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Kamala spun towards the door and slammed it shut with one of her light blasts. It was faster than walking back and fast was key.
Grunting, she deposited Bruno against a dumpster. (Don’t make a trash joke, she ordered herself. Now is not the time.) He was heavier than he looked with all of his short spindly limbs.
He was also wheezing in pain with his a face scrunched up oyster shell, so that meant no weight jokes or trash jokes, but what else was she supposed to do but joke when she was this freaking stressed?
“You need to go,” Bruno said, his voice weird and strangled.
“No, wait-“ Kamala waved her hands around like he was a mosquito or he was attacking her now, too. “Wait, just hold on-“
“Kamala! There’s no time!” Since when did he get assertive? “You need to go.”
“I’m not going to leave you here!” Kamala cried. “You- you’re hurt and it’s my fault, and what if they- what if they come back and they slice off your head and put it on a platter or cut off your limbs and beat you with them or-“
Bruno groaned and listed backward, effectively shutting her up.
“No!” she exclaimed. She could be assertive, too, she could be, she could be. “No, we’re going someplace safe! Together.”
“I’m going- to slow- you down,” Bruno panted.
“Well, good, because-“ she scrambled for words that made sense in the jumble hopping inside her brain, “because it’d really suck to be a turtle alone.”
She urged him (forcibly, with grabby hands), to wrap his arm around her shoulders again, and they set off at a stumble. When Kamala realized she was leading them back towards her house, she hesitated and Bruno tripped over his feet. “What?”
“What happens if I bring you back home?”
Bruno drew in another (it had to be at least the seventeenth) of the deep breaths he’d been sucking down while they walked. “Your mom gets me some ice and I stay the night in your guest room?”
“Hardly,” Kamala scoffed. So many years, and he still didn’t understand her mother in the slightest. “She’s gonna take one look at you and yeet you straight to the ER.”
“Please don’t say ‘yeet’ at a time like this,” Bruno mumbled, but she was pretty sure his head lolled on his neck to hide a smile, not just out of pure exasperated exhaustion.
“Hey, if I have to fight bad guys and save your butt, the least you can do is let me say yeet,” Kamala clapped back as she started to drag him off again. ER or no, they needed to get somewhere, and they weren’t cool superheroes with safe-houses. (Yet.)
Bruno was silent for awhile, save for his continued very long breaths, and Kamala thought that the banter had just petered out as it normally did. But normally was no longer allowed, considering she was lugging his broken body down a shady sidewalk at eleven at night after fighting some mystical Djinn supervillains and wow that would make a good episode for her webcomic series.
“I’m really sorry,” Bruno muttered. “I’m really freaking sorry.”
“Sorry for-?” Kamala face twitched up in confusion. “Sorry for what, what are we talking about right now?
“Because I can’t go all ninja on those… freaky bad guys like Kameron could, and now you’re stuck dragging my sorry butt back to your house even though it’ll freak out your mom.”
“Heyyy, what?” Kamala stopped again, mostly because she was out of breath but a little bit because this felt like a Big Moment and she wanted to squint into his watering eyes. “You threw a wedding gift at baldy ringleader! That’s super duper ninja!”
He broke the eye contact, mouth twisting.
“Look at you, you got yourself injured all for little old me,” Kamala went on soothingly. Poor baby bird with his injured wing. What she couldn’t understand was what Kameron had to do with it. “Sooo, buck up, Bruno. ‘Cause your a badass, too, and now you gotta live with it.”
The mouth twisting looked a little more pleased.
“Okay, let’s get a’marching.” Kamala set off again and Bruno had no choice but trip along after her.
Kamala was half-ish right about her mother’s freak out. Muneeba Khan shot out of her chair the instant Kamala and Bruno crashed through the door—crashed because Kamala’s arms were numb and Bruno was whimpering like a brown, fluffy kicked puppy.
“Where have you been?” Muneeba demanded, her voice sharp as the pins and needles in the hand that Bruno had been death-gripping the wrist of. “Do you have any idea how worried we have been? And what did you do to Bruno?”
“She helped me, Mrs. Khan,” Bruno said quickly. He was always a parent-pleaser, Kamala thought with both respect and jealousy. It was particularly remarkable when it came her generally un-pleasable mother. “Everything was happening so fast, I tripped, Kamala came looking for me and got me out of the building.”
“And so you walk all the way back here like you are some- some crawlers of the night instead of calling your mother for a ride home like a reasonable young woman?” Muneeba scoffed, still targeting her attacks at Kamala despite the fact that she hadn’t said a word. If she was annoyed, it certainly wasn’t going to be at Bruno. Never ever.
And ineloquent, “gahhhhh…” was all Kamala could manage. She had no excuses, her brain was emptied and rung out of all thoughts except Bruno was so freeeeeaking heavy. She wished she was the one who was injured so that she could limp home and avoid all of this mess.
“I hate to interrupt,” Bruno spoke up again, despite the fact that it was silent and there was virtually nothing to interrupt. “But I just… need to sit down for a hot sec.”
