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Wandering the markets earned him nothing but pointing and stares. Checking the commissions board earned him nothing but pointing and stares. Hell, even walking down the street earned him nothing but pointing and stares. Wherever he went, he couldn’t escape constant judgment.
He wasn’t blind to the whispers. “I heard he killed someone once on a commission for the Fatui.”
“Dude, his prices are so high even if he would kill someone it wouldn’t be worth it.”
“What’s with that creature next to him? Did he make a deal with the abyss to get it?”
None of these comments were out of the ordinary for him. He had learned over the years how to tune it all out, ignore it in favor of going about his day. Sure, the prices for his market goods were always more expensive than everyone else’s. Sure, nobody wanted to include him in anything not combat related. It was fine. Kinich had it all under control.
The fact that he craved validation from someone, anyone, didn’t matter. The fact that, when Ajaw went out at night to roam his pathetic garden and the surrounding trees he cried himself to sleep, it didn’t matter. The fact that the rumors he heard daily all could be traced back to shit his father had said to him at one point.
“He’s a monster.”
“Monster child!”
Nothing but a worthless monster.”
It all came back to that word. ‘Monster.’ In reality, it’s what he was, wasn’t it? Taking commissions no matter how dark for the sake of money, caring less for the people of his tribe than his own self. That’s what everyone around him saw, so that’s what must be true.
Today was a bad day, one where he couldn’t keep the thoughts from affecting him. On these days, choosing his own work schedule meant that he could stay in his bed all day. Though he usually went out and completed commissions anyway, on this particular day he couldn't force his body to move. All he could do was rot away in his bed, letting the thoughts consume him whole.
*****
He had never had friends to notice if he was missing or not. Nobody truly cared about him, so it shouldn’t have mattered.
Therefore, around noon, he shouldn’t have heard a knock at his door.
“Kinich? You in there?” The voice was Mualani’s, no doubt about it. “I’m coming in!”
The door creaked open somewhere in his house, but he didn’t have the energy to care. Why would he, when she would leave when she finally saw the monster he truly was?
Footsteps echoed down his hallways like thunder rumbling in the stormy skies. He closed his eyes, waiting for her to reach him and see his disgusting self, giant eyebags, greasy and disheveled hair, rumpled and dirty clothes. He hadn’t been taking care of himself because who would want to take care of a monster like him?
He didn’t know where Ajaw was. Couldn’t even keep an eye on his own saurian. His mother would be disappointed, just like his father always told him.
The door to his bedroom opened, Mualani’s figure coming into frame. He closed his eyes, not even bothering to wrap the blanket tighter around his form or turning over to avoid her.
“Kinich?” her soft, almost scared, tone was almost enough to get him to move, to reassure her that he was okay and that she could leave. She walked closer, “Kinich?” and when she was finally at the side of his bed, she tenderly placed a hand on his forehead.
“No fever,” she murmured. Crouching down, she moved her hand to his cheek. “Hey, can you look at me?”
He didn’t open his eyes, but he did summon enough energy to toss the blanket over his head.
She quickly pulled it away. “Hey, none of that. When was the last time you washed your hair? Or even your clothes? Have you been taking care of yourself?”
He slowly shook his heavy head, nonchalantly humming. That earned him a sigh.
“Okay, enough moping. It’s time to get up and eat something!” she then scooped him up into her arms in a bridal carry and started to walk toward his kitchen.
He didn’t care with the knowledge that she would leave as soon as she was satisfied with toying with him, making him think she cared.
*****
Mualani didn’t leave.
She helped him eat, wash his clothes, even bathe. She stayed with him when he couldn’t move, rocks of expectations and assumptions weighing him down deeper and deeper into a sea of depression. She was the first one who didn’t leave him.
It wasn’t until he was lying in bed and she was helping to tuck him in that he found the will to speak again. “Why?”
She looked up at him with curious eyes. “Why what?”
“Why are you still here?” Kinich didn’t understand. What could he have done for her to feel the need to pay him back so graciously?
She hummed, as if in thought, before she spoke again. “Why not? I care about you, of course I’d stay.”
He fell silent at that. But when she turned to leave, he grasped her wrist.
She turned around to look back at him.
He didn’t know what he wanted at that moment, how to say it, how to pay her back for everything she’d done for him. But it must have been something in his eyes that gave him away, because she smiled as bright as the sun before plopping down in the bed next to him.
“Of course I’ll keep staying; you’re never getting rid of me, after all!”