The blue eyes staring back at him are unfamiliar and don’t strike him as anything he’s seen before. But the man behind those blue eyes is looking at him like they’re old friends and that they have shared many secrets to one another. Lucas is his name and he makes Adrian feel a lot of things he thought he had saved for someone else. He looks past this and wonders why the man is so close to him. They’ve only just met and yet Lucas is acting too touchy for a first encounter.
Lucas smiles at him, scooting closer so that their arms brush. His grin is full of temptation, his lips curving up in a sensual way. Adrian covers his face to hide his blush when he stares for too long. It’s not his fault this guy appeared out of no where and decided to start being friendly.
He fidgets a bit with the sleeve of his shirt. One look at his empty plate and he remembers that he has no obligations to stay here. Slightly flustered and slightly overjoyed, he stands up and doesn’t say goodbye to the strange man that was speaking to him. It’s rude, but he can’t make an excuse up at the moment. On his mind is making it out of there without being ambushed again, even though it wasn’t like that at all. His heart is beating fast and droplets of sweat build up at his temple.
Leave. Just go.
The order should be easy to follow. He’s the boss over his own mind and body, but then again, he’s under a spell that he can’t break. His strides were slowing down, now painfully slow against the backdrop of the shop. He swallows and can take the milk and chocolate left on his tongue. In the air, death plays a soft tune, calling for him to take a peek over his shoulder.
He doesn’t want to. There’s no explanation how this turned out to be. He can’t explain how this man found him, why he feels so familiar and so foreign at the same time, or why he keeps seeing people dying. He doesn’t want to have dreams of death or face the next day while knowing that he might see something he doesn’t want to see.
Who would ever choose that kind of life?
A hand wraps around his arm and stops him before he makes it to the door. He can feel the pulse under the skin, can imagine the blood pumping through their veins. Lucas draws closer and lets out a laugh when Adrian flinches.
“I’ll see you around.”
Like a soft tune, the words ease Adrian’s heart but makes his stomach upset. It is not a sweet song this man plays, but a harsh one with static in the background and torture as its singer. The mood around them changes and when Lucas leaves the shop before him, he wonders what the couple must think of them.
At first he doesn’t care what the couple must think. They have no business knowing about what was going on between them, though it was nothing at all. But when he left the shop after and had looked for Lucas—who couldn’t have gotten too far—and turned up with nothing, he rethought about it.
What the hell had happened back there? It made no goddamn sense when he watched it back in his mind, replaying the moment when Lucas had walked in like he owned the place. He acted as if he was royalty or that he was above them in some way. Beyond that, he seemed like a regular person. He looked the same as everyone else, except for maybe his bright blue eyes.
He’d never ordered either, only sat that to introduce himself.
Adrian rubbed his eyes. Thinking about this too hard was going to give him a headache. Hopefully, whatever had happened back there with the Lucas dude was nothing major. God, why was everything going to shit the past few days? Why was his life turning out so weird?
For the next hour he walked around town before heading back to the apartment. While the long walk had cleared his head and taken his mind off of Nick, it had given him more things to wonder about and to wish would go away.
***
He isn’t expecting anyone when he arrives home. When he passes the parking lot, he doesn’t even recognize his mother’s car and doesn’t notice that she’s there until he’s stepping into lobby of the apartment building. Anne isn’t the type of person who likes to wait. She’s impatient and likes to get things done straight away. Always organized, it’s a shame that Adrian never took to her ways and learned from her.
If he had he might have had more money than he does now. Anne would say that what was done in the past doesn’t matter if you’re in the present. Only the future will help you. That’s another thing he wished that he’d developed. Things would be a lot better if he didn’t think about the past so much. Most times he couldn’t even face what was going on around him at that moment. He was always too busy thinking about all the things he never said or did to pay attention to the problems he had now.
She’s waiting at the center of the lobby, sitting in one of the chairs. Her legs are crossed and her eyes are looking forward, focused right on him. Nothing frightens her, nothing that he can remember. If she’s developed a new fear she would have told him because she loves to talk on the phone as stereotypical it might seem for a mother. But the things she likes to talk about aren’t really gossip. Scientific discoveries, politics, and the stock market are her favorite topics all ranging from difficulty to understand.
You would think by now he would pick up a few words to just make a sentence to appease her when they speak, but alas, Adrian isn’t a communicator by any means. That could possibly be why Anne wasn’t so shocked when he told her that he wouldn’t be studying any of those things.
“I’d thought you’d never get here. Why haven’t you answered your phone?” She’s dressed in casual jeans and sweater. Her hair is tied up in a loose buns and the only makeup she has on is black eyeliner and a think layer of lip gloss. It’s the closest thing to dress up in her world and the only way to get her to wear a dress is to marry her.
When she married Adrian’s step-dad it had been the last time.
Adrian touched the pocket that held his phone. “Sorry. I didn’t hear it.”
He didn’t mention that he’d turned it off specifically because he didn’t want to be bothered. Nick never called him anymore.
The look on her face says it all. “How very like you.”
She lets out a sigh and stands up. The black purse she carries catches the light even though it isn’t a flashy bag. “We should go inside. It’s about your sister.”
The mention of Gemma makes him raise an eyebrow. His sister was a sore subject now that she was living with her husband. It had been years since he’d heard from her and longer when they had been on good terms.
He doesn’t ask straight away what has happened to Gemma. If their mom is even willing to talk about her then it must be serious. Ever since Adrian had confessed to Gemma about his secret she hadn’t spoken to him. Not a word.
They take the elevator and the whole way up to his floor they don’t speak. In his head he can’t help to think about the dream or vision he’d seen the night before. The girl creeping towards him who looked very similar to Gemma. It couldn’t mean anything. There was no way possible that he could have seen a premonition of what was to come. He wasn’t a goddamn psychic.
Though he can deny it all that he likes, it doesn’t change what he saw. It felt like a warning more than anything else, but at the same time it felt like something bad had already happened. If either of these things were true, he was horrified about what news he was about to hear from his mother.
***
“Icarus, what are you up to now?”
Demetri placed his hand on the blonde’s shoulder and peered at what had the boy’s attention. What he saw wasn’t so shocking as it should have been. In Icarus’s hands was a picture of a curly haired boy. The picture vanished just as he was taking a closer look.
Demetri blinked. “Is that him?”
Icarus gave him a bright smile. He folded his arms behind his head as he leaned back in the car seat.
“Adrian Styles. He’s going to be the easiest job yet.”
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