Psync by Zile Elliven

Chapter Twenty-Three

Eli

The next time Eli woke, he didn’t have to fight his way free from sleep. His aching head demanded attention, and it wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Yuck, my mouth tastes like ass.”

The sun was high in the sky and pouring through the window, highlighting a glass of water and a bottle of Tylenol. Before he could reach for it, Haruka handed them to him, not quite touching his hand as he passed the items over.

Eli took them gratefully. His head didn’t hurt half as bad as it had that morning, but his body ached like he’d been tossed around like a ragdoll.

He turned to Haruka, who was staring pensively at something in his hands. Eli leaned forward for a closer look.

“You found my kitty!”

Haruka nodded, still staring down at the small stuffed cat. “It was on Jace’s bed. With this.” He picked up a familiar hoodie and tossed it to Eli.

His cheeks heated. This looked so bad. There was no way he could disguise the fact that he’d taken Haruka’s things to bed with him as part of his nest.

“It’s not what it looks like . . .” He began nervously. How was he going to explain it in a way that didn’t make him seem like a complete weirdo?

“What does it look like?” Haruka’s voice was a thin veneer of ice over a rushing river—which didn’t make words come any easier to Eli.

“Um . . .”

“Do you sleep in his bed?”

Well. This wasn’t going in the direction Eli had been expecting.

“Sometimes?” Only when Jace was away—which was every night, currently. Eli knew it was an incredibly childish thing to do. “Is that bad?”

Haruka didn’t say anything, instead he kept turning the little cat over in his hands.

What was happening right now? Earlier, Haruka had seemed fine with how weird Eli was. Was it really such a surprise that Eli had a fucked-up sleep situation? Maybe it was one thing too many.

He chewed on his lip and tasted blood, which reminded him . . . “Do you want help with your face?”

Haruka looked up from the cat. “My face?”

Eli scooted forward for a closer look at the cut on Haruka’s mouth. It looked small, but he knew it was probably painful, “Your cut. Did they clean it for you at the hospital? I can help you with it if you want.”

“Okay.” Haruka’s pensive expression transformed into something Eli couldn’t read.

Eli stood up gingerly, testing to see if his head was planning on cooperating with him. Everything acted the way it was supposed to, so he hunted down his first aid kit and brought it back to where Haruka sat at his desk.

“This might hurt a bit.” Eli dabbed an alcohol pad on Haruka’s lower lip and stopped when he heard a hiss of pain. “Sorry, I’ll be done in just a second.” He finished as quickly as he could—or at least he tried to, but he kept getting distracted.

Haruka’s mouth was perfect, how dare Ash damage it?

“You have to ask that after what he did to you?”

Eli started, then realized he had a hand on Haruka’s chin, which meant Haruka could hear his thoughts. “Perfect can mean a lot of things, you know. Like a painting, or a flower.” Eli snatched his hand away before he embarrassed himself further. “I’m all done.”

“So, I’m like a flower?” Haruka leaned backward in his seat and put his hands behind his head.

Eli was just happy the weird mood had dissipated, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Oh, shut up.”

There was a loud pounding on the door, and Eli jumped about a foot into the air.

“Eli, you get your tiny ass up and open this door right now before I break it down.”

Holy crap, Eli had forgotten all about Nate. He was halfway to the door before a hand on his arm pulled him back.

“I’ll get it,” Haruka said, tucking Eli behind him before opening the door.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Nate tried to push his way past Haruka but was blocked by his arm.

“Taking care of Eli.”

“Taking care of—Eli, why haven’t you been answering your phone? What’s going on?” Nate tried to look over Haruka’s shoulder at Eli, but since they were both shorter than the man between them, Eli only saw the top of his head.

“It’s okay, Nate’s not going to do anything.” Eli pulled on Haruka’s arm. It resisted him, but after a few seconds, Haruka dropped it and took Eli’s hand, sending tingles of delicious sensation up his arm.

Eli tugged at it, trying to get free without drawing attention, but Haruka tightened his grip. Unless he made a big deal out of it, Eli wasn’t getting his hand back right now.

Nate stomped into the room and dropped down onto Eli’s bed. “I’ve been calling you since you went missing last night. What the hell happened to your face?”

Eli smacked his forehead, which turned out to be a terrible idea. “Ow . . .”

Haruka glared at Nate.

“Don’t look at me, he did that to himself,” Nate said.

“I’m sorry! Last night was really weird, and I think I lost my phone. I would have called you but I—”

Haruka pulled Eli’s phone out of his pocket and handed it to him.

He had thirty-eight missed calls from Nate and thirty-two from Alice.

“You got a call from the police station, too. They want you to come in and make a statement today if you’re up for it,” Haruka said, choosing the worst possible time to be helpful.

“The police station? What the actual fuck, Eli?”

“It’s a long story.” One Eli wasn’t looking forward to telling.

“And you.” Nate turned his ire on Haruka. “Why didn’t you answer Eli’s phone when I called?”

Haruka shrugged and pulled Eli closer. “You didn’t answer when I called you earlier this week.”