His knees buckled right there where he stood, and Kamala let out a soft oof as he inadvertently dragged him with her. She didn’t think that he had planned this ungainly collapse, but it did the trick as Muneeba immediately went from Ammi wolf mode to Ammi hen mode.
“Ohh, oh dear,” she fussed as she hurried over and lifted Bruno up with those weirdly strong arms of hers, helping him efficiently into a chair and taking the blanket offered by Kamala’s dad so she could wrap it around Bruno’s shoulders. Kamala sighed, content to lie on the floor for awhile and admire her lovely wooden ceiling.
“Kamala, get off the floor.”
“Okay,” she agreed, scrambling up.
“Go boil some water. And get some ice. And get some advil.” Muneeba was busily clearing a space on the table beside Bruno and looking for a coaster.
“Can’t-“
“You dragged him into this mess, now you must do the work to help him!”
The fact that Bruno had literally told a story (read: flat out gigantic lie) that was the opposite from that sentiment, and Muneeba still blamed her… Kamala slogged off to the kitchen to do as she was told. She’d fought enough battles for one evening. (She kind of wished she could go back to the ones she’d engaged with her gigantic light fists.)
When she returned with a mug of tea (she’d considered bringing the whole pot of boiling water, just to spite her mom, but was concerned Muneeba would straight up dump it over her head), she found Yusuf inspecting Bruno’s wrist and Bruno herself with very tight shoulders, white to the lips.
“We must take you to the emergency room,” Muneeba fretted, taking the tea from Kamala with barely a glance and setting it beside Bruno. “This is a serious injury!”
“It’s not, really,” Bruno groaned. “Besides, it’s so late. I’ll go tomorrow. I promise?”
Muneeba and Yusuf exchanged glances, communicating with their eyes for a moment before Muneeba sighed deeply. “Yes, yes, all right. Where is the ice, Kamala?”
“Still in the freezer,” Kamala grumbled, already turning around to retrieve it. What about if she was tired, and sore, and had just singlehandedly beat up a bunch of people (Djinn people, actually!), and wanted a cup of tea and to be doted on? She’d really have to consider the pros and cons of serious injuries the next time she planned on coming home this late.
By the time Muneeba had Bruno settled into the itty bitty, bizarrely tassled guest bedroom with his wrist wrapped and iced and a fresh set of blankets despite the fact that no one had slept in the original bundle since their last wash, it was well past midnight. Yusuf and Muneeba, the former yawning theatrically, waved Kamala up to bed with them.
She stayed in her room for approximately 6.3 seconds and then tiptoed downstairs again. If she wasn’t allowed to text I’m fine and then get a good night’s sleep, then neither was Bruno.
Okay, yes, he was literally downstairs, like twenty feet away, so it wasn’t the same thing at all, but she needed an excuse to go check on him and since the excuse was just for herself, it didn’t need to be any good.
When she reached the guest room, she knocked a quick drumroll on the closed door, then carefully creaked it open. “Heyyy, just wanted to see—oh, shoot. Sorry.”
Bruno was there, standing squeezed between the window and the far side of the bed.
And he had on… no shirt.
Immediately, her eye was caught by something startling on his midsection. No—not his abs (her ADHD brain was then immediately distracted by said abs, because she had gone to the pool with him last summer and they had not be there, so exactly when had they appeared and why was this the first she knew of them???), but instead by the large, mottled bruise against his sternum.
“Hey,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest.
“When’d you get those?” Kamala blurted. Shoot, wait. “That, I mean. The bruise.”
“Uh. Tonight…?” Bruno squinted confusedly at her, as if he couldn’t figure out if she was seriously asking him that question or not. “You know, when we got in a fight with a super villain?”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s a…that’s a good time to have gotten a bruise.”
And because she was her, and she simply could not resist anything, ever, she had to add: “Okay but, um, when did you get the abs?”
Bruno barked out a laugh, winced, and came around the side of the bed so he could sit down. His wrist was still wrapped, but he’d already gotten lazy with the ice pack and it was leaving a puddle on his bedside table. “I dunno, I mean, they didn’t just appear all at once. I’ve been… trying to work out, I guess? I dunno.” He squeezed his eyes narrowly again. “This is a really weird conversation.”
Kamala nodded rapidly in agreement and dropped down on the bed beside him, flopping to rest on her back to stare up at her second lovely ceiling of the night. “Hey, Bruno?”
He shifted and laid down next to her. “Hey, Kamala.”
“I’m really, super duper sorry you got hurt tonight.” She fiddled with the ends of her sleeves.
“It’s not that bad, really.”
“Yeah, but… with a hurt wrist it might be hard to do computery stuff, and with a bruise that big you might not feel comfortable taking your shirt off or something.”
She heard him snort lightly, right next to her ear. She kind of wanted to turn and look at him but knew that if she did, their faces would be closer than close, and the air in here was way to charged with… something to make that not-scary.
“Don’t worry,” Bruno told her quietly, fondly. “I never feel comfortable taking off my shirt in public.”
“Yeah, well..” She cleared her throat. “You should. Because, well, because you should. Because-“
“Of my abs?”
