Trist returned home just before nine, as promised. The girls seemed to have made a silent agreement not to make a big deal about it, and Gabe certainly wasn’t going to be the one to mess that up. Trist still seemed determined not to acknowledge him.

Trist came back from the kitchen with a plateful of cold pizza. For a moment, Gabe thought Trist was about to sit down on the end of the couch he was laying on so he moved his feet, but Trist ignored him and sat on the armchair instead. His eyes were firmly on the end of the Spider-Man movie they were watching and Gabe got the impression that if anyone so much as spoke to him, he’d be out of there.

Well, fine. If he didn’t want Gabe around, that could be arranged — at least temporarily. Gabe was tired anyway.

Gabe ignored the protests of his achy body as he hauled himself to his feet. “Okay, I’m off to bed.”

“Aw, okay,” Bee said. “Goodnight.”

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” Sophie added.

Gabe carefully stepped over Sadie where she was fast asleep on the floor, sprawled out in an undignified manner on her back. “I hope there aren’t actual bedbugs.”

“Well… probably not,” Sophie said. “Definitely fleas, though.”

“I can deal with fleas.”

Unfortunately, the combination of banter and the struggle to not simply fall asleep on the closest available surface had been too much for Gabe’s brain. He’d allowed himself to get distracted and only realised when it was too late to change his path without being even more awkward that he was going to walk in front of Trist. Maybe that shouldn’t have been a big deal, but the tenuous peace they had going just then seemed to be entirely based on Trist not having to look at him.

Still, he expected Trist to look at his pizza or find something else to distract him for two seconds while Gabe passed. It would have been better for both of them.

No such luck. Trist locked eyes with Gabe, one eyebrow quirking up in a way Gabe would describe as challenging, but not exactly threatening. Gabe quickly averted his gaze and hurried past 

Gabe just wanted to collapse into bed and sleep forever, but he forced himself to take a shower and dig out a clean shirt. He was doing his best to avoid getting some kind of horrific infection.

Or, well, not his best. But the best he could do while not letting anyone else in on the whole situation he had going on with his back. He didn’t even really know why he didn’t want anyone to know. He just… didn’t. He felt oddly ashamed of it, even though he knew that made no sense. 

But he wasn’t going to analyse that. He was going to sleep.

At least, that had been the plan.

He was certainly tired enough. His brain was trying so hard to shut itself off that he couldn’t hold a thought together for more than a couple of seconds, but every time he started truly sinking deeper, his stitches would start itching or he’d decide the position he was laying in on his stomach wasn’t working for him and try to find a more comfortable one.

He didn’t know if it had been two hours or fifteen minutes when Trist came in to go to bed, but however long it had been, Gabe was still frustratingly awake.

He hadn’t known it was possible to simultaneously feel this close to and this far from sleep. He had settled into something that was very nearly sleep, but his brain refused to sink deeper into it or rise out of it.

And then, to make matters worse, Sadie started scratching at the side of the bed to be let up. Oh, no, Gabe wasn’t falling for that one again. Trist already hated him enough without him kicking his dog a second time. He’d just ignore her until she gave up.

Unfortunately, that only made her think she had to work harder to get his attention. The scratching became more insistent and she started letting out little wuffs and whines.

After a few minutes of this, Trist let out a long sigh and the bed shook as he climbed down. Gabe heard him bend down and then felt Sadie being deposited onto the end of the bed before Trist climbed back up again. Sadie lay down with her head on Gabe’s leg, satisfied.

Well, okay then. If she ended up getting kicked again, Trist only had himself to blame. He knew the risk.

The last conscious thought Gabe was aware of was that having a dog sleeping on his leg was going to make it even more difficult to get to sleep, and then he woke up and there was sunlight coming in through the window and Sadie was gone. 

Apparently all he’d really needed to get to sleep was something to get him to stop fidgeting around in a futile attempt to get comfortable for two minutes. 

By the time Gabe had showered and dressed, Sophie and Bee were already out in the living room watching an episode of an anime Gabe didn’t recognise. There was a Lego set laid out on the table that they’d started to put together, but their attention was mostly on the TV.

“Good morning,” Bee said. “How are you feeling?”

“A little better,” Gabe said, though it came out sounding uncertain. He actually was feeling slightly less exhausted and sore, but he still didn’t know what she thought was wrong with him. How long was whatever she thought he had supposed to last? How severe was it? Was he contagious?

She seemed satisfied by that response, in any case. “There’s cereal if you want some.”

Mm, yes, he did want some cereal. Almost as badly as he wanted some painkillers. He headed to the kitchen to get both.

Their painkiller supplies were running worryingly low and he didn’t know what to do about that. He’d have to explain why he needed them so badly if he wanted to ask someone to get more for him, and that would require him to either tell the truth or commit to a lie more solidly than he wanted to.

But that was a problem for later. There were still enough left to get him through another couple of days

It was another laid back day, this time of marathoning anime and putting together the Lego set. Although the second part ended up being a far more massive task than Gabe had anticipated. He hadn’t played with Lego since he was a kid, and this was nothing like anything he’d had. This was a castle set with hundreds of pieces. It was a bit too much for Gabe’s tired brain, but the girls were into it and he liked helping them find the pieces they were looking for while they did the hard job of putting it all together.

By the time Trist got home from work early in the afternoon, they were well into the castle foundations. It didn’t look like much, but it had taken them hours to get as far as they had.

Bee tried to wave Trist over. “Come help us!”

Trist shook his head, heading towards the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “I just got back from work.”

