Comfort Zone -CHAP.09--SOULEATER-

  “How am I supposed to use this stuff? Surely it’ll look really obvious.”

  “Oh here then, let me do it!”

  Brina would never have believed that Professor Stein’s class project would somehow result in her having to put makeup on a guy… Yet here she was. She made Kid sit on the end of her bed since her bedroom had the best light to work with – all the while consciously aware of the fact that Lord Death’s son was in her bedroom, no matter how much she tried not to think about it.

  And to make things worse, the concealer really wasn’t working. The black eye that was rapidly spreading across one side of Kid’s face refused to be covered. Brina was going to run out of concealer before she successfully managed to cover it. Crap…

  “Erm… This isn’t really working as well as I’d hoped…” she eventually forced herself to say, dreading Kid’s reaction.

  “What?!” exclaimed Kid, looking horrified. “But you have to make it work!”

  “I can’t!” Brina protested. “It’s not covering as well as I thought it would… I won’t have enough concealer for it. And you’d look ridiculous with the amount I’d have to put on anyway! I’m really sorry, but there isn’t much else I can do…”

  Kid clutched his knees, his face hidden by his hair. “Fine, I guess there’s nothing else for it…” He said in a strained voice, as he inclined his face to one side. “You’re going to have to punch my other eye.”

  Brina stared at him in disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “I’m not kidding. If we can’t get rid of the mark that’s already there then this is the only way to make it symmetrical,” said Kid, remarkably calm considering what he was asking.

  “No way! You’re insane!” Brina protested. “I’m not going to do it!”

  “You have to!” Kid argued, starting to get annoyed. “You were the one who did this in the first place, so you have to fix it.”

  “Look, I said I was sorry, but I’m certainly not going to hit you again!”

  “It’ll be fine. Just do it.”

  “I’m not going to.”

  “Brina…”

  “I said I’m not going to do it!”

  “Dammit, will you just hit me already?!”

  “Gladly,” said a new voice, just as a fist connected with Kid’s face and sent him flying off the other side of the bed.

  Brina squealed and ran to see if he was okay. “Kid, are you alright?” she asked frantically, helping to drag him back to his feet.

  “I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth, clutching his other eye. He seemed more annoyed than anything.

  Brina turned and rounded on her intruders. “Adrian Carrow, what on earth do you think you’re doing?!”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” said Adrian, rubbing his knuckles and looking somewhat satisfied with himself. Jesse was stood to one side behind him, not quite as comfortable with the situation. “What the hell is he doing in your room at this time of night?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Brina argued. “At least he was invited in! What gives you the right to just barge in without knocking first?”

  “It is my right if he’s being a sadistic little bastard and trying to engage you in some freaky foreplay,” Adrian accused.

  “What?!” Brina spluttered. She had no idea how to reply to that – she didn’t even know where the idea could possibly have come from!

  “Not that it’s any of your concern,” Kid interrupted irritably. “But we’d simply been practicing for Professor Stein’s project.” He’d moved his hand now. His eye was brilliantly red, even more so than the one that Brina had injured.

  “I wasn’t asking you!” Adrian snarled, moving towards him again.

  “But he’s right!” said Brina angrily, causing him to stop in his tracks. “It isn’t any of your concern! Now apologise!”

  “There is no way in hell I’m apologising to the reaper,” Adrian refused. “Whether you invited him to your bedroom or not.”

  “Adrian…” Jesse warned. He could see that their usually level-headed meister was ready to lose it.

  And he was right. Brina couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this angry. Adrian was always doing this. He insisted on making their friendship so complicated and she never knew how to handle him. He’d treat her however he felt like. One minute he’d act like she was the best friend that he and Jesse had ever had, then the next he’d be ignoring her existence completely.

  And he was always acting like he had the right to poke his nose in and tell her what to do. Well he didn’t. He knew he didn’t. Which was why he was resorting to such ridiculous accusations. And Kid hadn’t even done anything wrong! Well… Brina had had enough of it.

  “I told you it is none of your business!” she cried as she stormed over to Adrian and pushed him in the chest as hard as she could.

  He was so much taller than her that he didn’t move an inch. But he certainly got the message. He gave her a bitter smile. “Well it’s nice to see you’re not being such a pushover for once.”

  For once though, Brina didn’t find his attempt to be amusing funny at all. She was still too annoyed. “Just get out,” she said shortly. “Both of you.”

  Jesse hadn’t really done anything wrong, but she knew that he would have known more than anyone that Adrian would have made a big fuss over Kid being there. Yet he still hadn’t done anything to stop him. Plus she couldn’t be bothered to distribute the blame fairly right now. She hated arguing – she just wanted to be left alone.

  The smile vanished from Adrian’s face. “Fine. See if I care. Have fun with your reaper friend.” He banged the door open and strode out without looking back.

  “We’ll see you around,” Jesse muttered to Brina, following Adrian’s lead.

