Icarus stepped out of the bathroom, pulled on his pajamas, waltzed to his bed, and collapsed. He would get the call from the Association soon to go get tested, he thought in annoyance. He did not want to go. As a specialist, he was going to be wanted by a lot of guilds, and he would be fielding requests left and right. He didn’t know which guild he wanted to join. He thought it would be better if he didn’t join a guild. That might actually be better. Jacinto was independent. They could be independent together.

He was still a little high, and he sat up and grabbed his bag of yarn. He unlocked his phone and pulled up a pattern for a sunflower amigurumi, and then he rooted around in the bag for the yellow, brown, and green. He got out all the yarn and pulled over the big bag of stuffing, and then he drew his first loop before he got to work. He had to start with the stem, which was going to be a bitch to stuff, but he didn’t mind so much.

Shrooms peered out from around the corner and hopped onto the bed, and Icarus smiled at him.

“Hey, buddy,” he said and started crocheting. Shrooms watched him in interest before he hopped closer, slumping down against Icarus’s thigh, and Icarus followed the pattern carefully, using a stitch marker and counting under his breath as he crocheted it all together. The yarn pulled on his hand pleasantly, and he curled up in place as Lonely Boy by txt played in the background. He sighed quietly to himself as he counted the stitches, and he wondered what this one was going to do. He had no idea. It seemed like the system assigned powers at random, and he didn’t have much say in it.

He buried his toes under the blanket and sighed quietly, crocheting together the stem. He was moving slower, in his eyes, and he didn’t know why. Oh. Right. He was high. He was, in fact, very high. He probably was moving at a normal pace, but it was taking so long.

There was a knock on the door, and he blinked before he checked his phone. It was 12am. Who the hell was at his door? Was his music too loud? With a groan, he pulled himself to his feet, turned down the music, and walked to the door, pulling it open to greet…

It was Aiden.

He was tall, with bright red hair left long on top, shorn short on the sides. His green eyes stared down at Icarus, and Icarus stared up at him. He had gotten more muscular. He used to be a skinny little twink. He was tall and broad, and Icarus…

Shut the door in his face.

“Oh, come on, Kayla, don’t be like that,” Aiden said, and Icarus let his head thump against the door. “I saw clips from the live stream.”

“Then, you should know not to call me fucking Kayla,” Icarus bit out, and Aiden was quiet for a moment.

“Come on, just let me in, I’m sorry,” he said, and Icarus let out a harsh bark of a laugh.

“Oh? You’re sorry?” he asked, and Aiden didn’t respond. “Sorry? That’s it? You abandoned me.”

Aiden and Icarus had awakened when they were fifteen and twenty. It was the same event that killed their parents, and Aiden stepped up to the plate. Dropped out of college and started taking care of Icarus. At first, he lived quietly, working at a gay bar to pay the bills, but then, he got greedy. He started hunting when Icarus was sixteen, and by the time Icarus was eighteen, he was never home. He was always gone in a dungeon, and he just…

He just abandoned Icarus. Paid for a lease for a year and abandoned him in this shit studio apartment the second he turned eighteen. Never spoke to him again. The first year, Icarus begged him to come back, but all his texts and calls went unanswered. He never spoke to him, never communicated with him, never told Icarus what he did wrong to deserve this. He was just… gone.

Like he had never loved Icarus at all.

“Icarus, just let me in, please,” Aiden said quietly, and Icarus sunk down against the door and stared at the wall. He was high right now. He couldn’t deal with this.

“No,” he said, and Aiden took a deep breath in.

“Just let me in. Let’s talk,” he said. “I know you’re re-awakened. I saw what you did.”

Icarus stared with unfocused eyes at the wall.

“Icarus. Come on,” Aiden said, and tears welled in Icarus’s eyes before he stood and ripped open the door.

“You left me!” he cried. “You left me to go be a big, bad S-rank, and now you’re coming back crying to me because I’m S-rank, too, and I’m not forgiving you!”

