living in the present tense | strxvinsky
It's a habit of his to waver between painful shyness and overexcited eagerness in most situations, and it's made no better when faced with other children. Mortimer makes it a point to put Edmund between himself and any other person, using the older boy as a buffer of sorts, which he's all too glad to serve as.
Even Lord St. John-Smythe wouldn't have been able to guess how quickly the two boys had taken to each other, Edmund becoming a shield for Mortimer while, in exchange, the younger boy served as an adoring audience for him, often being dragged into whatever ideas filled his head, most leading to trouble of some sort.
And now they're both equally as curious about the boy sitting quietly on his own in the sitting room while the adults have moved elsewhere in the house.
In one of his bolder moods, Mortimer comes out from behind the doorway and makes it halfway across the room before a hand slightly larger than his own grabs at the back of his shirt and keeps him from advancing. "I'm Mortimer," he blurts out, struggling against Edmund's hold. "And this- this bruiser of a vice is Edmund. Let me go! I can talk to whomever I please!"
"And who are you?" Blunt as ever, Edmund doesn't break eye contact with the other boy as hauls his friend back, using the few inches of height difference to his advantage. "Do you even speak English?"