Chapter Seventeen
IT WASN’T THAT Skylar moved into Xander’s apartment, exactly. But as he explained to Ms. Mary when she commented on how seldom he was at Delta Sig, with all the construction going on because of the shrine renovation, he couldn’t study there.
He didn’t tell her how little he was studying at the Palace of the Sun or anywhere else, and he worked hard not to let her, his father, or anyone else know.
He still went to his tutoring sessions, where he appeared in his suit and what Xander would grumble and call a plastic smile. He did his best to prepare enough so his tutor didn’t report to his father that he wasn’t doing anything at all, but the truth was, essentially, he was doing the bare minimum required not to fall on his ass in the sessions, and he put a lot more effort into charming the tutor—female, straight, attracted to him—than he did the lessons. It paid off, because he didn’t get any more phone calls from his father, and he got the impression that so long as he kept charming her, she’d make sure his reports were glowing.
But it was a lot of work, and it made him feel slimy, even though he was doing it expressly to protect his time with Xander. He feared what would happen if the tutor ever flirted with him in front of Xander, though she lived out of town and they met in the conference room of a private club of one of his father’s friends. He was finally able to relax after one tutoring session when he witnessed Danielle getting into her boyfriend’s car and realized this situation was the same as the Tau Kapps: She was flirting with Safe Skylar who wouldn’t try anything but was so good for the ego. It made him feel better, but the guilt and sick feeling didn’t go away, nor the impending sense of dread.
Because this was a game, he knew, that he couldn’t win. Not studying was not studying. Posing for Xander and reading manga wasn’t going to get him a good score on the LSAT. Eventually his father would find out what he was doing, and when that happened, Skylar had no idea what he was going to do.
He only worried on the drive from his tutoring sessions back into Benten, though, because as soon as he was back at the Palace of the Sun, once he walked into what were slowly becoming the Lucky 7 offices, his tension eased—and when he saw Xander’s grumpy face, fading into a smile at the sight of Skylar, all Skylar’s cares disappeared entirely.
It helped that there was so much to get done to resurrect the Lucky 7 offices in Pamela’s garage attic. Unc and Cory had the tech end set up, with some help from Sara, who was teaching Xander the deep tricks of his new toy, helping him transition from paper drawing to digital. Jacob had his hands full, working all his jobs and wrangling with the printing company for the new arrangements, so Skylar offered to help, because the only other person was Zelda, and noble as their intentions were, it was like sending in a nuclear bomb to shift a cabinet to the left.
Then there was the writing. Xander hadn’t been lying. There hadn’t been a head writer position before because no one wanted the job. They were all more than happy to turn the task over to Skylar, though they promised to help him with research if he needed it. Never mind the fact that Skylar seemed to know more about their own lore than they did.
When he told them he wanted to include the full Shichifukujin in the storyline, their only hesitation was that they hadn’t known the term meant seven gods of fortune. After that they said it sounded great, and he should go for it. They’d been milking the seven gods as side characters for years, they said, so why not make them regulars?
“I feel really nervous about this,” he told Xander one night as they lay on Xander’s bed, both in their underwear with a fan blowing over them because it was eighty-five degrees in the room, even though it was after ten o’clock. “I’m going to mess up the whole magazine.”
“You won’t mess it up.” Xander swung over him, settling their groins together as he stared down at Skylar. “We’ll write the stories together. Tomorrow we’ll do some storyboarding. It’ll be fine.”
Skylar opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, Xander pulled a wide paintbrush shaped like a fan from the bed beside him and ran it lightly down the center of Skylar’s chest.
Shuddering, Skylar moaned as gooseflesh broke out across his body. “Xander.”
“That’s me.” He ran the brush down Skylar’s side, making him flinch and gasp. Then he ran the brush up the other side, across the lowest point of Skylar’s abs.
The shivers rushing through Skylar became more intense. “I can’t…think.”
“Did you want to think?” He teased with the brush below Skylar’s belly button. “Or did you want to put your arms above your head, bite your lip, and go slowly crazy while I run this fan brush all over your skin?”
Skylar put his hands over his head, arched his back, and closed his eyes.