“And, what, Lego is just too stressful until you’ve had some downtime?” Sophie asked, but Trist had already gone. She sighed loudly. “Why are boys so difficult?”

“Hey, don’t lump me in with his shit,” Gabe said.

“I’m sorry he’s being this way,” Bee said. “He’s really not normally like this.”

Gabe handed her the Lego piece she’d been looking for. “So you keep saying.”

“Thanks.” She pressed it down into the correct place in the structure. “He really isn’t, though. I have a lot of health problems, and before I moved here he used to come over and take me to the hospital in the middle of the night when I was worried about something and my parents wanted to wait until morning. He never complained about it or asked for anything in return. And I moved up here about six months before he did, and he drove me all the way here himself. It was like a six hour drive.”

“She’s right,” Sophie admitted. “He can be kind of aloof and in his own head a bit sometimes, but he’s not normally like this. This feels actually kind of mean.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Gabe insisted.

“Well, obviously,” Sophie said. “That’s what makes it mean. I just don’t get why he’s doing it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gabe said. 

He didn’t feel like micro analysing it. Most guys didn’t like Gabe, and the fact that Trist was apparently a really nice guy to other people didn’t make Gabe feel better at all. He much preferred to believe anyone who disliked him for absolutely no reason was just an asshole. His struggling self esteem couldn’t handle the possibility that they weren’t and it was actually just some sort of instinctive response he elicited in some otherwise perfectly nice people.

“I mean, did you say anything to him when you first met, or… I don’t know.” Sophie made a face. “I don’t even really know what would offend Trist, to be honest.”

“It’s fine, it doesn’t matter,” Gabe repeated as he pushed himself to his feet. “I’m tired, so I’m going to go have a nap, okay?”

It had mostly just been an excuse to get out of the conversation, but now that he’d gone through the exertion of standing up, he realised it was also just the damn truth. He also realised, only once he was already halfway down the hallway, that Trist was in the bedroom.

Oh well. Gabe just wouldn’t look at him, as Trist loved to do to Gabe, and then Trist could glare at him all he wanted and Gabe wouldn’t have to know about it.

As expected, Trist didn’t acknowledge him when he entered the room, and as planned Gabe didn’t acknowledge him either. He quickly got into bed and tucked his face against the crook of his arm to block out some of the daylight.

It was too hot, he was itchy, and he was sore. None of this was conducive to sleep. There was a quiet scratching sound coming from the top bunk, though, and Gabe found it oddly soothly. Was Trist writing? No, it sounded like he was drawing.

Gabe’s impression of reality was that he had been uncomfortably awake for around half an hour, but when he finally stretched out and cracked his eyes open, he found the bedroom light was on and there was only darkness through the crack of window the curtains revealed. The bedroom door was open and he could no longer hear the soothing scratch of Trist’s pencil.

Gabe felt around under his pillow for his phone to check the time, but somehow managed to knock it down the side of the bed instead. He groaned as he reached his hand down between the wall and the mattress, already anticipating how much his abused body was going to hate him for the awkward positions he was going to have to put it in to get his phone back.

His fingers hit something, but it wasn’t his phone. It was… paper? He pulled the object out and held it up so he could see. It was a drawing of a dog, done in coloured pencils. No, not just a dog — Sadie, specifically. On the back there was blu-tack, as though it had once been stuck to the wall.

“Where did you get that?”

Gabe physically jumped and looked up to see Trist standing in the doorway.

“Uhh…” was what ended up coming out of Gabe’s mouth. 

The look Trist gave him wasn’t exactly threatening, but it definitely wasn’t friendly.

Gabe held it out to him. “It was down the side of the bed.”

Trist looked skeptical for a second — but only a second — before he seemed to realise that Gabe’s explanation had been reasonable. He strode towards Gabe and reached out to snatch the drawing back.

Gabe reflexively leant his body away and held the drawing further out and for a moment Trist stopped, his gaze shifting from the drawing to Gabe’s face. His attention then returned to the drawing — or, no. His eyes were on the stitches on the back of Gabe’s hand. The whole sequence played out over just a few seconds, but Gabe saw the look on Trist’s face before he took the drawing and turned around. He’d put a few things together.

A sad, lonely little part of Gabe hoped that Trist would be sympathetic, that this had been some sort of bonding moment and that Trist would be nicer to him now. Of course, that had literally never happened to him before. In his experience, whenever some guy who’d decided he didn’t like Gabe on sight saw some kind of weakness in him, there was only one thing it inspired them to do: exploit it.

The girls seemed to think that Trist was nice, a good person, but perhaps that was just how the people in the lives of the guys who hated Gabe always felt. They weren’t usually friendless loners, and who would be friends with someone who acted the way they did towards Gabe?

“I’m sorry,” Gabe said as Trist reached up to tuck the drawing on his high shelf, though he didn’t know why he said it. He wasn’t sorry and he wasn’t scared enough to pretend to be. He was just tired.

Trist shot him a look over his shoulder, and Gabe couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or just confused.

“It was a good drawing,” Gabe said quietly, mostly to himself, when Trist turned back around to get something down from the shelf.

Trist didn’t respond, which was honestly what Gabe had expected. What he hadn’t expected was Trist turning around to look at him, really look at him, two minutes later. He didn’t look angry, just… unhappy.

“Just… don’t touch my stuff, okay?” Trist said, voice surprisingly soft and genuinely imploring.

Gabe nodded quickly, though he didn’t know why he felt so nervous. This was the least hostile Trist had ever been to him. “I won’t. I promise.”

Trist nodded, switched the light off, and left the room.