You know, I had a weird thought. I was writing this one night while watching a "true story" movie about a serial killer ("Woman of the Hour"), and then I went back to reread a couple of chapters for continuity's sake, and it just occurred to me, like, 'wouldn't it be funny if Mars was actually a serial killer?' What a twist that would be, and for just a minute, I was tempted to start taking things there. It'd be a helluvalot easier than a mere romance. These things are hard.

Von

Chapter Five

"Hey."

I pulled the bud from my ear and glanced up at Mars, standing entirely too close to my seat for comfort as the train rocked around us. I had nothing for him but a deadpan, "What." Not that I was trying to be rude, but it had been a tiring day and all I wanted to do was go home and play with Phi and decompress.

He'd been following me around all day again, except for the one class that we had apart. I still hadn't gone for coffee breaks with him, but he seemed to have an utterly unerring sense of where I was in the building, because he always found me afterwards, settled down at my table, and pulled out his sketchbook to draw while I wrote, with only the occasional interruption for a quick comment or three on his behalf. I'd never asked to see his sketchbooks – just like I'd never offered to share my writing – but he would swivel it around on the tabletop for me to take a look and help him decide things, like whether a mechanized suit he was working on, powered by the souls of the damned, should have an extendible, whip-like snake's head for a hand or a plethora of tiny, blade-tipped tentacles to flay its enemies to pieces.

I'd chosen the snake's head. It suited the overall reptilian/serpentine look of the armor that he'd been working on, and the funniest and/or most pathetic thing about it all, was that he'd been drawing this without even realizing where his hand was taking him. And he was a good artist – spectacular, even, in his attention to detail and overall quality – but I couldn't help but roll my eyes and shake my head before going back to my own work. He'd still been eyeing that particular piece like he'd never seen it before, filling the silence with a soft, "huh, would ya look at that." I simply couldn't understand how someone of his calibre could draw something like that without even an inkling of the concept slowly coming to fruition.

Maybe that was part of the main reason why he wanted to go to school for this. To refine his raw talent and give it a focus to center itself around.

"I've got a quick question for you," Mars continued, oblivious to where my mind had gone, eyes shuttered behind his sunglasses. "Do you live around the station?"

Hmm… To lie or not to lie. My mismatched eyes narrowed themselves as I peered up at him from hip height, a truly unfortunate position considering what else was playing through my head. The image of him sucking Daniel's cock was flashing itself through my brain again – the flush in his cheeks, his half-lidded grey eyes, eager to satisfy and drunk on pleasure – and I tore my gaze away to fiddle with the handle of my backpack, hoping like hell that I wasn't about to start blushing like a virginal maiden. "Why?"

"Ah…" Mars gave a sheepish chuckle as he rubbed at the back of his neck, his voice softer than usual. "I kinda didn't use the washroom before I left because I wanted to catch up with you, aaaand now my bladder's on the verge of bursting." His hand flew from the loop it had been holding onto to press his palms together, a contrite, lopsided smile on his countenance. "Could I use your bathroom? Please?"

Wearily dragging myself from the mire I'd been stuck in all day, I scowled up at him. And was immediately rewarded with the thought of nuzzling at his crotch through his jeans, teasing him until he was hard as a rock before taking him out to lavish a little… oral affection on him. I wanted to feel those tattooed fingers in my hair, wanted to feel the salty weight of him in my mouth.

Okay, so I was still stuck in the mire, so sue me.

I wrenched my mind from both the gutter and wondering how open he'd be to the notion of friends with benefits, and refocused myself on our conversation, which was… Right. Bathroom stuff. "Why don't you just wait 'til you get home?"

"Because home, my friend," Mars very deliberately enunciated, his expression altering itself ever so slightly with his words, "is over thirty minutes away, and I can't wait that long." To be perfectly honest, for a moment he reminded me of Jim Carey, probably from The Mask or Liar, Liar. The tone of his voice and the enunciation and the exaggerated calm was enough to make me smother the grin I could feel twitching at the outskirts of my lips, the subtle shudder that ran itself down my spine and over the backs of my forearms.

"Ah," I drawled instead.

"So," the other man drawled as well. "May I? I promise that whatever I see will remain locked behind these eyes in a vault in my brain. And besides," his shoulders froze in a minute shrug, "who would I tell it to? You're pretty much the only person I talk to."

Wait, really? Now he's gotta be messing with me. "Seriously?"

"Uh, yeah." Mars retorted, as though the answer should have been obvious to anyone who didn't have a never-ending reel of smut playing in the back of their head. Case in point: me. "As far as I can tell you're the only one even close to my age, and… Yeah."

"What?" I snorted incredulously. "You don't get along with people younger than you?"

"I can if I have to," the man replied, hanging by one hand from the dangling loop overhead, hunched as he leaned down to talk to me, "but I don't generally enjoy it, no. I have been an old soul since I was a kid," he proclaimed, "and while I had my wild child phase, my dad raised me to be a hard worker who doesn't bitch and complain just because things don't turn out the way I want them to. I never got a Porsche for my sixteenth birthday, but did I complain? No. Did I ever complain that my newest tech gadget wasn't the right model or color? No. Was I realistic about what I wanted for gifts? Hell yes. And I'm not about to start complaining now, when my recon has confirmed that our classes have a bunch of rich kids in them. People who got Mommy and Daddy to pay for their way in. It's the rich people in general, man," he continued sourly. "They just piss me off."

My brain severed itself from the pornography playing through it long enough to catch a potentially hypocritical snag in something he'd told me earlier – and if there was anything I hated more than myself on any given day, it was hypocrites. "Didn't you say you were also fairly well off?"

