Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“What’s going on?” Kai steps into the living room and looks around to find all of his teammates minus one already sprawled over the room, sitting in confused silence. “Cole’s birthday isn’t for another five months.”

The thing that prompts the question is the text he got from Lloyd five minutes ago, specifically on the group chat that includes everyone in the house but Cole, and which use is usually limited to surprise parties. (Everyone but Cole and Master Wu, who keeps insisting he can’t figure out how cellphones work and whose role in the organization of a birthday party is usually limited beforehand to budgeting and decorations. Kai has argued that if he, who at this point of his teenage life relies on a seventy-percent on audio functions to be an actual mobile phone user, can still be actively involved in the group chat, then Wu can figure out how to send a text once. But that’s a matter for another day, and actually, Wu’s absence is gonna save them some inconveniences, as it turns out.)

“This doesn’t concern anyone’s birthday,” Lloyd says solemnly, looking way more serious than Kai’s ever seen him, and he was forced to fight his father to death twice. “This is a much more pressing matter than has recently been brought to my attention.”

Kai blinks at him and proceeds to take a look around the cramped room. He is, generally, used to not understanding people, like when they’re talking about the things you only know if you grow up in the city, or when there is a written text involved that is assumed everyone can read. Yet, when it comes to the cryptid demigod he has for a little brother, he can at least expect Jay or Cole to be as lost as he is. Now, Cole is nowhere to be seen, Jay looks like he knows exactly what is going on, and with Pixal and Zane taken into account, the only person who seems as confused as he is is his little genius of a sister, which is just. Weird.

“Please, tell me we didn’t forget his mom’s anniversary again,” she says.

“Okay, that one time, we didn’t forget it, he just never told us the date,” Jay cuts Lloyd off before he can speak. “And no, this is a lot more serious than anyone’s dead parent.”

Kai stares at him. “Wow.”

“Jay actually knows what’s going on more than I do,” Lloyd says, and such words should never be spoken. But Kai isn’t given the time to process the horror of it before Lloyd sits down and makes a motion to give Jay the floor.

The aforementioned gets up from where he’s sitting next to Nya with an arm over her shoulders and stands in the center of all of them alongside Zane. 

“Alright. We have evidence that suggests—”

“Why are you talking like that?” Nya asks with a frown.

“Please, don’t interrupt me. As I was saying,” Jay goes on without missing a beat, “there has been some evidence pointing to the fact that our Earth Ninja, Cole, has been up to some suspicious affairs.”

“He’s been having a movie marathon with Zane for the past week,” Pixal says for all explanation, meeting the siblings’ confused stares. “They’re gonna be like this for another one at least.”

“Feels pretty normal for them,” Kai mutters, mostly to himself. Pixal doesn’t seem to agree, looking totally done with it already.

“And what exactly are these suspicious affairs that he’s been up to?” Nya, on the other hand, seems willing to humor her boyfriend’s antics, mimicking his exaggerated gestures and giving him a smirk. “Should we have noticed an unusual behaviour from our teammate?”

“Has he been plotting with Lloyd again to steal leftover cake from the fridge while we’re all sleeping?” Kai asks. “Because if he is, Lloyd, I swear on your grandfather—”

“Hey, I told you that wasn’t me!”

“We don’t count the food in this house, we’re not living on rations,” Zane chastises them both. “And no, although the matter of cooking is, in fact, quite serious, that is not what we’re discussing today.”

Yep, again, now that Kai’s heard his voice, it feels pretty normal for Jay and Zane to be weird like that.

It is maybe not that normal for Cole to be at the center of such a big discussion. Which, okay, it might not be big as in, we need to discuss the fact that someone’s allegedly dead parent is no longer dead, or we need to discuss the fact that some of us were possessed for a prolonged period of time that goes from weeks to literal decades in our arguably-but-likely-more-than-not teenage lifetimes, but still. The fact that they’re all gathered here, paying attention to the proud resident weirdos of the group, discussing Cole’s suspicious affairs and unusual behavior, still indicates a certain weight to the topic, and a certain compromise from everyone on the team to pay attention to whatever’s going on, nevermind how ridiculous or insignificant it may seem.

“Perhaps some of you may have noticed that our dear Black Ninja has been spending a little too much time outside. That is, not in the monastery,” Zane says.

Pixal mutters a curse under her breath and something that sounds like, “the fucking funny voice”.

