If this was part of some elaborate plan to break me down, Asa's family does it well.
Almost as soon as I'm wheeled through the front door, I'm met with chaos. To the left, a crowded kitchen sat through an open doorway, a dining table squeezed in and piled with assorted pages of homework and art projects. Two twin girls with curly dark hair were dropping edible glitter onto a plate of garlic bread while another boy played on a game system under the table and forked spaghetti into his mouth at the same time.
It looked like the type of kitchen where mornings were spent mopping up spilled juice and buttering toast under the light of the windows. Herbs grew in pots, and plants hung from the curtain rods, their vines trailing down, flowers blooming brightly. Kid's art projects hung from the walls, and there were toys in the dishrack.
"Micha?" Asa shrills as he holds the door open wide, his mouth dropping as if he couldn't believe that I was actually present in his house and not like down the street and shit. "What are you doing in my house?!" He yelps, obviously caught off guard, judging by the owl boxers and sleep shirt that he was wearing.
"Your creepy brother kidnapped me," I reply with a shrug, and Asa shoots Soren a distraught look in response.
"Here I opened wide the door; -- Darkness there and nothing more," Sorren replies mysteriously, and then he dissolves into the shadows of the bustling little home, the majestic glint of his gorgeous hair shimmering in the multicolored lighting of the hallway before he's gone. If I had been into poetry, and boys who looked like a member of an eighties hair band, there was a chance I would have given him more than a passing flicker of interest, but that wasn't me.
"I'm so sorry about this, Micha!" Asa blurts as soon as Soren's out of earshot, "Soren usually doesn't kidnap people and bring them home."
"Are you sure about that?" I answer skeptically, and I slouch back in my chair, "Maybe you guys should check your basement for dead bodies."
I was kidding, of course. Sort of.
"Come on," Asa says quickly as the chaos unfolds around him, and he runs over and grabs my wheelchair, "I'll show you my room, it's much quieter upstairs."
I hesitate to ask him how he's going to drag me upstairs in a wheelchair, but he pivots out of the kitchen before I can protest and wheels me down a hallway packed with pictures of the Moon family. Since there were nine kids, there were a ton of baby pictures of bald-looking, drooling little infants bundled up in pink and blue blankets.
Weirdly enough, there were also portraits of various owls in assorted stages of life, some of them balls of fuzz and nothing more. Others were wearing little knit sweaters to make up for the lack of feathers, which was weird as hell.
"This is so crazy," I tell Asa finally when he stops by a closet and opens it up to grab something from inside. "I never fucking thought your house would look like this," I admit, and I scan the hallway, a little astonished by the difference between his house and mine.
"Like what?" Asa muffles, and then he comes out and hands me some crutches, his cheeks bright pink, his eyes shimmering, "Is it okay?"
"Yeah!" I exclaim, my voice coming out louder than I intend it to. "I mean--yeah! It's great, it's just weirdly different than I imagined it. It feels happy, you know? Like I wouldn't mind falling asleep in a bean bag somewhere with a book in my hand."
"Oh," Asa replies shyly, and he scuffs his foot a little while I stand up, towering over him as usual. "I wouldn't mind you falling asleep here either," he admits.
All my words dry up in an instant.
"I-I mean! I wouldn't mind you falling asleep somewhere that's not my bed!" Asa squeaks, "Not because I like you or anything, and imagine us cuddling together!"
"Wait. You imagine us cuddling together?" I reiterate, but before Asa can reply, there's movement from down the hallway and we both look over in time to see a dark figure approach one of the bedrooms, a plate of spaghetti in one hand before he notices us standing there, standing ridiculously close to one another.
"Oh hey, Quince," Asa perks up, "This is Micha. You haven't met him yet, have you?"
"I have no interest in your pets, Asa," The boy replies smoothly, "Nor do I believe in true love. Eventually, all of us will die alone, deep below the earth where the worms will feast on our flesh while we scream silently into the abyss. Oh, and by the way? Never address me by that name again. Quince is no more. My true name is Zherneboh, God of Darkness."
Asa and I watch the strange boy open his door and vanish inside before slamming it closed behind him.
"Alright," I sigh, and Asa looks up at me, somewhat mortified, "Any other weird siblings I should know about?"
"Just Rocky, but he's away at college trying to major in theater arts right now," Asa admits, and then he darts past me, his head coming up to my shoulders. "My bedroom's this way," he says, "Don't make fun of me, okay? I didn't get a chance to pick up all my stuff and my bed's all messy."
"I don't care," I admit, and I hobble after him, "My room permanently looks like a dump. I doubt you got anything on me at this point."
Asa giggles a little which makes me blush, and I follow him up the stairs as carefully as I can. From outside, the house hadn't looked as big or complicated, but as Asa walks me through his family home, I couldn't believe how weirdly magical it was. Every inch of the place had something to look at. Old portraits of people with owl eyes, painted by someone long gone. There were cabinets with curious things inside, like animal skulls and dried-up flowers. At one point, I even see a live owl on a perch, his head rotating to follow us.
Asa finally reaches his room and opens up the door for us. "Here it is!" He chirps, and he glances at me from over his shoulder, "I promise nobody's going to bother us up here."
I look over the top of his head, into the cozy room that was all Asa. From the window with the arch in front of a bed on the floor, tucked into the corner. To the weird random sofa squished into a space between his closet and bookshelves filled with weird action figures. It reminded me that he was still fifteen, but verging on adulthood judging by some of the books on the shelves.
"Is that a Martin with David Bowie painted on the front of it?" I ask Asa after a long pause and a little awkwardness passes between us.
"Oh! Are you talking about my guitar?" Asa pipes up, and he quickly goes over to the guitar on the wall and takes it down. "This was my grandpa's. He painted it and gave it to me a few months before he died."
"Whoa," I whisper, and Asa brings it over, holding it out so I could see it. It was beautiful, painted neon colors with "rebel rebel" written across the bottom. I didn't know a lot about playing guitars, but when Asa leads me to his bed, we both sit down and he passes it to me.
"Do you play?" He asks me, his eyes searching mine, reflecting the moonlight outside.
I strum a few chords to Space Oddity and smile at him in response as the music washes over both of us. At some point, Asa lays down and I lay beside him, plucking random notes in the darkness of the night while I listen to him breathe. We don't touch, and we don't speak, but we were closer than we had ever been to one another.
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