  Brina stood and stared after them, still shaking and with angry tears filling her eyes. She shook them away, feeling even more irritated. Why did her body always react that way? She couldn’t even get angry over something without her body betraying and embarrassing her.

  She still couldn’t believe what had just happened. What the hell was Adrian’s problem? She really thought that he’d matured more than that since they’d met…

  “I should get going too.”

  Brina turned round, mildly startled. In the midst of everything she’d almost forgotten that Kid was there. The reminder made her feel all the more annoyed at the situation. She’d felt like she’d been making some real progress with Kid today, even despite the whole kick to the face… But Adrian had just gone and ruined that.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologised. “I didn’t think he’d… I mean, I never would have expected…”

  “It’s fine,” Kid interrupted smoothly. “There’s no need for you to apologise. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I’m still sorry,” Brina repeated lamely. Kid was right that it wasn’t her fault, but she still felt that she should have somehow been able to control Adrian better. He was one of her weapons after all. She was responsible for both him and Jesse.

  “Don’t be,” Kid reassured, unconcernedly. He seemed a lot more serene now that the twins had left. Knowing him, he was probably just happy that his face was symmetrical again… “But it is late, so I should be going anyway. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

  He let himself out, leaving Brina feeling confused and irritated about the whole situation. She guessed that she hadn’t been spending that much time with the twins lately… But it wasn’t like she’d just been off gallivanting and having fun with other people – it had all been because of Professor Stein’s project. They could hardly hold it against her for wanting to do well in class…

  Plus that still didn’t excuse Adrian taking it out on Kid. Kid really hadn’t done anything wrong. If Adrian had an issue with the way that Brina was spending her time then he needed to take that up with her; not anybody else.

  Brina sighed as she walked through into the hallway and grabbed her set of keys from the bowl on the sideboard so that she could lock the front door. She didn’t want anybody else bursting in tonight. How had one class project managed to turn into something a lot more complicated?

                                                      *

  Brina felt grumpy the following day. She hadn’t slept very well after everything that had happened. She was still mostly annoyed over how things had been looking up and now her hopes of actually doing well in Professor Stein’s project felt like they’d been dashed.

  Kid may have acted cool about it last night, but she was worried that he’d be off with her now that one of her weapons had physically attacked him. Especially considering the apparent reasons he’d given for it. She’d be lucky if Kid even still wanted to be her partner after that!

  Her mood wasn’t improved when she found Adrian waiting for her at the front of the school. Jesse was with him of course. Adrian never did anything on his own.

  “What do you want?” Brina grumbled, as she attempted to pass by and ignore them. They still followed her anyway.

  “I wanted to apologise if that’s alright with you,” Adrian said sarcastically, walking practically beside her.

  “Well you’re not going the right way about it,” Brina pointed out, meaning his sarcastic tone. She couldn’t hold grudges and she found it difficult to stay angry with people. Adrian following her around wasn’t really making it any easier.

  “Come on, Bree-Bree. I’m sorry, alright?” said Adrian more loudly. “You happy now?”

  Brina stopped walking and sighed. Adrian almost walked straight past her. “If you think that will make me happy then you really don’t know me at all.”

  “Well what do you want then?” asked Adrian.

  “I want you to apologise to Kid!” said Brina like it was obvious. “I really don’t give a damn about what you said to me – in case you haven’t realised, you do stuff like this all the time. But Kid didn’t do anything wrong, so go and apologise to him!”

  Adrian did not look happy. “So that’s all you care about, is it?”

  “Yes,” replied Brina impatiently. Hadn’t she made that obvious already?

  “Well I’m not gonna do it,” said Adrian huffily.

  “Well leave me alone then!”

  Whenever situations like this arose Jesse always just ghosted into the background. He’d long since given up on trying to play peacemaker between the two of them, but he still sometimes had to step in and try to bring Adrian back to reality. He was the only one who could ever do so, besides Brina herself.

  “Come on Ade, I told you that’s what she’d say,” he interrupted. “You’re not gonna get anything else out of her.”

  Brina gave him a small grateful smile. Well at least Jesse clearly knew her well enough.

  “Whatever,” said Adrian childishly, turning on his heel. “Let’s just cut class, Jess.”

  Jesse hung back long enough to say to Brina, “For what it’s worth, he really is pleased to see you sticking up for yourself. He’s just not so happy about you sticking up to him.”

  “That’s a fat load of help,” said Brina disbelievingly.

  Jesse just laughed. “You know him as well as I do – he’ll come around sooner or later. You’re better off just ignoring him for now.”

  He hurried off to catch up with his brother. Brina sighed. There was definitely no other individual as complicated as Adrian Carrow… She was just glad that his twin was on her side! At least she knew now that she was definitely in the right. She already found it hard enough to stand up to people – it was so much easier to just go with the flow.