This wasn’t the first time they’d played the fan-brush game. Sometimes Xander sat on him the way he did that night, getting hard while Skylar got off, but other times Xander held Skylar’s wrists with his right hand while his left ghosted invisible trails across Skylar’s skin. They hadn’t gotten naked with each other yet—the closest they came was when Xander painted or sketched Skylar, and that didn’t count. They had, however, discovered what brushes aroused Skylar.
As in, literally.
Technically Skylar knew he was meant to be in the Benten Library practicing his law essays, but he couldn’t, not when he could lie in a sweltering attic apartment, gasping and clutching at a blanket as Xander flicked a fan brush or an ox hair script liner against his navel. Over and over, touching nothing else, until Skylar canted his hips, chasing after his…erection.
He got erections now. With other people.
They weren’t crazy intense, they didn’t last long, and he certainly didn’t ejaculate, but he got hard. It was so strange and wild and freeing that he often made rough, animallike sounds, tossing his head, mewling, grunting. He would have thought he’d be embarrassed. But it was all right, because he was with Xander. Xander understood.
At no time, ever, did Xander expect Skylar to take his moments of pleasure further. Xander refused to get off in front of Skylar, saying Skylar wasn’t ready for that and neither was he. When Skylar occasionally felt guilty for this, Xander would point to the painting, still displayed in the middle of the living room.
“You aren’t here for my pleasure. And you’re still discovering your own. Maybe someday you’ll be ready for more, but not now. I’m happy enough to be your vehicle.”
Skylar threaded fingers in his hair, smiling and shutting his eyes against a wave of pleasure. “You’re Pygmalion now. There’s no question. I’m absolutely Galatea.”
“No. I’m not creating anything. I’m only helping you set free what you’ve had in you all along.”
Sometimes the game ended with a tender cuddle, lacing fingers and nuzzling noses. Sometimes Skylar felt brazen and turned the tables, literally flipping Xander over and giving him the body contact and stimulation he needed to get himself off—but as promised, they never went quite that far. That always felt like a razor edge, but that was why Skylar loved it. It wasn’t about getting off for him. It was about undoing Xander.
He did that today, pressing Xander into the blanket—it was hot, sticky with their sweat, smelling of heat and dust. He pushed his groin into Xander’s, let him feel his erection, which, as it always did, made Xander tremble and go soft everywhere except in the matter of his own space between his thighs. Xander didn’t need a paintbrush to turn into a quaking pile of goo. He only needed a few slides of Skylar’s body against his own.
“Please.” Xander nuzzled Skylar’s beard, teased Skylar’s wrist, the back of his hand. “Onegai.”
Skylar gave him what he asked for. Slow, agonizing friction. Teasing fingers against his skin, grazing his nipples. And his beard—the stubble of his chin he rubbed everywhere. Ms. Mary kept clucking her tongue at him, asking if he was going to shave it off because he looked so nice clean-shaven, and Skylar ignored her. He was never shaving, because Xander loved this too much. It was his paintbrush.
Never had Skylar dreamed he could not only discover so much about himself, become so accepting of his orientation and sexuality, and find someone who not only patiently went with him on that journey but insisted it was his pleasure to be a part of it. To find their own way to their mutual enjoyment of each other together.
Delta Sig was rebuilding the shrine at the fraternity house, but here in the attic of the Palace of the Sun, Skylar felt he was living Xander’s painting every day. He came through the door, accepted his welcome by Hokusai and Hiromu, brewed some jasmine tea, and let his wisdom king lead him to paradise.
He decided, feeling cheeky, this should be the story of the manga, the arc they followed for the year.
“What if Hotay gets a call from Benzaiten?” He lay in Xander’s arms one day as he said this, his boxer briefs on now that Xander was finished drawing him. “She’s in some kind of trouble and needs help. All the Shichifukujin do, but Benzaiten is the one who asks.”
Xander trailed his fingers down Skylar’s arm, teasing his wrist. “Are you saying you want to have Moo and Benzaiten have a romance?”
“Maybe. But not right away. And not an overt one.” He faltered, feeling his idea was weak, silly. “Never mind.”
“No, no. Keep going. What’s the conflict? Or maybe, what’s the goal? Where do you see this ending?”
