Not That Bad

Evan rolled with it. No matter what it was. Strange supernatural tournament? Sure. Prison? Why not. Nothing that Jugemu did or didn't do really bothered him anymore. Maybe he was just tuned out a bit. Not really effected by things the way he probably should be.

That was kind of inevitable, wasn't it?

"So, anything fun happen while I was out?" Evan asked, tucking the card away for later. He'd look into it, but he wasn't commiting to really dealing with it. Maybe he'd ask Straga?

"What do you think about a job, by the way?" He asked after a moment's thought. He'd considered it a bit in prison, but he'd never really decided anything.

Evan had a very, very general idea of how unattached to the concept of fun Jugemu was, but he didn't quite realize just how bad it was. He didn't realize how many of those limits were almost entirely self-imposed, and that they'd stayed even though he was, more or less, effectively free. Without giving it that much thought, he'd just sort of assumed most of the worst bits of it had stopped with the end of the Sideralis family.

Evan didn't really consider himself part of the family anymore.

"You go to the range?" Evan had no actual desire to go himself. He'd been before. He knew how to shoot. And he was happy to let those skills go rusty.

"Not sure. I could go back to my old job, if they'll take me. Kind of hard to get in at my age, but I do have the experience at least."

Had Evaristus not had a job? No, probably not. He'd never split from the family, so he'd never had to work. For Evan, it had been a matter of being homeless or not.

"I was a firefighter," Evan said. "Seemed like a good way to give back to the community. Also let me cheat a bit and be a bit more effective by splitting myself off. Alone in a building bathed in flames, I could cover three times the ground and take a lot of risks others couldn't. I'd send a clone to the very back of the building, and then send the other two to explore and try and save people. If it collapsed? I'd say I just managed to get out the back at the last possible moment."

Was he... blushing? Evan was pretty sure he was blushing. Like, he'd turned away, blinking a whole bunch, and Jugemu was pretty pale, so...

Hard to miss.

And his ears were red.

That helped.

"Oooh," Evan said, an undeniable smirk on his face as he folded his arms across his chest. "Are you blushing?"

Maybe it was mean to point it out. No, scratch that--definitely mean.

Oh god, he was squirming. Like a teenager who was getting flustered. Because, as the kids said, senpai had noticed him.

Well, Jugemu was kind of cute. Definitely not what Evan would have described as 'his type' first and foremost, but he was kind of charming. The glasses. The random moments where he got all serious and got intimidating. That was kind of what was nice about the whole thing right then--Evan had jerked the rug out from under him.

"This is a whole new side of you," Evan said with a wide grin. "Never expected to see it."

"I'm definitely a bully," he said with a nasty little grin, but he didn't actually follow up. Just kind of gave a general wave.

"Do I need to send one of me out to escort you?" The tables had turned, after all. Jugemu was technically his master. He'd had plenty of experience babysitting- er, bodyguarding. Why not escort him?

Huh.

Huh.

That was something.

It was a lot of something. A lot of reaction. A lot of... well, there was some tension there, and it definitely wasn't just Jugemu. He was hot. He had the whole servant thing (which Evan found, truthfully, kind of weird) going on. And Evan was bored.

God, it was going to be weird no matter what, wasn't it?

So Evan let him go. He let him go off to do who even knew, because Evan had distinctly lost track of the conversation somewhere along the line.

Maybe one day. But not that day.