i'll be by your side
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
Zachary and Caspian both froze when Xavier started choking on his food, only relaxing when they were certain he wasn't dying. Zach smirked and looked to Cas, hoping to get a smirk back. He didn't. Instead Cas gestured that he should continue. Smirk now gone, he turned back to his half-brother.
"What do you know about him, though?" he asked, and he hoped his tone told Xavier that he wasn't looking for a simple he likes to draw and who his godly parent was answer. Chace only hid his wounds under bandages and the kid rarely trained and had never once gone on a quest. He wanted to know what his little brother had inferred about Chace's life, his situation. Even if he only had a small guess.
"Just so you know, we have nothing against Chace," Caspian pointed out, to which Zachary verbally agreed. "He's a good kid with a kind heart."
"And a reputation," Zachary mumbled, earning an elbow in his ribs from Caspian. "Ow!"
"He's a good kid," Caspian repeated, giving Zachary a quick glare to shut him up.
They could still see Chace, sitting with Justin and Atticus. He was laughing and trying to put his fluffy rainbow hat on Justin, who was trying to get as far away as possible without sliding off his seat. Zachary sighed. He didn't like keeping things from his little brother.
"I'm just going to say it," he blurted, ignoring the wait, what? look he got from Caspian. "I heard from Chace that he likes you. Like he has a crush on you." He held up his hand to stop Xavier from interrupting, though he wasn't sure if his little brother would be too shocked to speak or not. "I have no personal problem with if you want to date boys or girls or neither or both. You know I like both so I don't have any problem with whatever you like. However," he paused, trying to think of how to word what he wanted to say.
"What your brother's trying to say," Caspian interjected, "Is that Chace doesn't just like you. I don't know if you've heard, but people talk, and there's rumors about Chace. Nothing too bad, I assure you. What people say is that Chace doesn't get crushes, he falls in love. So what we mean by he likes you is that he's in love with you."
Zachary nodded. "And the poor kid, for as long as I've known him, always gets his heart broken. Campers, Hell even the staff, say he's cursed. His mother's the goddess of forbidden love. They say his curse is... well, it's that no one will ever love him back, in any form of love."
Even as he said it, both he and Caspian found it hard to believe as they saw how Justin and Chace interacted. Surely Justin felt a friendship or brotherly love toward the boy? But if Chace was truly cursed, then his relationship with Justin wasn't quite what it seemed.
