Nothing Less than Extraordinary

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I woke up on Zaine's bare chest and as I usually did when I noticed he was soundly sleeping, I tried not to wake him. I slid out of his embrace as lightly as I could and slipped on my oversized t-shirt and made my way to the bathroom. When I was finished in there and grabbed the handle of the door in my exit and pulled, it came off at its hinges.

"Shit!" I scolded myself in a whisper and tried balancing the door onto the wall. I guess my adaptation of people's powers due to an evoking response was true because I had inherited Zaine's strength.

"Did you just rip the door off?" I heard Zaine's groggy voice ask from the bed. I didn't even look over at him before he let out a breathy laugh. I gritted my teeth as he got up and examined my work. "Your powers are funny."

"Ha-ha," I said without any ounce of amusement. He looked at the hinges with his hands on his hips and then looked over to me.

"If Sumer's clairvoyance is as good as she's seems to be, she'll have a couple hinges and a screwdriver waiting for us downstairs. Don't worry about it," he joked as he went to retire to the bed and pulled me with him. I sat between his legs and pouted.

"Great. I guess I'm on Zaine-obtained-powers-lookout today," I grumbled.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," he said and feigned offense. He spun me to face him. "If you could control Wib's and Cheshire's, you can control mine," he encouraged. "Here," he said and held up a hand. His eyes urged me to meet my hand with his. I felt the roughness of his palm and looked over at him. "The strength is involuntary as a response to denseness, meaning any kind of tension or stress, say like trying to quietly sneak out of bed for my benefit, is gonna trigger it," he lightly chuckled, but I only glared. He suddenly collapsed his fingers onto mine to interlock our fingers and the irritation and tension in my body melted away. "But if you relax and think of something important to you, it should fade right away..." As if I didn't need the aid of the gorgeous boy sitting in front of me to affirm my cells of my adoration of him, I felt my hand and arm start to tingle before totally going numb. I watched as my hand and Zaine's faded into each other and passed each other as if we weren't just solid objects. Our hands overlapped and it felt like the movement of silks or strokes of feathers as our matter melded more in this moment than we had last night. I pulled my hand back and felt it solidify once more.

Whoa.

"Aspen, Zaine. Carlisle and Fiske are on their way to pick us up!" Sumer suddenly yelled through the door. "Can I come in?" Since I was wearing a baggy shirt and Zaine was at least in a pair of shorts, we affirmed her entrance. All she did was walk in and allow us to see her fist full of something before she placed a handful of screws and packaged hinges onto the bedside table. She looked between us and narrowed her eyes briefly. "There's a screwdriver under the sink."

We waited for her to leave the room entirely before we busted out laughing.

=XXX=

Everyone seemed to change and gather their belongings to move downstairs well before Carlisle and Fiske got here. The only one missing was Cheshire and while that broke my heart, Sentara at least informed us that she had transported him herself. I didn't ask where because I knew I would pry and I had faith that he'd catch up with us when he could. I had no choice but to believe that especially when we found a small box from him left on the banister addressed to Zaine of all people.

"Well...this is it," Andres said as we all loitered in the living room with our duffel bags or backpacks or anything we managed to keep up with. He sat on the longer couch with Anthony to his right and Skye on his left. Even though his comment was general, I had a feeling he meant it was also for him and Skye. Even though Skye sat as far from him as possible while pressing herself into the arm of the couch, Andres reached a hand over to her leg. I saw her sigh and continue looking in the direction of Indica sitting adjacent.