Luc shifted his gaze for long enough to read the tweet. "Looks great. You might want to get a bit faster at writing them though. Ten minutes to craft two-hundred and eighty characters must be a record."
Adam scowled, which was not the reaction Luc had hoped to get from him.
"It was a joke."
"A bad one." Adam lowered his chin. "I know I'm not as good at this shit as you, but I'm doing my best."
Luc reached out and touched Adam's shoulder before his brain could engage and tell his hand not to. But seeing as he'd done it, he chose not to move his hand away. "I know that. I'm sorry, I was just poking fun."
Adam jerked away from his touch and shifted his chair an inch to the left. "I told you not to touch me," he hissed.
Luc dropped his hand into his lap. "Trust me, you'd know if I was trying to touch you inthatway."
If he stepped over that line again, there would be no doubt in either of their minds. He would make it absolutely clear what he wanted from Adam.
Adam put the tweet live and then switched tab to the Facebook account. "More words to write," he muttered. "Great. You actually enjoy doing this for a living?"
Luc chuckled. "There's a lot more to marketing than running social media accounts, but yes, I do enjoy it."
They lapsed into silence again as Adam typed, then deleted, then finally wrote a post.
"Too long," Luc said, when Adam had finished his fifth attempt. "Just because you have more space, it doesn't mean you need to use it."
"Why don't I just copy and paste the tweet, then?" Adam growled. "Or link the accounts. You can do that, right? Whatever I post on Facebook goes out as a tweet and vice versa?"
"Just because you can, it doesn't mean you should."
"Stop trying to sound clever. Everyone knows that saying."
"You know you're cute when you get annoyed," Luc said.
It was another instance of not engaging his brain fast enough. When Adam scowled, it spurred him to carry on. He'd already pissed his stepbrother off, what harm would it do to prod a little further?
"You get this adorable V shaped wrinkle right here." He pointed to the bridge of Adam's nose, his finger only a millimetre or two from actually touching Adam's skin.
Adam glared at him but didn't flinch away. "You're an ass."
Luc snatched his hand back in response to a knock at the door.
A second later, their dad opened it and peered into the room. "How's it going?"
"Great," Adam said, staring at the laptop screen again.
"Yeah," Luc agreed. "Great."
Ken paused for a second, his gaze flicked between his two sons. "Good. Your mum called, she wants me to pick her up. We'll be back soon, okay?"
"Okay."
He left, shutting the door behind him. Neither Luc nor Adam moved as Ken's footsteps faded away down the stairs. There was a pause for a minute or two and then the front door slammed shut with a rattle that reverberated through the house, reaching them on the top floor.
"That's a good post," Luc said. "Find a photo we haven't used yet and you're good to go."
Adam didn't make any attempt to attach a photo to the post. He sat with his shoulders hunched and his jaw clenched, staring at the screen.
"I'm sorry for being a jerk," Luc said. "Sometimes I don't know when to stop."
"Apparently not."
