Work Text:
Something was up with Zayne. He’d been stiff ever since picking you up from work, and quiet for the entire drive back to his place. Notably quiet, which was remarkable for Zayne. You’d tried to prod with a “long day?” in the car, but got no more answer than an affirming hum.
You knew Zayne well enough to know not to pin whatever was going on onto yourself. He snorted when he was supposed to during your long recount of your day, asked all the right follow-up questions. But any inquiry turned back to him was answered with either a shake of his head or a shrug. A lucky few got a single word.
That rigidity followed Zayne inside his house, stiffening his walk, keeping his arms close to his body. You eyed him as you followed inside, wordlessly plotting on how to get rid of his apparent tension. Talking hadn’t gotten you very far in the car, but maybe something as simple as a hug would.
You seized the opportunity when he turned around to lock the door.
“Please,” Zayne took a half-step back from your outstretched arms, “allow me to freshen up first.”
His smile was apologetic enough, but it wasn’t enough to distract you from the way his shoulders rose when you came closer. It was strange that he wouldn’t humor you, but you couldn’t really scrutinize him for it. Today had been one of his dreaded 12-hour shifts. If Zayne didn’t want to give you a nose-full of antiseptic during your first embrace of the day, then you wouldn’t press for now. Especially not when he was bordering on cagey.
“Alright alright,” you said, flashing your palms in innocence. A hug wasn’t the answer, then. Maybe some time to decompress alone was. Sometimes it took a while for the work stress to slough off. “I’ll get started on dinner while you do that.”
You watched him retreat upstairs, rubbing away a chill that passed over your arms in his wake. You glared at the AC vent housed in the floor nearby. Why a walking refrigerator needed to keep the AC in his home so low, you would never understand.
Preparing dinner went well enough without Zayne there to help. You did what you could, referencing a recipe you’d picked out together over text that morning and chopping vegetables with one of Zayne’s perfectly sharpened knives. His kitchen, much like the rest of his home, was organized to a fault. Everything had its place. You had yet to come across a junk drawer. Likewise, a drawer to toss random cooking gadgets didn’t exist—the only place you’d ever known a vegetable peeler to live.
You scoured through the dark cabinetry and drawers, finding just about every overly specific cooking implement there was. Alas, no peeler.
Frustration mounting in a sea of soft-close drawers, you gave up and decided to just ask Zayne. It had been a while since he disappeared to change anyways.
You plodded up the stairs, having to rub away more goosebumps once you reached the top.
“Zayne?” You knocked on his bedroom door. “I need my sous chef!”
You didn’t get an answer. Figuring he was in the bathroom and couldn’t hear, you opened the door. A soft gust of cold air met you on the other side, and your list of criticisms expanded beyond Zayne’s kitchen organization to include the ridiculous electric bill he was paying.
You took a step inside, pausing when you noticed Zayne sitting on the bed—hunched over, his back facing you. Evidently, he hadn’t even changed out of the clothes he wore to work.
You hesitated. Wondered if you should just leave him be. But then you noticed his arms wrapped around his front to hold his sides, and you pushed closer.
“Zayne?”
He jumped at your voice and dropped his arms, so consumed in thought or whatever it was that he was doing that he didn’t know you’d entered.
“Sorry, I can’t find the…” You trailed off. Now that you were standing in front of him, you noticed how shifty he was. “Hey, is something wrong?”
He was straightening his spine too much, clearly trying not to flag anymore of your attention. But you saw through it. He was overcorrecting. And the longer you looked, the more you noticed everything that was off. Trembling arms, flared nostrils, tight breaths.
The only answer you got was an averted gaze. But picking up on everything else, you didn’t need a response. Besides, his silence was answer enough.
Zayne was in pain.
The neutral expression he so carefully wore flickered. His hands balled into fists on his knees before replacing their spots on his ribcage.
You got closer, reaching to see what he was clutching against.
“Don’t—” Zayne pulled away, his voice strained.
His sleeves had pulled up enough for you to see what he was hiding—black ice webbing down his arms and onto his hands.
Zayne wasn’t trembling. He was shivering.
“Evol backlash?” You’d both been here before. Concern mixed with the frustration of him keeping this to himself again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
You mentally chided both you and Zayne. Him, for hiding it from you again after promising not to. You, for not noticing it sooner. You knew something was off before, but hadn’t looked close enough. Would the ice have been visible back when he picked you up? You thought back on the signs you’d neglected to put together—the white-knuckled grip over the steering wheel, the avoidance of your touch, the cold.
“It’s fine,” Zayne bit out, though the strain in his voice betrayed his words. “It will recede on its own. You don’t need to worry.”
Nothing about what you were looking at was fine. The small amount of frost you could see looked thicker than previous times this had happened, and the skin around it was turning purple from the cold. There was no telling what kind of a disaster was hidden beneath his shirt.
“In how long? An hour? Two? The ice is spreading, Zayne. Not receding.” It was a slow spread, but your point stood firm nonetheless. You went on, forcing the edge out of your voice, knowing all it would do was make him retreat more, “You’re in pain. Let me help.”