“So? We all spend time outside the monastery,” Nya points out.

“Not as much time,” Jay says, “and not in the middle of the night.”

“About thirty-six non-consecutive hours in the last week alone, to be precise,” Zane adds. “He’s been skipping practice lately, leaving the monastery early after lunch. Sometimes, even before. He’s been going off on his own quite often after we wrap up a mission. He’s also been neglecting a good number of his chores lately, and the only one that hasn’t suffered such a fate seems to be grocery shopping. That is, the one task that requires him not to be within the monastery’s grounds. Yesterday, he asked me to take over the laundry and have him handle the shopping list under the argument that he had not been to the city in a while, which—”

“Which is a total lie!” Jay cuts him off, briefly apologizing, and then going on enthusiastically. “Because I know for a fact that the day before yesterday he was in the city at least till midnight, because me and him went out to answer a call about some low-level thugs and we got into a fight and all, but when we were done, he just ran off on his own! He didn’t even stay to clean up afterwards! I had to deal with the police force all alone.”

“Maybe he was cleaning up on a different part of the site?” Lloyd suggests. “Our powers do tend to cause more extended havoc.”

Zane smirks. “You would’ve thought that. But as our witness here can testify—”

“That’s me.”

“—there were no reports of a quake or a building collapsing or any similar incidents in the area during the altercation. Plus, there’s the fact that Cole didn’t show up for dinner that time. Whatever he was doing, kept him occupied for some time. He didn’t show his face again until 2:03 in the morning, when he very clumsily attempted to sneak in unnoticed back into his bedroom.”

Nya lifts an eyebrow. “And you guys said he was sneaking out too?”

“Oh my Master,” Kai sighs. All eyes turn to him. “He’s in a secret fight club.”

Lloyd’s eyes widen. Pixal sighs. Nya rolls her eyes. “Just because you had a secret fight club phase doesn’t mean—”

“Listen, that was a hard time for us all, okay?”

“As long as he’s not drinking juice as well…”

“Lloyd, there’s something I haven’t told you.”

“Speaking of, I believe that, statistically, teenagers do tend to spend money on other sorts of addictions when they’re sneaking out at night, but I suppose ninja and Elemental Masters are not taken into account…”

“He’s not in a secret fight club,” Jay states, cutting Pixal mid-argument, “and he’s not doing drugs, I think, probably, anyway. That’s not where the evidence leads. If he was in a secret fight club, then how would you explain this?”

He picks something up that he left on his feet and shows it to the rest of the team.

He’s met with silence at first.

Kai turns to Zane, as if hoping he’ll be making signs behind Jay to say, yes, he’s gone crazy, please be nice to him, just play along, but the nindroid is just staring back at them expectantly, like he wants them to understand something. So he just turns back to the plain orange bundle Jay’s holding in his hands.

“It’s…” Nya frowns at it. “A hoodie.”

“Not just any hoodie,” Jay says, spreading it to reveal that it is, in fact, a piece of clothing with arms and a torso and a hood. “It is no one’s hoodie. Can anyone here claim it?”

This is a common occurrence around the house, to be fair. Seven people of a similar size, with very monochromatic styles of dressing, and clothes that are always getting torn or burned, it’s only reasonable that they swap or borrow stuff from each other from time to time. Kai probably has a pile of Cole and Nya’s hoodies that he’s accumulated over the years in the back of his closet, because theirs are the ones that fit everybody. It’s not unusual for a piece of clothing to be claimed by many owners, especially if it doesn’t happen to coincide with anyone’s singular color or if it has a patterned design. Pixal has gotten away with stealing many shirts like that, a crime that Kai will be able to prove one day.

All of this to say, it’s a fair question to make. Still, Kai can’t explain why all eyes turn to him immediately.

“It’s not mine,” he assures them. “That’s orange, not red. If it’s anyone’s, it’s Nya’s. She’s changed colors like three times already.”

“Grey to blue shades,” she says. “Red is still closer to orange. And anyway, don’t we have a certain someone here who’s also been sneaking out for a good number of nights to visit an orange ninja’s house?”

Kai turns the color of his gi. “That would be amber,” he says in a small voice. “Skylor says orange clashes with her hair.”

“Pixal?” Lloyd asks. “You went shopping recently?”

“I did, but I did not acquire any orange hoodies on this occasion,” she replies.

