Chapter Text
There was a sharp yelp, loud enough to cut through Cole’s music. Startled, Cole looked up—and discovered that Jay was sitting on Kai’s chest, trying to grab the comic book that Kai was just barely keeping out of reach. Jay was saying something, his cheeks red, and Kai looked like he had been laughing before Jay had tackled him to the floor. He was still smirking, though, succeeding at keeping the comic book far enough away that Jay wasn’t able to reach it without getting off of him.
Cole sighed in irritation, carefully closing his sketchbook and hooking the mechanical pencil he’d been using onto the spiraled spine. He watched Jay and Kai for a moment longer before he pulled his headphones off his ears.
“—it back!” Jay demanded, swiping for the comic book again. Kai quickly pulled it back out of reach.
“Too slow, shorty,” Kai taunted.
Jay growled. Lightning was sparking up his forearms, but he didn’t seem to notice any more than Kai did (Kai had gotten used to being shocked by him at this point).
“Would you stop being such a jerk?” Jay snapped, glaring down at him.
Kai smirked. “Nope.”
“Kai, c’mon,” Cole said. He’d meant to say it warningly, but it came out sounding more like he was an exhausted parent.
“What?” Kai asked innocently. “I’m just having some fun.”
“Fun?” Jay sputtered. The lightning increased, streaking across his shoulders and up and down his torso. “Fun?!”
Cole’s temper flared. Normally, he had one of the longest fuses of anyone he’d ever known, but over the last few days Kai had been consistently trimming it down. “Kai!” Cole snapped. “Would you just leave him alone? Or even better, leave all of us alone!”
An expression Cole couldn’t read crossed Kai’s face. “Why should I?”
“Because you’re a stupid jerk,” Jay seethed. He snatched for the comic again, but Kai kept it out of reach. “Honestly, how does Nya even stand you?”
Kai’s face darkened. “Well then, if you hate me so much,” he chucked the comic across the common area, “go get it.”
Jay scrambled after the comic book. Kai climbed to his feet, not looking at either of them as he stalked to his bedroom.
Kai’s words finally registered in Cole’s mind as Kai slammed his door, and Cole winced. They didn’t hate him. True, they didn’t exactly like him, either, but that was entirely his own fault—he’d been nothing but an insufferable jerk since waking up from the procedure four days ago. Cole had initially thought that maybe he had gotten brain damage—after all, he’d seemed pretty cool during that one day they’d spent playing cards together—but the doctor kept saying that everything looked fine, and Nya grimly backed that up with the information that Kai had always been a mistrustful hothead. Apparently, he always acted this way with people he didn’t trust—snarky and attacking—albeit a bit less, but being cooped up with them probably wasn’t helping anything. Nya helped hold him back, but Kai had just been getting worse as time went on, even getting snappy with her—and just last night the siblings had had a full-on shouting match.
Jay had retrieved his comic book, and now he held it to his chest like it was something precious as he fled to the gaming room (which was what they’d dubbed the lounge). Cole watched as he locked himself in, disappearing behind the couch.
Cole sighed, slipping his headphones back on. Hopefully Kai would stay in his room for a while.
*****
Kai flopped onto his bed, screaming into his pillow at half volume. He was angry again, the one thing that was bothering him inflating into rage for no reasonable reason whatsoever. It just happened, building in his chest like pressure in a . . . thingy. Whatever those pot-things were called. Either way, he hated it—it made him run hot, too, his power flaring in his veins in sync with the anger. But all Kai could do was try to distract himself from it until he cooled off. Unfortunately, “distract himself” combined with the anger didn’t really work well—he just took it out on the others, which he hated himself for. He couldn’t really stop himself though—anger made his self-control go out the window, just as it always had. The fact that he couldn’t control the anger at all now didn’t help.
He’d definitely deserved what Jay had called him—a stupid jerk. Because Kai was—both a massive jerk and a stupid, brain-damaged idiot.
Kai forced himself to take a deep breath. Made himself hold it. Counted to fifteen before letting it out—it helped a little, but not much. He was still angry, still running hot.
Kai rolled over, yanking open the nightstand drawer and feeling around until he found the . . . the temperature-measuring thingy. He swiped it across his forehead, then waited for the beep to look at the result. One hundred forty . . . six? Or nine. Six.