Skylar didn’t know. He tried to imagine it. “Well, we don’t want it to end, not completely. But it would be nice to see the arc finish, before we left Benten.”
“So some problem arises that Moo needs to solve for the seven gods which can be seen to by the arc’s end, but which doesn’t tie up everything so much that the manga has to end.” He tapped his fingers on Skylar’s arm. “Hmm.”
“Is that impossible, do you think?”
“Of course not. Problems are easy. Something gets in the way, Moo solves it. He’s the remover of obstacles. Obviously we have to make it a little difficult to remove them, but that’s the gist. And with all seven gods to balance, that’s enough right there.”
Skylar wanted more, though. He played with the hair on Xander’s leg. “What if to save the whole, he has to hurt the one? Or himself? What if there is a romance between himself and Benten, but to solve the problem he has to sacrifice something?”
“Huh. Well, that’s depressing.”
“It’s reality.”
“Yes, but…what if he only thinks he has to, and then it works out that they can have everything? What if it’s by being part of the Shichifukujin, working together, that they can have their happiness? That’s a good lesson for Western audiences. We’re always taught to be the damn Lone Ranger.” Xander poked the top of Skylar’s head. “You need that lesson. I say we do this.”
Skylar swatted his hand away, but he smiled. “All right, how? How would it work out that only the seven gods could save the day, but they wouldn’t know at first? And how could it be tied to Fudō and Benten?” He bit his lip. “Is this even a good idea?”
“It’s a great idea,” Xander insisted.
They plotted for days. Xander showed Skylar how to storyboard, which felt like a revelation. Skylar wasn’t sure if he wrote on his own he could make such organized outlines work, as his narratives always drifted out to sea somehow, but with manga, with a visual artist, there was no way. His narratives were nothing more than chunks, concepts Xander would rough out so Skylar would see how much text was needed, or more to the point, what his limits were. There wasn’t time to wax poetic. He had to find the right phrase, right word to accentuate what Xander planned to draw. But Xander only drew what Skylar set up.
It was as if they danced together across the story, moving in perfect harmony with one another. Xander didn’t mind that Skylar was still feeling his way. He patiently answered all Skylar’s questions, helped him when he got stuck on a plot snarl, and best of all, seemed legitimately grateful to be illustrating his ideas.
“But I’m so clumsy at it,” Skylar protested.
Xander shook his head. “You’re passionate. You don’t understand how important that is, how long I’ve been waiting for it. I would get so frustrated, pointing out there was nothing to produce without the plot and that I wasn’t any good at making up stories, only illustrating them. So they would grumble and complain and help me make one. Not you. You wrestle with it, but your whole face lights up while you do it. Your whole spirit. My only complaint is that sometimes I want to stop storyboarding and sketch you. Or make out with you.”
Blushing, Skylar leaned forward, ran his index finger down Xander’s nose, then pressed their foreheads together. “I’ve totally neglected your senior project.”
“You haven’t. We have all those accounts set up. I’ve been working on my pieces for my show. It’s fine.”
It wasn’t, though. Zelda was right, Skylar had set up the entirely wrong approach for Xander. He didn’t know the right one yet, and…and he didn’t want to stop making a story with him to fix it. The same way he didn’t want to study.
“Let’s focus on the manga this summer.” Xander stroked Skylar’s beard. “We’ll get serious in the fall. For now, let’s enjoy this moment.”
Skylar caught Xander’s hand, laced their fingers together, and swayed them gently in the space between them, watching them glide.
I haven’t been studying for the LSAT. I’ve been flirting with my tutor, even though it makes me feel sick, to keep my father off our scent, because I’m afraid if he finds out about you, he’ll take you away.
He wanted to tell Xander. Wanted to explain how dangerous this was, how much it scared him. To tell him every time he opened his study guides he thought of storyboards for Hotay & Moo.
To tell him thinking of law school next year made him feel cold and dead inside.
To tell him that feeling was nothing compared to his attempts to imagine days where he didn’t wake up and rush through his shower and throw on whatever clothes were handy so he could come over to this quirky Victorian house on a hill, to climb to the top and work with the man waiting for him.