“Can anyone in this room recognize this hoodie, or otherwise assure that they’ve seen it before?” Zane asks.

Nya and Pixal shake their heads. Kai has to think a little about it, and he sees that Lloyd seems to be doing the same.

“Okay, I’ll make this short.” Jay clasps his hands together. “Cole has a boyfriend.”

There’s a beat of silence.

And then —

“What?!”

“Wait, Jay, baby, go back — go back on that,” Nya practically begs of him, making motions around her head as if she’s trying to set the turning gears of her brain back into place. “Cole has a—”

“Boyfriend,” Zane states. “Romantic partner. Or, well—”

“Do not finish that sentence,” Kai says, getting out of his stupor just to cover Lloyd’s ears. “We all know what people do with their boyfriends, you don’t need to say it out loud.”

“Yeah, I know too, you idiot,” Lloyd complains, kicking him away, at the same time that Pixal states, “Not everyone does that with their boyfriends,” and Kai is sincerely not prepared to argue with the fucking rainbow he has for a team on specifics.

He’s not prepared for any of this.

“What makes you think — I mean, how would you know—”

“You saw the evidence,” Jay says.

“So what! You found a hoodie no one’s seen before—”

“In Cole’s bedroom.”

“—in Cole’s bedroom. That doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t mean he’s seeing — ugh —”

“He could’ve gone shopping,” Lloyd rationalizes. “He could’ve been doing that in the city. Maybe he went to visit his dad and that’s why he didn’t tell us.”

“I already checked with Lou. He hasn’t,” Zane informs them. “And as for shopping, that’s highly unlikely. If you take a closer look, you will see that this hoodie is extremely worn and aged with time. See the wrinkles and the paint and coffee stains? I estimate its age varies from six to eight years old at the very least.”

Nya tilts her head as she looks at it. “Second-hand store?” she suggests, though she doesn’t look very convinced.

“I already checked his credit card,” Pixal says with a blank stare, like she’s actually processing the information in real time. “He didn’t buy this hoodie anytime recently.”

All eyes turn to her. Then, Lloyd makes a face as if he’s saying, why am I surprised, and Kai decides to live a happy life and follow his example, because honestly. Zane’s way too much of a goody-two-shoes when it comes to this stuff, someone has to take up on the task of hacking every device necessary when it’s convenient.

“It still could be borrowed from Lou,” Nya says. “Could be from a friend. Skylor, maybe? The other Elemental Masters?”

“I told you, it’s not Skylor’s,” Kai mumbles under his breath, like he’s ashamed of that knowledge.

“Well, I’m sure Cole has friends outside the team.”

“It does beg the question, why would he keep it a secret from us if he were just meeting with a friend?” Zane points out.

Nya shrugs. “Mom stuff? Secret birthday parties stuff? Dad stuff? Former ghost business? I’m just saying, I don’t see how any of these leads to a necessarily romantic outco—” She’s silenced as Jay shoves the bundle right on her face and she makes a dignified sound. Then, she turns still and she holds the hoodie closer to her face, wrinkling her nose like she’s picking up a smell. “Oh. Oh. Yeah, you’re right.”

“What? What is it?” Kai asks, and she hands him the hoodie as well.

He holds it close and sniffs the air.

Then he gives her a frown. “That’s a stereotype.”

“It’s not, Kai. It’s a universal truth,” she says.

“What stereotype?” Lloyd asks.

“You’re deadly allergic to these things. What are you doing smelling perfume on a stranger’s hoodie? And what are you doing,” Kai turns to Jay accusingly, “giving my sister a hoodie sprinkled with perfume that she’s deadly allergic to?”

“You’re one to talk! You tried to kill me with one of these once!” Nya says. “I’m not deadly allergic to this one, that’s why I recognize it. Because of, what you call, the stereotype.”

“Hey! What stereotype?” Lloyd asks.

Kai turns to face him. “She’s saying this is gay man’s perfume.”

There’s another beat of silence.

Kai’s tempted to ask Pixal for online statistics but decides to trust his expert sister’s opinion on this one. (That’s sarcasm. She has absolutely zero ground to claim to be more of a perfume expert than he is. Mainly because…)

“You know, one would think you’d avoid fragrances all together, given that most of them can kill you.”

“Look, I found this one that works and I held onto it, okay? It’s got some weird vegan chemical stuff that doesn’t trigger my allergies—”

“Smartest person I’ve ever known, everyone.”

