call out my name [2gether]

CH 16 ⏳

<< A COUPLE OF YEARS PRIOR

THE WAY YOU SMILED (I).

Tine sniffled and wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand, only to look up and find the disgusted, feline looking face of his older brother staring back at him from across the room, eyebrows pinched and hands on his narrow hips. Tine poked his pink tongue out at Type unashamedly and glanced back down at his cell phone, enviously scrolling through the social feeds of his friends that were certainly not too shy to brag about how much fun they were having without Tine. Buttheads.

"Are you planning to mope around the house like this for the remainder of the night?" Type asked, a hand fluttering at Tine's unsightly appearance. He was still in his sweaty, gross pajamas, parked under a pile of blankets on the living room couch. Balled up tissues and dirty mugs were cluttering the tiny coffee table.

"Please, Phi, let me be," Tine whined dramatically in a stuffy voice, placing a weak hand against his clammy forehead while sliding further down into the nest of pillows around him, only a mop of dark hair visible. "I'm too sick to do anything."

Type rolled his sharp eyes in annoyance.

Tine had been running a worrisome fever in the early hours of the morning but it broke out around noon and since then he had been rapidly gaining back his usual, fidgety energy. And by now he was just a moody blob of snot, annoyed at himself to have missed out on the music festival where his favorite band Scrubb was going to play. That was the event Tine had been looking forward to the most during this semester, since it was one of the few last chances for him to make memories with his high school friends, before everyone was off doing their own thing. Instead Tine had caught a cold as the idiot that he was. Accidents and unfortunate events seemed to plaster themselves to Tine like flies to honey. He was not clumsy, he just had a spell of bad luck.

"Well, I did tell you to stop hanging out at the beach when it rained with your stupid one cell gang. I bet you guys thought it was fun to swim in the cold water while it poured down, huh?"

"Shut up." Tine pouted.

Actually, he liked taking pictures in the rain the most. Not because of the rain itself but because of the possibly of glimpsing a rainbow afterwards. It reminded Tine that after the storm, any storm, there would always be this pale, shy light filtering trough the ashen clouds, bringing new hope and a quivering breath of fresh air with it. If one stayed faithful and patient, then things tended to work themselves out. Somehow. Sometime.

Tine looked down sadly at his hands atop the blanket and sniffled pitifully to drive his point down of him being sick, his physique being too weak to handle any harsh reprimands right now. He peeked up from under his lashes at his brother, gauging his reaction.

Type sighed and sauntered over to his younger brother and pressed a cool hand against his forehead. Tine was still running a little hot. Type frowned, he did not like that. As much as Tine could be a brat sometimes, Type still worried about his brother excessively. Their parents travelled a lot so they had grown up taking care of each other.

"Stay home until the end of this week and on Monday we'll see if you're well enough to go back to school."

Tine only huffed in reply, pulling the blanket over his head and thus successfully ending their conversation. A rueful smile pulled at the ends of Type's lips at his brother's cute antics. Seeing Tine all quiet and barely moving while his fever spiked had made Type go crazy with worry, an overbearing or even a pouting Tine was a thousand times better than the lethargic creature he had been hours prior. If Tine was still or quiet for too long then something certainty had to be wrong with the world. Type could not even imagine a life without his brother. But of course, that little shit did not need to know that.