Nate was back on his feet, and Eli hurried forward to get between his friend and Haruka, holding out both arms. “Jesus, chill, guys.”

Nate growled and sat back down on the bed, glaring at both of them.

Eli collapsed into his desk chair. Haruka followed, sitting on the edge of the desk, keeping his body between Eli and the bed and allowing his hip to bump against Eli’s arm.

Nate gaped openly at the easy contact between the two. “You need to start talking, Eli. When did this happen?” He waved his hand at the nonexistent space between Eli and Haruka. “No, wait, tell me about the police station first.”

“Umm . . .” What was the best way to spin this?

“Don’t dumb it down, Eli. Your friend deserves to know the truth.”

“I wasn’t going to dumb it down.”

“Yes, you were.” Haruka lifted Eli’s chin and forced him to look him in the eye. “Ash hurt you. He deserves to be punished for it.”

“Ash did this?”

“It doesn’t look that bad, does it?” Eli hadn’t looked at himself in the mirror yet, but if he looked as bad as he felt, it probably wasn’t pretty.

“You look like someone slammed your face into a wall!” Nate exclaimed.

“It was a desk, actually.”

Nate got up and began to pace, while Eli explained what happened. He tried to leave out the gory details, but when he did, Haruka stepped in to fill the gaps.

“And Haruka stopped him?” Nate looked at Haruka appraisingly.

“He did.”

“And the two of you . . .?” Nate pointed between the two of them with an eyebrow raised.

“Aren’t fighting anymore,” Eli said hurriedly. He wasn’t ready to try and explain the complicated and unbelievable connection he had with Haruka to someone else, especially since they hadn’t discussed it yet.

“Oh.” Nate deflated a bit as his anger began to leave him. “What a fucking asshole. I hope you beat the hell out of him, Haruka.”

Haruka’s face darkened. “Not as much as he deserved, but yes. I gave him many good reasons to never come near Eli again.”

“You’re going to press charges, right?” Nate asked.

“Yes,” Haruka answered.

“I can answer for myself, thank you,” Eli said coolly. “If I pressed charges on everyone who shoved me around, I’d spend my entire life in court.”

Court wasn’t his favorite place. He’d spent far too much time there when he was a child, dealing with the fallout of his kidnapping.

The room went deadly quiet, and the steady hum of Haruka’s presence cut off abruptly.

He was still touching Haruka, but he couldn’t feel anything from him.

Oh.

He’d been touching Haruka while thinking about the Incident.

“Nate, I think Eli needs to rest now.” There was something wrong with Haruka’s voice.

There was a beat of awkward silence before Nate stood. “I’ll go tell Alice what happened, just . . . stay with Eli for me, okay?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Haruka said solemnly.

Nate went to Eli and crouched down. “You should use your friends more than you do. It’s what we’re here for.” He reached out slowly but was blocked by Haruka’s hand. Nate gave a wry smile. “I think you’re in good hands right now. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Nate’s departure left a vacuum in the room.

“I don’t need to rest right now.”

“Hn,” Haruka said noncommittally, but Eli took it as an acknowledgment that he’d used Eli’s injuries as an excuse to get rid of Nate.

Eli picked up the little gray cat and poked at its feet. Haruka’s gaze was a tangible force pressing against him, but he didn’t look up. “I can’t feel anything from you right now.” Eli nudged Haruka’s leg with his arm.

“Good.”

“Good?”

Haruka sighed. “I don’t want to hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt. You don’t need the weight of my reactions right now.”

“So, it’s okay for you to deal with my stuff, but I’m too fragile for yours?” Eli rolled his chair away. “I don’t know what this”—he pointed back and forth between them—“is, but I don’t think it’s here just for me. I may not pick up as much from you as you’re getting from me, but I’ve seen some of your dreams. You aren’t any happier than I am. You just deal with it better.”

“You’ve seen my dreams?”

“Some of them. You’ve seen mine too, right? That’s why you called and woke me up last week?” Now that Eli knew Haruka was the Voice, everything seemed so obvious.

“Hn.”

“So, what do we do now?”

Haruka’s eye’s darted to Jace’s bed before answering. “What do you want to do?”

The bed thing again. It was as good a place to start as any. “Jace is gone right now. If you wanted to stay with me for a few days while we figure this out, I wouldn’t mind. I’d . . . rather not sleep alone.”

Haruka frowned. “My room is more comfortable.”

Eli couldn’t dispute that. It was bigger and had a bathroom. “But all my stuff is here.”

“I’ll help you move it.”

“What about when Jace comes back? I’ll just have to move everything back again.”

“He can get a new roommate,” Haruka said with a hint of a growl.

Maybe Eli would address the whole moving back to his old room thing when Haruka was in a better mood.

“Normal people are supposed to be able to sleep alone,” Eli said forlornly. He really had tried to make it work and look where it had gotten him.

“Normal people who have gone through what you’ve gone through don’t handle it half as well as you have.”

“You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“If you ask, I will answer.”

Eli laughed. “Fine. Let me grab a few things, and we can go back to your place.”