Home Is When I'm With You - Cynonari

Stained Sheets - 20

Maybe I could ask the others if they'd seen him?

Though it was unlikely, it wasn't past 11:00 am and it was a Sunday. I pushed open the clear glass doors of Cyno's dorm building, brainstorming what to do when my thoughts took an abrupt pause.

At the opposite end of the rather empty or better yet completely empty courtyard was a short boy with fluffy white hair falling off his shoulders and covering his right eye. He was walking in from the main building

Cyno.

Like Celestia had suddenly blessed me with bouts of luck, I ran over without a second thought, my smile stretching across my face as I did so.

"Cyno!" I called out to him. When he saw me, his eyes lit up for a brief second. Just before I caught up to him, I noticed his eyes looking over the empty courtyard.

"There you are, I've been looking for you," I said with a smile, stopping to stand in front of him. I reach for his hands and slip them into mine, his fingers tensing before very lightly grasping mine. I pull him in for a quick second and plant a soft kiss on his lips, not enough time for him to reciprocate. When I pull back, he had a small look of surprise etched over his face.

"Why were you looking for me?" he asks in a noticeably hesitant tone. I frowned slightly at that detail, my eyebrows furrowing.

"I wanted to talk to you...I've just been a bit worried about you..." I said trailing off and looking away, but I quickly dragged my eyes back to his "Is now okay to talk?"

"Yeah, now is...okay," he said, that hesitant tone beginning to slip out of his voice, as he said that, I felt his hands fall out of mine "What is it?"

"Oh, I've just been a bit worried about you lately..." I started "You just seem...a bit off, and Kaveh said you were acting weird on Friday after you came back to the party and I felt it was-"

"Wait! Did you tell Kaveh what we were doing? Did Al Haitham?" he asked, a sense of urgency appearing in his voice.

"No...Kaveh doesn't know," I said, taken aback by the sudden response. He seemed to calm down at this and motioned for me to continue.

"Are you feeling alright?" I started hesitantly "You seem really off lately,"

"In what sense?" he asked.

"I..." I started again but trailed off. How was I going to justify this, all he did was not drink and then suddenly had a lot of work "Just not quite right, you seem a bit on edge and like I was saying, Kaveh said you didn't drink at all on Friday and that just doesn't seem...like you...I suppose,"

I forced my eyes down to the ground before adding smally "I'm just worried about you is all,"

I glanced back up to see him cracking a smile at me, it looked warm and stretched across his face. But it wasn't right.

"You have nothing to worry about, I'm perfectly fine. I'm sorry if I'm on edge, I've just been so busy, it's made me tired. And I didn't drink because I felt at least one of us should be sober when we came back up,"

Looking away from that smile of his and focusing in on his eyes with a smile of my own.

"Thank you, I just couldn't help but feel a bit worried," I said sincerely, before remembering a rather minute detail "Why didn't you sleep in my room last night?"

He looked at me for a quick moment, silently, his mouth not moving in the slightest. After a few seconds of agonisingly uncomfortable silence, he finally replied.

"I didn't want to wake you, I was...worried you would already be asleep,"

"But you know I don't mind...Right? I've told you before," I explained.