Snippet #2053803

Cassius was always early. It was just a part of him, the pre-punctuality that he always exhibited. Time had even less meaning to him than the others boys. The absence of light, artificial or otherwise, made it hard to tell if they were in day or night mode. He just slept when he was tired, and he had gotten The Box to make him an alarm clock that, when the fourth button on the top was pressed, would announce the current time in a tinny female voice. Pushing that button was the first thing he did when he woke up, because for all he knew he’d only caught a few hours and everyone else would still be in bed… or he’d slept ten and he was late for breakfast.

As a result, he took his time with things. Getting around wasn’t all that hard, not anymore, but it tended to be slow. Counting steps in long hallways required concentration even after the months of practice he had with the more common to’s and from’s in their strange metallic home. He’d probably been the first to arrive for the meeting, crossing the sixteen steps from the door to the round table and then feeling around for a seat. No one had greeted him, anyway, so he was pretty sure he’d been the first one, but then again Pandora might have been there the whole time and not said a word. The quiet boy was funny that way, but Cass could usually tell when he was around. It was just… a feeling. That weird prickling of the mind one got when they were being watched, even if they couldn’t actually remember what watching felt like.

He’d put on his earphones and some Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. He’d been on a classics kick for the last couple of days. Much though he loved music, the boy never, ever sang along. He sang in the shower, when there was no music accompanying him, but with his headphones on he could never tell when someone entered the room, and he didn’t want to annoy anyone with his kind of breathy, inexpert voice. Sighted people could spot an interloper and hush up, but whenever the urge overtook him, he thought about all five of his friends gathering around him, listening without tapping him or anything to let him know they were there. It made his cheeks feel hot to think of that, and the urge to sing usually went away very quickly.

Someone had prodded him when the meeting was about to start. He wasn’t sure who. Oh well. He reached up and pulled his headphones away from his ears, using one finger to kill the tiny sounds coming out of them once they were off. He was slouching, like he usually did, so he sat up. This was a break in the routine, this meeting. Maybe it was something important? He had no idea, and he’d been pondering about it all day, ever since Olly had called for it. He heard a chair scraping about, and then Olly clearing his throat. He did it in a pretty distinctive way, at least to Cass’s sharp ears, so he knew immediately that their leader was sitting to his left. He turned his head so that he was facing him, and got ready to listen.

He blinked his wide eyes when the other boy went on about people blowing their brains out or vanishing. Was that really something he worried about? Cassius found reasons to check in with Olly every chance he got, so it couldn’t be him that Olly was talking about. Probably Pandora and Drew. Mostly Pandora. He wondered where the solitary boy was. Probably away from the rest of them, maybe leaning against the wall.

When Olly looked at Cass’s face… well, Cass’s face could be pretty hard to read. Eye-contact was obviously out of the question. Even though he’d turned himself to face Olly, he was still staring through him rather than at him with those vacant eyes of his. Cass could smile, sure; he did smile, and laugh, and frown, and pout, but more subtle, less natural expressions were alien to him. He’d never seen them, so how could he know how to make them? He heard him sigh, and almost frowned. He hated when Olly was upset. Instead of frowning, he smiled, as encouragingly as he could. At least, he hoped it looked encouraging.

His brow creased. He had that one down, too. Ghost stories? He didn’t have the usual run of fears, so horror movies or creepy stories had never really interested him. That sort of stuff was only dangerous to dumb people anyway. They always wound up breaking the rules, then the bad guys got all of them but one, and it was just stupid how they all separated and got lost and picked off one by one. Maybe that was the point of it? To scare them into sticking together? No… Olly wasn’t that subtle. His heart was in the right place, but he couldn’t have come up with that.

He didn’t really know any scary stories, but he decided to speak up, remembering Olly’s sigh, his exasperated tone of voice. ”I think it’s a really great idea, Oliver.” When he spoke aloud, he always called him Oliver. In Cass’s head, though, he’d always be Olly, who fretted over him so endearingly. Olly, who… well, he liked Olly, and it was a good idea. The meetings were. He turned his head to smile a little more weakly at… well, he wasn’t sure where everyone was, but he probably got most of them before he panned back to Olly. ”I’m all for spending more time together. It will be fun. I don’t… know if we should start a fire… but we could have it make us s’mores and melted chocolate and all of that. I mean, maybe we can start a fire, I don’t know. What if there are sprinklers that just come on? I…” He realized he was doing that thing where he just kept talking. That happened, when Olly was around, more than any other time. He slouched in his seat again. ”I just think the meetings are a good idea, is all,” he finished quietly.