The thought of his own bed had kept him going today. He'd pull another late nighter, caught up in some research, then had to wake up early for classes and head straight to work right afterward. He'd skipped lunch too, something he normally wouldn't have done, but there'd been too much to get done today with too little time to do it in. He'd managed though, and now he'd allow himself the luxury of passing out on his bed until Ky or Ravel came in so he could ask either of them to dinner with him.

To see that Ky was already there, waiting outside of their room, was a surprise. Not only because Ky was home before Cayden, he typically stayed out later during the day, but because. Well. He was waiting outside.

Now Cayden didn't bother to give himself the delusion that Ky was doing something like waiting for Cayden to come home. For one, it was Ky and sitting outside their shared dorm room didn't follow along with the common sense he knew that the other man had. For another, he had a certain look on his face, the one that was busy trying to forget something that happened relatively recently. So Cayden paused beside him, raising a brow and waiting for some sort of explanation as to why Ky had decided to enjoy the not-so-fresh air of the hallway.

Though he'd never actually been around the more artistic parts of campus, it didn't take Cayden too long to wander his way over to where he was fairly sure Allen would be coming from. He'd seen him come from this direction, just once admittedly and only in passing, but it'd been something worth remembering. So he did.

To keep himself from looking too awkward, he'd brought along a small book on human psychology, which he was well into, tucked off to the side and out of the way, as classes began to release.

Life had been... busy since the start of all this, so to speak. Between the chaos that'd rampaged through most of campus and Cayden's own rushed pact with Narc- Allen, he'd been on the move nearly non-stop. The only times he'd been able to get a rest was when he managed to make his way back to the room he was sharing, completely exhausted, and passed out on whichever bed was available.

Which was exactly what he was doing now. He'd asked Allen to go out and help where he can while he rested, he'd be fine here. And though he was mostly awake now, he was still mentally too tired to even manage getting up. Turning his head, still laying stomach down on the bed, he stared blankly across the room.

Allen's power, his power, did that to him.

Kill or be killed, was it? Funny how he never thought a saying like that would ever literally apply to him.

It was something that Cayden couldn't remember happening, but had caused Ky to wake up in the middle of the night with a flushed face and the need to avoid eye contact with his roommate for the next two hours more than several times. Sometimes, he hated the fact that Cayden didn't remember every detail about that night like Ky did, that he didn't seem to remember that night at all. But it worked better this way; the way things were between him and Cayden was something he didn't want to change.

But there were still those dreams, no, memories, of a night when Cayden'd had a little too much to drink and Ravel had gone off with an unfortunate victim to teach him the ways of a crossdresser. He'd carried Cayden to their room, that was the vaguest part of his memory, he couldn't remember how long it'd taken or how hard it'd been. Just that it had to have occurred. The same with opening the door and having to prop Cayden between his shoulder and the wall to keep the other man from hitting the ground. That'd been a struggle all on its own.

The details came clearer once they were in the room. Cayden had started to rouse out of whatever state of near consciousness he'd been in for the trip here and had stumbled away from Ky, mumbling incoherently about jumpers. Ky'd ignored him, grabbed his wrist before he could fall and pulled him back up to maneuver him into his bed.

It'd all gone well until Cayden's foot had somehow hooked behind his, their next step sending the blonde tumbling back onto his bed and Ky just barely catching himself with his arm against the bed, just under a foot away from falling on top of him. He'd given a long exhale then, swearing under his breath that he'd get Cayden back when he'd felt shifting of weight under his hand, his only warning before warm lips pressed against his.

This was the part that he hated the most, that he could remember that Cayden's lips had been warm and his mouth hot. That he hadn't tasted strongly of booze and whatever Cayden'd eaten that night, but that he'd tasted like, well, Cayden. Just uniquely him. It was disturbing whenever he thought about it for too long, that he knew exactly what Cayden tasted like and that he didn't hate it. That for a kiss that'd been relatively chaste, it'd also been one of the most heated kisses Ky had ever experienced and had sent a chill through his spine that he insisted to himself was out of anything other than lust.

It didn't feel like it lasted forever, contrary to the minds of romance-readers everywhere, but Ky's breath had been stolen away nonetheless. Which was for the better, because when Cayden had met his gaze, the look in them would have done the trick. Ky suspected this was the look he gave his ex-girlfriends, but there was something in those eyes that made Ky squirm in his skin because he knew that Cayden knew just who he was directing that gaze at.

"Thanks," was all Cayden'd said, with so many unspoken depths that not even a minute later, Ky'd been outside with a cigarette in his mouth, ignoring how absurdly warm it felt outside in the middle of February. He'd stayed out the rest of the night and the following day, returning to the dorm late with a cold. Cayden had just shoved him into bed with a couple of pills and no sign of recognition of what had happened the night before. And Ky had let him.

Cayden never brought it up, so Ky didn't either. He dealt with the dreams as they came, never lingering on the matter in order to keep himself sane. But once in a blue moon, Ky caught himself thinking about it too hard, not that unnamed emotion that had been in Cayden's eyes or the thank you that'd sounded like so much more.

He thought about why Cayden tasted faintly of cigarette smoke. The brand that Ky liked.

To this day, neither of them were sure how circumstances had worked out to make that certain situation they never spoke about occur. There'd been a lot of shifting around, they did remember that, and blanket stealing too, but in the end one lion cub and two cuddly blondes had ended up in one bed while Cayden and Ky had ended up in the other, without anyone realizing it.

That explained why Cayden had rolled over, draped an arm loosely over Ky's abdomen, and rested his head against Ky's. It also explained why Ky had given little fight in return, because actions like those were getting off easy when it came to Ravel snuggles. So they'd spent the night comfortably like that, tangled in the few sheets they'd managed to salvage for themselves.

Waking up to three pairs of eyes staring down at them, one of which they'd both thought they were sleeping next to the whole night, had been one of the most uncomfortable moments they'd ever experienced.

Ravel's dreamt about it before. He's dreamt about it a lot, actually. A world where he and Cayden weren't brothers, weren't forced together by fate, blood relations, destiny, or any of those words Cayden liked to use whenever he read those cards of his. Instead, they choose to come together; they find their way to one another in a sea of millions of people and decide to be friends, to become close on their own without anyone forcing them along. And even though the things they do are the same in those dreams, eat together, sleep together, there's always that slight difference in the air, that decision that sits warmly in Ravel's heart that they both wanted this.

When Ravel wakes up from dreams like those, he immediately goes to Cayden, buries his head against the familiar arch of his brother's back and hangs onto the warm fabric there as if he'd had another nightmare. And it's the unspoken chance, the chance that in those worlds, they never do meet and live in a world without each other, that scares Ravel the most.