Chapter Nine
SKYLAR WASN’T ENTIRELY sure what had happened at Xander’s apartment.
It hadn’t been bad, any of it—it felt good, when he allowed himself to relax into it. But if he thought about it too much, he felt slightly panicked, for reasons he couldn’t quite put a finger on. He told himself it was because he’d gone over without a plan. It was the first time he’d ever done that, approached such a serious situation without a battle strategy. That was the Stone cardinal rule, and he’d broken it.
But look where it got you.
He still couldn’t believe he’d sat there and watched Xander draw Hotay & Moo. He was a little mortified at how he reacted—seriously, where had that all come from—but it had worked out okay. It wasn’t very professional, but he’d seen the sketch, and…well, basically something had snapped in Skylar. Silver Stone flew out the window, and Geek Skylar had sailed to the surface.
To see Xander actually draw, though. To sit there and watch him draw the characters in real time had been nothing short of magical. Now Xander wanted to draw Skylar, all summer long. It felt like a dream. Xander had even hinted he’d be open to putting Skylar in a manga, if someone gave him a story.
Well, funny that you should mention that.
Over the next twelve hours, Skylar shut down that voice every time it surfaced, and he had to shut it down a lot. Hoping they’d calm if he acknowledged them a little, he let his thoughts spin out in the shower the next morning as he got ready to meet Xander.
He’d never been a writer, exactly, but he had always enjoyed stories. He used to write all the time. When had he stopped? He wasn’t sure. He simply had at some point. He’d stopped reading fiction too, outside of what was assigned for his classes. Somehow anime had snuck in, like a thief. Now Xander, and his art, were worming their way in too.
Or rather, Skylar had invited them in. Xander hadn’t wanted to stay, though. And Skylar had gone over there, barely dressed, unshowered, to make sure he didn’t leave.
That hadn’t been about his art, though. That had been about Xander evading the Pygmalion bargain. Which…there was another question. Why did Skylar care about that so much? Why did he want to transform Xander?
Because when he relaxes, he’s fascinating, amazing, and everyone should see that. He doesn’t have enough confidence, and it makes me crazy. I want to help him find some.
While that answer was the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth, and Skylar couldn’t find the rest of the answer. All he knew was that when he thought of spending the summer with Xander, he felt a thrill all the way to his fingertips and through his toes.
Skylar took care getting ready before heading over this time, shaving and wearing clothes that didn’t make him look as if he’d dressed out of the bottom of his closet, which was precisely what had happened the day before. When he knocked on the door to Xander’s apartment, he wore crisp khakis, his blue check button-down, and because he’d been nervous, a little L’Homme Libre. He was dressed to impress and ready to seal the deal.
Except as soon as the door opened, Xander started scowling.
“Ugh, you’re back to being a magazine ad. And smelling like one too. I guess it was too much to hope for that you’d show up like you did yesterday.”
Skylar faltered. Like he had—yesterday? Xander wanted him to look like a slob? He’d assume this was a joke, but Xander didn’t appear to have much of a sense of humor today. “But yesterday I was a mess.”
“Yesterday you looked human. For the record, I’m drawing you like that, not this.” When Skylar opened his mouth to defend himself, Xander waved a hand at him and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Whatever, it’s fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Skylar didn’t want to get this over with. He intended to enjoy the day, but it was clear he needed to make some kind of amends to Xander first. He felt disjointed, however, to find his preparations were what had undone him. “I can go change.”
Xander sighed. “You’re fine. Ignore me. Let’s go.”
“But I don’t want to ignore you.”
They were on the metal stairs leading out of Xander’s apartment and down to the driveway below. Xander, ahead of Skylar, stopped and turned around, staring up at Sky with a strange expression on his face.
“It’s comments like that throwing me off.”
Skylar frowned. “What do you mean?”
“When you show up at my house looking like a Brooks Brothers ad, when you give me that plastic smile, I remember you’re a Greek. I remember what Zelda told me about how you’re a one-percenter and how everything about you is alien to everything about me. When you’re like that, I know where to put you in my head: in the same place I put the rest of the Greeks and the kids with trust funds and lives that are nothing like mine. But you tell me you don’t want to ignore me. Or you tell me you like my painting. Or you turn out to be a fan of Hotay & Moo, and then get the history behind the story better than I do. For all that Zelda is the anarchist trying to blow up my life because they think it’s healthy to be constantly reborn, you’re the one making a mess of my tidy hermitage.”
