Tail curling between his legs, he leaned away from them, hands dropping to his lap. For a moment, something akin to regret pinched their pretty features, and he swore a glossy sheen settled like a film over their eyes, like they were about to cry. Or maybe they’d already been crying.
Elbow on their desk, they rested their head in their hand and faced away from him. He could practically see them freeze over again, the ice webbing over them until even he felt the chill. They didn’t move for the entire class period. Except for the rattled-tip of their tail. It twitched and flicked every few seconds, a chaotic click against the floor.
They hadn’t brought their usual supplies. No computer bag. No purse. Not even their coat, like they’d run out of the house in a hurry, forgetting everything but the phone in their tunic pocket.
Since they were clearly not taking notes or even listening to the lecture, Dex doubled his effort to record the professor’s directions and explanations. He’d have to spell it all out for Cya later, and he wanted to make it as easy on himself as possible, given the stormy mood they were in.
After the professor finished and assigned homework, she’d barely returned to her desk before Cya was up and out of theirs, rushing out of the lecture hall. Dex scrambled up after them, crumpling the notebooks in his backpack as he jammed his laptop in and zipped it shut, all while jogging to catch up with the Sypent’s surprisingly quick momentum.
He’d always assumed Sypents to be a slow species, but Cya could really move when they wanted to, apparently.
“Cya, wait!” he called after them, stopping to fix the zipper where it had caught on the canvas material in his haste. “Yo, Cy, can you just—for deities’ sake.”
They were halfway down the sidewalk by the time he stumbled out of the STEM building, and he ran them down as they marched—slithered—determinedly toward the campus gates. Spinning around to face them, he walked backwards as he studied their stony expression.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” they said stiffly. “I don’t want to study; I don’t feel well.”
“I mean, yeah, I figured. You’re looking kind of…”
“If you value your ballsack, I suggest you think very carefully about how you end that statement,” they warned.
Since he did, in fact, value his balls, he swallowed the wordshittyand replaced it with, “Pale. I was gonna say pale.”
“Sure you were.” When they tried to dodge around him, he side-stepped to stop them, hands up but not touching them. They finally stopped their enraged charge, arms waving wildly in frustration. “Oh my gods, what do you want?”
“Okay, whoa, can you take it easy for one second?” He stopped too, hands lowering to his sides.
They folded their arms over their torso, but the position was different than it normally was. Usually, they crossed their arms tightly like a shield, hands fisted, shoulders taught. This time, their hands cupped their elbows and their shoulders were curled inward, like they were trying to disappear. They weren’t armoring up for a fight; they were holding themself together, as if their arms were all that was keeping them from imploding.
Another whine clawed at Dex’s throat, and he shuffled toward them half a step. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” they lied.
“Pretty sure something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s—” They bit off the word with an audible clack of their molars. “I’m fine.”
Still cradling themself close, they tried to get around him again, and, again, he headed them off, hands hovering in the space between them.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” he said, and their tail gave a warning rattle. “It’s okay to not be fine, sometimes.”
“Why do you even care?” they demanded, and the tiniest spark of temper flickered to life in Dex’s chest.
“Because friends care! That’s, like, the whole point of friends,” he barked, immediately lowering the volume of his voice when Cya flinched. “Friends care about other friends, especially when those other friends are clearly upset.”
They scoffed something in the neighborhood of a laugh, but it was too cutting to truly live there. “Well, you’re off the hook for two reasons. One, I’m not upset. And two, we’re not even friends.”
“Okay, now, you’re actually starting to piss me off,” he huffed in aggravation. “We are friends, Cya.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are,” he insisted, and they swelled, rising up higher on their tail until they were actually taller than him.
“No, we aren’t!” They loomed over him, fangs practically dripping with venom, drenching every word they shot at him. “You are a parasite. You’re a tick, a flea. A fucking infestation that I can’t exterminate. Everywhere I turn, at school, at work, there are you, with your backwards ballcaps and your muscles and your showboating and your ‘high-five, bro! Boom!’
“And no matter what I do or what I say, you just keep coming back. Is it your overinflated ego? Or are you really so stupid that you can’t comprehend the fact that I don’t like you?” They paused their tirade—not to give Dex an opportunity to answer the cruel, clearly rhetorical questions—but to finally take a breath so they could deliver the last three death blows with vicious accuracy. “I don’t want to be your bro. I don’t want to be your destiny-bff. I don’t want to be your friend!”
