Finally coming out of the slump! Thank you for the wait! I know I still have hot spring Caleb's unfinished WIP, but I also know stressing over finishing it will do me no good 💆
I also will sell digital fancomic on my Ko-Fi later if it's more than 5 pages, currently working on it (There will still be free comics so dont worry :D)
❄️Any Zayne girlies here? I hope I managed to capture his features… it was the first time I tried to draw him.
I love Zayne… but in a different way. I don't know why, but while reading the story, I kept getting these 'father figure' vibes, the kind I never really had. There was something so comforting about him, so familial… The way he’s always checking if I’ve eaten or worrying about my health… He’s just such a good man.
If you’ll excuse me ima go watch some movie about some old dude riding his lawnmower cross-state or some guy lost on an island talking to a volleyball or whatever that’s more in my ballpark
Tags: Zayne/Caleb/MC, polyamory, autistic!Zayne, anxiety. Can be read as DID or body sharing; self-cest or pseudo-incest (it’s whatever you want it to be).
“Are you nervous?”
The question is so sudden the soaped up plate slips out of your grip. It splits perfectly in the middle as it hits the bottom of the sink. You stare at the sharp edges, glimmering in their newborn glory. The deep hum of water running through the pipes and out of the kitchen faucet deafens your throughs for a moment.
“Earth to pipsqueak? Do you hear me?”
“Don’t scare me like that, gege,” you admonish. “Of course I am nervous. Today will be my first real mission.”
You pick up two halves of the plate and throw them into the trash. When you straighten from bowing over the trashcan a lone chopstick stares at you from the sink. Where is its sibling? Did it slip down the drain?
“Scared of this, scared of that,” laughs Caleb. “Who raised this scaredy cat, hm?”
“You did, dumbass,” you retort without enthusiasm, your mind elsewhere.
If the second chopstick is in the pipes, then it’ll surely get stuck on the bend, and you’ll have to disassemble it, lest it accumulates grime and clogs the sink. There’s probably so much nasty stuff in there already — old oil you’ve poured in the sink despite your brother saying you shouldn’t do that; hair from when you’ve washed it here instead of in the bathroom, too tired to do it properly; bits of food, charred and over salted, from your cooking adventures. Maybe you could buy one of those things, how’s it called? A plumber’s snake or something? But even then it’ll be gross. You don’t want to do it.
“Gege, can you unclog the sink?”
“Sure,” he agrees easily. “Later, when we are both free.”
Relieved, you slam your palm on the faucet’s handle to turn the water off, and flick your palms. The task is as good as done in your book.
“Hey, stop that! It went into my eye,” grumbles Caleb.
“Serves you well,” you answer cheerfully, and wipe your face with the bottom of your shirt. Instead of reaching for a towel you dry your hands on your pyjama pants next. Caleb complains some more, but you pay him no mind. The sink and the chopsticks are forgotten in favour of going back to your anxiety.
The hunters uniform is the only piece of clothing you keep in pristine condition, despite it being easily replaceable. Hunters go through uniforms rather quickly, as it gets torn, splattered with dirt and blood all the time. Still, the uniform means you’ve made it. Somehow. So it has to be clean, even if keeping things clean is hard. There’s so much that needs to be done at home, and at work, an unending struggle between you and expectations. Caleb manages your wardrobe for you, shopping, washing, and mending clothes when needed. And he’s pretty good at keeping up with fashion too, as his outfits often got you a compliment or two from other girls.
You shrug off your pyjamas, letting Caleb catch it and put it in place with his Evol. Then you carefully take your uniform out. Time to get ready.
“So,” Caleb drawls, “why are you so nervous? You know you’ll do great.”
“What if I don’t do great? What if I mess up?” you say stubbornly, tugging on your uniform pants.
“Then we’ll deal with the fallout.”
You put on the white shirt next and add, mulish, “What if I do something so bad it can’t be fixed? What if someone gets killed because of me?”
Caleb sighs. “Pip, we’ve been over this. I know you’ve wanted to be a hunter since you were little. You can do it. You are just a little anxious. It’ll pass.”
