso hung over the side. Will had them pinned down with their arms around Dev’s middle.

As Will let go and sat up to grab another pillow, Dev rolled off the bed and caught themself on their hands and knees. Despite Will’s threat, Dev was grinning.

A pillow whumped against the side of Dev’s head, sending them rolling onto their side, then their back. With an impish laugh, they tried to curl into a fetal position to protect themself from the pillow’s blows, but Will was already sitting on top of them, holding the pillow above their head.

“It was an accident!” Dev said again. The grin was still present as they turned their head and covered their face with their arms. “I didn’t mean to!”

“Maybe…you…should…learn…to…control…your…powers,” Will said, punctuating each word with a blow of the pillow.

“Help! I’m being attacked!” Dev yelled. Will shoved the pillow over their face, muffling their voice.

“SHH,” Will hissed. “Hanna is trying to work.”

Too late. Will’s bedroom door opened. Hanna cracked it open just enough for her to poke her head in and assess the situation. Will had started to raise the pillow again, and paused with it above their head, prepared to wail down on Dev again.

“What are you guys doing?” Hanna said. She sounded weary, not at all concerned.

“Dev deserves this,” Will said without hesitation.

“I don’t doubt it,” Hanna said. “Can you be quieter, though?”

Will said, “Yes” at the same time Dev answered, “No.”

“They’re trying to kill me!” Dev said, their voice too loud for the small size of the room. Will shoved the pillow over their face again and looked back to Hanna.

“Will, don’t kill Dev,” Hanna ordered.

“Why not?” Will asked. Dev squirmed beneath them, trying to get away.

“I’m not in the business of body disposal, and I don’t want to start,” Hanna said.

“But what if I get rid of the body myself?” Will asked.

“Hey!” Dev yelled, voice muffled by the pillow. Will pushed it harder against their face. Dev jabbed their fingers repeatedly against Will’s torso, but the tactic was ineffective. Will was serious about pillow warfare. They were immovable.

“I’d rather not deal with a murder scene in my apartment. Annabel’s goat sacrifices are bad enough,” Hanna said.

“What about series injury or maiming?” Will asked.

“I’m dying,” Dev yelled. They wiggled their limbs and then flopped completely still, playing dead. Will lifted the pillow and smacked them with it again.

“I’m not driving you guys to the E.R.,” Hanna said.

“Fine.”

“That’s it!?” Dev said. “Hanna! Will’s trying to kill me,” Will shoved the pillow over their face again.

“Well, die more quietly. I have an exam in two days, and I need to focus,” she said, her voice fading as she pulled out of the room. She shut the door behind her, and Will listened to her soft footsteps disappear.

“Willllll,” Dev whined from beneath the pillow. “I’m sorrryyyy.”

“I don’t believe you,” Will said.

“At least let a person defend themself!” Dev said. “Make this a fair fight!”

“Life isn’t fair,” Will said. Their tone was grave, which made Dev snort in amusement.

“Oh, boo hoo, edgelord,” Dev said as Will finally pulled the pillow away. They didn’t actually want Dev to suffocate. Mostly.

“This should be a battle of honor!” Dev said. “Right now, it’s just an assassination.”

“Maybe if you weren’t such an ass, you wouldn’t get ass-ass-inated.”

“Ha!” Dev laughed

Will moved off Dev and stood. They reached out a hand to Dev to help pull them to their feet. As soon as Dev was standing, they turned to the bed and picked a weapon of their own.

“En garde!” Dev shouted, holding their pillow with one hand. They both dropped into fighting stances, their knees bent, their pillows ready for battle.

Will’s bedroom door flew open, Hanna’s hand still on the knob as she looked into the room with a much more annoyed expression than last time.

“If you guys have a pillow fight at eleven p.m. the week before finals, I will kick you out of the apartment,” she warned.

“What other time is there to have a pillow fight?” Will asked, making an incredulous face at her. Didn’t she know anything?

“It’s not a pillow fight,” Dev said. “It’s a pillow battle. A battle for honor.”

“Postpone it,” Hanna said, in her I-Mean-Business Mom Voice, a voice that she insisted she neither had nor used. She was not a mom.

Will and Dev let their pillows drop to their sides.

“Fine,” Dev said, their mouth turned down in a pout.

“Thank you,” Hanna said, and with more force than necessary, she pulled the door closed.

Will tossed the pillow back onto the bed and remade Pillow Mountain, stacking the pillows in their optimal arrangement.

“If you shock me again, you can watch the rest of the movie from the floor,” Will said, using a threat that wouldn’t result in annoying Hanna for a third time, should it need to be carried out, (which if past experiences were any indication, it would). As much as they loved to annoy Hanna, they knew finals and school actually mattered to her, and they didn’t want to make finals season more stressful than it already was.

“Okay,” Dev said cheerily, nearly bumping their head against the top bunk as they tried to jump onto the bed.

Will tossed the fleece blanket to the floor, hoping that the lack of static conductive fabric would prevent so many sparks. Instead, they grabbed the quilt that was bunched at the foot of their bed. The quilt was a gift from one of the only good foster moms Will had ever had. It wasn’t made for a queen-size bed, but it was cozy and lovingly-made, two things that were rare in Will’s young life.

Dev curled up beside Will, pulling part of the quilt over one of their legs. Reaching out with their other leg, Dev hit the spacebar with their toe, unpausing the movie.

“Ew,” Will said. “Keep your gross toes away from my laptop.”

“Keep your gross laptop away from my toes,” Dev said.