Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.
With each manual breath, Jim forced himself to stay as level as he could. The scrape of Mellow's feet on the wall was nearly enough to drive him out of his forced calm. He was by no means ever going to achieve tranquility or serenity, but with each repetition of his breath, he was able to reclaim just enough control to remain baseline.
Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.
"To the left." The command was a bit shorter than Jim meant, but his voice didn't waver with anything as undignified as fear or distrust. "Sy's window is the fourth one over. I think."
He had not, in actuality, ever actually tried to work out which was Sy's window from the outside before. But he knew the view out the window well enough, and he could tell you how many doors down it was from the corner he turned at. The question was just if he had identified where the hallway was accurately.
Mellow turned, still parallel to the wall, and scuttled straight forward to the left. The sudden change in direction nearly pitched Jim off his back, and the young man was forced to lean more heavily on Mellow's back just to maintain balance.
Hard shell pressed into Jim's arm and chest. There was no movement, no rippling muscles or shifting limbs like he remembered from riding Delilah as a child. No indication of a living, breathing being at all, actually. Just the rocking of Mellow's body as he scuddled across the outside of the building. Almost like Jim was clutching the underside of a tiny ship being wrecked by solar waves.
It only made his stomach twist even further with unease. Maybe if there had been a hint of humanity, of anything mammalian about Mellow, Jim could find it easier to connect what Sy saw to what he felt. But how could he find anything soft about a being made of whatever this was.
. . BreathIn. BreathOut. Breath In. Breath Out. Breath In. Breath out. Breath in.
"I'm sorry."
Again, those two words. That was, perhaps, the only part of Mellow that didn't terrify Jim completely. It was still scary, his raspy, unnatural hissing voice, but it wasn't terrifying. It was hard to be utterly horrifying when it held such a meek, almost mournful tone.
"I can feel you trembling. I forgot that you don't experience changes in orientation as well as I do."
Jim hadn't even realized that Mellow had repositioned himself so his face was once again pointing up, towards the sun. They were still moving left, but at an awkward gait now. Wasn't Mellow part crab? Shouldn't crab walking be easy for him?
"I'm sorry you're so scared of-"
"I'm not scared!" Jim's voice cracked halfway through his automatic, defensive answer.
Mellow took it in stride. "I'm sorry you're so disgusted by me. I've been trying to keep my distance. Sy keeps asking me to join you for lunch, or to sit with his other friends sometimes, but I've been finding reasons to tell him I can't. I promise you won't see me again after this. Not unless you have to in class. I'll tell Sy I can't join your groups any more. The teachers always find somewhere to put me."
If he could focus on the conversation, he didn't have to think about the cold shell between his legs and under his hands. "What do you mean 'find somewhere to put you'?"
The rhythmic clicking sound emanating from under Mellow seemed to come faster now. As if he were taking smaller steps for the sideways approach. They were almost to Sy's window - or what Jim thought was Sy's window anyway.
"Sy's the only one who ever asks me to be in his group. If I approach others, they always say their group is full. Usually the teachers have to tell someone to work with me. I…I still remember the first day Sy joined our class. No one realized he was our classmate, I guess we all thought he was just waiting to speak to Mrs. Parr. She asked us to partner up so we could prepare evacuation kits together. I was waiting for her to dictate which group I would have to join, but Sy just…" Mellow's voice trailed off quietly.
Jim didn't need him to finish, though. He knew what Sy did. He knew his boyfriend well enough by now to guess it. "Sy saw that you didn't have a partner, so he picked you."
Mellow nodded. "I remember when he met you, too."
"You do?" That Jim didn't know.
"Yes. I wasn't very far away, actually. I don't think you saw me, though. Sy had several other people ask him to partner up. He never actually said no, he just answered 'My friend doesn't have a partner yet'. Most of them went to go find someone else. You were the first person to approach him after he'd found me someone to work with."
Jim was spared from answering by Mellow's fortunate timing. His long limbs easily hooked over the windowsill and, with one final pull, the heads of both boys finally popped into position to view through the window.
It was indeed Sy's room.
His bed was neatly folded, the blankets carefully tucked under the mattress, the pillow missing from the head of the bed. His desk was tidy, but covered in notes and papers. It looked almost as if he had abandoned it halfway through whatever he was working on. There was a coffee cup from the canteen sitting on the desk that Jim suspected was half full of cold tea. One of Jim's sweaters was draped across the back of his chair. Jim couldn't remember if he'd left it there, or if Sy had stolen it from him.
But Sy wasn't in it.
The clicking sped up.
Wait.
Why was there still clicking? They weren't moving.
Jim lurched backwards to get away from the sound. Only the tight grip he maintained with his thighs kept him from launching himself to his death. Flailing wildly, Jim reeled in midair, his arms pinwheeling as he tried to keep himself from becoming a splatter on the pavement below.
Something hard slammed into the center of his back. His body jerked forward, crashing into Mellow's thorax-abdomen-thing again. He wrapped his arms tightly around the spindly waist and held on for his life.
. .breath in. breath out. breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
The weird, clicking, hissing sound was still happening.
A sutter ran through Jim's spine. "Wh-what is that sound?"
It stopped.
"I'm sorry."
Again with those two words!
"I was stridulating."
"Well don't do it again!"
A whisper in reply. "I won't."
Slowly Jim's heartbeat began to return to normal. He didn't let go of Mellow, though. He also didn't open his eyes. He wasn't sure when he had closed them, but keeping them shut seemed like the best choice now. "Please. Just get us down."
Mellow began to move. "I'm going up. There's an access door on the roof over there-" Jim wasn't sure where 'over there' was, but he wasn't about to take the time to look "-that our badges should be able to get us in through. The access doors are coded to open for any badge, in case of flying emergencies or something. Sy mentioned it to me."
Jim nodded, his face scraping against the cool shell. Up here, on the side of the building with nothing but sunlight and heat reflecting off the stone and tiles, he could almost appreciate the lack of warmth coming from Mellow's body.
Almost.
AN: Hey friends! Pay attention to the times for the next few chapters. I'm doing multiple POVs happening at the same time or very close to. I know it's not my usual way of doing it, so wanted to give you a heads up to help keep confusion down. Thanks for everything, love to all!