The uniform on, and buttoned up, you stand in front of the full length mirror in the bedroom. Caleb pats your head, which looks awkward reflected back at you. Not awkward as in uncomfortable to perform, but awkward because it’s dumb.
“Stop that,” says Caleb sternly. The whirlwind of your thoughts immediately quells, suppressed by his authority. “Look,” he taps the mirror, “you are so cool in your uniform. You’ll do great.”
Feeling both chastised and guilty, you nod, and pat your chest in apology.
”Let me check your bag before you go out,” he adds.
—
Being a hunter is much like being a doctor. The majority of time is spend on writing reports, explaining why you did this or that in an extremely stressful situation and why that wasn’t dumb. “I know what I am doing!” you write, using other, cooler, and more professional words, “Everything turned out fine! Please don’t fire me!”
In previous missions you were a part of one of three newbie groups, led by a senior hunter. This time it would be only you and your partner, also a senior hunter. Just you and the guy who slept face down behind his desk when you came to work today. Great.
Others might see your job as heroic, but in reality it’s little more than the police service, just worse. (“So are you a doctor or a police officer, pip?”) Instead of dealing with people who could hurt you or others out of confusion, anger, fear, or a million of other human reasons, you deal with something alien, mindless, yet cruel enough it will hurt anyone it sees. Maybe you should have gone to work at the police, like grandma insisted. You’ve never wanted to, and Caleb was decidedly against it, insisting he wouldn’t allow you be at the mercy of an organisation like that. At the time you didn’t understand what he meant, and actually you weren’t even supposed to listen to them talk, but you did, because you were too curious.
Grandma always acted differently around Caleb. She rarely punished or grounded him. Even when Caleb got into a huge fight with the boys who bullied you, seriously injuring one of them by stabbing through his arm with a stick grandma didn’t say much. As soon as Caleb yelled he’d done it because he was protecting you, she just send you both in your room.
When grandma talked to Caleb her voice would gain a subtly bewildered tone to it. She never hugged Caleb or called him sweetheart like she did with you.
Despite all of that grandma would buy things for Caleb too, saying a growing boy needs this or that. Whenever she found time and energy to cook, she would ask who out of the two of you would be having dinner, and if she needed to add cilantro. You loved cilantro just as much as Caleb hated it, so if you wanted to eat it, he had to withdraw as far as he could. But you hated being alone. That’s why as a kid you‘ve invented a “cilantro hour” when you’d stuff yourself with dishes full of it, while Caleb slept. Then you would brush your teeth, tongue, and the inside of your cheeks twice, and only then wake Caleb up. Otherwise, as you two discovered, Caleb would throw up immediately upon feeling the taste. In the same manner he had his own private time when he, to grandma’s horror, ate lemons. You were okay with lemon flavoured sweets and lemonades, but the intense sourness of the fruit was too much for you. Your brother however could straight up bite into a lemon, and chew happily without as much as crinkling his nose. But most of the time neither of you needed to “sleep” while the other was busy doing things. Homework, hobbies, cooking, cleaning, and everything else you did together. Certain things required a different touch, so one would be at the forefront, controlling the body, while the other observed and chatted with the first, or hummed a song, or kept an eye on something else that needed attention.
According to others you possessed an uncanny ability to pay attention to many things at once, and concentrate at a long periods of time. In truth you and Caleb just switched whenever either of you grew tired. Your brother also had a greater sense of direction, was more focused on details and was extremely disciplined. (“That’s because I am your gege.”)
Caleb dreamed of being a pilot. You were sure he’d do great at any profession, especially one that required a desciplined mind. When you were still in high school you had a serious conversation, just between you two, what profession you should pursue. Caleb was adamant the decision was yours.
“But we’ll be doing it together! We should pick something that we both like at least,” you’ve said, throttling an innocent plush frog Caleb won for you that day.
“Being a hunter is fine. We’ll be a pilot next time,” placated Caleb. He made you unclench your fingers.
“What next time?” you huffed.
Your brother pinched your nose.
“When it’s my turn to have a body. Then I’ll make you study planes all day!”
He already studied planes, and bugs, and read all about stars and spaceships when it was his free time. Just as you, in your own free time studied wanderers, played video games or reread your collection of BL books. You agreed bugs were interesting, and Caleb liked the sci-fi books.