He wanted to say these things, but he didn’t. He told himself it was because he was afraid of what Xander would say if he found out about the tutor, and he didn’t think he was wrong to fear that reaction. But the truth was, he was just as scared of the way he felt inside. Of the things he was letting go of, of the things he was shutting out of his heart.
Of the things he was turning his face toward and wrapping his arms around.
So in the end he said none of the things he wanted to say, only stroked the side of Xander’s hand with his thumb and told him the idea he’d had for the next panel.
THE PALACE OF the Sun had gone from being a lonely old house to a bustling hive at all hours of the day and night. Sara had her own room on the first floor, but she only used it for sleeping, spending most of her time in the main living room or the kitchen. Zelda, Jacob, and Cory came downstairs more often than not.
Xander’s mother’s care packages never made it to the art department anymore, because now as soon as one of his housemates saw the familiar brown box with the red-and-white label and Xander’s mother’s handwriting sitting in front of the mailboxes, everyone started making doe eyes at him until he opened the thing and put it on the kitchen table.
“Are you sure you don’t mind us eating all your cookies?” Cory asked, helping himself to four.
Xander turned away as he replied. “No, go ahead. She sends too many.”
“Must be nice,” Sara called after him, “to be loved so much that someone sends you too many cookies.”
Xander didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He wasn’t able to mask his expression, though, and he knew as he rounded the corner onto the porch and ran into Skylar that not only had his boyfriend heard the whole exchange, he’d seen Xander’s face as well.
Xander did his best to do damage control. He rubbed his neck and nodded at the stairs to his apartment. “Got a headache. Going to go take a nap.”
Skylar said nothing, simply followed Xander up the stairs.
Shit.
In the apartment, Xander made one last attempt at escape. Dumping his backpack on the couch, he picked up Hiromu and headed for the bedroom. “Would you feed Hokusai? I’m going to lie down for an hour or so.”
“Xander?” Skylar’s backpack thunked softly beside Xander’s on the couch. “Why don’t you eat your mother’s cookies?”
Xander tripped, dropping Hiromu, who leapt from his arms, glaring at him as she disappeared into the bedroom. He returned the favor by glaring over his shoulder at Skylar. “I don’t want to talk about my mother.”
He wanted, for the first time ever, to see Silver Stone emerge, but there was no ting smile to be found. In fact, Xander hadn’t witnessed one in quite a while now. Skylar didn’t smile at all, only stood in the middle of Xander’s living room, patient and serious.
“I know you don’t. But I think it’s time you do anyway.”
“Why?” Xander tried to make the question come out caustic, but he couldn’t, and it only sounded sad. Tired.
“Because every time someone mentions her, you close off. I don’t want to open a wound, but not talking about it doesn’t seem to help either.”
Xander stared at the open door to his bedroom. He thought about how easy it would be to go inside, to get away from this line of inquiry. He wanted to. He really did.
“Please, Xander?”
Shutting his eyes, Xander turned away from the door and sank against the wall. “It’s complicated.” His voice felt small and hoarse. “And it probably sounds ridiculous.”
“I doubt that.” Skylar didn’t come closer or make any encouragements for Xander to leave the hallway. “Take your time. I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
“Like I told you, my stepfather makes me miserable. Which is common enough, and I could certainly handle that. But things got complicated when I was applying for colleges. Because my stepfather wanted me to go to a state school in Pennsylvania, and I wanted to go to Benten. I fought so hard. I begged my mother. I roped my aunt who lives in Wisconsin to lobby for me, and she gave me some money as well as browbeat my stepfather. In the end I took out a private student loan and got several scholarships, but my stepfather also had to put up some money because it costs that much to go here. Which is where all my troubles lie, because he’s always threatening to take it away. And my mom doesn’t do anything to stop him.”
He curled his fingers against the wall. “I might not have come here if I knew everything I know now. The school’s been good to me, but it wasn’t the magical land of Japanese wonder and manga-tinged friendship I thought it would be. I don’t know what I thought would happen, that we’d all get together in the cafeteria and swap manga or what, or that I’d suddenly want to talk to people or something, but I was definitely full of fairy tales when I applied, all of my dreams shit and nonsense, just like my stupid stepfather said.”