Skylar grinned, even though he was fairly certain Xander meant this speech to be an insult. “I think I’d like to meet this Zelda.”
Xander snorted. “They would eat you alive.”
“That sounds like an excellent challenge. But not one for today. Did you have somewhere in mind to pick up something to eat?”
“I packed a peanut butter sandwich.” More blushing and a deeper lift of the shoulders. “I know it’s my turn to get lunch, but my stepdad is a dick sometimes and deliberately forgets to transfer my allowance to my account.” He cut a glare to Skylar. “If you try and buy me lunch two times in a row, Richie Rich, it’s not going to go well for you.”
Skylar frowned at him, bemused. “Richie Rich?”
Xander rolled his eyes, though the gesture seemed to be aimed at himself. “Sorry. I think it’s some 80s cartoon or something. My mom said it all the time. She had a thing for pop culture. As you might notice from my name.”
Sky was truly lost now. “I’m sorry, what about your name is pop culture?”
Xander gave him a look of disbelief. “You can’t be serious. Xander? As in Xander, Willow, Buffy, and Giles? Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”
“Ah. Yes, I know it. Wait. You’re saying…”
“That I’m named after Xander Harris, yes. My mother had a huge crush on him that never died. Married a man who looked like him, and boy was that a bad choice. That relationship ended in disaster, but she got a baby boy out of it, so she named her son after her childhood crush.” When Skylar couldn’t help a wince, Xander smiled wryly. “Yeah, well, I thought I had it bad until I met Zelda. They’re named after a video game princess. They pointed out I could have been named Link.”
Skylar laughed, but it didn’t escape his notice that Xander had, for the first time, talked about his mother in some detail without being tense. He couldn’t help himself—he plumbed a little.
“Do you mind that she named you that way? For a character?”
Xander shrugged. “I mean, it fits who she is.”
“Do you mind, though?”
Xander looked away, but he still hadn’t tensed up. “I don’t, I guess. It’s an okay name. Most people don’t even think to guess it’s for a show, and if they do, they think that’s cool. But it’s not like I really have friends to think that through anyway. So it doesn’t matter.”
“Have you ever watched the show?”
There was the tension, but it was more of a shadow passing over Xander, a sadness on his heart. “We used to, before she remarried.”
Skylar hesitated, but decided to press just a little further. “I don’t mean to pry, but…are you estranged from your family?”
He hadn’t meant to be quite that blunt—God, but he was off his game with this guy—but thankfully Xander didn’t close up again, though he did speak quietly, his tone flat and slightly hollow. “Not estranged, no.” He shifted his backpack higher. “More that we don’t speak the same language. I’ve found it easier to avoid contact with them.”
Skylar thought of the unopened cookie boxes. He wanted to ask if homemade snickerdoodles could somehow muddy communications, but he was pretty sure that would shut Xander down.
He rubbed his chin, staring at Xander’s backpack. Never mind his family just now. Skylar had to figure out a way to buy the man lunch. “Do you have your sketchbook and pencils in there?”
Xander gave him an incredulous look. “Is that a serious question? Of course I do. I have three sketchbooks, two sets of pencils, and my markers. Always.”
“Excellent. Then I’m buying lunch. And,” he added quickly, as Xander started to protest, “as payment, you’ll draw me something.”
Xander glowered at him, but his shoulders settled back into their proper place as well. “Fine, but I’m picking the sandwich shop, then, so I don’t have to draw the goddamned Sistine Chapel ceiling to break even.”
The thought of watching Xander draw even a McDonald’s value meal worth of a sketch had Skylar’s heart beating faster. “Sounds good to me.”
SKYLAR MAY HAVE dressed like an ad again, but Xander could still see glimpses of the man from the day he’d shown up unpolished. Especially when they were on the hospital hill. For the first few minutes, Skylar lectured Xander about smartphones and social media apps. Then the wind rustled through the trees, dislodging some white blossoms from a tree, and Skylar cut himself off mid-sentence to look up and watch the petals fall.
Xander didn’t watch the flowers, too caught up in the transformation of the man before him. It was like a camera shutter, except it didn’t flash, it stayed open, stuck in place by the movement of the trees and the wind. Gone was the plastic smile and the calculation. This was nothing but wonder and softness, and it pulled Xander in like a tractor beam. He’d buy all the smartphones in town, if Skylar would look at him like that.