Lumiere wasn’t the only reason you wanted to be a hunter. Deep down you knew somehow it was just the right choice. You should be a hunter. You should protect, but do so by destroying. Teenagers were full of themselves like that. For an adult a thought like that was strange. But it was the truth. You were in your place, like a nice little cog, snug in a perpetually moving mechanical tower.
And now you officially work as an alien (an actual, real alien) hunter for the special organisation, based on a small planet, that pretends it can withstand the onslaught of such anomaly. Despite it being your dream job, it’s still bleak. Will the planet even hold on long enough for you to live the time intended for you? And if it does, will Ever be the one to fuck everyone up with its greed? Or will you just be killed on duty, left to bleed out, while a monster slaughters people around you, because you’ve made a mistake? The only comfort is the knowledge Caleb will always be with you.
“Of course I’ll always be with you, meimei.” You can hear him smile as he says it. “Why are you so gloomy today?”
Idly, you tap on the space key on the keyboard.
“Life is scary,” you whisper under your nose.
“Well, yeah,” your brother matches your whispering, “But there are good parts too. Cute plushies. A sunny day. A—
“Noodles with lots of chillies and cilantro…”
Caleb sputters indignantly. “See if I try to cheer you up again, you dummy!”
You are distracted from the quarrel by a loud rattling of Tara rolling up to you on her office chair.
“Hi.” Tara smiles broadly, waving at you, paying no mind to the fact she’s just on the other side of the table. “Waiting for your turn?”
You nod frantically. “I know other teams get dibs over newbies, and it is good it’s a slow day but still…” You pointedly look at your partner sleeping. It’s been hours. He hasn’t moved as of yet. At least he doesn’t snore.
Tara signs, and lies on the desk too. “Yeah… Oh, wait, want to see something cool, Xia-jie?”
She takes out her phone, taps on it a couple of times, and shoves it right into your face. You back out a little to see properly. It’s a farming game.
Together with Tara you spend about an hour making a character for you and setting up the farm. Tara's character is a crane with cute buns, dressed a pink sweater and a pink skirt. You make a leopard and dress him up in a white summer dress and a straw sunhat.
A crane and a leopard run around, watering crops, chopping wood and cutting grass until the operator finally calls your team.
—
Nether you nor Caleb think about much while you ride to the place where the wanderer appeared. Xavier nods off again on the bike, leaning his helmet on your shoulder. But his grip is tight across your stomach so at least you aren’t afraid of him falling off.
The police had already cleared the mall by the time you arrive. You are immensely glad for it. Despite the mandatory psychology classes covering how to calm people who are hurt or just scared, you still have no idea what to do. It’s one thing to know something, and another to put it to practice. What if someone started crying? Or throwing up? What if they were missing a limb?!
Xavier gently bumps your shoulder with his, then nods to the entrance.
Right. You don’t have time to panic.
Xavier leads the fight, with you providing support and enhancement for his Evol. Having shrugged off his drowsiness, he’s much too fast for you to catch up to him and fight by his side equally. And you aren’t even supposed to do that yet.
There’s not much space for fancy manoeuvres, with the glass walls, and the perfume stations, and many, many expensive things put on display The Hunters Association would have to pay for if they became damaged. Xavier tries to keep the wanderer in the relatively empty middle of the mall. There’s still fake plants, and benches, but at least they are cheap. You almost want to beg the wanderer to create its little space bubble, so you don’t have to think about having your first real paycheck coming with a deduction roughly the cost of a couple of Hermes bags. Can’t it aim its sword-arm away?! There’s a perfectly good Lego store nearby.
“Why the Lego store?” whinges Caleb. “And sets are expensive too!”
You’d really like to argue about how much does your brother think a Hermes bag costs, but Xavier calls out to you.
The resonance faded overtime. Xavier needs your support. You make haste, running a short distance to him, while the wanderer recovers from a heavy blow of Xavier’s sword. But your boot slips on shards of glass littering marble floors, and you come barrelling down.
