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The rain beat insistently against the tin roof of the Wingfield garage, creating a white noise that Xeno usually found ideal for concentration. At thirteen years old, his mind operated like a piece of Swiss clockwork. Today, his obsession was perfecting a chemical compound to improve the efficiency of homemade fuels. His safety goggles were snugly adjusted and his brow furrowed as he measured each milliliter in his test tubes with millimetric precision.
A few paces away, Stanley was cleaning the disassembled parts of an old engine.
To anyone looking in, Stanley looked exactly as he always did: his back straight, his movements methodical, and that expression of cool indifference that kept the other neighborhood kids at a distance. But inside, Stanley was fighting a silent battle against his own body.
That morning, a combination of rushing and an unforgivable oversight had caused him to leave the house with his pockets completely empty. Not a single peppermint, not a cheap chocolate bar—nothing. To make matters worse, the small corner shop was closed due to the storm. At first, he hadn't thought much of it; Stanley had a sense of pride as grand as his marksmanship, and he loathed the idea of admitting he depended on a piece of sugar to function. “I can hold out for a few hours,” he had told himself.
It was a severe miscalculation.
For an hour now, a dull, throbbing pain had settled behind his eyes. Then came the cold. A strange chill that started in the center of his chest and radiated outward to his extremities, making his fingers feel clumsy against the heavy metal.
"Stanley, hand me the ten-millimeter wrench," Xeno requested, without looking up from his mixture. "The sedimentation process is taking longer than predicted; I need to adjust the burner support."
Stanley grit his teeth, swallowing hard to suppress a sudden wave of nausea. He forced his arm to move, located the tool, and extended it. His fingertips brushed Xeno’s hand for a split second.
"Your core temperature seems to have dropped a couple of degrees, Stanley," Xeno commented casually, taking the wrench. "A curious phenomenon given the ambient humidity. Ensure the side door is tightly sealed."
"Mmm... The north wind, I suppose," Stanley replied. His voice carried a slightly lower pitch than usual, but he maintained his trademark flat, steady tone.
Xeno nodded, completely submerged in his formulas, rapidly jotting down data in his notebook.
Stanley surreptitiously leaned his weight against the workbench. His legs felt like jelly. A thin layer of cold sweat drenched the back of his neck, and when he tried to focus his eyes on the engine, the world tilted. Dark spots, like diluted ink, began to float in the periphery of his vision. His heart was racing—a wild, frantic hammering in his ears that was trying desperately to compensate for the lack of fuel in his system.
He could ask Xeno for something. He knew Mrs. Wingfield always kept cookies in the main house kitchen. But pride, mixed with a strange streak of teenage stubbornness, held him back. Xeno was so happy, so entirely absorbed in his "scientific revolution," that Stanley refused to be a nuisance or to show weakness. “Just a little longer,” he promised himself, wiping down a part that was already clean.
"Excellent! The catalyst is reacting within the expected parameters," Xeno announced enthusiastically, lifting a flask where a bluish liquid bubbled softly. "Stanley, come look at this this. The molecular density is simply elegant."
"Yeah sure…" Stanley murmured.
He detached himself from the table, but the moment he took his first step, the floor vanished from beneath his feet. There was no warning, no time to fake it. Gravity claimed his body all at once.
A loud crash echoed through the garage as Stanley collapsed, knocking over a metal toolbox in his descent.
The flask nearly slipped from Xeno’s grip. He spun around, his heart leaping into his throat, expecting to see his friend complaining about a clumsy trip, ready to toss out a sarcastic remark. But what he saw left him entirely frozen.
Stanley was lying on his side on the concrete floor, surrounded by scattered engine parts. He wasn't moving. His eyes were closed, his eyelashes fluttering spasmodically, and his breathing was shallow and ragged, as if he were fighting for air.
"Stanley?" Xeno dropped the flask onto the table, careless of whether it spilled, and rushed to his side. He knelt beside him, all analytical detachment vanishing from his face. "Stanley! Stop playing around, this is not a normal behavior from you. Respond."
When he touched Stanley's face to force him to look at him, Xeno flinched a millimeter in shock. Stanley’s skin was ice-cold and completely drenched in sweat. His lips, usually set in a firm line, carried a deeply worrying pale tint.
"Xeno…" Stanley’s whisper was barely a breathless, thick rasp. He tried to open his eyes, but his pupils wandered, unable to lock onto anything. "I don't feel... It’s so… dark. I can't…"
A violent tremor racked the shooter's body—a chill so severe his teeth audibly chattered. Stanley tried to curl in on himself, seeking a warmth his own body could no longer generate.
Xeno felt a sharp spike of panic, an emotion his rational brain detested and rarely experienced. What was happening? He mentally cataloged the symptoms at lightning speed: localized hypothermia, diaphoresis, distal tremors, altered state of consciousness… This wasn't a common cold; it wasn't mere fatigue. His mind connected the dots with astonishing velocity, and for the first time, a detail he had always dismissed as a quirky childhood habit came rushing back: Stanley eating candy at all hours. The sugar. The lack of it.