“Not nonsense,” Skylar countered quietly.
“Yes, nonsense, because none of my ridiculous hopes were real, and Benten is expensive. I mean, I thought I was going to show up and get a boyfriend, for fuck’s sake. Mousy old me who’s too grouchy and antisocial to talk to anyone.”
“You’re not grouchy. And you’re not antisocial.”
Xander startled. He hadn’t heard Skylar move, but there he was, right beside Xander. Patient. Handsome. Earnest.
Too real.
Xander slid down the wall toward his room. “I am. Everyone says so.”
“Not me.” The hallway was full of shadows, but Skylar somehow brought his own light, his hair catching the thin reflection of sun from the other room, his blue-green eyes bright with tenderness. He followed Xander, not crowding him, but not letting him get away, either. “You’re not grouchy. You’re reserved. You’re not antisocial. You’re shy.”
Xander’s throat felt thick. Stop. He couldn’t say the word.
He didn’t want to.
He’d stopped trying to get away, but Skylar kept coming, moving even more slowly now, as if he were approaching a skittish lamb.
“Tell me why you don’t open your mother’s cookies, Xander.”
Xander shut his eyes, startling when a tear rolled down his cheek.
“Because it hurts to see them,” he whispered. “Because I don’t want cookies. I just want…” He couldn’t finish.
Her. I just want her.
Skylar closed the distance between them and gently, oh-so-carefully took Xander in his arms.
Xander sagged against him, allowed Skylar to envelop him, and let go. For a moment he thought he might sob—the waves of emotion rose up and rolled out of him, but they left him quietly, their only side effect that they made him shake.
Skylar continued to hold him, letting him ride the feelings out. When Xander had calmed, Skylar spoke again. “I have two other observations I’d like to make.”
Xander breathed in the scent of Skylar, watching his own fingers as they traced along Skylar’s collarbone. “Yes?”
Skylar stroked Xander’s hair. “One, you did find your manga-heads at Benten, and you did exchange volumes with them over the dinner table. You did just that with Unc last night. And as for the other…” His hand moved to Xander’s chin, which he held lightly as he tilted Xander’s head far enough back to smile at him. “You did find a boyfriend. One who loves you very much.”
Okay, now Xander was going to cry. “Skylar.”
Skylar stroked his cheek, his eyes sparkling with life and love. “I’d like to kiss you, Xander. If that’s okay.” He brushed his thumb over Xander’s lips and added, with a wry smile. “With my mouth, I mean.”
Staring up at him, Xander nodded, trying to remember to breathe.
He shut his eyes as soon as Skylar started to move—his heart beat faster and faster, and when Skylar’s lips brushed his, he thought his heart had actually exploded. He gasped, tightening his hand against Skylar’s chest.
Skylar responded by holding him more tenderly to his body and anchoring him to the wall so he could cradle Xander’s face in his hands, tilt his head to the side, and kiss him again.
Now Xander did cry, big stupid tears that kept falling, and he kept trying to get away because he felt like an idiot, but Skylar wouldn’t let him escape here anymore than he had at any other point since he’d run into him on the porch. They weren’t deep kisses, nothing more than whispers against his lips, but they penetrated Xander more powerfully than the most X-rated lip locks he’d imagined when…
Well, when he’d dreamed of going to college and getting a boyfriend.
“Skylar,” he whispered, still crying. He couldn’t stop saying his name for some reason. He cradled his boyfriend’s face in a mirror of the way his own face was being held and said Skylar’s name over and over between the sweet, breathless kisses and his tears. “Skylar. Skylar.”
“Xander,” Skylar whispered back.
And as Skylar pressed their foreheads together, twining their hands with one another in kisses that were much less intense but no less pleasurable, Xander felt the last of his sorrow and loneliness fade away.
THE END OF July and beginning of August before Xander’s senior year of college were, when he looked back on the time years later, some of the warmest, most perfect memories of his life.
It wasn’t only his slowly blooming relationship with Skylar. It was that Skylar was right, Xander wasn’t antisocial, not anymore. He came home to find the house full of people and got excited about it, not annoyed. Zelda and Cory and Jacob weren’t the only residents drifting downstairs to be with the others. On the rare occasions Skylar wasn’t around, Xander hauled himself to the main kitchen or over to the offices, even if he had no reason to be there.