A lot of things happen quick succession. Xavier jerks his sword away, so you don’t fall straight on it, and tries to catch you with his free hand. You try to catch yourself by grabbing Xavier, but forget you are holding two guns. As a result the gun catches Xavier’s cardigan and you drag it down as you fall, undressing and restraining him in one motion. At least you are quick enough to aim the barrel straight up, and take your finger off of the trigger. Caleb tries to catch you too, and actually succeeds, using his Evol. You only scrape the tip of your nose on the floor. In this exact moment Knave decides it’s a great time to kill you, actually. It stabs its sword-arm down, intending to pierce your scull.
Caleb flips you on your back, like you are a door swinging open. Unfortunately Xavier shoves at the wanderer with all of his strength at the same time, and what could have been a miss turns into a long slice along your shoulder, as Knave stumbles and flails.
Xavier, bound by the cardigan, and losing his balance due to putting everything in one move, starts to fall too.
For this resonance you don’t need touch. Only a second passes, and both Xavier and Knave are already frozen mid-fall.
You shoot the wanderer through the head from your prone position on the floor. It’s sword-arm crumples like paper under gravitational forces at the same time. You get up with difficulty, click safety on your guns, and shove them into holsters. Only then you right Xavier. Caleb helpfully lets the resonance dissipate. Knave falls, but dissipates before it hits the floor.
Xavier blinks owlishly at you with his beautiful blue eyes.
“Yeah,” you answer his silent question. “I really have two. Sorry about… all of that. Do I… get a disciplinary now?”
His pale brows furrow. “The most important things is that you are alive. Mishaps happen all the time. It’s okay.”
“I fell on my face. And nearly killed us both.”
Caleb taps on your thigh to calm you.
Xavier tugs his cardigan back into place, and shrugs lightly.
“Mishaps happen all the time,” he repeats. “You need to go to the hospital. Do you have a first aid kit?”
“Yeah, it’s in the tail bag.”
Xavier nods, and simply starts walking away. You hurry after him, now mindful of where you step, even though it doesn’t matter anymore. He cuts through a group of gawkers on his way to your motorcycle like a king walking up to the throne. Police officers don’t try to ask either of you anything, only glance at your injured arm briefly.
Quick and efficient, Xavier is done with wrapping your wound in a couple of minutes. He pats your healthy shoulder lightly in consolation.
Possessing two Evols has been unheard of before you. A rare Anhausen class Evol coupled with gravity manipulation. Instructors at the Academy said you could bend time, make planets change its course or destroy the whole solar system with a black hole. Potentially, of course. If your primary Evol stabilised.
But you don’t have primary Evol. You have your enhancement, and Caleb has his gravity manipulation. Caleb is not secondary to you, he is his own person.
Caleb may jokingly call you dummy, but you are not stupid. You know how others see Caleb, when they learn about his existence.
Grandma send you to the therapist when you were in middle school. He explained what was wrong with you using proper, correct words. Both you and Caleb knew what he said was untrue. It didn’t work like that.
Here’s how it actually worked — you resonated with Caleb. If Caleb was you, then theoretically he’d be able to use your enhancement Evol too, but he couldn’t. If you were Caleb then you wouldn’t have needed resonance to use his Evol. But you did. It was that simple. But the therapist didn’t get it. The psychiatrist who came after didn’t get it either. Or the next one. They got mad at you. You’ve felt their irritation so acutely, as if they were trying to suffocate you with it. They insisted, they pressed, they repeated you were wrong again and again. Soon you got so scared, Caleb started going to every session alone.
Eventually grandma stopped taking Caleb to the psychiatrist too. You thought she was disappointed with the pair of you, but Caleb said she was just sad and confused. Caleb always knew better, as the older sibling, so you believed him. Grandma just didn’t get it, like everyone else. But because she loved you both, she got sad she couldn’t help you. Or something like that.
Caleb decided it would be better if less people knew about him. He appeared to even be fine with it, but it hurt you deeply. You wanted your brother to have a normal life. To have his own real friends at least. Not just people he played online with.
But as always, Caleb was right. The Academy didn’t suspect anything. You smoothly got through, and now could be officially called a hunter. There wasn’t even any evidence of you going to psychiatrists, as all of them were grandma’s old friends. And wasn’t that just great?
