brooks & hale ✔️

bonus chapter!

a/n :

i had the idea for this extra scene after i wrote the book and began writing it, but clearly, never completed it (classic me). i've revisited it multiple times over the past two years and finally, finally, finished it!
it takes places within the timescale of b&h, between chapter twenty-nine and thirty (that's right before hassan tells brooks he knows about his relationship with hale and elliot outs brooks to the whole school, if you can't remember or can't be bothered to go to reread those chapters) and is super long because it's actually two chapters worth, one from each of their pov's, but i crammed it into one cheeky bonus chapter.
apologies for the stupidly long time it took for me to get this written down as more than a concept in my head and who knows, maybe one day i'll finish that epilogue i started two years ago! but no guarantees because of who i am as a person!

b r o o k s ;

MOST TEENAGERS HIS AGE spend their Saturday evenings at parties, getting drunk, generally doing rebellious teenage things that were unsavoury and probably illegal. When he wasn't studying (lame, yeah, but that was the price of taking five subjects), Brooks spent his Saturday nights debating which movies to marathon.

"Aw, c'mon, you guys," Calla complained, waving DVD cases that were too blurry to make out on the small screen of her laptop. "You already vetoed Mean Girls and Legally Blonde. You seriously can't allow Devil Wears Prada?"

"No," Hassan said flatly, and Brooks nodded agreement. He might have been gay, but he knew as much about fashion as a teaspoon, so that movie didn't hold much enjoyment. "You've already forced us to watch it five times. I'm not putting myself through that torture again."

"Fine, fine." She held up another DVD with a hopeful expression. "Mamma Mia?" 

Brooks grimaced. "Please tell me that isn't the singalong version."

"Well, obviously! What else?"

"Vetoed," Brooks and Hassan said simultaneously, the immediate response to the majority of the films Calla scrounged up from her extensive collection.

"This is why I need girl friends," she grumbled, tossing the DVD over her shoulder. It bounced off her dresser to join the other rejected movies on the floor. "You guys suck. You know these are all classics, right?"

"I don't think you know what classics are," Hassan said.

Brooks wondered how their Skype call had turned into an attempt to schedule a movie marathon, even though they were only going to Calla's tomorrow. This was the only method in which Brooks and Hassan got even the slightest say in what they were watching — if they didn't do this, they'd turn up at Calla's house and be forced to watch hours of bitchy girls and fake blonde hair and too many songs that Calla knew all the words to.

Calla Brodeur had many talents, but singing was most definitely not one.

Brooks heard his phone buzz on the bedside table and he rolled over on his bed to grab it, leaving them to their bickering of what exactly the definition of "classics" was. Hassan reserved it for movies such as Shawshank Redemption, while Calla was insistent that Mean Girls was a classic. Brooks couldn't help his involuntary smile when he saw the text was from Hale.

hale :
hey are you at home?

brooks :
yeah i have no social life remember