Zyan
When Carter walked off, Zyan followed him into the bedroom to give Jessica and Ava some privacy.
Carter was already rummaging through a dresser when Zyan got there. He dug up spare pillows and covers, which he stacked onto his arms and carried into the living room, while Zyan was left behind to sit awkwardly on the edge of the bed and twiddle his thumbs with nothing to do.
Were they already moving too fast? Just hours ago, they'd established they wanted to give this another shot, and now they were already about to jump back into the same bed. Not for that, but still. It was stupid and risky and would drag up memories Zyan shouldn't be thinking about before they'd even started dating properly.
He rubbed a hand down his face and sighed. Maybe they'd just fall asleep right away and he was just overthinking everything. Had Ava rubbed off on him? Was her anxiousness contagious? His mind usually wasn't so quick to calculate every likely and unlikely scenario.
Carter's return interrupted Zyan's train of thought.
"You don't happen to have pajamas of mine lying around here somewhere as well, do you?" he asked in an attempt to ease the tension spreading between them.
"I think I do, actually." Carter headed to his closet and pushed aside a few boxes and scarves on the top shelf, until he freed a black duffel bag. He pulled it down and set it on the bed near Zyan."Those are all your clothes I found mixed in with mine…well, most of them, at least."
Zyan watched the shift in Carter's expression. Was he nervous too? Zyan didn't give himself the chance to read too much into it. He pulled his leg up onto the mattress and turned to unzip the bag.
Carter seemed to take it as his cue to step back. "I'll, uh, get changed and brush my teeth while you…do your thing…here." He stumbled over his own words and feet as he backed out of the room.
Zyan watched on in bemusement. Carter usually wasn't one to lose his cool. He stayed eloquent when Zyan got flustered. He was levelheaded when Zyan's temper snapped. At least, that was how it had been for the better portion of their relationship. Toward the end, things had been…different.
Zyan shook his head and started to dig through the bag until he found a wide shirt and pajama bottoms. He got changed as quickly as possible, in case Carter came back sooner than expected, and threw his own clothes on a chair in the corner by the window.
With nothing else left to do, he sat back down and continued to go through the duffel bag. Some of the items, he couldn't remember owning, but there were a few he'd been missing for a long time. Like the shirt he now held between his fingers. He hadn't seen it in at least a decade, but the silky, plain fabric brought back a flood of memories. He'd worn it on the day they'd bought their first shared apartment as an officially married couple—papers and all. They'd been so happy and excited. They'd thought this time it would last forever. It hadn't.
Zyan shook off the memories and rolled up the shirt before he stuffed it back inside. He zipped up the bag and put it on the ground by the chair holding his clothes. But as he stood there by the window and looked out at the night sky, he could feel there was no use in trying to hold back the memories.
It was weird how much he'd changed. The person Carter had fallen for was long gone, the one he'd first proposed to lost in time. And somewhere along the way, their roles had reversed.
If he were to tell Ava this, she wouldn't believe him, but it used to be him that was open, him who was flirty and outgoing, who loved to meet new people and make friends, who enjoyed being the center of attention and entertain everyone. Now, he could barely remember that person. He didn't remember what it felt like to be him and why he'd enjoyed it so much.
He just wanted to be left alone these days, and not think about how they'd all age and die within the next few decades. They'd become a constant reminder of his immortality: of the people he'd lost, and would inevitably continue to lose, no matter how hard he tried to stay away.
But he hadn't just grown tired of the loss and heartbreak. He'd also grown bored of living. He was bored by the simple tasks of showering, of vacuum cleaning, of making his bed, and opening the fridge. He was tired of sleeping and cooking. He was bored by the way he walked and sat and lay. He was tired of the way humanity repeated past mistakes and the sheer foolishness that kept getting them into situations easily avoided if the majority of them would start thinking for themselves, instead of allowing the media to dictate their opinions.
Carter could relate to this, Zyan knew. They'd talked about it many times, but the first time still resonated within him to this day. "Frustration and boredom is a dangerous mix. It leads to apathy. No matter how long you live, and no matter what you think is right—never allow yourself to become apathetic."