You could see Zayne’s internal debate playing out in front of you. Fighting against his instinct to withdraw, pushing past the fact that you were seeing him out of control, and knowing that you could help if he would let you. You reached for the buttons on his shirt, not backing off when Zayne pulled away. He eased after a beat, letting you undo the buttons and slip his shirt off his shoulders to sit at his bent elbows.
You sucked in a breath when you saw what was hidden. Black, jagged ice spread along his torso, so cold it steamed against the open air.
Zayne followed your gaze down to his exposed chest. He shuddered, the sight of his own ice-covered body seeming to make it worse. You could tell he’d been denying how bad it was even to himself.
You placed a hand on his chest, the cold meeting you there biting back as if to protect the very man it was hurting. Intent on pushing through the discomfort, you set your jaw and braced the back of Zayne’s neck with your other hand. Resonance hummed beneath your palm, seeping through the ice and along Zayne’s cold-bruised skin. After so much experience resonating with Zayne, it took hardly any time for you to slip into the frequency of his Evol. But when you tried to turn down the flow, it hardly budged. It was as if the imaginary dial was frozen solid.
You felt the effort Zayne was pouring in to fight against his own Evol, and all the moments his grasp slipped. The ice crackled along his skin, creeping to cover his extremities and thicken over his chest. His breaths grew ragged as it spread, the pain he felt evident in every cut-off gasp. You could only imagine what it was doing inside his body. The cage it formed around his lungs, the agony it inflicted if he took too large a breath. Sweat beaded along his hairline, freezing into small droplets of ice that stuck to his skin.
But what hurt the most to see weren’t the physical consequences. Beyond the tension, the shivering, and the apparent pain, you could see Zayne was scared. You weren’t sure what would happen if he fully let go. Power came to him easily; the challenge was in controlling it. It was the price he paid for the strength of his Evol.
Honing your focus, you tightened your figurative grip on his Evol and yanked back. The ice cracked, grating against itself at the sudden shift. It was stubborn, first drained of its dark opacity before finally melting and dripping down his skin.
The whole ordeal left both you and Zayne sapped, your muscles sore even though the energy you used wasn’t necessarily physical. Zayne’s arms relaxed from their grip on his sides, his chest expanding over double what it had been now that it wasn’t trapped in its icy cage.
Without looking up, he pulled you towards him. His cold, damp arms wrapped around your waist and he planted his ear to your chest, listening to your heart as a way to calm himself. You returned the embrace, your arms lifting and sinking along his back, feeling every exaggerated breath.
“Better?”
Zayne hummed, leaning into you more when you began rubbing up and down his back. “Your heart—”
“Is fine,” you cut in, pulling back to look Zayne in the face. “We’re not worrying about me right now.” Unlike Zayne, you weren’t deflecting. You were fine, if not a little dizzy. It would pass.
His gaze shifted to the duvet where his hand traced the outline of melted ice. Shame had already crept in, plain enough for you to see. “I should change.”
You stopped him with a palm on his shoulder. “Just take a minute, okay?” You knew the inner workings of his Evol backlash enough to know there was more to what just happened. “What’s on your mind?”
Zayne hesitated, his gaze still fixed on his bedspread. “It’s nothing. Just work. You don’t have to—”
“Zayne…” You cupped his jaw, sweeping a thumb along his cold, damp skin.
The long sigh said more than whatever words would come next. He grabbed your hand and kissed your palm, replacing it on his cheek and holding it there. He went into specifics—a patient he’d lost that morning, his day so busy he could never process it until he slipped into his bedroom alone. She was young, sick for the entirety of her short life, each surgery just a way to buy her more time though she was always doomed to never have enough.
His words tightened until he decided he’d said enough. He tucked his chin again, and you pulled him close, cradling the back of his head in your hands and letting him hold you tighter.
“I’m so sorry, Zayne.”
It broke your heart to think of how he hid this before, leaving it to be sorted through on his own. Zayne wasn’t unemotional by any means, but he dealt with those rare bouts of sadness in his own way. For the sake of his profession, he had to compartmentalize. But holding it in could only get him so far.
“You don’t have to keep all of this to yourself.”
He slipped back, his brows drawing together as if what you said wasn’t as simple as you thought. He traced over one of the scars along his hand—one from the cluster that marked his arms, their origin from a past he’d never explained but that you could piece together well enough.
“Zayne,” you waited until his solemn gaze met yours to continue, “you don’t have to tell me about every rogue snowflake. But it shouldn’t ever have to get to this point.”
“I know,” he sighed, his voice heavy in the wake of everything that came before. “You’re right.” His cold hands slid down your arms to hold yours, his touch breaking through the fading numbness. “I’m sorry for keeping this from you. There won’t be a next time.”
“I’ve heard those words before,” you said, mostly teasing.
You thought back to the last time this had happened. How the only way you found out was by catching him off guard. This time was different. The choices to not cancel plans, not lock any doors, to push past the hesitation and lean into your touch—they said what he wouldn’t directly. His choice to not shut you out was a step closer to letting you in.
You pulled him up to stand, helping peel off the damp, partially frozen shirt from his forearms. “Let’s warm up in the shower. Dinner can wait.”