Oneshot Book!

The Intruder (JSaB)

"I don't know at this point."

The other person, who was indeed named Zone, made a small meal for the two out of the ingredients he had.

While he was cooking, he decided to ask a few questions about the thief.

"So, I didn't get your name. Mind telling me?" Zone asked.

"Oh, my name is Max." He replied.

"Okay. So, Max, how did you get here? You clearly come from somewhere entirely different to Paradise, so I'm kinda curious"

"I'm able to make these portal thingies, they let me travel anywhere I want. I just kinda opened up one at random and hoped for the best, since I was getting kinda desperate."

"Oh, right. Uh, do you mind me asking all these questions? I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable or like I'm interrogating you"

"Oh, no, it's fine. I wasn't expecting you to be so nice to me, though"

"Your situation is clearly a bad one. I mean, you had to resort to thievery in order to eat. I understand that you didn't mean any harm, and after listening to you I wanted to make sure you're okay."

"Oh, wow" Max flustered a little. "Thank you"

"Hey, it's the least I can do. This is probably the most interesting thing to happen to me in a while, anyways." Zone said, a caring tone in his voice. "I am pretty curious as to how you got past security. This place's security is tighter than a pickle jar lid"

Max chuckled at the analogy. "They were distracted by something else, probably someone else trying to break in, and I think one was asleep. It wasn't too hard to avoid the cameras either."

"Heh, those guys are a bunch of idiots." Zone smirked.

A short silence was interrupted by a gagging noise.

Zone whipped his head around, to find Max doubled down, mouth open.

"The bathroom's the next room over" Zone said, clearly worried.

Max ran as fast as his weak legs would allow, and continued gagging over the toilet.

Zone paused what he was doing, making sure nothing was cooking, and went to check on him.

"Are you okay?" Zone asked, placing a hand on Max's back. He noticed Max's temperature had gone up.

"I-it's a panic attack... I could feel it coming on... Oh god, I hate them..."

"You're really warm. Do you want to take all that off?"

"Oh, yeah, that might be a good idea."

Max took off his scarf, cape, and gloves. Zone noticed his hand and neck were scarred and rough.

The two sat there for a bit, until Max calmed down. Afterwards, Zone sat down with him to eat.

Max was still starving, so naturally he scarfed his food down rather quickly. Zone wasn't all that surprised.

The insomnia started getting to him again, since everything started getting blurry, and Max could feel a migraine coming in. He knew he was about to faint, so he pushed his plate over to not damage it.

*thud*

"Uh... mmm... wha?"

Max's vision was all blurry, so he couldn't see Zone cuddling him and making sure he was comforted. All he knew is that his headache was getting soothed, and he felt a warm embrace.

It felt nice.

Too nice.

He ended up dozing off into Zone's arms. Zone continued cuddling until Max woke up.

The two just looked at each other, in a sort of "I trust you" kind of way.

Zone ended up letting Max stay as long as he wanted, and the two got a lot closer over time.