"I wouldn't say I'm 'well off,' but comfortable, sure, because of my inheritances. My dad's and my farfar's – my grandfather's – both. But I live well within my means and donate things, including money, when I can. I also wasn't always like this, and my family certainly wasn't like this, so I understand what it's like to have a humble upbringing where you don't have much of anything. A lot of my dad's money went back into his shop in the beginning."

Hypocritical? Peering at Mars for a long, muted moment with squinted eyes, my brain hummed to itself while I considered the question. Does it count if he's not flashing his money around like someone in a gangsta rap video? Unfortunately, before long, my mind was racing to another point entirely. I couldn't help it. My curiosity was piqued, and I tilted my head inquisitively before asking, "What kind of shop did he have?"

"CNC machining. He was a machinist from Norway who immigrated here for my mom only for my mom to take off when I was, like, five."

"Oh," I said, brows furrowing ever-so-slightly over my sunglasses as my shoulders sagged. "I'm so sorry. That must've been hard."

"I won't say we always got along, but we had a pretty strong relationship when he wasn't trying his damnedest to beat some sense into me." He hesitated for an instant before hastily adding, eyes wide, hands up with his palms bared, "Figuratively, I mean. Figuratively. He never laid a mean hand on me in my life, even when he probably should have. My nickname was 'drittunge', though. Norwegian for shit kid apparently."

Despite myself, I huffed out a brief breath of laughter, the corner of my mouth tilting itself up a fragment. Okay, now things were starting to make sense if he'd had a wild child phase. That could certainly have put him on the path to a brief career in porn, amongst other things, and in utter spite of my determination not to let Mars sink his hooks into me, I found myself absently wondering what else he'd gotten up to while he was younger. I could see the last vestiges of that wild child even now, in his tattoos and piercings and his flat-out refusal to conform. It lent a depth to him that hadn't been there before, along with this new knowledge of his father and his upbringing as a supposedly single, rambunctious child with a single parent.

I could partially relate to him, at least, with the refusal to conform. Jo and I had been the resident goth/punks amongst our group of outcast friends, all the stoners and nerds and weirdos who just didn't fit in anywhere else. I couldn't even remember how much I'd spent on eyeliner alone in high school – and how much I hadn't spent, given I'd shoplifted my fair share of kohl sticks – but it had been… a lot. All of my clothes had been black, with bondage pants and chains and straps everywhere; I'd had mesh-sleeved tops, and I'd painted my nails black. (I still painted my nails black. And my toenails, as a kind of guilty pleasure. They looked nice painted.) I'd had an obsession with horizontal stripes, especially white, lime green, purple, or red, paired with black. I'd dyed my short, meticulously spiky hair black except for my white forelock, thinking it looked edgier that way. Suddenly overcome with the urge to know if Mars had been the same, I locked the question behind my teeth before it could erupt of its own volition.

You're not supposed to be getting closer to him, remember? Heartbreak waiting to happen, and you don't need that shit now or ever.

"But anyways," Mars suddenly interjected into the relative hush of the train, waving the previous conversation away. "D'you mind? Promise I won't judge you on your openly displayed dildo collection."

Part of me wanted to splutter with indignation, heat rising into my face, but what came out instead was a sigh of resignation as I quietly glared at the empty seat across from us. "Fine," I finally caved in a petulant drawl. "Although, just for the record – and, sorry to let you down, but – I do not have an openly displayed dildo collection."

"No? Shame."

"No, they stay in the drawer where they belong. Because I cut off all their attachments. No moving for them."

Mars just tilted his head back, a broad smile breaking like a wave across his mouth as he gave a silent laugh. And I, like the creeper I am, couldn't help but take in the fine lines of his throat, the jut of his Adam's apple and the cut of his jaw, licking my lips and gently biting the lower of the two before his head lolled forward again with a grin. I made sure my countenance was relaxed in a carefully constructed mask of neutrality by the time he could see me once more. Christ, but he was a masterpiece, and my fingers were itching to draw him, just once. A portrait, maybe, of that moment when his head tipped back with that beautiful smile.

No, my mind firmly drawled. No, we are not getting involved any further than we absolutely have to.

"It's a bit of a walk, though," I absently informed him. I thought for a moment, judging the real distance between my apartment building and the station, and eventually corrected myself. "I mean, it's not hugely far – maybe a couple of blocks across the parking lots and whatever – but…"

"That's fine," Mars replied with a shrug. "We can take my car, and then I'll just take off from your place after I'm done."

Take a ride in his car, my mind contemplatively hummed. And get chopped into pieces? Or questioned to death? Choices, choices…

It wasn't like I was secretly panicking about someone seeing my home, disarrayed and boxed up as it was. I wasn't worried at all. Nope. Nothing to stress about here.

Never mind the fact that Mars seemed collected enough to keep his own home well in order, without boxes turning the place into a mini labyrinth through which I'd had to purposefully carve a path to the areas that saw the most use. It wasn't like the stacks of boxes were high, or anything; there was just… a lot of them, still. Openly displaying what could easily be assumed to be laziness on my part – which of course it wasn't, but I couldn't very well preface the visit with a warning about how my severe depression kept me from getting even the simplest of things done.

God, I hadn't left my laundry all over the place, had I? Had I done the dishes at least? I know I hadn't made my bed, but that was probably fine, and it wasn't like he was going to be getting a tour, anyways. That was one place I could just shut the door on and hide multiple secrets from him. Like the prostate massager I probably hadn't put back in its drawer. (And that I'd lied about. The silicone cock ring was still very much attached to the massager.)