  She made her own way down to class. Kid wasn’t in the room when she got there. There were still a few other people missing, including Professor Stein himself, but she couldn’t help but worry that Kid was avoiding her. She grabbed a seat along the empty bench in front of Maka and Kera and put her head down on the desk. Part of her wished that she could have just cut class with the twins…

  “Don’t tell me you’re sleeping in class now.”

  Brina turned her head to the side. Kid had now taken up the seat next to her, the usual bored look on his face. And the class was louder than before – everybody else seemed to be here now. Oops… Maybe she really had dozed off for a few minutes!

  She sat up quickly. “I wasn’t sleeping,” she said unconvincingly. It wasn’t really surprising though – she’d been tossing and turning all night after what had happened.

  “Of course you weren’t,” replied Kid, obviously not believing her for a second.

  After sitting up, Brina realised that she could hear mutters from around the class. A lot of the students seemed to be looking in their direction. Well of course… Kid was sat there with two black eyes after all. Nobody would have exactly known that it was Brina’s fault, but she felt embarrassed nevertheless.

  Kid either hadn’t noticed or he didn’t care. In fact, he was sat up in his chair and looking quite composed. The mutters and stares clearly didn’t bother him in the slightest. Brina watched him carefully. She’d always been quite perceptive of other people, but for some reason she could never seem to tell what Kid was thinking.

  “You can stop staring at me,” said Kid. “Everybody else is already doing enough of that.”

  “I wasn’t staring!” Brina protested, feeling her face colour. She then glanced back at the row behind them before lowering her voice. “So, um, how are your eyes?”

  “I heal a lot faster than most people. The marks should be gone in no time,” replied Kid, not entirely answering her question.

  Brina took his evasive answer to be a definite brush-off. She stared down at the desk in front of her. Yep, any progress they’d made had certainly been for nothing… And if anything she felt even guiltier now about the incident than she had to start with. She’d had all night to dwell on it more.

  “I really am sorry,” she apologised quietly, her eyes still on the desk.

  Kid sighed. “We’ve been over this already. I thought we established that it wasn’t your fault.”

  “You established it. I just didn’t agree,” Brina countered, still not looking up.

  Kid sighed and very lightly placed his fingers on top of Brina’s hand on the desk, forcing her to look at him. She jumped slightly at the contact. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You really don’t have to worry about it.”

  Brina stared at him. He really did seem perfectly content, even with two very obvious black eyes that had to still be hurting. She guessed that he had been encouraging her to punch him again last night. Did it matter to him that Adrian had been the one to do it instead?

  “You’re actually happy… aren’t you?” Brina asked slowly. “You only care that your symmetry’s back.”

  “I admit that as arrogant as your friend was, he did take care of the problem at hand,” said Kid simply.

  Wow… Brina had never met anyone quite so insane. She shook her head. “Well I guess if you’re happy about it then that’s all that matters…”

  “Exactly,” agreed Kid. “Besides, I think you’re still concentrating on the wrong thing here.”

  “What do you mean?” Brina asked, confused.

  “I mean you’re worrying about the black eye that your friend gave me and not the one that you gave me yourself.”

  Brina’s face grew hot again. “Hey, I already said I was sorry! What do you want me to do? You know I didn’t…” She stopped when she realised that Kid was actually smirking. “Wait, are you messing with me?”

  “Well apparently it’s quite easy to do,” replied Kid, still bemused.

  Brina scowled. “Jerk,” she muttered and punched him lightly in the arm, surprising them both.

  “You’re hitting me again?”

  “Oh come on, that wouldn’t have hurt…”

  Despite her light tone, Brina was still surprised at herself. The only people she acted like this with were Adrian and Jesse. When had she suddenly gotten so comfortable around Kid? And when had he started feeling the same; enough to start teasing her?

  Professor Stein suddenly came zooming into the room on his wheeley chair, effectively distracting Brina from her thoughts. “Good morning class!” He narrowly avoided crashing into his desk. “You’ll be pleased to know that we’ll be working on some more fighting practice today.”

  Most of the class seemed pleased with that, but there were some grumbles from a few of the students. Probably those who had been paired off against Brina before. Brina sighed to herself. Kid may have helped to find her a temporary solution to her balance issues yesterday, but after how the practice had ended up she wasn’t exactly filled with confidence anymore.

  “It’s clear that some of you have been practicing in your own time too,” said Professor Stein pointedly, nodding in Brina and Kid’s direction. “Nice job, Brina. I’m assuming that’s your handiwork.”

  Several of her classmates started laughing. Brina felt her cheeks burning. “But… Wait… I didn’t…” she spluttered. “It wasn’t my fault!”

  “Technically one of them was,” Kid added, causing everyone to laugh harder. Brina’s face turned positively crimson.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, Brina,” said Professor Stein cheerfully. For some reason he seemed genuinely pleased about it. “Now… Let’s start with some two-on-two practice again…”

  Brina groaned, feeling like putting her head back down on the desk. This was going to be a long day…