"Severe hypoglycemia…" Xeno hissed, his voice cracking with a sudden weight of guilt. "You idiot, why didn't you say anything? Your homeostasis is collapsing."
"I'm… fine…" Stanley tried to say, the stubbornness hardwired into his system even on the brink of unconsciousness.
"Silence! Your judgment is clearly compromised by neuroglycopenia," Xeno snapped, though his hands, usually as steady as a surgeon's, shook visibly as he cradled his friend's head in his lap.
Xeno looked around frantically. The garage was full of acids, metals, and tools, but nothing that could save his best friend in this moment.
"Do not move," Xeno ordered, though Stanley was barely conscious enough to attempt otherwise.
With a gentleness that contrasted sharply with his usual bluntness, Xeno slid his arms under Stanley’s shoulders. Exerting physical effort that pushed the limits of his own slender strength, he dragged him over to the old built-in sofa at the back of the garage. He settled him as best as he could, watching in horror as Stanley huddled into himself, shivering uncontrollably.
Xeno dashed out into the pouring rain toward the main house. He burst into the kitchen like a whirlwind, startling the cat and knocking over a couple of items before finding what he needed: a jar of pure honey and a carton of concentrated juice.
When he returned to the garage, panting and his clothes soaked through, he found Stanley even paler, his breathing dangerously shallow.
"Stanley, I need you to cooperate," Xeno sat on the edge of the sofa, slipping an arm behind his friend's neck to prop him up slightly. Stanley felt like a ragdoll, his head resting heavily against Xeno’s shoulder. "You have to swallow this. Come on."
Using his fingertips, Xeno took a small amount of honey and applied it directly to the inside of Stanley's cheek, knowing the mucous membranes would absorb the glucose faster if he lacked the strength to chew. Then, with infinite patience, he held the straw of the juice box to his lips.
"Drink, Stan. Please."
Hearing the use of his nickname seemed to spark a faint light in Stanley’s clouded brain. His eyes fluttered open a fraction, recognizing Xeno’s silhouette, and he began to weakly sip the liquid. Xeno carefully managed the flow from the carton, ensuring he wouldn't choke, while murmuring words that tried to sound scientific but spilled over with purely human concern.
"The absorption window is approximately ten to fifteen minutes. Your heart rate should stabilize… just endure it, you idiot. Do not dare pass out on me."
Slowly, the miracle of biology did its work.
The violent shaking began to subside, settling into an intermittent shiver. Color gradually returned to Stanley's cheeks, and his breathing grew deeper and more rhythmic. Stanley let his head fall back against the sofa, exhaling a long sigh as the dense black fog in his mind finally began to clear.
Xeno didn't pull away. He set the empty juice box aside and took an old wool blanket they used to keep dust off the projects, draping it over Stanley's body and making sure to tuck him in tightly up to his chin.
Several minutes passed in silence. The only sound was the rain outside, which seemed to have lost its intensity.
"Quite a way to ruin the laboratory, Wingfield," Stanley finally whispered. His voice was still weak, but the sharp, ironic glint had returned to his eyes.
Xeno, who had been staring at the floor with white-knuckled hands and an expression of pure frustration, looked up. His glasses were slightly fogged.
"The laboratory is perfectly intact, Stanley. Your pride, however, should be suffering a severe fracture," Xeno said, trying to reclaim his haughty tone, though the tremor in his own voice betrayed him. "To overlook a metabolic deficiency of that magnitude… to hide it from me… It is the most unscientific, foolish act I have ever witnessed! You could have slipped into a hypoglycemic coma."
Stanley shifted his gaze to the ceiling, a tired smile tugging at his lips beneath the blanket.
"I told you. It’s no big deal. I always handle it. Today was just… bad luck."
"It is not 'bad luck,' it is a critical biological variable," Xeno corrected him, sitting in a chair beside the sofa and crossing his legs, though his eyes never strayed from his friend. "And as of today, I consider the management of your glucose levels to be under my strict supervision. I do not care how well you act, or how hard you try to appear indestructible to the rest of the world. You cannot deceive me."
Stanley looked at him from the corner of his eye. He knew exactly how controlling Xeno could be when he set his mind to something, but this time, beneath the grand words and medical scoldings, lay an unshakeable loyalty. Xeno had been genuinely terrified. His hands still bore traces of honey, and his lab coat was damp from running through the rain for him.
"Whatever you say, Doc," Stanley conceded, closing his eyes as he curled a bit deeper into the blanket, welcoming the warmth finally returning to his body. "But next time, find me a flavor that isn't grape. That juice tasted like medicine."
"Be grateful I did not administer an intravenous saline solution utilizing my own tools," Xeno countered, though the corner of his lips curved upward into a subtle, relieved smile. "Sleep for a while, Stan. Your cerebrum needs to replenish its glycogen stores. I shall see to cleaning up the disaster you made with the engine."
"Thanks, Xe," Stanley murmured, already drifting off, knowing that in this garage, protected by the most brilliant mind he would ever know, he was entirely safe.