Kai chucked the thingy across the room and buried his face in his pillow.
Why was it always him? Sure, the others had a few issues, but they were more or less fine. But he—he kept getting angry, and that made him keep running hot, every single day, and he couldn’t control it.
He’d even fought with Nya.
Tears stung Kai’s eyes. He furiously blinked them away—he was not going to cry. Crying never solved anything. What he needed right now was to cool off—he had to be at a normal temperature before Zane got back from helping Borg, had to regain at least some control over his temper. Had to pretend that he was fine, that he was intending to be a jerk. That he actually had some sort of control over himself.
No way could he ever let them know that he was damaged.
There was a soft sort of hissing sound. Kai looked up, startled, and found that a paper—folded in half—had been slid under his door.
Kai’s chest seized. Someone was trying to tell him something, and he—he—
Kai let out a soft string of curses as he forced himself off of the bed. He stared at the paper for a long moment before he picked it up, sitting down cross-legged and leaning against the door.
Kai couldn’t breathe. At least, it felt that way, the dread in his stomach outweighing the anger and wrapping around his lungs.
Maybe he could just put it away. Hide it somewhere, pretend he hadn’t seen it—no, that wouldn’t work. It’d been slid under the door; it was impossible to miss. He had to, or else—or else they’d know.
Slowly, Kai unfolded the paper. It looked like a letter of some sort, hand-written. It had his name at the top. Nya’s was at the bottom, which meant that the letter said either very good things or very bad things. Probably both, knowing Nya.
Kai bit his lip, then started reading.
Well, “reading”.
The first two words were small enough for him to recognize. But after that, he couldn’t understand it. He recognized individual letters, but put together they didn’t make any sense. It was just gibberish. Sometimes he could figure out words, but then when he’d look back at it again it’d be a different one—“saw” turned into “was”, etc—and sometimes when he thought he had the word he couldn’t tell what the word meant.
Kai forced himself through the first sentence, but by the end he didn’t have the slightest idea about what he’d just tried to read.
Kai yanked the paper apart, tearing it down the center. He chucked the pieces away from him before he buried his face in his hands. His head was throbbing, shame forcing its way up his throat as tears stung his eyes.
Maybe what was in the letter didn’t really matter. After all, he was a stupid, brain-damaged idiot who couldn’t even read.
Why would anyone want anything to do with him?
It was better to push them all away before they found out.
*****
Jay smirked as he played a +4 card.
“Seriously? Again?” Cole groaned, holding his Uno cards close to his chest.
“Again,” Nya said sweetly. Jay grinned. It was honestly impressive how she managed to sound perfectly genuine but very clearly mean the opposite at the same time.
“Are you sure that you’re not ganging up on me?” Cole asked suspiciously, drawing the required cards.
Jay muffled a laugh. They totally were. “We reserve the right to remain silent,” he proclaimed.
“Uno!” Nya said brightly as she took her turn. Cole glared at her. Nya wiggled her eyebrows at him teasingly, taking a drink from her water bottle.
“Hey, I thought it was my turn to win!” Jay jokingly protested.
Nya winked at him. “Ladies first.”
“You just won!” Cole exclaimed.
“But I still need this win to beat your six,” Nya said.
Cole gaped. “Hey!”
“Hay is for horses,” Jay said automatically. Cole glared at him as Nya giggled.
“You are ganging up on me!” Cole decided.
Jay snorted. “Of course we are. You won six times in a row!”
“But now you two have won eleven times,” Cole said.
“We still haven’t pounded you into the dirt yet, Brookstone,” Nya countered, her eyes dancing.
Cole sputtered. “Hey!”
“Is for horses,” Jay added.
“Would you stop that—” Cole cut himself off as Nya straightened, her attention snapping to something behind him. Jay followed her gaze.
Kai had emerged from his bedroom.
Jay stared at him for a long moment. Kai scanned the room lazily, his hands in the pockets of the bright red jacket he’d been wearing nonstop since the procedure. When his eyes landed on Jay, Jay forced himself not to flinch—thankfully, Kai looked away quickly.