The wind settled down, but the petals kept falling, and Skylar’s expression didn’t change, only morphed into an extremely happy smile. “I feel like I’m in an anime. If only these were cherry blossoms.”
“I think they’re apple. Which, honestly, is a lot more American.” Xander tried to feel his way carefully across the soap bubble of this softer Skylar. “So. First you read my manga, and now you admit you watch anime.”
When Skylar’s smile faded into a guilty expression, Xander worried that had been the wrong approach, but Skylar didn’t retreat, only changed his focus to tearing the edge of his napkin. “I do, yes.”
“I don’t watch as much as I’d like. I’ll admit, I have a bias toward manga, but I feel that’s acceptable, given that I draw it. Also, drawing anime and manga isn’t the same thing. I feel sometimes if I watch too much anime, I screw myself up.”
That snagged Skylar’s attention again. “Really? How is that?”
“Well—I mean, drawing is drawing, but the biggest difference is that anime moves and manga doesn’t. Anime is short for animation. They get to actually move their drawings around—in fact, they have to. I must convince you my static drawings could move. It’s not all that different than the difference between a novel and a movie script, I would think. The script is the blueprint for the movement the actors do, and the novel has to do it all, or make you think it’s happening.” Xander’s ears heated as he felt his metaphor sliding away from him. “Or something. I don’t know, ignore me. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Like I could write anything.”
But now Skylar was truly interested. He leaned forward over their mini picnic spread, all his junior corporate persona evaporated—this was a different shark emerging, and it made Xander’s whole body tingle. “No, you’re right. It’s exactly the same kind of thing. God, I never thought about it. When I used to write, I’d sit there for hours, trying to find a way to show a sunset or a fight scene or a lovers’ quarrel. I could see it in my head, like a painting, but believe me when I tell you that you don’t want to see me with a brush. I’m not sure my pencil was much better, but sometimes I thought I came close to painting with my words. That’s so brilliant, Xander.”
The wind had picked up again, sending more apple blossoms down around Skylar’s head as he smiled. He was always beautiful, and perfect, but right now he was so excruciatingly perfect that Xander felt he could crack. He’s straight, he told himself, desperately.
Are you sure about that?
And is that what you should be thinking about at this moment?
Xander let out a breath. “Thanks. I try.” His brain finally registered what Skylar had said. “Wait, you used to write? What did you write?”
Skylar blushed—actually blushed—and Xander felt his own cheeks heat in sympathetic response because the guy was so fucking adorable, blushing under the apple tree. “Oh, nothing much. Just silly stuff, when I was younger.” He smiled what Xander could tell was supposed to be one of his charming Silver numbers but was, in truth, just more embarrassed adorableness, and nudged Xander’s foot. “Okay, so, finish your food so you can pay me for lunch. I’m looking forward to this.”
Xander grunted and stuffed the last of his sandwich into his mouth so he couldn’t self-deprecate. He hated it when artists did that, and it annoyed him to discover the reason he hadn’t been one of their ranks was because he was such a hermit no one ever gushed about his art the way Skylar did, not to his face. Hell, maybe no one ever did at all. Maybe Skylar was his only fan.
Maybe they were some sort of doomed muse relationship where Xander was in love with Skylar and Skylar was in love with Xander’s art.
Actually, that wouldn’t be a half-bad arrangement. He’d been getting himself off this long. Why fix what wasn’t broken?
Xander dusted off his hands, wiped them on his jeans for good measure, and got out his supplies.
Skylar brushed his crumbs away too, tracking Xander’s every movement. “What are you going to draw?”
Technically, Xander should offer to draw whatever Skylar wanted, since this was supposed to be his payment, but he was feeling punchy. “You.”
It pleased him to see how much this startled Skylar, made him sit up straighter and fidget. “Me? Seriously?”
“I did tell you I wanted you to model for me. Why not start now?”
God, but the man was cute when he was put on the spot. “But…I’m not wearing anything special, and I’m not…prepared.”
“God help us if you get more prepared. I want you to seem natural, so don’t do anything in particular. Relax, and let me study you. It’s my job to make the portrait interesting.”
“But why do you want to draw me?”
Dammit, busted. Time to bluff. “Because it’s fun to watch you get flustered.” Redirect, redirect. “Okay. I brought along a few different mediums. Regular pencil, charcoal, or manga marker?”
