Vivid (BoyxBoy) {Pipe Dream: Book I}

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Glacial Bear

A/N: so...hi...after sleeping practically 10 hours straight for the last two days...

i managed an update!

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Chapter Thirty-Seven: Glacial Bear

If someone's presence could chill a room into glacial silence by just sitting in it; Siem would be the Viking to do it. Which was what I was met with when I walked into the kitchen. He said nothing as I walk on over to the breakfast bar, sitting on the stool next to him, as X handed me the usual water, orange juice and porridge.

The silence is killing me but I'm too scared to open my mouth since the last time I saw him I practically ransacked his secretive meeting room. I stare at the gruel, wishing it would suddenly come alive and swallow me whole but that wish wasn't coming along very well as it just stared back at me.

"How is your health?" Siem asks finally after a billion years in silence.

I couldn't really respond. The truth was, deep down, I have no flipping idea. Most people would be dead. In most circumstances I should be dead. But here I am eating food mixed with painkillers served by X, sitting in the basement of a secret organisation run by a cranky Viking and his deranged sister who I think looks at me like an amoeba that belongs on a petri dish. But I digress. Oh and I can talk to glow in the dark tigers. "I don't really know..." I finally muster. I was going to go with 'fine' but the look he gave me told me to say what I really think.

X instead answers after placing a mug of coffee in front of Siem, "Kae is recovering..."

Siem grunts, "That is good." He picks up the coffee, sipping a bit before looking at me again.

I leap away from him when I feel something touch the side of my face. Looking back, I see it was Siem's fingers.

"The markings have changed," he goes back to drinking his coffee without so much as a blink. "Heel, X. I was only checking. I will not hurt him."

I look over to see X let go of something and realise it was a spoon. My spoon I was using to push around my food. Sitting back down, Siem continues, "I have come here directly to speak. Away from the mess upstairs. Away from Hanna's ears."

"You do not want Hanna around?" I ask without thinking.

"...For the most part, no. She can be...what is the expression...'difficult when excited'."

The would be an understatement.

He must have seen the look on my face as a half-grin crosses his lips. But he loses it just as quickly, "Your recovery progress is...slow compared to previous observations but sufficient...and understandable. It may be because of recent exposure to a Hexer Queen but I will also put it down to overtaxing your body before it has been sufficiently healed. That is a fault on my part. I cannot apologise for my actions but I do apologise for the after affects it has caused."

"...I can hear a 'but'." I mutter, unable to look him in the eye.

An amused sigh escapes Siem's throat. "Indeed."

"You are after a training schedule for him," I feel X rounding the counter to stand beside me.

"Yes," Siem simply replies. "Your condition will continue to deteriorate unless we can build you up. Muscle, stamina...nourishment...have not been well seen to. And no matter what you are or where you come from Kae, I cannot sit by and watch you wither away."

I growl at him, "Because you can't afford to lose the new commodity."

"You are not wrong, Kae." But his voice went quiet, "I also owe you that much."