“—and it’s widely used by queer people in Ninjago City, so. You see.”

Kai shakes his head, unconvinced. “If anything, that just points to the hoodie being yours.”

“It’s not! Jay’s right, it’s Cole’s boyfriend’s! This is a romantic, perfume-sprinkled hoodie!”

“Okay, wait. Time out,” Lloyd says, standing up between Jay and Zane. “So we have the evidence. We have some strong leads. We have a hypothesis. What do we do with it?”

“Big words today,” Kai mocks, and then yelps as Nya elbows him on the side. “All I’m saying is, if he does have a boyfriend, why wouldn’t he tell us? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, think about Lloyd’s question, you genius,” Nya says. “What would be the first thing you do if you find out Cole is effectively dating someone?”

“I would track that motherfucker down and give him the shovel talk with fire—Oh, I see.”

Lloyd sighs and turns to the resident detectives again. “What do we know about this guy?”

“Well, he’s a guy, for one, obviously,” Jay’s talking normally again, “unless Cole has figured out some things about himself and he’s ashamed not to be gay anymore and that’s why he’s been hiding it from us—”

“He is presumably a gay or queer man, as supported by the evidence Nya has pointed out,” Zane says, taking back the hoodie. “He appears to like coffee, as judged by the stains on this hoodie, and he appears to be an artist, as there are paint stains here on the sleeves. He lives or he hangs out with Cole in the center of the city, as judged by the locations in which Cole seems to have been disappearing to in the past weeks.”

Kai facepalms. “Cole, you’re such a dumbass,” he mutters, suddenly very convinced by this argument. Of course Cole’s into rich art students who drink coffee.

“I already have his name, IP address, Chirp account and university records,” Pixal says suddenly, and everyone glances back at her again. She has been suspiciously quiet for a while now, so really, this is on them. “You’re welcome.”

Zane gives her a look. “Pixal.”

“That is an incredibly disrespectful violation of privacy,” Lloyd says. “Buuut it’s totally warranted just to make sure that Cole isn’t dating a murderer with an ax.”

“Lloyd!”

“He isn’t, as far as the internet can tell me,” Pixal says, “and because I am in fact respectful of a citizen’s right to their privacy, I am not sharing that information with any of you.”

All eyes turn to her yet again. Kai’s face drops. “You — what?”

“Pixal,” Jay begs her name, looking very meek for the first time throughout this whole conversation and not his confident detective self, “Pixal, please, you must share this information with us. You have to tell us his name, his address, if he’s royalty — it’s important, Greenie, shut up — please, Pixal, we’ve been scavenging for whatever we can find on this guy and we haven’t even found his name, Cole’s built a bunker closet or something around him, please, you have to tell us—”

“Wait a second,” Nya cuts him, and everyone looks at her. “Did you just say closet?”

Jay makes a pause. “… Did I?”

Nya looks back at Pixal. “Do we know if this guy’s even out?”

Pixal frowns. “Well, there isn’t any direct information that I could find where he states that he’s openly queer, but I suppose I could look into it further and make an easy deduction. That does seem to be a bit of a stretch on what’s appropriate for me to know, though.”

Kai sneers, “Oh, because hacking into the guy’s socials and not telling us his name is so appropriate.”

“I am legally a computer. It is not illegal for me to have access to this information. If they wanted to stop me, they should start by recognizing me and Zane as people and as citizens with rights.”

The room goes silent again.

“Damn,” Jay says. “You’d think we would’ve made a movement or something by now.”

“The streets just blow up every other day, it’s kinda hard to organize a protest—”

“So, wait,” Nya stops the conversation right there, “that could be why Cole hasn’t told us about him. Maybe he’s dating someone in the closet.”

Kai lets out a heavy sigh. “Well, shit,” he says, and gets immediately reprimanded by a mocking “Language” from Lloyd that he responds to by elbowing him.

“Besides,” Nya asks, “we do know the public eye has been going easy on us lately, but are we sure they would keep doing that if the Black Ninja showed up in public holding a guy’s hand?”

“Well, Cole is out, publicly, isn’t he?” Kai says.

“He hasn’t made a statement or anything,” Jay answers. “We’ve talked about this before. He might’ve brought it up once or twice in interviews, but like, he’s not a public figure about it. You know, like we all are.”