He’d been pretty sure of the answer before he asked, but it was fun to watch Skylar’s face light up. “Manga marker—does that mean you’d draw me as a manga character?”
Xander couldn’t help smiling. “If you wanted. I don’t have to draw manga style with my markers. I could also draw manga style with pencil, for the record. But if you yearn to see a comic version of yourself, I can make your dream come true.”
All Skylar’s self-consciousness bled away. “Yes, please.”
Xander smiled to himself as he pulled out his manga paper and his tin of markers. “Done. But if you want it colored, you’re going to have to spring for a lot more than a sandwich. All my Copics are low.”
He shouldn’t have said that, but he couldn’t stop himself. He yearned to see the hungry look on Skylar’s face. “You can do it in color?”
It was like they were passing a crack pipe back and forth, and God help him, Xander couldn’t stop. “Not just color. The good color, that rich, dark stuff like you see in your anime. Copic color. Japanese markers. My pride and joy. But they’re pricey as hell. Twelve dollars for one marker, new, and the refills are five dollars each online, seven dollars in town.” He tried to reel himself in, but there was no hope for it, not with Skylar looking at him like that. “I don’t whip them out for just anyone.”
There was the shark smile—no ting, something far, far more dangerous—and it didn’t simply make Xander shiver. It made him want to lie in the grass and wait breathlessly for Skylar to do things to him. It made him bananas to admit Skylar wasn’t flirting with him. Well, he was, but not in the way Xander wanted. Not in all the ways he wanted.
As he roughed out the drawing, however, that voice came back to him, that strange backseat whisper that kept nagging at his mental coattails.
It’s not as simple a comparison as that. It’s not that he isn’t interested in you. He’s interested differently in you. Pay attention.
Xander didn’t understand that voice, in fact got more frustrated by it every time it nagged him, so he snuffed it out and focused on his paper. That is, he did until a Skylar-head-shaped shadow fell over it.
“I thought you were going to use marker.”
The right side of Xander’s mouth tipped up in a smile. “I will. First I’m roughing out my map. I can erase pencil. Marker, not so much.” He flicked his fingers at Skylar’s nose, suppressing a shiver when he accidentally grazed his skin. “Sit back. I need to check your proportions. This may be a comic drawing, but if it’s going to resemble you, I need to see what you look like.” He nodded at Skylar’s legs. “Your feet, specifically, please. Your hands too, but also your feet.”
Skylar laughed as he shifted his body so his feet were visible. “Why my feet?”
“Because the human body is like a puzzle, one part giving clues about the other. Your feet I need simply because they’re always tricky to get right, but hands are critical. Your hands are exactly as big as the size of your face.”
“What? No way.”
“Check it and see, if you think I’m lying.”
He watched as Skylar put his hand to his face and then gasped as he discovered Xander was, in fact, telling the truth. “That’s insane.”
“So I suppose you’re going to lose your mind when I tell you your arm span is the same as your height.”
Skylar did, and Xander stopped sketching for several minutes, giving a mini drawing anatomy lesson to a delighted Skylar, who tested out everything testable on himself as Xander watched, smiling.
“That’s amazing.” Skylar shook his head. “Who knew all this stuff?”
“Portrait artists.” Xander picked his pencil up and began to sketch again.
This time Skylar didn’t ask him any questions, and soon Xander lost himself to his work, first mapping out a rough concept until he liked his draft, then, at last, opening his markers and beginning the real work. He’d decided to draw Skylar as he was, in a way, sitting at his picnic, but what Xander couldn’t get out of his head was the way he’d looked when the apple blossoms fell. That unbridled joy on his face. The true Skylar, unvarnished.
And because it had seemed to mean something to him, when he added the falling petals and the tree they came from, Xander made them cherry blossoms.
How long he worked, Xander wasn’t sure. He only knew the drawing quickly stopped being something he did to humor the man he had a crush on and became art he took pleasure in making. He loved chasing down the little flicker in Manga Skylar’s jaw—he didn’t mean to put the stubble back in, it simply crept in on its own, starting as a shadow, then giving in and becoming a baby beard. The character had his hands up, fingers spread, mouth open in happy surprise as he tried to catch the petals falling all around him.
