I wanted to finish this by the new year. That's probably not going to happen.
At this point, it's sort of just expected for my chapters to be very late, but uh. Still. Very sorry.
(I'm surprised you guys are still here)
Anywho, Merry Late Christmas! Or Happy Hanukkah! Or Merry Kwanzaa!
Just. Uh. Happy Holidays!
Hope you guys are doing very well and I hope you enjoy this chapter as a little late Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/other gift<33
Keefe's Pov
Keefe slept peacefully.
Well, maybe peacefully wasn't the right word, but it was something like that. He didn't toss and turn and didn't wake up once throughout the entire night, so he wanted to believe that was peacefully. In any case, it was soundless.
Which was weird, and strange, but he knew his body had needed rest. He had been so tired, and whether it was physical or emotional exhaustion he wasn't sure, but the premise had been the same: he slept softly and dreamed of nothing.
When he did wake up, he did it slowly. He shifted and tried to return to sleep, but when that didn't work, he laid on his bed and stared at the ceiling, thinking. It was early morning, he could tell by the way the sun barely shown through the window. But he felt well rested, and a tiny part of him was ready to face whatever horrors the day presented.
A tiny part. Not a lot of him, that was for sure, but . . . there was enough. Enough to get through the day.
Get through the day.
He repeated it in his head until he was ready to drag himself out of bed, across the room and into the adjoined bathroom. He peeled off his clothes and stepped into the shower, where he watched the water slowly steal the dirt and flour littering his body and carry it down the drain.
There was a metaphor there, somewhere, but he couldn't find it.
When he was done, he put the same clothes he had been wearing back on. He was sure that somewhere in the room there was something else he could have worn, but he liked the familiarity that came with his own clothes.
Distantly, he also realized he wasn't sure if he would be allowed to wear whatever clothes he might find. And he didn't particularly feel like asking someone.
So he stepped out of the bathroom and let his eyes wander over his room. He was searching for something, though he wasn't sure what.
Something to do, maybe, because he didn't want to go downstairs yet. Maybe just a thought to grasp. Whatever it was, it didn't seem like he would find it.
Eventually, he snapped out of whatever he had put himself into and made the bed, though that was something he rarely did at home. He regrettably couldn't remember the proper order the pillows and covers had been set up in the night before, so he placed them in what he hoped was a presentable way and left them.
When that was done he stood beside it, staring at the rest of the room, trying to make excuses as to what else he had to do.
Because even if he had slept well, and he had showered and he felt a little better, the idea of trailing down the stairs and seeing Grady and Edaline and being met with the questions he was sure they had was something he wasn't very sure he could handle.
And he was so sick of all the things he couldn't handle. Of all the sounds that made his heart pound and all the people he couldn't see without getting a headache.
He was sick of being weak, he supposed, because while he knew, distantly, that the way his parents had treated him wasn't normal, he also knew that it was deserved. At least partially, you have to punish a child, and he knew he had been a bad kid, so it was only logical that his parents had had to be more severe with him, right?
But while that thought made perfect sense to him, he knew Sophie wouldn't approve of it, so he shook his head to clear the thoughts and waited for something like courage to overtake him.
And he was like that for a while until someone knocked lightly on the door.
The noise didn't startle him, as if he had expected it, and he moved slowly across the room until his hand lingered over the doorknob. He swallowed hard and asked, "Who is it?"
His voice sounded rough.
"Sophie."
Ah. He had known, of course, that it was her. In the way the knock had sounded, he had simply known, and maybe that was a stupid thing and maybe it wasn't.
"Come in," he said, just to see if she would.
The knob turned and he stepped back as she opened the door, popping her head through to look at him before stepping all the way in.
She pushed the door closed behind her with an audible click and they stood there for a moment.
"Good morning," she greeted.
"Morning," he replied, and just like that they were both studying each other, eyes trailing their forms in vain hope to find nothing amiss.
Sophie had large eyebags, Keefe noticed, and while that wasn't very new, it still tugged at his heart while he wondered what had kept her up so late. How was it fair, he wanted to know, that he could sleep so soundly and she didn't sleep at all?
Other than that, though, she looked fine. He tried to take comfort in that, but it felt cold.
When his own "inspection" was done, he watched her do the same to him. She spent a while in silence examining him, eyes soft as they raked over his body insearch of anything wrong. He had almost passed, he realized, when her eyes narrowed at his wet hair.
Suddenly he felt self-conscious. He tugged on the hem of his shirt, glancing away.
Of course she caught the movement, and she looked at his dirty outfit, back to his hair, and sighed.
"You know," she said, offhandedly, after a moment, "there's extra clothes in here. You didn't have to put on the same dirty ones."
Keefe shrugged, his eyes landing on her's, and then immediately wishing they hadn't because oh. They were trained on him, warm brown meeting cold blue, and it was mesmerizing the way she looked at him.
But she blinked, and whatever spell had been cast was broken, and Keefe cleared his throat, tilting his head down. "I know. I just . . . wasn't sure I was allowed to wear them."