That was the thought that dumped gasoline all over my panic before setting it ablaze.

"Uh…" I delayed, scratching a non-existent itch on the back of my neck with a grimace. "You sure?"

Mars just looked at me like I'd grown two more heads. "Wha- Yes I'm sure. Trust me, I'm not going to be a Judgy McJudgerson about your place. I'm not that kinda guy."

I let a soft breath slip as my shoulders sagged. Barnacle, indeed.

"Fine," I eventually said, heaving a sigh. "You can use the bathroom at mine. Just…" I frowned down into the footwell between the seats, trying to ignore the way I wanted to hunch up as though the smaller I got, the less he'd be able to see me. "Ignore the boxes."

"Sweet! Takk!"

I tucked in my chin and groaned under my breath.

-x-

Mars

-x-

Zeke had a sour expression on his face as we climbed the stairs out of the underground station, remaining silent while I was next to bursting with questions as I led the way up. He'd been lingering a short way behind me, over my left shoulder since we departed from the train, and it made the back of my neck itchy as fuck. So I slowed down and slotted myself in at his side, instead.

"What's wrong, partner? Don't want me seeing your place?"

"No offense," Zeke grumbled, never lifting his eyes from the concrete beneath our feet, "but no."

"Oh come on!" I gave him a hearty slap on the back that jolted him forward half a step. "It'll be fun!"

He turned what I can only assume to be a glare on me. "What's 'fun' about using someone else's bathroom?"

"The essence of one's home tends to reflect the nature of its master, good sir," I informed him in a haughty tone, "and seeing as this is so, I shall delight in discovering traits of your character further."

Zeke pinned me with a sidelong look that said loud and clear that he thought my schpeil was pure bullshit before he went back to watching the concrete.

"You're really into this whole, 'book that's never been opened' thing, aren't you?" He paused. "Is it normal to feel like I'm a virginal maiden about to be sacrificed to a dragon?"

"Dunno, are you actually a virgin?"

"I'm not dignifying that with a response."

Feeling benevolent enough not to tease him further, I laughed and led the way through the parking lot until I could see the tail end of my car, a bright, metallic cherry red that shifted beautifully under the sunlight depending on how you were looking at it. "That's me there," I pointed out, and Zeke cocked his head as we rounded the vehicle next to me to fully reveal my brand-new Mazda CX-5.

I loved the shit out of the little thing, and while turbos were, in my humble opinion, more trouble than they were generally worth, I couldn't deny the little jig my heart gave every time I had need to really pull on the engine. Thankfully, I had a garage, or else I never would've gotten a turbo engine to begin with. They didn't like the cold, and this was Canada. We only really had the two seasons: Winter and Construction.

At any rate, Zeke gave a soft, "huh," when he saw my car in full, and I pulled up to a stop to look at him. "What?"

He was still eyeing my car – SUV, technically – with skepticism before he seemed to drag himself out of his head, gave himself a quick shake and returned my gaze. "What? Oh, oh, no, it's…" He absently swiped a knuckle under his nose. "It's nothing, I suppose. I guess I just thought you'd be driving something else, that's all."

Brow quirked, a confused half-grin on my lips, I asked, "Like what?" And then, without any real heat, "Man, if you're planning on dissing my car, I will take a tire iron to your shins and leave you here to crawl home."

Zeke sucked in a sharp breath through his nose. "No, no, it's not that. It's just…" He eyed my car again and shrugged. "I just kinda pegged you for a sports car or a truck kind of guy, that's all."

"Oh," I emphatically drawled. "We're making assumptions now, are we? What happened to not judging a book by its cover?"

Zeke held up his fish belly-white hands. "That was you, not me."

"Bull shit that was me. It should be an unspoken rule of society, and I am sincerely disappointed in you. I thought you were better than that, man." Chuckling to myself, I dug around in my messenger bag for my keys and sidled my way up the vehicle sandwich to unlock my door. "All right, get your ass in the car, McJudgerson, before I piss myself."

Watching Zeke make his way to the passenger door, I had the utterly unholy urge to tease him some more as he opened it and slid into the leather seat – but I restrained myself, in case I went a little too far and offended him again. He seemed slightly more relaxed just now though – even if he was busy annihilating the hems of his sleeves with twitchy fingers. Gaze lingering, I was honestly surprised there was anything left to annihilate. The rest of his zip-up hoodie seemed fine, but the hems of his sleeves were ragged and torn, some places holding on only by a scarce fistful of threads.

Zeke was looking out the window as I hit the push-button to start the ignition, my gaze flicking back once more to those raggedy edges and the pale fingers worrying at them. So he looked relaxed but obviously wasn't, if his hands were resorting to that kind of self-soothing action. I'd have to be careful about what I said about his place, otherwise I might lose him, and that was, more than anything, the last thing I wanted. I was still being driven by the urge to get to know him, to figure out what made him tick and snark and develop that strange, hot/cold personality that he had. Honestly, it felt a bit like walking through an orchard of mines, but I was okay with that. Challenging people were the best types to get to know.

He obviously wasn't an asshole through and through otherwise he would've made it obvious by now, but neither was he some shy, shrinking violet to be pushed around. It was interesting. And even more than snark, I loved my people to be interesting. I loved plumbing their depths, and sure, sometimes the pressure was enough to crush a person, but I still kept swimming past into their own personal midnight zone, where the fundamental building blocks for their personality lay. Maybe I was a masochist, but it felt built into my genes to discover who people were at their core.