He slammed the door in his face, and there was a long pause.

“Are you high right now?” Aiden asked, and Icarus laughed harshly. “You’re twenty. That’s illegal until you’re 21.”

“I don’t care,” Icarus snarled, and Aiden let his head drop against the door.

“Icarus, just let me in. I need to talk to you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Aiden said, and Icarus didn’t think he was sorry. He did not think he was sorry. He thought he was miserable because now he would have to deal with his useless little brother, and Icarus was not dealing with it. He was not going to entertain this.

“Go away,” Icarus said, muffled through the door, and there was a long pause.

“I’ll text you,” Aiden said and pushed off the door. There was the sound of his footsteps fading away, and Icarus felt tears well.

Two years. Two years Aiden had ignored him and pretended he didn’t exist, and now he was… What? Sorry because Icarus was important now? Sorry because Icarus had power now? Didn’t he know how this looked? Didn’t he know how this worked? How dare he. How dare he. He didn’t get to come back in here now that Icarus was important. He didn’t get to try to fix things now that Icarus was a S-rank.

Fuck. He had to go pick up his motorcycle tomorrow. With a groan, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way to his bed, collapsing face down and burying his face in the pillow. He needed to lock the door. With another grunt, he got up and locked the door, sliding the chain lock into place and going back to crawl under the covers. He hugged the yarn stuffie to his chest and buried his face in it, and then he breathed out.

This wasn’t working.

This was not working.

….

Aiden March ripped open the door of his car and stuffed himself into the driver’s seat. His hands curled around the wheel, and he took a deep breath in and rested his forehead against the wheel. This was it. This was the worst case scenario. Hands down, it was the worst possible case scenario. He needed to get Icarus to talk to him so he could convince him to move in with him.

He thought the distance would protect him. And it had, to some degree. No one knew Icarus existed, and that was for the best. He was only F-ranked. He would be targeted. That much was clear the second Aiden took a step into the world of S-ranked hunters. Someone would murder him, rape him, do something to him, and Aiden would have to deal with the fallout.

It was better that Icarus didn’t know what was going on. The world of S-ranks was cutthroat. It was dangerous. And he knew Icarus would be mad at him. Gods, he knew that. He loved his little sister… brother, and he wanted the best for him, but he couldn’t be selfish with him. He could not keep him around. He could not keep him around, and then Icarus had gone picking in dungeons. Like an idiot. He was an orphan. He could get free college. Aiden didn’t know what possessed him to go picking. It was insane, dangerous.

And now he was re-awakened. An S rank, clearly, just from the presence on the other side of the door. A predator recognized a predator. He was S-rank, and Aiden didn’t know what to do. This lifestyle… it would take the sweet kid he knew and rip him apart. It would destroy him.

Fuck, he had missed so much. Kayla was trans. He blinked, and Icarus was fully grown and clearly on testosterone. That was hard to believe. Icarus… Icarus had always been a girl. He crocheted, for fucks sake. He crocheted. And Aiden didn’t even know his class. Was he still a fighter class? Aiden had no idea. What were his skills? F-ranks didn’t typically get skills, but S-ranks did. He must have awoken a skill when he was re-awakened. That was the only way he could have even managed to survive.

Fuck. This was a fucking nightmare, he thought as he pulled up his phone and dialed Ember’s number. It rang once, twice, and Ember picked up.

“Hello?” came Ember’s sleepy voice, and Aiden cursed.

“Can you head over?” he asked, and Ember rolled around in bed, the sound of shuffling and a door shutting.

“Why?” Ember asked, and Aiden rested his forehead against the steering wheel.

“I tried to talk to Icarus,” he mumbled, and there was a pause.

“Who’s Icarus?”

“Kayla,” Aiden said, and there was a long, long pause.

“Trans?” Ember asked in confusion, and Aiden nodded.

“Yeah,” he said thickly. “Yeah, I missed that.”

