I have finally made it back to La Caldera after a long week of boring work. I opted to take a cab this time, knowing full well I won’t be driving back home tonight. Despite cleaning up after work, my clothing choice looks incredibly sloppy to me: baggy jeans, white undershirt, and a greyscale flannel buttoned at the top. I comb through my lightly-damped hair with my fingers before walking up to the door. I already feel like I should head back home.

I pull the door partly open with my hand and kick it the rest of the way open. It is not very packed tonight, but I do see a seated patron look up at me from their sandwich. My bad.

I look over to the bar, and there sits Ke’lan, drink in hand while he engages Kat in lively conversation. They seem to be doing just fine without me… but it would be rude to leave them waiting for me, so I saunter over. They both look back to address me.

“Look who’s late to the party!” Kat exclaims, immediately prepared to take my order.

“I took a cab this time,” I shout back before slipping into the seat in the dead center. I wave my hand back and forth dismissively at the positivity. “Give me the usual.”

“No problem, chief.” She gives me a playful military salute before placing an iced glass on the bar and pouring me my shot of scotch. I admire the glistening amber for a moment as it cascades down the ball of ice. After it’s done being poured, I throw it back.

“Ke’lan was just telling me how he’s going to be living in the area for a few weeks,” Kat continues as she pours me another shot, “and was asking me about some cool places to visit. Guess someone has taken a liking to the area, huh?” She winks and nudges towards Ke’lan, who chuckles with a covered mouth.

“What can I say,” he admits, “the place is far different compared to the one back home. Though, when you have lived in one place for most of your life, would one not want to admit that every other place feels exotic to them?” The blond takes a sip of his drink-- un Ojo de Serpiento, the same non-alcoholic drink he had the last time he came to the bar. “Plus, I have a distant cousin that wants to take in all of the sights as well, and she does not speak the language.”

“To be free enough to discover new places,” I groan before taking another glass to the head. “Bah, I wish my hands didn’t feel tied. I would love to get out of the Nardu metro area and see something else that isn’t green and brown.” Kat pours my third glass slowly this time, and I take it slowly in kind, letting the heat of alcohol linger on my tongue before smacking my lips in exasperation. “Guess it really is my fault for rushing into the managerial position, huh…”

“I’m telling you, Val,” Kat sighs, propping the bottle of scotch beside her, “you should just quit your job and find something more meaningful to you, not your agonizing family.”

I really don’t want to hear this from you again, Kat; just don’t let my cup dry, please.

Kat shakes her head when I lift my glass up, only filling it up to half a shot before saying, “You should tell your family to go fuck themselves at this point.”

“Wo-ho-hoah, profanity!” I scoff exaggeratedly, savoring the bit of alcohol I was given.

“Oh kiss my ass,” Kat snaps. “No more for you. Why don’t you talk out your feelings for once instead of drowning them in liquor like you always do? Outside of the usual ‘my family has full reign of what I do and I, a grown-ass adult, can’t do anything about it but whine’.”

The bar sits silent, and I grit my teeth. Katarina walks away to tend to the only other patron here, and I press my palm into my face in frustration.

Why did I decide to come tonight if all I was going to do was ruin people’s nights?

“Say…” I hear softly from beside me, causing me to look over: Ke’lan has been sitting silently this entire time, listening to us pointlessly argue, and I only realized that once he spoke up. His brow is creased, and looks down on me in confusion. Kat starts to come back from the kitchen when he continues, “do you ever spend time… out on the town, besides the businesses that your friends own?”

I recoil back into my shell in embarrassment, head tucked into my arms. I called him out here just so he can hear me complain about my mediocre issues. Waving my glass above my head as a sign of surrender, Kat snatches it out of my hands and fills it for me before roughly placing it on the bar in front of me. I pull it into me and take a quick sip: it is a non-alcoholic ale.

Works for me, in all honesty.

Kat sighs as I sip through the little straw in the cup. “Some people really don’t want to talk about their problems, Ke’lan,” she chides. “It’s a lost cause most times, trying to get them to speak.” I see her lean into Ke’lan with a cupped hand. “Sometimes I think it’d be effective to start icing people who keep their thoughts in at all times, but that’s just me.”

“I can hear you fine, Kat,” I growl, nibbling on the straw in my emptying cup. I pull up from the glass, straw still in my mouth. “Look, they’ve got me working on stuff that could be a serious invasion of privacy. That’s basically it. Being someone who swears secrecy my whole life, it kinda hits me hard, you get what I’m saying?”

