It should be concerning to think about what to eat for dinner and the sound a knife makes when sliding through human flesh at the same time, but it was normal now.
That's two ways to a man's heart, no doubt.
Ezra snorted at his thoughts. Morbid humour, it seems, was a world-class coping mechanism that befell him too.
But of course it would, ever since the night he didn't witness and the things he didn't see because of the detour he hadn't taken on his way home. It was completely normal, in the way that the metal sounding through his headphones was louder to drown out the new screams in his head. Just normal college student things. In fact, one door down to his friend's room, he could still hear the sobs resounding despite the pillow no doubt muffling it. He'd heard her exams ended today.
The point is that absolutely no one would cast him a second glance for the way he seemed to cave in on himself, and the meals he skipped sometimes, and the way he ran from home to school, and then school to work, and then work to home again. It was normal for a college student to hurry, they'd say, to prioritize everything over their health, and he was so, so grateful for it and he hated it with every fiber of his being.
Maybe if it wasn't so, he wouldn't be stuck here, contemplating between calling for pizza or the cops.
Be that as it may, he ordered pizza that night. With pineapple, heathen as he was.
One choice enjoyed for a hundred he gave up.
---
"Hey, Timbelina," he said in pleasant surprise even as his stomach swooped down low, spotting his little brother in the kitchen as he stopped to take off his shoes in the hallway. "Fancy seeing you here."
His brother, carrying a dish of steaming hot food in his gloved hands, stopped to give him a withering glare before petulantly marching back to the oven and placing the dish inside.
"I was gonna be nice and make you dinner - for free, too! I had to beg mom to let me get ingredients first! - and yet the first thing I hear is not appreciation, no, not even a greeting!" Said Tim, wagging his finger in faux-anger, "Instead, all I get is slander about my stature. You can kiss dinner goodbye, I'm donating it to your roommate."
A laugh bubbled out of Ezra, always amused to see his extroverted brother get along with the social recluse that was his roommate. Half the time he wasn't even sure if Tim checked in because of him or Ava.
"I'm pretty sure if you bother her right now she'll scream at you," he said, moving to the oven to check what's cooking. "The final year students got their results today."
"Oh, ouch."
Ezra nodded in solemn solidarity.
"Well, I'll still keep aside a plate for her. If she's anything like you she'll want 4 am meals." Tim, who'd stayed with Ezra for a year when he hadn't been able to find a school to take in someone who'd been in a detention center for while, had seen enough of Ezra's sleepless nights to know the ways of a new adult.
Ezra ruffled his hair affectionately. "You're a good kid," he said.
If only someone really looked, they'd see the haunted look in his eyes, the way his hand lingered on his brother's head, the way his eyes seemed to drink in every feature as if he might never see them again.
But Tim was a kid, barely even a high schooler, and it was his job to be careless in every way a child was supposed to.
Ezra wouldn't let anything change that, despite the cost.