There were a lot of petals, and Xander felt compelled to put a great deal of detail on the cherry tree, and in the grass, and of course on Manga Skylar. Which was probably why his neck hurt so much when he finally put down the marker and why, when he glanced at his phone, it told him he’d been drawing for almost two hours.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry! Why didn’t you—?”
He stopped talking when he got a look at Skylar’s face.
Skylar looked arrested. He clearly hadn’t pointed out how long they’d been sitting there because he didn’t know how long it had been, either. He looked gut-punched, but not necessarily in a bad way. More straight-up gobsmacked.
Xander couldn’t take it anymore. “You know, nobody else looks at my art the way you do.”
Skylar lifted his gaze to his, but he seemed drugged, like all he wanted to do was look down at the drawing some more. “Is that really how you see me?”
Didn’t think things through, did you, Fairchild? “Um, well…yeah. That’s how you looked to me when the petals fell. Except I wanted you to have cherry blossoms.”
It was as if Xander had gut-punched him all over again. “That’s the part that keeps getting me. How you changed the flowers. But I guess that’s an artist’s job, to be perceptive.”
“You’re not exactly blind to people’s details, Mr. Stone.”
“But I can’t do this. I can’t do anything like this.” He touched the edge of the paper reverently, as if it might disintegrate under his touch. “Could you color it?”
Xander sighed. “I’d color it as thanks for the hungry way you look at my art, but I wasn’t kidding when I said my Copics needed refills. My pinks especially, which are going to be critical for the blossoms.”
“I’ll buy them for you. Please don’t fight me,” he said, before Xander could try. “It’s my own self-interest here.”
“You don’t understand how many markers I need refilling to color this one sketch.”
“Not to be gross, but you don’t understand that you could tell me it was one hundred markers at twelve dollars and I could order them for you on my credit card right now.” He winced. “Sorry. That really was entitled. But I want you to color this. Badly.”
It was entitled, yes, but it was also kind of hot, to see Skylar come undone over his art. And it was also a bit sexy to have money thrown at him like this. With nothing expected in return except a colored-in drawing.
Xander was developing a kink.
“Message received, Richie Rich. You want to go to Art Haus now, before I come to my senses, or order online where the prices are a little better?”
“Art Haus, definitely.” Skylar sighed. “Here I was going to try to talk you into letting me get you a phone, but I’m buying you markers instead.”
“Marker refills. For the record, I’d have never let you buy me a phone. And I wouldn’t let anyone but you buy me refills.”
The smile Skylar gave Xander rang in his head like a bell. “Good to hear.”
IT WAS NINE by the time Skylar made it home to Delta Sig. He came in the back door as quietly as he could, but unfortunately he didn’t make it to the stairs before Mary came to find him, drying her hands on a towel and offering him a welcoming smile.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in. That must have been an amazing study session.”
“Not a study session.” Unc appeared behind her, munching on a cookie as he leaned in the doorway. “He was off working on his senior project, the overachiever.”
No, he’d been at Xander’s apartment, spellbound as he watched him color with his magical Japanese markers, then enjoying cheap ramen in his kitchen while he coaxed Xander into talking more about art, specifically about how he made the Hotay & Moo comics. The truth was, Skylar could have stayed there another three hours, but Xander had been the one to politely shoo him away, apologizing because he had to call his mother before she went to bed so he could get money before he ran out of food and toilet paper and had to have awkward conversations with his landlady.
“Otherwise I’d be happy to sit here and talk with you all night,” he’d said, then looked embarrassed to have said it.
Skylar smiled at Mary and Unc, the gesture feeling stretched and strange on his face. All he wanted to do was escape and process the day, alone. “It was a long day, for sure. Think I’ll go to bed early so I can start again tomorrow.”
Mary frowned and pointed at the ratty folio he clutched in his hands. “Goodness, what on earth is that?”
“Nothing.” Skylar hadn’t meant to speak so sharply and tried to soften his rebuke, but the way she looked at the folder made him tense and grip it tighter. “Sorry. It’s…a gift from my client.”
“That’s nice.” She patted him on the shoulder and winked. “You sleep tight, sweetheart.”
Escaping up the stairs at last, Skylar went to his room, shut the door, and locked it. Alone, he spread the folio on his bed and unlaced the string keeping it closed. Drawing a deep breath, he opened the flap and pulled out the drawing that had cost him a seven-dollar sandwich, fifty dollars’ worth of markers, a ten-dollar mat board, and a day’s worth of LSAT study.