“So basically, your job is making it hard for you to… do your ‘second job’?”

I bend the straw between my teeth. “Yeah.”

“Still pretty bullshit, if you don’t mind me telling.”

I spit the straw into the glass and lean into my arm, rubbing my forehead as I stare at the ice globe inside of my cup. “Maybe it wasn’t the best idea for me to come here tonight.”

Ke’lan stands up from his chair and places his hand on my shoulder, gently pulling me into his side. “I feel as though you have come here because of Kat,” he coddles, “because it is she who tells you exactly what you want to hear.” I look up at him, and he softly smiles at me. “You asked me to come here because you were worrying about me as well, yes?”

“Honestly,” I stretch my back into an upright position, “that’s the shorthand of it. I just wanted to hang out with you again, I don’t know… it is extremely lonely living in a studio apartment on your lonesome, when your job… takes all the energy away from you, I guess?”

“Would you like me to bring you home again?” Ke’tlan takes out his phone, likely looking through his messages. The phone screen colors his pale face, and as the colors flicker, he smiles. “My distant cousin and her chauffeur are close by, so they can pick me up whenever we are done here; they likely would not mind if I asked them to drop you off. I just have to ask.”

I look over to Kat: surely, she doesn’t want to be left alone just so my ass gets the attention it apparently needs. She furrows her brows and smirks. “You really don’t need to ask me if you can go home,” she sasses, “I am not your momma. If you need to go back home, I won’t be offended; just feel better, okay?” She ruffles my hair up with an accepting pet.

---

Ke’lan took a call outside to talk to his cousin, or her chauffeur-- whomever-- and I took the moment to look through my phone. That dumb little salamander has notifications over its stupid little head, and I click through it: there are so many emergency call requests for work…

I’m just glad that I intentionally didn’t buy into a cable or Internet plan, or else I’ll have to start clearing these tickets.

There’s no way that I could start working right now, anyways: not only am I far away from a computer or Internet, I can start to feel the buzz bleeding through my field of vision.

In no time at all, Ke’lan started to pull my sleeve: “They are here,” he seems to whisper, “so let us go.” As I stand up, he tells Kat that he’ll text her later when he’s free: that’s nice.

When I walk outside, I see this worn down, grey mess of a jalopy. There are clear dents on the exterior, and the paint started to flake off of this thing… probably half a decade ago. The headlights and brakelights are at least intact, but if this vehicle doesn’t seem shady…

Ke’lan enthusiastically pushes me towards this dumpster of a vehicle, and my body feels far more inclined to not. The chauffeur gives me the most… squeamish vibe. It definitely wasn’t the skin, or hair-- no, I am very much used to dyed hair and melanin in the workplace. It was the really weird body mods that raise my red flags: big, bulbous plugs on their forehead, ears with copious amounts of helix rings, and the pierced tongue that they stick out at me with the most sultry of gazes.

What in the nine hells is wrong with this person.

“Val,” Ke’lan says gingerly, “this is Kam’rin, a friend of mine. They will be driving us to your home today.”

I can feel my fight or flight instincts try to claw their way out of me. Even with Ke’lan opening the door for me, my feet feel like concrete, stuck to the pavement.

“Ke’lan I feel like this person’s going to drug and kill the two of us,” I whisper into the kneeling blond’s ear. “How do you even know this person and why are they taking me home?”

“Val…” He literally lifts me up from the concrete and helps me into the car. Fuck what, he can carry me? “I would not allow that to happen, and Kam’rin promised me that they will not do such a thing.” Ke’lan slides himself into the car and shuts the door. “Isn’t that right, Kam’rin?”

The chauffeur looks back at me with narrowed eyes and says, “Ec thir kir nepolko.”

What.

What did they just say to me?

Ke’lan is finally picking up on my dis-ease. “Kam’rin!” he shouts. “You know the universal tongue, do not start speaking differently just to scare him!”

They laugh, and that laugh reverberates through my bones. “I am sorry, Great Prince,” they say. Oh so they do speak our language; what a tool. “Can’t a person have fun for once?”

“I already told you, Kam’rin; stop calling me that. It is Ke’tlan, you nuisance.”

“Right, right,” they say, before finally moving the car.

Needless to say, I passed out on the car-ride back home.