It was too bad, really, that I'd been complacent enough with the higher layers not to subject my ex-fiancée to the same level of scrutiny. Maybe if I had, I would've seen what had wound up coming, like a tsunami in the far distance.

Thrusting the bitter, briny thought from my mind, I backed carefully out of my parking space and put my car into drive, never really going much above 30 klics as I waited for Zeke to point out the way. When we got to the end of the transit station's parking lot and he failed to do so, I glanced over at him while we remained halted at a stop sign only to find him staring out the window still, probably lost within the depths of his own mind again. God, I wish I could just pop open the top of his skull and plug him into a machine that didn't exist so I could see exactly what he was thinking of. His fingers never slowed from torturing their sleeves, and much as I wanted to put a hand over his to still them, I didn't want to try my luck any more than I already had today. He obviously felt uncomfortable being touched, and I didn't want to scare him off.

Instead, I asked, "Zeke?"

He sucked in a sharp breath through his nose, eyes fluttering as they returned to my face. "Mm?"

My mouth pulled itself into a smile. So he was a bit of a space cadet, too. That was cute. "Where am I going? Y'know, to get to your place?" My overfull bladder was tight in my abdomen, my brain screeching at me to find a bathroom. Now. Now now. Now now now now.

"Oh. Uh, just around the next couple of corners."

He began directing me, and I followed like the good little driver I was, until we pulled into the visitor parking in front of a sign that informed me in no uncertain terms that if I stayed there for more than four days, I was likely going to have my car towed. Well, that was just fine. Unlike what Zeke was probably thinking, I had no plans to stay for more than a couple minutes – I mean, unless Zeke wanted to keep me longer. Then it would be impossible for me to say no to him and his beautiful heterochromatic eyes.

But I still had the dogs at home who hadn't been out all day, so there was that to take into consideration as well.

I punched the ignition button again with my knuckle, killing my car and leaving us trapped in an awkward silence as Zeke stared down at his hands, brow furrowed with what looked like concern. My gaze flitted over his features again, his eyes blocked by his sunglasses, his flesh pale except for two high points of color in his cheeks, his mouth and nose pierced several times. I had the abrupt urge to reach over and either tuck a stray lock of mint-ish blue-green hair behind his ear or tug playfully on his stretched earlobe, and smothered both by trying to get his attention another way.

"Zeke, we're here." And my bladder was starting to get real impatient. "Can I come in?"

A meme flashed through my mind of a vampire and an English teacher, with the vampire asking the same question I just had while the English teacher pedantically replied, "I don't know, can you?" It gave me a tiny internal chuckle, especially given the sharpness and prominent points of my canines. Not that I'd had them doctored to be that way – they were just like that by nature. I'd had braces and everything as a kid and I still grew up looking like a vampire. Although, I had to admit, it had attracted the attention of some very interesting people over the years. I'd had some pretty kinky times as a result, with lots of biting thrown in for good measure. Not that I'd ever managed to break skin; they weren't that sharp.

Zeke tore himself from his thoughts again, with the tiniest of head shakes and a long, slow blink. "Uh… Yeah. Sure." I watched him collect his bag from the passenger footwell and duck out of the car before I did the same. He was already walking ahead of me to the doors, bag slung over his shoulder, while I was busy locking up before I trotted after him. We slipped in through the outer doors, and Zeke had his key out, ready to unlock the inner doors, when he paused, head down, eyes trained on the lock. He inhaled sharply, shoulders hunching, and his voice was soft as it tumbled from his triply-pierced lips. "Just don't… joke about my place, okay?"

Head tilting, I frowned for a fleeting moment before saying, "O-kay."

"Okay," Zeke whispered to himself, shoving the key in the lock and turning it until he could pull open the inside door and awkwardly waved me inside, using his body as a door stopper.

I shoved my messenger bag back behind my hip – why did I bring it, anyways? I was just here to use the washroom – and sidled by him, chest to chest. It struck me then that he was really only a couple of inches shorter than my 6'2", even though he seemed intent on continually trying to make himself seem smaller. His eyes remained downcast with that tiny frown beetling his brow the entire time. The doors opened immediately into a small, plain foyer with an elevator to our left, and Zeke was already on his way over to push the button before I took notice. I hustled over as the doors parted with a ding and swivelled on a heel to face them when they began closing. Zeke hefted his bag back up onto his shoulder next to me, fiddling with his cuffs again at his waist as he watched the numbers above the doors.

Why are you so nervous, sweetheart?

We exited on the top floor of the three-storey building and I obediently followed him like a newborn lamb as he led the way through the corridor, until we came to the end of the hall and stopped in front of a door just next to the access to the stairs. He seemed to take another deep breath as he punched in a code on the console above the door's handle and hit a lock button that beeped. He barely opened the door before he stopped and turned his head just enough for me to see a sliver of his face.

"Just remember your promise."

"Right-o."

God, was he a hoarder or something? Was he living on piles of dog shit and used up food containers? Did he even have a functioning bathroom? I couldn't for the life of me understand why he was being so cagey about his place, until he opened the door the rest of the way and stepped in to greet the monochrome furball that was Phi, wiggling with her whole body as her tail lashed back and forth.

I stepped in behind him and let the door close with a heavy snick. Apart from Phi, the very first thing I noticed were the boxes, piled three high in some stacks while others sat alone on the carpet, opened and obviously rummaged through. The next was that, aside from the TV stand and sofa, the living room we'd entered into was practically barren of furniture. There was an almost empty bookshelf on one wall, and a computer desk with what looked like a custom desktop and two monitors on it, but that was it. The disordered pieces of other articles of furniture lay propped against another wall, present but unbuilt.

