Quiet Hearts, Quiet Rooms
Sam sat on the edge of his bed, sketchpad open, pencil moving slowly.
He wasn't really drawing — not in the usual way. Just soft lines and loops, lazy spirals, a shadow of a shape that might have been a person leaning over a car console. The light from his desk lamp haloed the page, everything else in his room fading to quiet.
His phone lay beside him, dark.
He didn't want to text. He didn't want to break the spell of the day. But the feeling in his chest — light and heavy all at once — was hard to hold without letting it spill somewhere.
He wrote a note in the corner of the page:
> When someone makes you feel like a soft place to land.
Then he smiled, shut the sketchpad, and curled up under the blanket, heartbeat humming like background music to a dream.
---
Across campus, Hayden stood at his mirror, removing his glasses, then immediately forgetting where he'd set them down.
The turtleneck was folded neatly on a chair. The mask lay on his desk, newly reshaped, now holding a folded map Sam had added earlier — a detail that hadn't been discussed, just quietly agreed upon. A shared story, still unfolding.
He turned off the main light, leaving just the string of warm fairy lights that draped his bookshelf like sleepy constellations. Then he pulled out a notebook — one he didn't show anyone — and flipped to a blank page.
> Things I didn't expect this week:
1. Glitter in unexpected places
2. Mutual destruction of final projects
3. Sam's laugh
4. The way he looks when he's concentrating — like he's drawing from somewhere deep
5. Wanting more time with him
6. Wanting it to mean something
Hayden tapped his pen once against the page, then added a final line:
He closed the book and lay back on his bed, staring at the ceiling, rehearsing goodbyes that hadn't happened and wondering what might come next.
And somewhere between the tick of the clock and the rustle of wind outside, both boys drifted to sleep thinking of the same moment:
A soft hand on a soft head.
A ride home.
A day that felt like something new was beginning.