The ride to the closest hospital is silent. You hold Xavier with one arm across his stomach, ass glued to the seat of the motorcycle with Caleb’s Evol. Your shoulder hurts a lot. Strangely, you feel like it’s nothing special. Caleb is quick to distract you from mulling over why with nonsensical talk, and moves you slightly away from the sensations of the body.
—
The Akso hospital is busy at this time of the day. Or maybe it’s busy at all time, as the best hospital in Linkon. The moment you step inside you are assaulted with bright lights, sharp smells and loud noises. Doctors and nurses rush around, while patients either nervously chatter with each other or idly walk the corridors, dragging drip stands on wheels after themselves.
You turn to look outside through the glass doors. Xavier sits on the motorcycle, his head turned your way. You can’t make out his facial expression in the twilight. He doesn’t move, even though he should be able to see you clearly, standing in the middle of the well lit up hospital as you are. Is he asleep again?
You shift from foot to foot, uneasy for some reason. A dark spot on periphery of your vision catches your attention. Among other patients waits an old man in a coat and a suit. Seats to the right and left of him are empty. He leans on his cane, sharp chin resting over his folded palms. The slick black cane ends with a horse head handle, its sharp fangs bared at the world. The old man himself looks vaguely familiar. You think you’ve seen him on TV or something. Yet his face is so sallow it’s hard to be sure. He looks more like a skeleton dressed in skin than an alive person. The old man is obviously very, very sick. Why does he wait here?
“Don’t stare, pip,” says Caleb. His voice is tense, and your shoulders raise up to your ears involuntarily.
The old man moves. He turns to look outside too, or maybe he turns his good ear to you to hear better. He taps the cane on the floor, like a spider plucking at its web to check if someone had stuck in it.
Caleb turns his back to the old man, and silently stalks away. You want to ask, but decide it would be better not to.
Your brother walks to the main nurse station, where you notice Yvonne chatting with a nurse you don’t recognise. She notices you too, and her eyes crinkle above her mask, indicating she’s smiling under it.
“Oh, hello, miss Xia. Do you need any help?”
The other nurse looks between Yvonne and you curiously.
Caleb lets go, and you peel away the jacket to show them the crusted with blood uniform shirt. You smile awkwardly, unused to bothering anyone but your grandma and brother.
“I got injured on duty. I think I need stitches.”
The other nurse starts typing something on her laptop, but Yvonne quickly waves her off.
“I’ll take care of it. Doctor Li is free at the moment.” Yvonne raises one eyebrow at you. “Unless you’d like someone else to do it?”
“If it’s okay, I mean, if Zayne is free, I’d prefer him.”
Yvonne raises the other eyebrow.
“I mean doctor Li,” you hastily correct yourself.
“O-oh,” drawls her friend, “it’s that miss Xia.”
Yvonne waves her off more vigorously.
“Don’t mind her,” she says to you. “We remember every patient. It’s very important. Let’s go?”
The other nurse snickers as you walk past the main station. You trudge after Yvonne, already exhausted. Nothing even happened, not really, but you couldn’t handle even this much.
“Yeah, nothing happened,” mocks Caleb. “And we are absolutely not dripping blood right now.” He pats your chest gently. “Hold on for a bit. We’ll go home and rest soon.”
Yvonne slips in Zayne’s office first. There’s brief muffled talking, and then she slips out.
“Here you go,” she ushers you in, flapping her hands around your shoulders without touching, mindful of your injury. “Doctor Li will take care of you.”
The door closes behind you, and Caleb and you are left alone with Zayne. You’ve been here before. Even if you weren’t, this doctor’s office doesn’t look much different from dozens of others you’ve been to as a children. White. Barely any furniture. Empty not only in a literal way, but—
You feel the head turn, eyes focusing on a little tray of candies on a white ergonomic desk. To the side sits a small pot with flowers. It’s colder here too.
“We are fine,” says Caleb quietly.
Zayne sits behind the desk, his palms poised over the keyboard of his laptop. But he isn’t typing anything. His phoenix eyes look at you blankly behind thin wire frames of his glasses.
