Work Text:
Zane never knew Zane's mother, she wasn't in any of his memories, at all. Growing up Zane remembered spending most of the time with Zane's older brother, Echo.
As they grew up, their father, Doctor Peter Julien, began to spend less and less time with either of them as he was always busy with his work. So eventually they only had each other.
Other kids had wanted nothing to do with Zane at all, that was until Zane accidentally run into Kai in the street one day during the year of year six.
Gods, their entire group wasn’t alright at all.
And throughout it all, Zane was muddling through gender stuff.
When Zane came out as non-binary a few months later (at the start of year seven), gods, was that absolute hell. Who knew high school staff and students could be so discriminatory? Not them, apparently.
Thankfully, Echo and Kai had both accepted them.
All their teachers called them by their old pronouns of he/him saying that ‘he was male, therefore he/him pronouns’ and ‘stop labelling yourself, all except for Ms Koko who used they/them pronouns for them.
Honestly, Zane’s whole life is a mess, more or less. Between making sure their father remembered to take care of himself, their job at Mystake’s Shop, being tutored by their brother and then also Kai, and various other things they did, they were constantly on the move or late for something.
Their group, which formed in the months and years to come, seemed to make a silent promise to not let anyone run themselves into the ground. So, a few months later during the second last week before September break (AKA exam block) and Zane is going around doing various odd jobs for people and cramming revision near midnight, some things happened.
They had overslept by an hour for their seven AM shift at Mystake’s Shop and there was no angry email from the shop’s namesake, they were confused, that was until they came into the kitchen and caught sight of Kai and Echo talking.
“Hey, Zane,” said the brunet when he caught sight of them standing in the doorway, “Oh, don’t worry about going into Mystake’s, I emailed and called you in sick,” he added.
They turned to their brother, who was now getting the carton out of the fridge to put milk on his cereal.
“Were you in on this?” they asked.
Echo screwed the cap back on before answering his brother’s question.
“Yep. Zane, you were running yourself into the ground with all you have been doing lately, and you know our rule,” Echo told them.
“I was not ‘running myself into the ground’”
Kai spoke up, “And my hair isn’t brown. Echo has already said it but, we have a rule which we intend to follow, and because of that, Cole and I have decided to take on some of the errands you run, not forever, I know that’s not what you want but for a few weeks at least,”
They really didn’t know what to say to that, so they didn’t say anything.