When Pamela commented on the change, he didn’t grumble or make an excuse. He only blushed and smiled.
Unc came over to the Palace of the Sun a lot as well. He said it was to help Cory with Lucky 7 setup, but honestly that had been finished weeks ago, and until an official edition was ready, there wasn’t much to do. So the two of them often drank wine in the kitchen while Unc made dinner. Unc was always showing up with a bag of groceries, and he’d put on an apron, turn on music, and start cooking. Xander knew this because someone would come fetch him. “Unc’s cooking, you need to come down.” Usually Skylar was with him, so they’d bring the storyboard they were plotting and work in the dining room until it was time to eat, and then all eight of them would sit around the kitchen table and laugh, eating Unc’s food and drinking the wine from Pamela’s cellar.
“Are you sure it’s okay we’re drinking all this?” Sara asked.
Pamela waved this away. “Takahiro would want us to. He was always bringing out bottles for company. He’d hate how I never had people over anymore. This? This he would love. I hope he’s watching now and enjoying every moment.”
They often drank to the point that they got ridiculous. One hot night Xander climbed onto the table and, wearing nothing but a pair of paint-stained cut-off sweatpants, swung an empty bottle around and christened each person in the room with a their Shichifukujin alter egos.
“You keep telling me I’m Fudō Myōō. That’s fine. I’m going to remove your obst-ch—obstacles now. You’re all gods.” He swung his arms expansively. “You’re the seven gods of fortune. Tada.” He pointed at Unc. “You’re Hotei. You laugh a lot, and you bring wealth and fortune wherever you go.”
Unc grinned and rubbed his belly, “I’m getting the Buddha belly to go with the name too, with all this wine and cooking. But I can’t say I mind. I love hanging out with you guys. This is the best summer I’ve ever had.”
Xander aimed his wine bottle at Pamela. “You’re Kichijōten. You’re wise, happy, and you helped bring us all back to life. The only thing missing was that you were always hungry, until the other gods moved in. Your soul was hungry. But now you’re fine. In fact now you only seem to nibble at food unless Unc is cooking. Because you’re satisfied now.”
Pamela looked misty. “I am satisfied. I love having you all here.”
Xander kept going, turning to Jacob now. “You’re Daikokuten. The god of wealth and food.”
Jacob glared at him. “I’m not wealthy. At all.”
Xander shook his finger. “Hear me out. You are food, though, with your family’s deli, or whatever, and the food service jobs you have, and the way you moved in here and immediately planted a garden. But now that you have Unc and Skylar, you’ve been using their financial advice and passing it on to your family. And it’s been helping, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Plus you have a wealth of spirit. You’re the one who keeps us going when we want to quit, when things seem hopeless. You’re our king.”
Jacob blushed, but he appeared moved.
“It’s true,” Zelda said from beside Jacob. “What he said. Every word.”
Everyone agreed, and Jacob’s chest rose, full of pride. A king indeed.
Xander kept going. “Zelda—you’re Bishamonten. God of war and order.”
They grinned and lifted their glass in toast. “Damn straight. Sky told me this one already. Except I hate the order part.”
“You shouldn’t. You can tear down the systems, but you have to put something in their place.”
Zelda didn’t say anything, but they looked thoughtful.
“And what about me?” This was Sara. She sat in the overstuffed chair, dragged into the kitchen so she could sit in it especially, because it was a bad pain day for her.
“You’re Ebisu,” Xander replied.
Sara lifted her eyebrows. “The…fish god?”
“The laughing god. The god of prosperity and wealth in business. He was born without bones, but he overcame his obstacles and loved his life anyway. He’s the only god of fortune whose origins are purely Japanese too.”
“Born without bones, huh?” Sara ran her hand down her brace. “Laughing god. Do I really laugh that much?”
“You do now,” Unc pointed out.
Xander noticed that Unc’s gaze lingered on Sara a lot, actually.
“That only leaves Sky and me,” Cory said.
“Cory, you’re Jurōjin. You’re wise, you love your wine, and, well.” Xander gestured vaguely at him. “You have a long head.”