“Hi,” you wave at Zayne with your healthy hand.
He blinks, and the impression that you startled him, even though Yvonne announced you’d be coming, dissipates.
“Hello,” he says back, clipped as always. Still, there’s something in his face that makes you relax. Maybe it’s because he became familiar to you again, or maybe it’s something else. So minuscule you can’t pinpoint it, like the way his eyes shine.
You sit on the chair opposite of Zayne and wait. He types something on the laptop, most likely writing down the purpose of your visit Yvonne related to him in your medical records. Caleb and you watch the way his thin fingers glide over the keyboard. White light from the screen reflects in his glasses, making it even harder to understand what’s he’s thinking about.
“Probably deserts,” whispers Caleb.
“Yeah, my guess is macaroons,” you whisper back.
Zayne stops typing, and rolls his chair to the side. He glances at you briefly, then stands and goes to the little sink in the corner to wash his hands.
“How are you two?”
“I am totally fine,” you answer quickly. “Except for the arm. A wanderer got me.”
Zayne nods while staring at the sink. “And you, Caleb?” he prompts softly.
Caleb coughs to mask his awkwardness at being addressed. Not many people talk to him directly.
“I am fine, ge,” says your brother in his own voice. The body’s larynx drops, the muscles on your ribs relax, allowing the deeper pitch to emerge. “Our heart is fine, we haven’t felt anything strange in a long time:”
“Glad to hear it.” Zayne finally turns to you, but his gaze is stuck between your eyebrows.
Zayne was always kind to Caleb and you, even if he sometimes showed it in an unconventional ways. Like that one time when he gifted you snow (Caleb later explained he tried to make three seals out of it). Zayne didn’t understand pretend play very well, so instead all three of you would make up stories about passerby strangers sitting in the park and eating ice cream or read books together at his house. Zayne could easily distinguish between you and Caleb, even before your brother got a different voice. And he never made fun of you two for being that way. In turn, nether you nor Caleb made fun of Zayne’s habits, like eating sweets all the time or talking like an adult.
Zayne busies himself with preparing everything needed for stitching your arm. His movements are sure and calculated as he takes things from the cabinet. There’s a certain sense of comfort in watching a person who knows what they are doing. It makes you believe everything will be fine.
“Take your jacket and shirt off, please,” asks Zayne, his phoenix eyes now downcast.
You snicker together with Caleb. This part was funny the first time too. Zayne is so awkward about it. Is he like that with all of his patients, you wonder. Everyone has to undress in front of a doctor, otherwise how can they do their job? And Zayne usually needs to listen to your heart too. He’s seen you in just your bra already. What’s there to be embarrassed about?
You shrug off the jacked and the ruined shirt, leaving only your tanktop on, and prop your elbow on the tabletop, covered in what looks like a puppy pad to you.
Zayne’s medical glove clad hand feels like pure ice on your skin as he gently tugs the skin this way and that to assess the damage. Still, you don’t flinch. Up close you can smell the disinfectant and soap on him, and underneath a barest hint of something sweet and flowery.
“Osmanthus,” murmurs Caleb. “Did you know osmanthus and apples in green tea taste good, pip?”
You breathe in deeply. “No, we need to try it.”
Zayne cleans the wound carefully, never taking his eyes off of it. You and Caleb watch the way strands of his hair flutter as he moves; the way the thin frames of his glasses slip down his nose ever so slightly; the way his fingers glide over the skin.
But when Zayne takes out the needle, Caleb forcibly turns your head with a gruff “Don’t look”.
“How have you been, ge?” asks Caleb.
Your consciousness is nudged slightly out of the way again, so you don’t feel the pain as acutely.
“Fine.”
You roll your eyes at the answer.
“Anything interesting happened lately?” presses Caleb, his voice cheerful.
Zayne hums behind the surgical mask, considering.
“I’ve been at the conference at the beginning of the month. It was very informative.”
“Did you give a presentation there?”
“Yes.”
You snicker. Immediately Caleb gives you a mental equivalent of a pinched ear.
“I am trying! This is supposed to be a joint effort!” he says to you.
“Yeah, and the only ones putting in the effort is us,” you sigh.