Zeke wound his way through the boxes and took Phi to the patio door so she could pee on the faux grass patch on the balcony – which, smart of him to have – while I stared around me. His place wasn't exactly roomy, either, which made the stacks of boxes all the more suffocating as I tried not to rudely gawp from my position in the entranceway. I leaned around the wall and peered into the kitchen. Opened boxes there, too, but the dishes and kitchen utensils had been left in piles on the counter.

They weren't dirty, thank god, but still… I could see what must have been the dining area through the kitchen, and there was what I assumed were the bulk of the boxes, piled around the area against the walls with some sitting in the middle of the floor.

Did he just move in? Is this why he doesn't want me joking about his place? I wondered, absently toeing off my boots. I mean, it's a lot, but it's not bad, per se. The apartment looked clean where I could see the floors; the dishes had all been washed; any food items that might have been kicking around were put away. The sofa had a mussed blanket and a pillow on it, and there were games stacked neatly next to one of three gaming consoles hooked up to his TV. A special place had been cleared amongst the boxes in the living room for a big, squishy-looking bed for Phi, and her food and large water dishes – the water was half-full, but both bowls were clean – had a spot in the kitchen for her.

"Did you just move in?" I called over to the open balcony door, where Phi had hunched down to poop while Zeke stood guard, leaning against the rail, ready with a bag turned inside out over his hand. He cast me a perfunctory glance.

"Uh, no," he called back, his tone rich with awkwardness and embarrassment. "I've been here for a while, but I've never managed to… you know…"

Hoping to alleviate his anxiety about a stranger being in his boxed in flat, I returned with, "Hey, it's cool man. No judgment here. Unpacking everything sucks just as much as packing it in the first place. I feel you."

Zeke's only response was a soft, "mm," as he dumped his poo baggy into a bin outside before he came in again, tugging the door shut behind him. "Bathroom's down the hall, by the way. Door on the right."

"Oh! Fuck, right. Thanks!" I wound my way through the labyrinth and escaped into the clear hall before beelining for the bathroom. Also neat and tidy, looking lived in without being messy. Then again, there's only so messy you can get with the bare minimum of two soaps – liquid sweet pea for the sink, presumably unscented bar for the shower – one shampoo, and a vanilla bean exfoliating body wash. I let my gaze wander while I did my business, heaving a sigh of relief while my bladder emptied itself, tempted to snoop but knowing far better than to let that particular impulse take the reins. Everything was clean, so really aside from the boxes I didn't see what the problem was, or why Zeke had been so anxious about letting me in.

So he hadn't gotten around to unpacking yet, so what? There were far worse things I could imagine that would merit embarrassment on the tenant's behalf. And I hadn't seen a dildo party yet, much to my disappointment. It would have spoke volumes about what Zeke was into.

Not that I particularly wanted to know, but… You know, boys will be boys. I couldn't help but absently wonder if he was a size queen. Or if he preferred direct prostate play. Or if he was into some kind of kink, like BDSM. There were a lot of things I had started to wonder, and none of them were decent, all things considered. But I wondered them regardless.

I finished up, washed my hands, and dried them on the nearby hand towel before I returned to the main apartment. "Tusen takk!" I called out to him, arms spread with a magnanimous smile on my face. "A thousand thanks, my friend, for allowing me to use your fine facilities! I don't feel like I'm going to explode anymore!"

With Phi perched happily at his side, Zeke slung an arm over the back of his sofa and turned to face me, his bright blue and brown eyes on full display. "You're welcome, I guess."

"By the by," I continued, mouth running on autopilot once again, "would you mind me asking how much they charge you for this place?"

Zeke's face crumpled into a non-plussed frown. "Why?"

"Just…" My hands made useless gestures through the air as I leaned back on the sofa. "Humor me."

"No, why do you want to know?"

Entirely too capable of sensing the thick lake ice cracking beneath my feet again, I tried to give Zeke an answer that would satisfy him without revealing my true intentions, which had struck as swift and silently as ninjas while I was walking down his hall. "I'm thinking about something."

Oh really, brain? Would you care to share it with the rest of the class?

Zeke's expression flattened, a single brow jumping into a severe arch over dead eyes. "Something that involves my rent? What? Are you trying to figure out how poor I am or something?"

"No no," I immediately replied, waving my hands. "I'm just… cooking something up in my brain and I don't wanna get into the details right now – which are still shaky, at best – or else I'll have to kill you."

"You make a lot of murder jokes for someone who supposedly isn't a serial killer," the other man deadpanned.

I opened my mouth to counter that, and then I realized I had nothing to counter it with, and snapped my jaw closed again. Instead, I pursed my lips, gave a low, disapproving "mm", and shook an accusatory finger in Zeke's direction. "Touche," I finally admitted. "But that doesn't change my question."

Zeke heaved a sigh and gave a very teenager-y roll of his eyes, shoulders sagging as he returned his gaze to me with resignation. "Thirteen-twenty-five a month, for this, electricity, and an electrified parking stall."

I felt like I'd been sucker-punched in the gut, and reacted the same way. "Jesus," I wheezed, "that's fucking extortionate!" My voice jumped up an octave in incredulity. "For a one-bedroom apartment?!"

"Yeah, well, pickings were slim," Zeke dryly responded.

"I'll say," I huffed. "What do they do? Hold you at gunpoint for rent?"

"They might as well," Zeke grumbled before he glanced back at me with a scowl. "Look, I'm well aware that I'm getting scalped, okay, you don't need to rub it in, but at the very least I get to save on my car insurance and gas because school is right there, and that's my main go-to right now."

