Aviator
are you laughing at my brother?
Ghost // Male // Age 18 // Training Instructor // Erudite to Dauntless
When Blair passed him the sketchbook, Ghost stared numbly down at it as if he were a truncated body holding his own decapitated head in his hands. Tendrils of shame crawled over him, leaving him feeling violated in a hundred different ways. The sound of his own swallow was deafening. He reached for a witty reply to downplay the situation, to show that Blair flipping through his sketchbook was no big deal, but for once he had no words. The contents of the sketchbook were painfully personal, and the fact that Blair had leafed through them meant that she had glimpsed the innermost workings of his mind. Most of the drawings were too ridiculous for many people to take seriously—a lightbulb with a fishbowl contained in its interior, a harlequin holding a fistful of balloons that were really cloudy planets.
Knowing that Blair had seen them all made Ghost feel as though he were standing before the gates of the afterlife and all the competing sins and virtues written on his soul were being evaluated in divine judgment. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Blair scorn, though. Ghost knew he was abnormal; he was afraid of being understood on such an intimate level. It had been years since he had last drawn within the sketchbook’s pages, but it had been his coping mechanism on those darkest days when all hope had been snuffed from the world.
The only thing to defuse the suffocating pressure building inside of him was the compliment Blair bestowed upon his artwork. And she didn’t seem to be saying it superficially or mockingly, or because it was the kind but meaningless thing to say. She regarded him with a tilted head and her words were lined with grudging respect, as if she were making invisible calculations and assessing him anew. It was the same way Ghost looked at an opponent who had successfully bluffed him at the poker table and stolen a stack of chips from him. He felt fortunate to be on the receiving end of such a gaze this time. “Thank you.” He accepted the compliment quietly, tucking it away for future ego-stroking purposes. Then, with his usual modesty, “But if you think those scribbles are good, then you should really see some of the graffiti art I used to do. You know that mural in Candor territory of the tree with falling leaves that are really birds taking flight?” Ghost smiled crookedly, his brown eyes glowing. “Oh honey, with me flattery will get you everywhere.”
The blue sheets wrinkled as Blair shifted beneath them, swinging her legs over the side of the bed in preparation to stand. But a dangerous wobble ran through her body and she flung out an arm to catch herself against the closest wall. Ghost instinctively stepped forward to lend his assistance, but Blair stopped him with a voice as rough as a knife against teeth. He tried not to feel wounded as she found her footing and brushed past him. While Ghost could completely understand not wanting to be touched, there was an edge to the way that Blair had waved him off that made it clear she still did not trust him. Perhaps she didn’t even like him outside of their mutually beneficial alliance. Frustrated with her contradictory behavior, Ghost couldn’t resist the bait. “Like I said before: If I wanted to kill or otherwise sabotage you, I’ve already had ample chances. Such as the thirteen-hour window where you were out cold. You realize that, right?”
Ghost knew it was an insensitive thing to say, and as soon as the words left his mouth a new thought occurred to him. Maybe Blair wasn’t angry with his treatment of her, but his treatment of Christian and his father. Whether he remembered them or not, Obadiah Parks would never be able to take back his insults aimed at Blair, insults that never would have been uttered if not for Ghost and his complex plans. Perhaps there was nothing to be done about the situation with Parks, but Christian would remember how Ghost had previously hurt him. I have to do something to fix that, or at least try. Something today, he thought, his eyes softening on Blair as she navigated to the door of his bedroom with minimal collisions with furniture. She turned the corner and disappeared into the hall. So lost in thought that he only just now realized that she was intending to waltz through his apartment unaccompanied, Ghost tensed and then darted after her. The last thing he needed was for either Caspian or Maverick to see that he’d brought an initiate to the apartment and start asking questions.
“Hey, uh, I have roommates and maybe it’s best that they don’t see you h—” But Blair marched down the hallway implacably, without so much as a backward glance at him, perhaps because she currently lacked the coordination. Which was just as well, because at that moment Ghost’s chest burned with hot rings of pain and a cough tore out of him. Just one short series, but it was enough to throw him against the wall and make his knees buckle. His vision swelled with tears, making the world swim. Ghost squinted through them. Blair was still moving down the hall with the slow determination of a storm cloud, oblivious to him. With small, surreptitious motions, he reached inside his coat, silently grateful for the fact that he’d fallen asleep in yesterday’s clothes. His fingers encountered the thin, plastic baggie with the insidious silver powder inside. Trying to minimize his shaking, Ghost dumped the contents into one hand, cupped them close to his nose, and inhaled. It was a crude way to take lull, coating the insides of his nose and mouth with fire, while it was so much less abrasive when dissolved into water. But also much harder to conceal.
There was a shallow nudge in Ghost’s mind, one that had become less and less intense over time. Instead of becoming deafening, the volume of his thoughts clicked up only a decibel louder. His shoulders were squared in a way that indicated he’d been worried about something, but it must not have been very pressing, because he forgot what it was. He watched Blair vanish into the kitchen and pursued her, discarding the now empty plastic baggie in a trash can. “You barbarian,” he called out as he watched the blond initiate pull her hair to the side and lower her mouth to the faucet. “If you want something to drink, next time just ask for a cup. What am I going to say, no?” He stood in the kitchen doorway, hands clasped together as he admired Blair. She was haloed in sunlight from the window above the sink, her previously sallow skin now a healthy liquid gold. Ghost decided that if he were to draw her as she was presently posed, with her back to him and her feet spaced wide apart, he would transform her shining hair into the metallic helmet worn by a warrior goddess ready to do battle.
As if feeling his gaze, Blair whipped around. Her eyes flitted down at herself in self-conscious assessment, and when she found no obvious mistakes with her appearance, she asked Ghost if there was something on her face. “When you were asleep,” Ghost mused curiously, ignoring the question, “you mentioned something about pirouettes. And don’t try to tell me I misheard, because I didn’t. So what was that all about?” Ghost tipped his chin up and returned Blair’s stare through half-lidded eyes, equal parts amused and smug. “And to answer your previous question, you don’t have something on your face. However.” He frowned and tentatively started toward Blair, not liking the ring of dark, shapeless splotches around her neck. Obadiah’s parting gift, it seemed. “You do have something on your neck that looks nasty as hell. Let me see?”
Emboldened by the hit of lull, Ghost didn’t wait for permission and rested a cool hand on Blair’s chin. A spasm rolled through Blair, whose body was sandwiched between Ghost in front of her and the kitchen counter behind her, but she didn’t move to push him away. His touch as gentle as a moth, he tipped her head to the side so that he had a better angle to view the bruises. “Yeah, you’re going to want to wear turtlenecks for the next few days,” he murmured, scowling. “Shall I get you some ice for it?” Even though his cursory observation was over, Ghost didn’t immediately move away from Blair and didn’t plan to, not until she sent him away. He was seized by a sudden curiosity to see how she would respond to his closeness, and had thrown her the question as an easy out for her to dismiss him without having to be awkward or assertive about it.
" She sent, before tossing her phone on the bed. 
