Don't Tell My Brother

Chapter 18 - Lukie, And Other Bad Nicknames

Lucas was sitting at the bench beside Damien, leaning on the cool marble as he tried, yet again, to explain how to structure an essay.

"You can't just start writing, Damien. You've got to actually make a plan."

Damien rolled his eyes. It'd only been ten minutes, and he was already proving to be a difficult student. "Why? It'd be faster if I just write it."

"No it won't. It'll be messy and incoherent and it'll just take longer to fix it when you're editing."

Damien grinned. "Right. Because I'll definitely edit it."

Lucas felt mildly horrified. He always went through several drafts of his essays before he submitted them, to make sure everything was perfect. Alex might've said that nothing was ever perfect, but Lucas always tried to get his essays as close as humanly possible. "You don't edit?"

Some of his horror must have been obvious, because Damien burst out laughing. "The look on your face, Lukie. You look like I said I kill people. Do you have any actual fun? Ever? You can't seriously care this much about school."

"Lukie?" Lucas pulled his face into an expression of disgust. There weren't many nicknames for Lucas, but Lukie was no doubt the worst one. "Don't call me that."

"What do you want me to call you, then?" Damien glanced at Lucas out of the corner of his eye, one of those stupid smirks curving his lips. "What about b-"

Before Damien could finish whatever word that was going to be, Lucas made the wise decision to smack him over the head with a notebook. "Shut up. Do you want my help or not?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

"That's what I thought. You're going to need an introduction with a thesis statement, about three body paragraphs for your arguments, and then a conclusion. It's simple, really. What's your thesis?"

Damien blinked. "Thesis?"

"What's the essay about?"

"Oh, right. We have to look at one..." Damien glanced at the screen again, rereading the question, "...key figure of the civil rights movement, and discuss what we think made them so prominent. So I thought I'd do MLK, and talk about language. Like his speeches or whatever. They're pretty good."

"They're more than pretty good." Lucas sighed, but he was relieved they were getting somewhere. This might've been harder than he thought. "Is that all you have?"

Damien rolled his eyes, a slight furrow appearing between his brow. For the first time since they'd met, Lucas thought he looked genuinely annoyed. "Yeah, because I'm completely stupid. Obviously I've got more. He used to be a preacher, right, so I was going to say something about how he started there and how it affects the way he speaks and why that makes people like it. Because a ton of people are religious, y'know? And preachers talk in a way that's supposed to make people believe, so that could have something to do with why he was so good. And my mom used to make me go to church all the time, so I'm basically an expert on the Jesus thing."

Lucas blinked. It was a little rough around the edges, but that was actually...a pretty good idea? Interesting, even. Definitely far better than what Lucas had been expecting. Which made him feel a little bad, because he'd been expecting so little. Unsure whether or not to apologise, he opted for a different tack. For someone so arrogant, Damien rarely spoke about his personal life. Well, unless you counted girls and parties, which Lucas didn't. It was a little odd to think of Damien with his family, or in a church with a devout mother at his side. Lucas didn't know anything about that side of him.

"You used to go to church? I'm surprised they even let you in."

"I'm hurt, Lucas." Damien placed a hand over his heart. "I'm a man of God."