Everyone laughed. Cory did too, and he touched his hair. “I do?”
“Yes, but you wear it well.” Xander and Skylar’s gazes met, held. “As for Skylar, He’s Benzaiten.”
Everyone oohed and ahhed, agreeing that yes, that was perfect for Skylar. None of them knew how perfect, or knew that upstairs was Xander’s painting, his finest as far as he was concerned, showing just how Benzaiten Skylar truly was.
They relished their new monikers, so much so that even beyond that drunken night they often took to calling each other by their god names in the privacy of the Palace of the Sun. Unc showed up one day with tiny keychains for everyone, clear acrylic rectangles with the seven gods inside, and he also got a blue Funko Fudō Myōō figure for Xander and seven tiny Shichifukujin to sit beside him on the main workstation in the Lucky 7 office.
Xander couldn’t help but notice that every time Skylar worked there Benzaiten ended up sitting next to Fudō.
They learned their blood type too, because Pamela insisted.
“If we’re going to be Japanese gods, you need to know your blood type. It’s very Japanese.”
“To know your blood type and use it for personality typing, really?” Sara seemed dubious. Everyone did, except Unc.
“It really is a thing,” Pamela insisted. “Some Asian employers try to use it, even though it’s frowned upon, because certain blood types are favored over others, and it’s not as if you can change your blood type. But everyone knows their blood type. They think it’s strange that we don’t.”
Pamela got them all to a blood drive, and when they were back at the Palace with their ID cards and blood types listed in front of them, she looked at their little plastic cards and read their fortunes.
“No shock, Jacob’s type O and totally competitive. But also a good leader. Zelda, you’re also type O.”
The two of them looked at each other startled—their expressions saying clearly they weren’t happy about having to share a type, since that meant they weren’t the best.
Cory, who was reading the printout Pamela had given him, grinned. “This says you would be good therapists.”
Zelda snorted. “No thanks. But what are you?”
Cory smiled wryly. “Type A. I put others first, but I’m a good listener and make an excellent friend.” He sighed. “Though I tend to bottle things up, which, yes.”
Sara raised her hand. “Me too. That’s my blood type, and also…yes, that’s my personality. Isn’t this weird, how it fits?”
“What’s mine?” Unc asked. “My blood type was B.”
“Oh, that’s my type too,” Pamela said.
“Extroverts,” Cory read. “Great listeners, but at their own expense. Highly tuned to body language and read others intuitively. No problem expressing their emotions.”
Pamela and Unc looked at each other, and everyone laughed.
“What type are you, Xander?” Sara asked.
He was lying on the couch, half in Skylar’s lap. “A. Which you probably guessed.” He tipped his head back to look up at Skylar. “I can’t guess you, though. Pamela can’t either. It’s been driving us both nuts.”
Skylar’s smile was enigmatic over his mug of tea. “That’s because, once again, I’m a unicorn.”
Cory clapped his hands and pointed at him with one finger. “I got it—you’re AB, aren’t you?”
Skylar nodded. “Rarest blood type. Leave it to me, I suppose.”
“Rarest and most spiritual, man.” Cory kept reading. “You’re rational and levelheaded, good at planning and organizing. Good at public relations. But good at education too. In case you decide not to be a lawyer.”
This time Skylar’s smile was…almost sad. And he changed the subject quickly, Xander couldn’t help but notice.
They didn’t talk about law school, or even the fall, outside of plans for the manga. They worked on the magazine, yes, but above all that summer the eight of them made amazing memories and deepened their friendships. It was as if they had stepped into a perfect, crystalline bubble of time and space where nothing bad could happen and everything wonderful would.
Eventually, though, August wore on, and signs of the school year starting began to appear once again. Skylar and Unc still came to the Palace, but they were drawn into fraternity business all too often as well. When Skylar would come over to see Xander, he seemed tense at first, until he shook off the mantle of whatever stress he’d worn over, but he had a cloak about him of constant worry, as if he feared something was coming.
Xander wanted to ask him if he was all right, if there was anything he could do to help. Except he knew the answer. No, Skylar wasn’t all right.
And despite that he was supposed to be the remover of obstacles, Xander knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could do for him. Not yet.