novelraw Chapter 132: Tomorrow
Chapter 132: Tomorrow
Alexei sauntered back into the living room with Sera’s refilled mug.
He didn’t touch her; he didn’t have to. He put the cup down on the table with the care most men gave to knives. Sera’s mouth curved. She sipped, hummed, and the room eased a notch you only felt if you were already listening for it.
Lachlan was.
He slouched back to the window. The white outside had turned gray and then white again; no lines, no edges, just pressure.
He leaned his forehead on cold glass and watched his breath fog and vanish. He didn’t like waiting. Waiting felt like being told to sit in the corner until the adults finished talking. He wasn’t a kid anymore.
He wasn’t sure he was human anymore, either. Not when the itch was this loud and the dark lapped at the edges of his eyes every time somebody raised their voice.
He closed his eyes.
The buzz in his fingers crawled to his nail beds. The keratin tugged, wanting out—hooked crescents, easy tearing, blood under skin. He let the feeling crest and ebb. Sera didn’t need a monster in a living room.
She needed a couch and hot chocolate and to hear the boys being idiots while the world tried to break the windows.
"Lachlan," Zubair snapped, just his name. Not a command so much as a simple reminder.
"I’m good," Lachlan said, and for once it wasn’t a lie.
He turned, found Sera watching him. She didn’t look afraid. She never did. She tipped her head a fraction, a question without words. He gave her his nothing-to-see-here grin. The dark receded like it knew it didn’t get to sit at the table tonight.
The generator coughed. The lights dimmed. For a heartbeat the room was just storm-silver and their breathing. Then the hum caught again and light flooded back, cheap and miraculous.
"Coffee?" Elias asked, too casual.
"Tomorrow," Zubair answered automatically.
"Tomorrow," Sera echoed, amusement under the word like a mint.
They fell into a quiet that wasn’t heavy.
Alexei sprawled with his feet on the table until Zubair kicked them off with the toe of his boot. Elias actually laughed at something he wrote, shook his head like he’d surprised himself.
Sera made a second cup disappear like she was a magician performing for a very small, very grateful audience. Lachlan did push-ups in sets of fifty until Zubair told him to stop rattling the floor.
He flopped onto the rug and stared at the ceiling. Paint flecks made their own constellations. He connected them: dog, knife, lemon, a little box that could be a TV if you squinted hard enough. He liked that the storm couldn’t get at those dots.
"Plans," Zubair said. The word snapped the line of the night straight again. "We need tinted lenses ready...and fast. Elias?"
"I can smoke plastic over the stove tomorrow," Elias replied. Then, softer, to Sera without looking at her, "You don’t need them, do you?"
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Lachlan felt the room clock the fact and keep moving. They were getting good at letting some things be.
"Skybridge," Alexei said, finally sliding his feet back to the floor like he’d decided to play nice. "If we go down three, we see if anything alive decided to be neighbor."
"Alive like us," Elias said. "Or alive like seal-head-eater?"
"Da," Alexei said, delighted.
Sera’s mouth twitched. "Try not to invite either for tea."
"Who said anything about tea?" Lachlan asked. "We have hot chocolate."
"Only if you want to die," Sera shrugged.
The building creaked again. A deep shift. For a second everyone held still, a held breath as old as buildings. Steel settled. The ding-ding-ding of ice resumed its clock.
Lachlan rolled to his feet in one clean move. "Perimeter?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
Zubair nodded once. "Two minutes. Stairwell first."
They did the walk together—Zubair and Lachlan, the oddest of pairs. Down the hall, past the pantry door with its smugly stocked shelves. Past the greenhouse, where a leaf scratched the glass and sounded like a tiny animal trying to get in.
The stairwell door rattled on its hinges but held; the brace they’d installed groaned, then stilled. On the landing below, a vent cover shivered in its screws; Lachlan tightened them with a quarter pulled from his pocket, the way his father used to fix things when tools weren’t worth the walk.
"You good?" Zubair asked when they started back up.
"Never better," Lachlan replied, and he almost meant it. "You?"
Zubair’s mouth did that almost-smile that was more about teeth than fun. "Tomorrow," he said.
Back in the living room, Sera looked up before they even crossed the threshold. Not a question. A count. He saw her creature nod in that place inside her chest he couldn’t point to.
Pack intact. Law satisfied.
Alexei had found a deck of cards. Elias was pretending to protest and already shuffling. "We’re not gambling," he said. "We’re... passing time."
"Gambling for chores," Alexei said. "Loser cleans freezers."
"Absolutely not," Elias said, already dealing.
Sera patted the couch cushion beside her. Lachlan went like a good boy and sprawled, shoulder to shoulder, letting the hum of her approval run through him like sunlight.
He didn’t know why this made him happy. It just did.
Outside, the storm clawed and hissed and swore at the glass. Inside, cards snapped, popcorn crunched, and Sera’s mug steamed, and the creature purred like the center of the world was exactly where it should be.
Tomorrow they would go down three floors and test a door that might spit them into another fight. Tomorrow they would melt plastic, count bullets, find out what else had teeth.
Tonight, he let the itch fade and kept his nails in their beds. Tonight, he leaned against the only thing that felt like home since the world stopped making sense.
"Your bet," Alexei smiled, sliding a king across the table to him with magician’s fingers.
Lachlan grinned. "I raise you one chore and the last of the hot chocolate."
"Monster," Elias said, but he was smiling, and Sera was, too.
The building creaked again, like a giant settling under a heavy blanket.
It held. So did they.