"So you don't get out much, huh?" I realized I'd just stepped on a mine by the way Zeke's mismatched eyes narrowed at me, and I quickly threw my hands up to hopefully stave off the retort coming my way. "Not that there's anything wrong with that, but…" My voice softened, all jest gone as I peered at him with sad eyes. "Don't you get lonely?"

"No," the older man answered, a little too quickly for my liking. "I've always preferred my own company, and besides, I've got Phi here." For the first time since we'd left school, a proper grin broke out on his face as he wrapped an arm around his dog and hugged her close, pressing a kiss to the silky smooth hair on her head. She squirmed in his arms in an attempt to lick at his face. "She's all the company I need some days. Besides," he looked back up at me with a glower, "people are full of shit. A lot of them talk the talk but they couldn't walk it if their life depended on it."

Despite the part of me that railed against the pessimism rife in his voice, I peered down at my feet, and quietly conceded with an arch of my brows, arms folded across my chest. "I mean, I guess there are a lot of people like that," I returned my gaze to my classmate. "But maybe you're just not meeting the right people."

"What? Like you? Are you one of the 'right people'?" Zeke's voice was caustic with its sarcasm as it splashed against my ears. "That sounds an awful lot like, 'oh, you think you're gay? Maybe you just haven't met the right girl yet.'"

Sensing how quickly our conversation was taking a nosedive into the negative, I met Zeke's gaze, as hostile as it had suddenly become, and murmured, "I'd like to be one of the right people. If you'll let me."

The older man held my eyes for what felt like an eternity before he ripped them away and returned them to his dog, absently carding his fingers through her hair. "I think you should probably go now."

Okay then. Locking my lips between my teeth, I watched him for a moment before idly bobbing my head in a nod; I peered down at my socks, and then let my arms fall from my chest as I pushed away from the sofa. "Okay, well," I sighed, heading towards the door without expecting him to see me out. "Thanks for letting me use your bathroom." Glancing back, I saw that he never lifted his eyes from Phi. "See you at school tomorrow?"

"Sure," he murmured.

I gave another petite, pensive nod, jammed my feet back into my boots, and saw myself out, feeling sorry despite myself for the poor man I was leaving behind in his quiet, solitary apartment. Zeke would have killed me if he knew, but I felt it regardless.

I really did want to be one of the right people.

-x-

I hadn't wanted to leave, but Zeke really didn't give me much choice, and I couldn't help but stew over this during the long drive home. Luckily, it was mostly highway driving, so I could afford to let my mind wander while my body and muscle memory did the rest, but… Jesus, talk about a crushing conclusion to our conversation. Did I push him too hard? Did I say something wrong? Maybe he took issue with me bringing up whether or not he was lonely. Maybe it was the mention of his rent and how ungodly high it was for what he was getting out of it.

Hell, how was he even able to afford rent like that as a student with a second mouth to feed? Did he have a sugar daddy or something?

Was I being overbearing? Maybe it sounded too much like I pitied him – which, honestly, I kind of did. I mean, it sounded as though his social circle was all but non-existent, and no matter how much of an introvert one might be, humans are social creatures down to our very foundations. Maybe he was fine with his own company, but I was willing to bet money on the fact that he still got lonely, with no one but his dog for company. And dogs were great for that – that was why I had two of them – but it wasn't like they could carry on a meaningful conversation with you. Their help could only extend so far, and they certainly couldn't completely replace human company, no matter how much they, and their owners, might try.

Sighing out a heavy breath through my nose as I shoulder-checked and merged onto an exit ramp, my hands and forearms exposed as colorful maps of images I'd accumulated over the years, I focused for a brief moment on making sure I didn't run myself off the road around the bend of the ramp, and then as soon as I was on the highway again, flanked on both sides by wheat and bright yellow canola fields ready to be harvested, my mind went right back to wandering.

I wanted to get to know Zeke; I really did, but he wasn't making it easy by shutting me out every time I started asking him the hard questions. Not to mention he'd seemed distracted by something most of the day. It wasn't beneath my notice how frequently he'd blushed while I was around, and while part of me might have attributed that to a budding infatuation, Zeke was still prickly enough to dissuade me. Hell, I wasn't even sure he liked me at this point or merely tolerated my presence.

Remember, boyo, it's only day two, my brain reminded me, and you've been digging for details since you first met. Can you blame the man for not knowing how to deal with you? Can you blame him for thinking you're nosey?

My face crumpled into some slight semblance of a pout at the scolding, head tilting itself into the fingers of my left hand, elbow braced on the window ledge, as I continued to drive.

You need to ease off with the interrogations, man, and try back off with the touching and terms of endearment, too. He's not your sweetheart.

No matter how badly I wanted the idea of him to be. Or a friend, at the very least.

It was a ludicrous idea, really. I barely knew the man. And yet I knew just enough of him to make me feel protective of him, to instill this strange, luring pull in my chest that told me to stay near him despite his barbs. It was exactly as I'd told him, repeatedly now. I wanted to get to know him better. I may not have known why, outside of that intriguing hook in my chest, but I wanted to know him, in all of his multifaceted glory. I wanted to make him smile. I wanted to make him laugh. I wanted him to not be so goddamn lonely and sad that it looked like he'd never learned how to grin.

Again, it was silly of me. I knew that, but as I eventually pulled up into my driveway and parked my car in the garage, still half-filled with my father's belongings, I couldn't help but wonder.

What would you do, Dad? You've always been better with people than I am. You dealt with mom, after all… until she left us, anyways. Not that that was ever your fault, no matter what you thought.