As the beauty of it hit him all over again, Skylar vowed he would pay triple that price again in a heartbeat.
“My job is to create movement in stillness.” Xander’s words came back to Skylar as he stared at the drawing, now mounted and matted, glowing in the light shining from beside his bed. Skylar didn’t look away from the image, but in his mind’s eye he saw Xander at the table in his kitchen, waving his hands to illustrate his point. “The potential of movement. I use your own mind to help me out—it wants the drawing to move, and if I set the lines just right, it will assume motion for me. Then it will realize there isn’t movement, and that paradox will charm you, which is where your appreciation for my talent comes in. Theoretically.”
There was no theory about it. Skylar was in complete awe of what Xander had done. The Manga Skylar sat spellbound, vibrant and glowing in his freshly refilled Copic ink—the color had added more than hue. Xander had done tiny crosshatches that somehow, along with the shading the black and gray markers had already done, made it seem as if Skylar’s clothes rippled in the breeze. His skin had more shades and tones than should have been possible with the handful of markers he’d seen Xander use. And he had seen him use them.
“I don’t usually let people watch me work,” Xander had murmured. Then continued to let Skylar watch him anyway.
Skylar had tried to keep quiet and not bother him, but it had been too difficult. He was too enthralled. He kept saying things like, “That’s incredible” or “How did you do that?” and when he asked questions like that, Xander would always explain, if he could. But most of the time Xander couldn’t answer. “The magic of art,” was his teasing reply.
The cherry blossoms still got to Skylar. That Xander had so casually made that switch—maybe it was a throwaway gesture to him, but he didn’t know how many nights Skylar had lain awake, drunk on anime, tired of pushing too hard to meet everyone’s expectations, and dreaming impossible dreams. Telling himself someday, perhaps for a vacation, he could go to Japan and see those cherry blossoms for himself. Hoping the dark voice inside him was wrong, that they truly were as beautiful as every anime made them out to be.
That’s how you looked to me when the petals fell.
Skylar didn’t know why it made him feel so uneasy to look at the expression on his manga self’s face. He didn’t know why that unbridled joy unsettled him so much, why he could neither look away nor at it somehow at the same time.
When he finally broke free of the drawing’s spell, he got out his phone and checked his messages. A text from his mother’s secretary about the fundraiser, reminding him she could still find him a date if he hadn’t secured his own. Messages and emails from Tau Kapp and Delta Sig members wanting favors, following through on chains of events Skylar had set in motion weeks ago. Other people asking for help, wanting the magic of Skylar Stone for themselves. The only item that wasn’t something demanding a piece of him was an email from Ellen with pictures of Chris’s graduation photos and a thank you for the present he’d sent.
That message made him smile, but it made him sad too. He’d have liked to go to Chris’s graduation, but he hadn’t known if he’d be welcome. Did they want some rich white guy in the middle of their family event? Ellen would have let him come if he’d asked, but would she have wanted him there? He had no way of knowing, so he hadn’t asked, to make sure he wouldn’t be a bother.
Looking at the photos, though, he ached, wishing he could have been at least a little bit of trouble, even if only slightly to the side, out of the way.
Skylar stared at Xander’s drawing some more, trying to recapture the happy feeling from the afternoon. All he managed, unfortunately, was that his chest tightened at the thought of that pressure and tension of those emails and texts enclosing around his joy.
Skylar laid the drawing on his dresser, shut off his lights, climbed into bed, and pulled his laptop under the covers, firing up Crunchyroll from muscle memory. But as the opening credits played, he stuck his head out, grabbed his phone, and punched out a text.
Thank you for today. I had a great time.
He couldn’t quite bring himself to push the send button. He thought he should erase it and say something more appropriate, something encouraging about Xander’s project or something joking about their joint Pygmalions, but in the end he put the phone back on his nightstand without texting anything.
Seven episodes later, he gave up trying to keep his eyes open and slid the laptop onto the window ledge, but he didn’t sleep right away, his brain chasing itself.
I don’t think Xander’s giving me curmudgeon lessons, it whispered. I think he’s turning me into something else entirely.
Except the warning wouldn’t hold, burned away by the Copic-colored memory of Xander’s manga drawing.
He’s not turning you into anything. He’s only chipping away your stone and showing you what’s already there.