Cole had had to twist somewhat awkwardly to see Kai—he was sitting on the armchair that faced away from the bedrooms, while Jay and Nya were on the ends of each couch next to him—and when Jay glanced at him he could practically see the gears turning in his head. Jay knew that his opinion of Kai had been sinking lower and lower as the days went on, which was understandable. As for Jay himself, though—well, Jay was somewhat frightened of him. He was Kai’s favorite target whenever Kai lost his temper or got bored.
However, Jay hadn’t been very good at holding it against him, not like Cole was. He didn’t know exactly why—he just had the feeling that there was something else going on with Kai, something that the rest of them didn’t know about. That there was a reason behind Kai’s actions. Of course, it could very well just be Mom’s words coming back to him—Mom had always said that bullies hurt other people because they were hurting too, not that that had helped any with the people who had tormented him when he was in school.
Still, something was off.
Nya took a deep breath. “So?” she asked, trying to disguise the hope in her voice.
Jay blinked, then remembered that Nya had written Kai a note of some sort—their first communication since their fight last night.
Kai stared at her. “So what?”
Nya reared back a little. “The note . . . ?”
Kai shrugged. “I couldn’t read it.”
“You didn’t read—” Nya exclaimed. “What? Why? ”
Jay frowned. Hang on—hadn’t Kai just said that he couldn’t read it, not that he didn’t?
“Why didn’t you read it?” Cole asked.
Maybe Jay had heard wrong.
Kai shrugged again. “Didn’t wanna.”
Nya's expression crumpled, but pain quickly turned to anger. "If that's the way you want to do it, then," she spat.
Kai flinched. It wasn’t obvious, but it was definitely there. “Nya . . .”
Nya shook her head as she shoved herself to her feet. An instant later she was slamming her bedroom door behind her.
Kai swore under his breath. He stared at Nya’s door for a moment before he stalked to the kitchen.
“That went well,” Cole muttered. He stood, leaving his cards on the arm of the chair. “Want to play video games with me?”
Jay almost accepted, but then he stopped himself. He’d already been using his hands a lot. “No thanks,” he said instead. His stomach decided to growl just then, so he added. “I think I’ll get something to eat.”
Cole glanced at the kitchen—which Kai was currently occupying—and looked back at Jay incredulously. “Are you sure?”
Oh. Right. Jay’s self-preservation instincts were telling him to stay as far away from Kai as possible—but he was hungry, and . . . for some reason, he didn’t think that Kai was in the mood to mess with him again.
“Yep,” Jay said as brightly as he could manage.
Cole glanced at the kitchen again. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Jay said, folding his arms. “I can handle Kai,” he insisted, ignoring the lightning that was sparking around his fingers.
“If you say so,” Cole said. He hesitated for just a moment longer before he went to the gaming room.
Jay stood, taking a deep breath before he made his way to the kitchen.
Kai was drinking straight out of the milk carton—ew—when Jay got there, standing in front of the open fridge. Jay just stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do.
Kai finished drinking, screwing the cap back on the milk and swiping at his mouth with the back of one hand. “What?” he grunted.
“Uh—could you, uh, grab me a white cheddar babybel?” Jay stammered. Wow, he was amazing at this.
Kai blinked at him. “That’s those little cheese things, right?”
Jay nodded, pointedly ignoring his common sense screaming at him in the back of his mind. So far, so good.
Kai put the milk back in the fridge—Jay made a mental note not to use it—and started digging through the drawer that the cheeses were in. He pulled out several flavors of the little wheels, then stared at all of them for a really long time. Like, long enough that Jay started wondering if he’d zoned out.
Then Kai shook his head slightly. “Here,” he said, tossing a cheese wheel at Jay. Jay barely caught it, and for a moment he thought that Kai had given him the wrong flavor—it definitely wouldn’t be out of character—but to his mild surprise, it was a white cheddar one. He stared at it for a moment longer than was probably warranted.
“If it’s the wrong flavor, just deal with it,” Kai snapped.
Jay looked up at him. “It’s the right one,” he reassured him automatically.
Kai blinked, then ducked his head. “Good,” he muttered, dumping the rest of the cheeses back in the drawer. He slammed both the drawer and the fridge door shut, then stormed out of the kitchen, back towards his bedroom.
Jay stared after him, his mind whirring. Had Kai . . . not known which flavor he’d given him? But he’d looked at each of them for a long time, more than long enough to read the labels—
Wait a minute.
“I couldn’t read it.”
Was—was Kai having trouble reading?