Well if that wasn’t the smirkiest tone known to man.
“I didn’t want to objectify you,” she whined, writhing a bit. “But yeah, because you’ve got some sweet abs, man.”
He laughed and elbowed her, and she simply could not stop herself from turning her head. There he was in all of his messy-haired brown-eyed glory, with his soft cheekbones and softer smile and a softest-of-all expression. And good grief, the fondness she felt for this dork lying next to her nearly made her squash him in a hug.
“Seriously, though,” Bruno said. Kamala jumped as she felt something on her cheek—he had moved, and his fingertips were brushing a bit of hair behind her ear, and that felt very new but also…kind of awesome. “It’s okay. I mean, yeah, it sucks getting injured but… I’d rather be there and walk out of the place hurt, but knowing you’re okay, you know? When you vanish into the void to go battle bad guys all I can do is just sit and twiddle my thumbs and hope for the best.”
“Nooo, you-“
He cut her off. “I know I’m no help either way, not really. But I’d still rather be there. It’s probably stupid.”
He rolled back on his back, leaving Kamala staring into his ear, which was considerably less romantic and- whoa, hold up a boiling hot second, when had she started wanting this to be romantic?!
She sat up, abrupt enough that Bruno looked at her in surprise. “I should probably go to bed.”
“What? Oh, um…” He sat up, too, and shifted away from her. “Yeah, of course. Sorry to keep you up; you must be wiped after all that superheroing.”
Kamala nodded, but now she felt the exact opposite of wiped. She felt like all of her nerves were tingling, like she would be capable of fighting twenty times the Dijinn gang from earlier that evening.
“Uhh, Kamala? You’re glowing.”
Kamala spazzed uncontrollably, staring around at her body until she realized there was, in fact, a big ol’ piece of her body glowing… a swatch of her chest.
Right above her heart.
She clamped her hands to the spot. “Yeah, it’s, um, kinda flukey, sometimes. Sorry. So. Yeah. Um. Goodnight.”
She leapt to her feet, bolted out the door, and collapsed back into it. He was Bruno. He was Bruno! He was Bruno who was her best bud; who talked about superheroes with her and got on absurdly, unfairly well with her family; who always had a stupid, wise, pithy piece of wisdom when she was confused or feeling down; who didn’t care if she was cool or that she drooled when she fell asleep in class or that she sometimes still cried when she skinned her knee falling a million times a day. He was Bruno, he was her best friend, he was always attentive and caring and supportive and-
Oh holy macaroni.
She was in love with Bruno.
Early that night rushed back to her, when he’d compared himself to Kameron, Kameron, who she’d been making heart eyes at for days despite the fact that he was barely more than intelligent eye-candy to her.
Could Bruno maybe be…?
Without wasting another thought or even another heartbeat, Kamala turned around and burst back into the guest room. Bruno had been lying on his back where she’d left him, hands over his face, but he jolted to his feet. “Jeezum, Kamala! You scared me!”
She was already charging towards him, talking a mile a minute: “Okay, so if you don’t like this just shove me and I’ll leave and we can forget about it but I just need to try because if I don’t I-“
She had him by the shoulders.
Then she was kissing him.
And it was soft, and it was electrifying, and it was everything a first kiss with your best friend should be particularly when Bruno broke out of his shock and kissed her back.
But then he did shove her. Just a little, just gently, but he held up his hands. “Wait,” he panted. “Explain.”
“I like you,” Kamala gaped, her eyes gigantic. “Like, I like, like you. And if your shocked, trust me, I’m doub- I’m triple shocked because I did not see this coming until like five, maybe three minutes ago.”
Oh, and this was why everyone said to fall in love with your best friend, because this whole confession thing was as easy as could be.
Bruno held his hand a little higher. “You’re serious?” he squeaked. “Like, dead serious, won’t wake up tomorrow and decide this is all a mistake, serious? Because Kamala, I have been in lo- I mean, I have liked you for- for- gosh, for years, I don’t even know how many. And if you decide that you don’t- that you-“
“I’m serious.” She made her face as grave as possible, her eyeballs stretching to their limit.
He blinked a few times, leaning away slightly. “Why’re you- what’s that face? Why’re you making such a weird face?”
“Oh.” Kamala relaxed. “Sorry.”
They stared at each other for a long moment before Kamala grinned brightly. “Well! Okay! I guess I should go to bed now, for real. Good night, Bruno.”
The poor boy looked like she’d just taken him on the craziest favorite roller coaster at the amusement park twenty minutes from his house. “I- bu- you- okay. No, wait, hang on.”
He reached out and grabbed her hand with his uninjured limb and held it in between the two of them with awkward formality. “Would you… Kamala, will you go on a date with me?”
Kamala thrilled, and warmed, and buzzed, and ooh this really was a rush. This was absolutely marvelous. If she had had any idea that the night of her brother’s wedding would end like this-
“Yes,” she said, a little more breathless than she had been during her incredibly blunt and chaotic declaration a moment ago. “I would like that, um… very much.”