It was a half-truth, at least, and he watched as Sophie's expression softened like butter. "Keefe, of course you can wear them. Here, let me . . . I can get them for you."
And even if Keefe didn't necessarily want to change, he didn't stop her, because the little crease between her eyebrows was very cute, and screw him for wanting something wholesome in his life right then.
She turned to the dresser, which was propped next to the massive bed, and opened the middle drawer.
Keefe lingered a few steps behind, making no comment as she pulled out a T-shirt, pants, and a pair of striped blue socks.
She hesitated for a moment, then turned around. She gasped, not expecting Keefe to be standing so close, but she didn't really seem scared. Her eyes trailed up his body, landing on his face, and Keefe wanted nothing more than to kiss her again. It was a whole body desire.
She fumbled with the clothes, almost dropping the socks as she handed them over. Her face was flushed as she murmered, "I guessed the sizes, but I think they should fit."
Keefe nodded and didn't move. If anything, he leaned closer to her, and tilted his head down as her's tilted up.
"It's early," she obserbed, softly, and her breath tickled Keefe's face.
"It is," he told her, and whatever reply she might have said was lost when he finally closed the gap between them.
He had kissed her before, but each time felt like the first, where everything was beautiful and nothing was broken and magic was real because magic was this girl in his arms.
It made him more awake, more alert. He wanted to press closer, wanted to move his hands to cup her face. He wanted to never stop.
But it had to, he knew, and when the kiss had ended he let out a sigh. He was disappointed, but he understood that there was a lot to do and as much as they both wanted to, they couldn't spend the day with their hands tangled in each other's hair.
Besides, Keefe could only imagine what Grady would say if he found them together.
So he turned on his heel and marched into the bathroom without a word. He firmly closed the door, a barrier between him and reality, and stepped out of his dirty clothes, letting them drop to the floor. He tried not to feel like a piece of him was falling away with it.
He turned to the new outfit, a simple, plain T-shirt and black pants to match, and he smiled when he pulled them on and saw they fit, for the most part.
Opening the door, he announced, "Guesed my size exactly right."
Sophie, who was sitting on the edge of his bed, perked her head in surprise. "Really?"
Keefe laughed, a little, and shook his head as he made him way over. "Not really. But close. A little big, but they'll do."
Sophie rolled her eyes and twisted her hair between her fingers, and Keefe tried not to follow the movement too closely as he shoved his socks on. He sat on the bed, too, tucking he knees to his chest and turning to look at her.
They were both quiet, for a moment, and Keefe couldn't help thinking she's so beautiful.
And she was. The way her hair spilled over her shoulders and her eyes glinted in the morning sun, and her skin seemed to glow softly. Keefe wasn't sure, he realized, when she had grown into this beautiful lady. When they had both stopped being kids. It had to have happened very recently.
Sophie sucked in a breath and Keefe snapped to the present, lifting his eyes to her face. There was a reason she had come here, and while Keefe would have liked to believe it was simply because she wanted to see him, he knew that wasn't true.
She had something to say.
So, hesitantly, he waited.
"Last night I hailed Elwin," she finally said, rushed.
Keefe blinked and sat up. "Oh." He felt dizzy. "About what?"
And wasn't that just a stupid question?
Sophie sighed and fumbled for Keefe's hand. He let her have it, let her squeeze his fingers sore as she explained, "I told him about . . . the situation, Keefe, and he said he would take you in. He said he would adopt you, Keefe, if you wanted, and that he would help us set up a court case and everything. And-"
"Wait," Keefe interrupted, lifting his head up. His heart pounded. "Wait."
Sophie waited.
Keefe took a deep breath, then another one, trying to process. Elwin? Elwin was willingly helping them, Elwin said he would adopt Keefe?
Almost instantly, tears pricked Keefe's eyes, but he held them back. He would not cry over this. He would sit here and listen to Sophie and nod his head, but he would not cry.
A tear brushed down his cheek and he would not cry.
Sophie squeezed his hand again, and a sob crawled up his throat because Elwin understood and Elwin would take him in and it wasn't that long ago where he had thought that no one would ever want him but someone did.
"I'm not crying," he gasped at Sophie, even as more tears flooded his eyes.
Sophie nodded carefully and pulled him into a hug, letting his head rest on her shoulder. "Okay," she said, slowly. "Okay."
"I'm not," he hiccuped, "crying." And he buried his face into her shirt.
Because, and this what had gotten to him, Elwin believed him. Elwin had met Keefe's parents and known firsthand from visits to the Healing Center that Keefe wasn't a good kid, yet he believed them and wanted to adopt Keefe and would help them and--
And Keefe wasn't crying, it was just that already the day was a lot. But he wasn't crying, because he didn't cry over stupid things, and he was fine. He was fine. He would listen to the rest of Sophie's sentence in a minute, he was fine.
He wasn't crying.
(He was.)