I shoved my way out of my SUV, breezed through the garage door before locking it behind me, and finagled my way into my house to a chorus of barks. A grin finally hooked itself in the corner of my lips as I opened the door to be swarmed by Zeus and Ginger, both saying their frantic hello-I-missed-yous before they squeezed past me, and burst into my large, fully-fenced back yard. Ginger peed right away, for which I praised her, while Zeus was aimlessly trotting and zooming about the yard to burn off some pent-up energy.

"Go pee, you little shit!" I affectionately called after him. He trotted around to the back of the yard, found a bush poking through the fence, snuffled around it some, then lifted his leg and obediently left his mark. "Good boy!" Ginger came jogging up to me, eager for her attention while Zeus was still zipping around the yard like a black and tan bottle rocket. "Hey girl," I murmured, bending over to give her some all-body scratches and some thumps on her haunches as she happily leaned into my legs. "Didja miss me? Oh, yes you did, you big baby. C'mon," I nodded my head back to the door. "Let's go back inside, shall we? I'll take you guys for one of those things later."

Calling after Zeus as I turned to go back inside, I held the door open until he came – reluctantly – and then let the screen door slam shut behind me as I dumped my bag on the floor and lifted an ankle to my knee to take off my boots. That done, I kicked them into the recessed closet, and savored the coolness of my air conditioning as I padded into the kitchen to get the dogs a treat.

My mind, of course, wandered briefly to the thought of the homework I had to do tonight, but swept past that to the notion of the man I'd left behind. I wish I could've stayed with him, maybe played some board or video games to help him relax when he seemed so uncomfortable with my presence in his home. Or talking. I could've plonked myself down on the sofa and chatted with him, too – but he was probably exhausted from dealing with me at school, and part of me wondered if I should back off and give him some space.

The other part of me, typically, drop-kicked that idea out the window, remaining determined to stay by his side until he was used to me. It was exposure therapy, in essence. He may have been perfectly happy to be left alone, but frankly, I also kind of wanted a friend to help me get through all of this – or as much of it as our schedules would allow – and Zeke…

Zeke intrigued me.

Granted, my ex had intrigued me too, otherwise I never would have put a ring on her finger, but Zeke was something else. He was like an iceberg waiting for someone to dive under the surface to see him as a whole. Not just the miniscule tip he allowed to pierce the waterline, but the sheer mass of him hiding in the depths, as well.

I wanted to plumb his depths more than I had for anyone else in a long goddamn time. And take that how you will, perverts, but I meant nothing of that sort. I was a gentleman, after all, and gentlemen most decidedly did not have a smutty thought about someone they'd just met. Most of the time, anyways.

My sex-deprived brain was behaving itself, at the very least. Although Zeke did not make it easy by giving me a noseful of the smell of vanilla and freshly baked cookies every time I was near enough to get a whiff of him. It just made me want to take him home and roll him around on all my furniture so I could bathe in his scent. And the way he'd bite his lip, or thoughtfully trace the shape of his lower lip with the end cap of his pen during class… Not to mention all the ways I could've rolled him around on my furniture…

Oh, kill me now.

It was just fascinating to watch him. Did that make me a creep? Well, regardless, I liked – really liked – observing him.

I was just signing myself up for a shit load of trouble, though, wasn't I? Navigating those treacherous hot/cold waters wasn't going to be easy.

And then there was the idea I'd had after using the washroom, the one I couldn't – or wouldn't – fill Zeke in on because the details had been hazy and half-formed. But I'd been thinking about that, too, on my way home, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought Zeke might be interested in at least hearing what I had to say.

I couldn't ask him yet, though. I needed to earn his trust first, and that was proving to be a very taxing effort indeed.

Again, only two days you've known him, asshole. Don't push him, or you will lose him. Slow and steady'll win this race.

Before everything else, however, I needed to somehow get him into my house, when he wouldn't even come for coffee with me.

Well, you do so love a challenge, don't you? My mind archly queried. I heaved a groan and scrubbed my hands over my face. Ugh, fuck my brain.

-x-

Zeke

-x-

Well, that had been… educational, and I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. On the one hand, Mars had kept his word about not making fun of the mess that was my apartment. On the other, he'd brought up my frankly outrageous rent only for the sake of criticizing it, it seemed, and then that remark about the "right people" and how quickly it had translated in my head to a homophobic comment I'd gotten from plenty of people growing up, no matter how well-meaning they were… Sitting on my couch in the gloomy silence with Phi flopped down to nap nearby, I wasn't sure if I was angry with Mars or intrigued or… I don't know what.

"I'd like to be one of the right people. If you'll let me."

I huffed out a sigh and seized a nearby pillow to hunch around it, hugging it to my chest as my chin rested on top of it, and I scowled into the nothingness before me. The apartment was murky around me, the sun giving its last grand hurrah for the day despite the black-out curtains I'd hung in every room in my flat. I preferred the darkness to the light, anyways. It calmed me, which brought my mind back around to the reason I'd been sitting there for the past god only knew how many hours.

There was no such thing as the 'right' person. There were people who sucked donkey balls, and then there were people I could bear, at best. My coworkers were friendly, but that in no way meant that I was crazy enough to consider them actual friends. As far as I knew, they only tolerated me because I'd been a resident fixture at the bookshop since before most of them had even been hired on. I'd had a hand in training a lot of them, despite my spotty knowledge of some of the more involved aspects of my job, thanks to my medically-impaired memory. Maybe it was just out of respect for seniority.