“Are you…” Zayne trails off for moment. His thumb rubs the underside of your arm briefly. ”Are you okay? Was it your first mission?”
“It was… I don’t know, I mean, I got injured, that’s bad, right?”
“Meimei is really anxious,” adds Caleb. “But I think she did great.”
“I am sure you both done a good job,” says Zayne softly. “No need to be anxious, although the first day is always the hardest. In a week you can be ready for another mission.”
Caleb turns to look at the arm. Zayne is covering it with a waterproof bandage, rubbing the edges with his knuckle so it sticks better.
“Done. Now keep it out of the water, and change bandages every day. I’ll write down what ointment you’ll need.”
Together with your brother you watch him clean everything, wash his hands again, and write down the instructions. Caleb dresses back. You are too mesmerised by how calm Zayne seems. He’s done plenty of scary, complicated and impressive things, but he doesn’t lose his composure.
Zayne glances at you again. Then he tries to main eye contact, but his green eyes slide away after a couple of seconds, only for his gaze to stop on your nose. (“No, he’s looking at our freckles.”)
“Are you two free tomorrow?” he asks. He sounds a little surprised at himself, and tries to cover it by tugging at his tie, successfully making it even more awkward.
“Yeah. We’ll get a day off because of the injury for sure,” says Caleb.
Zayne nods. He’s clearly mulling something over, still like a statue except for going back to fixing his tie again and again.
“Do you want to meet up with us?” you ask in your higher voice. “Tell us how you’ve been?”
Zayne perks up a little. “I just did. But yes, I do. At six?”
“Yes, at six would be great. We’ll wait for your shift to be over on the first floor.”
The tie fidgeting stops. Zayne curls his palms on the desk, and smiles. His lips barely move, but you can see it in his eyes.
“There’s a café near by. They sell crêpes.”
“Sounds like a plan,” you and Caleb smile back broadly.
The corner of Zayne’s mouth twitches up even more. He nods again, and goes back to staring at his laptop. Knowing it’s the end of the conversation, you take your instructions, steal a candy from his table and walk out, already dreading explaining everything to Jenna.
—
The talk with Jenna goes surprisingly smoothly. When she asks Xavier he even helps you, presenting your mistakes like something insignificant.
Xavier drives you home. It turns out you are neighbours. You aren’t sure how you feel about that just yet.
Caleb helps you hold your stitched up arm out of the water as you shower. The bathroom is dark, as to not worsen your stress headache; only a sliver of light spilling on the floor from the living room.
You’ve shed all of your clothes in the living room and gone to shower. Your precious uniform is now lying in a bloody heap.
Caleb talks about a book he’d read recently. His voice reverberates from the tiled walls, the low timbre of it making you drowsy.
“No opipsnions from you, pipsqueak?” he asks finally.
“No,” you answer silently. You wonder if Xavier can hear you “talking to yourself in different voices”.
“Are you excited about tomorrow?”
”Yeah. Zayne looks so cool now.”
“Me too. But I miss his chubby cheeks. He used to be so squishy,” laughs Caleb.
“And now he’s like an immortal from the cultivation books.”
“Definitely a shizun type,” Caleb jokes.
You yawn and lean your temple on the warm moist wall.
“Alrighty. Let me dry you real quick. I’ll take care of everything.”
You feel barely there as Caleb dries off and dresses up. He heats up something delicious, but you doze off before you can taste it. He probably does other important stuff around the house, but when you resurface you are already lying on the bed.
You are warm. Your stomach is full.
“The sink?” you mumble.
“Later, we are too tired.”
You shift to lay on your healthy side under the blanket, one arm thrown over the side, and the other grasping the opposite elbow. Caleb is mindful of the injury. Usually he’d hold the shoulder, and much tighter.
“Okay, I am holding you, pip,“ he says.
“Thank you, gege.” You wiggle to burrow deeper into the mattress.
“I love you lots and lots, do you know that?”
“Yeah, love you lots and lots too,” you mumble, starting to drift off again from how cozy you are. You feel Caleb’s mind start to dim too. “I want fried eggs for breakfast.”
Caleb yawns. “Okay, pip,” he says, barely distinguishable.