“Why did you try to talk to Icarus?” Ember asked, and Aiden inhaled slowly. Right. Ember would have missed that.

“There was an attack at an Olivia Rodrigo concert, and I showed up, and someone caught Icarus ripping apart C-rank Killer Chickens on live stream,” he explained, and then he swallowed. “He re-awakened today. Rank S, probably.”

There was a long, disbelieving pause, and then Ember spoke.

“Oh… Oh, this is really bad, okay.”

“Yeah. It’s really bad,” Aiden said, and there was the sound of a door opening and clothes being pulled off the hanger.

“Okay. Let me get changed and my teeth brushed, and I’ll be right over,” Ember said, and then--- “Should I pick up some food?”

“Yes, please,” Aiden said, because he hadn’t eaten, and there was a pause.

“We’ll protect him,” Ember promised. “I’ll make sure he stays away from…”

There were so many people Icarus needed to stay away from. There were so many, and Aiden didn’t know where to start with them. It would be impossible to protect him completely. There was no chance in hell. Aiden was going to have to be beating out fires around him, and he didn’t… Why did Icarus have to start picking? Why would he do something like that? That was dangerous. If there was a dungeon break, he would…

How did he even manage to survive? That was the real question here. Did the team reach him in time? Which team even was it? Where was he? What was he doing? Which guild was he picking for? There were so many questions, and not enough answers. Aiden felt panic claw up into his lungs, and Ember breathed out.

“We’ll take care of it,” he said. “He can… We can have him join the guild when it’s ready.”

The guild. Right. Why did it have to happen now? Why not later? Or sooner? The guild was due to be set up next month, and Aiden didn’t know what to do. If he could convince Icarus to join the guild, he could keep him safe. Limit the amount of ‘social gatherings’ he went to. But, Icarus was mad at him, wasn’t even letting him explain his piece. Aiden couldn’t convince him to join the guild as things were now. He couldn’t even get a hello out of him. Icarus just kicked him out and left him outside his door like a kicked dog, and since when had Icarus been so vindictive?

It wasn’t perfect when their parents died. Icarus was autistic, and it had been a lot of him refusing to eat Aiden’s cooking because it wasn’t Mom’s. Mom was magic. She had figured out how to get Icarus to eat. They had eaten a lot of chicken nuggets and pizza rolls in those days. Icarus had been in mourning, and it made everything all the more difficult for Aiden. Mourning for autistic people just looked different.

It looked like a lot of silence. A lot of masking, except when Icarus was too tired and hurt to mask and just dropped it in the middle of a meltdown. It had looked like regression, where all his coping mechanisms went out the window. He was a fucking wreck, for a solid year, before he started to reach a new normal.

It had been hard.

It had been really, really hard.

Fuck. Were the newspapers going to make a fuss out of Icarus being a trans person? Probably. He was diagnosed autistic, and if they found that out…

He didn’t know what to do.

He did not know what to do.

“Okay, I need to change, I’m gonna let you go now, okay?” Ember said, and Aiden nodded a few times, though he knew he couldn’t see it.

“Okay. I’ll see you in a bit,” he said, and then he hung up the phone. He let out a breath, and then he turned his car on and backed it up out of the parking spot.

Harbinger Guild would be made in a month. He just had to keep Icarus from losing his damn mind until then and invite him then. It would be fine. It had to be fine. Icarus would join once Aiden apologized, and he could keep him safe in the guild. He had to keep him safe.

His parents were dead. There was no one left to look after Icarus, no one left to love him. It was just Aiden and… Jacinto, now? The two of them had always been joined at the hip, ever since they were six. They were the best of friends, and maybe if Aiden invited Jacinto, Icarus would follow. It was kind of a manipulative way to go about it, but Aiden could put them on team B. He had team A already, but he could make them team B, and leave Ember with them to keep them safe.

Yeah. He could make this work. He could totally make this work.