Agh, but that wasn't what I wanted to think about. That was a great way to end up spiralling down into my depression, thinking everyone secretly hates me.

La La Loser you've got no friends
Nobody gives a damn
'Cause everybody hates you
Everybody hates you

La La Loser please just go home
'Cause you're gonna die alone
'Cause everybody hates you
Everybody hates you

As the lyrics from Citizen Soldiers "Everybody Hates You" played themselves through my brain, I exhaled sharply through my nose, clenching my eyes shut as I buried my face in the pillow, and hugged it tighter to my chest. That was not fucking helping things, ripping the words straight out of my head. Citizen Soldier was good like that, but this was one occasion on which I wished they could be a little less accurate.

I couldn't tell if Mars was yanking my chain or not. He'd put his hands over mine in class earlier that day, called me sweetheart during the icebreaker game. Maybe he was like that with everyone. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all to him, just another means to calm someone as skittish as a spooked horse. Soft touches, soft words. All meant to calm and console.

I hated being the skittish horse in the equation. No matter how hard I tried, however, I knew I couldn't wish my anxiety, or depression, away. It was futile to even make the attempt, honestly, when they had their roots wrapped so tightly around my very foundations that I found it hard to breathe sometimes. Pressing my face harder into the soft embrace of the cushion in my lap, I let out a cry of frustration. Chest and shoulders heaving with the aftermath, I softened my grip some and lifted my head once more to brace my chin on the edge of the pillow.

I just didn't fucking know what to do about him. On the one hand, something about him made me want to smile, to open up so completely that my sense of self-preservation was little more than a shadow in the corner; on the other, I wanted to clamp my gates shut even tighter, welding them together against his thoughtless comments that left me – well, not seeing red, exactly, but – irritated and prickly.

Trying and failing to swallow around the lump in my throat, I carelessly tossed my cushion aside and forced myself to my feet – rousing Phi in the process, who jumped down from the sofa, gave herself a good shake, and then waited to follow me – to wander into the kitchen in search of something cold and wet. After finding nothing appealing in the fridge, I searched the counters for a glass and turned on the faucet, waiting until it ran cold to fill my glass. At the first sip, I felt the knot in my chest loosening as the cold fluid moistened my mouth and flushed that lump down my throat. I drank half the glass before I had to stop for air, and then I wiped perfunctorily at my mouth with the back of my wrist as I leaned back against the counter in the dark kitchen.

Dead eyes stared unblinkingly at the counter across from me, filled with clutter I simply hadn't found a home for yet.

Honestly, I didn't know how I ought to be feeling about Mars at this point. Sometimes he made inconsiderate comments that got my back up; sometimes it felt like he was the only thing keeping me from a nervous meltdown. And I couldn't just disregard the term of endearment and how warm and gentle his hands had felt as they clasped my own.

For a moment, I wondered if I should actually give him a chance, but that was before my mind hastily cut in to remind me that he wasn't likely going to give me a choice. Not with how intent he seemed to be on gluing himself to my side. And now he'd seen my apartment. For some inane reason, I'd actually let him in, and that both puzzled and annoyed me. Only with myself, mind you, but still… I'd invited him in to my inner sanctum, my Hobbit hole that I could sneak away to when the world was just proving to be too much.

And he… hadn't commented on the boxes. Not really. The bit about my rent I could've done without, but he hadn't looked disgusted or bothered by the fact that most of my life – my books, my clothes, my knickknacks, my kitchenware – was still packed away, as though I were contemplating moving again right away when I knew I couldn't afford it. Hell, I could hardly afford this place as things were – most of my monthly earnings were poured into rent, which left me painstakingly aware of what money I had left.

If it weren't for the fact that my family home had proven to be too toxic of an environment for me to heal in, I probably would've stayed there. But then, my brother was living with my parents as well, and I didn't know if I had the strength to be civil to him day in and day out when he couldn't be bothered to extend me the same courtesy. And there was Phi to consider, as well, and how poorly my family had reacted to her while I was in hospital. She couldn't live there. I couldn't trust that she'd be taken proper care of while I was away. They didn't understand her like I did.

A knot began tightening itself in my chest again, my heart drumming just a little faster, both telltale signs that my anxiety was coming back. I could feel the catastrophizing looming on the horizon as though it were a black hole, slowly but surely drawing me into the crushing darkness.

I drained the rest of my water and left the glass in the sink as I dug out my phone and woke it up. No messages. No emails, even, to distract me. Burying the despondent sigh that so longed to escape from my chest, I put it to sleep again and stuffed it back into my pocket. My apartment seemed deathly quiet around me as I recalled our homework assignment for today, and drearily made my way over to my desktop computer, flicking on the living room light as I went.

I had lied, I realized, when Mars asked me if I ever got lonely. Maybe I lied to him because I didn't want his pity. But I was lonely. Even with Phi around, I was as lonely as a person could be, and I hated it.

I found myself wishing for Mars's boisterous personality to return as I booted up my computer, with his jokes and questions and distracting presence, and I hated that, too.

La La loser…

-x-

To Be Continued…

-x-

So, like it? Hate it? Wish it would spontaneously combust? Leave me a review and tell me all about it! C'mon, I only bite when people ask me to. ;)

This was actually, for the most part, an incredibly cooperative chapter. Doesn't mean it's the greatest thing ever because I'm pretty sure it's not, but it felt less like trying to pull my own toenails out with a pair of pliers. Which has been Redux, lately. Then again, that's partially my fault. I wasn't paying attention to my planning and wrote myself into a corner that I need to fix. But anyways! I hope you guys enjoyed it!