Zyan had to remind himself of that constantly. It was too easy to slip into a mindset of apathy at his age, to distance himself from the mortals and their problems. Especially when caring had become equal to heartbreak and pain. He'd seen too many people killed for who they were, what they believed in, and how they acted—senseless murders committed by people never put on trial because the broad public didn't care. They often didn't even bother to call it a crime. They viewed the life lost as too low in worth.
It was difficult to let himself feel the rage and frustration and grief when locking it away and turning into a heartless robot seemed so much easier and appealing. Especially in times where he no longer felt like he could go on. He'd lost faith in humanity too many times to count.
Every other decade, the hatred and fear in people grew until they turned their backs on their own people and hit the self-destruct button. Thousands of lives lost, thousands more destroyed, all at the hands of irrational fear-mongering and the illogical need to find a minority to blame for their problems when the perpetrators were usually the ones in charge. The rich and greedy left the poor to die to feed their own wallets. It was a tale as old as humanity itself, yet a problem still unsolved.
Then there was the guilt. It had become the one constant in his life. Even when every other cell in him felt numb, the guilt he could never get rid of. It lingered as a constant reminder of his wrongdoings. It gnawed at him, told him he wasn't doing enough, that he could help more, save lives across the globe and use the excessive amount of time he'd been gifted to step in and take the place of someone with a limited lifespan. But instead, he was here, living the high life and—
"Stop."
Zyan only shook his head.
"I don't even want to know how many times you've gotten stuck in your own head over the last decade without someone there to pull you out."
Zyan turned around. "Do you have a spare toothbrush I can use?"
"Drawer in the cabinet under the sink."
Zyan brushed past Carter without sparing him single glance.
When he returned from the bathroom, Carter was lying on top of the covers and staring at the ceiling. At the sight, Zyan turned around to shut the door and closed his eyes as he took a deep breath to steel himself for whatever was about to happen. He faced the bed again and walked closer, until he could slide under the covers, making sure to stick near the edge. Carter tended to unintentionally kick and slap people throughout the night.
"How many languages have you learned while I wasn't with you?" Carter's voice was low, yet jarring in the tense silence.
"Two. You?"
"Just one."
Zyan nodded.
He didn't question why Carter had brought it up. He understood the urge to find out more about their time apart in an effort to reconnect, and languages were something they'd both found a passion for. Somewhere along the way, they'd made a deal to only speak the language of the place they lived in, even when they were in private, as a means of improving their skills. Other languages only tended to slip in when they were cursing or insulting someone.
Zyan could hear and feel Carter wiggle around until he was lying comfortably. Then the tugging at the covers began. He rolled and moved around for several minutes, leaving Zyan to sigh and lie unmoving until he finally stilled.
Zyan was just about to ask if he was finally done when Carter huffed and rolled onto his other side, taking the bedspread with him. He kicked out, hitting Zyan in the shin and mumbling a 'sorry' before he turned around once more, sat halfway up, and hit his pillow before he flopped back down and wiggled around a while longer. When he finally calmed down and only tugged at the covers a little to get them untangled from his legs, Zyan glanced over at him with a furrowed brow.
"Are you done now?"
Carter froze and looked over at him in the darkness. "Sorry," he whispered.
"It's fine," Zyan said, even though it wasn't, and Carter knew it.
A few seconds of peace passed before Carter's rustling picked back up as he freed himself from the bedspread until he could throw one end to Zyan, so they were both sharing the covers again. "Better?" he asked.
Zyan nodded and made sure to trap the upper corner under his shoulder. Hopefully, that'd keep Carter from pulling them away again.
"Good. Then…goodnight."
"'Night."
They still lay in silence almost a full hour later. Zyan could tell it wasn't just him by Carter's breathing and the way he tossed and turned every other minute. Maybe he, too, was hyperaware of the other presence in the bed. Zyan couldn't seem to focus on anything but the heat radiating from Carter's body and the small noises that weren't Zyan's doing. He'd forgotten how intimate it could feel to share a mattress.
He wasn't sure how much time passed before his fatigue finally won out.