So yeah, overall, it sounds like being publicly in a relationship would put him in the spotlight in a way that hasn’t before, it’s what he’s basically saying.

They all sit in silence for a few seconds.

“So,” Kai says, “does this mean it’s morally wrong for us to stalk Cole’s boyfriend’s socials and intimidate him into never hurting him ever?”

Lloyd groans.

Nya hisses awkwardly. “Shit.”

Pixal taps her fingers against her knee, thoughtful.

“I must say,” she speaks up, “I fail to see the importance of gathering so much information on a person that does not seem to represent any immediate danger towards a teammate of ours. I mean, if Cole is indeed dating him, shouldn’t we trust his judgement?”

Kai turns towards her, nearly asking her why she even bothered to find the guy’s IP address if she doesn’t see why stalking him is so important. He then realizes she just reminded them all that she was designed as a computer, and also a secretary, so it is probably a given for her that she should have very personal information on every person they encounter, even without the possibility of risks.

Still…

“Pix, do I need to remind you what happened the last time we didn’t investigate someone’s boyfriend, girlfriend, partner?”

“No, you don’t!” Lloyd yells.

“She literally took over the entire city in less than a week.” Kai promptly ignores him. “It looked like an apocalypse when we got back. Buildings had collapsed. She literally made a reality show in which she broadcast civilians being hunted for spo—Ow! Lloyd!”

The kid crosses his arms over his chest, putting down the cushion he used to smack Kai in the head. “She wasn’t my girlfriend,” he mumbles. “She made that very clear.”

Nya pats him in the back.

“I can’t believe this,” she says absentmindedly. “Cole has a boyfriend. Our Cole.”

Jay sits back on the couch behind him. “It is pretty shocking, isn’t it?”

Lloyd lifts an eyebrow, looking at him. “I have to say, you’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would’ve. I mean, he’s your best friend. I thought you’d be more upset that he didn’t tell you.”

“Oh, this was the filtered version of our investigation,” Zane assures him before Jay gets the chance to open his mouth. “You didn’t see how he got when he first started to piece everything together.”

“That was a perfectly moderate and reasonable crashout,” Jay states, straightening up. “I’m not angry that he chose not to tell me, I was just… I have to make sure everything’s right, don’t I? Cole deserves nothing but the best.”

“Who deserves nothing but the best?”

You would think, five highly trained ninja and two self-taught very skillful samurai should be perfectly capable of noticing when someone’s sneaking up on them. Or at the very least, notice a person that isn’t actively sneaking up or being particularly quiet.

But no, Cole’s voice comes from the living room entrance and it takes them all by surprise.

“What’s up, guys.” He’s standing there in a crop top and sweatpants, staring at his phone without looking at them, cheeks red and hair dripping with sweat like he is after a particularly tough climb. He looks normal, overall. Not like he’s actively partaking in the sin of premarital sex and not telling them about it, which, honestly, Kai’s not sure which one is worse. Or whether or not he wants him to tell them, more like.

Scrolling through his phone, Cole doesn’t seem to notice that everyone has frozen at his arrival, or that they only come out of their trance and silence when Jay drops the hoodie to his feet and frantically starts whispering to Nya to hide it under the couch, hide the hoodie, repeat, hide the hoodie!

At some point, though, the silence goes on for too long and Cole looks up. He realizes everyone’s staring at him. “Something going on?” He tilts his head in confusion, and then obviously turns to Master Lloyd for an answer. “What were you talking about?”

Lloyd blushes and starts fumbling with his words. “We’re not — we were just—”

“Birthday party planning.”

Everyone turns to look at Nya. She herself seems surprised by what she just blurted out, but she blinks and quickly recomposes herself, sitting upright.

“For your surprise birthday party,” she clarifies. “We were planning it ahead. You just caught us. Sorry.”

The group chat’s name would agree with her, at least.

Cole frowns, scanning them all with his gaze. Kai makes a pointed effort not to look away. “Really? Five months away?” He hums, sounding mildly impressed. “You guys are really taking it seriously now.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Jay says, a little too cheerfully. Nya kicks him on the shin.

“Well, good for you, I guess,” Cole says with a shrug. “Hey, Zane, want me to take over dinner today? You know, to make up for the other day when I didn’t cook.”

He has to be kidding. “Where were you, by the way?” Kai asks, at the same time that Zane says, calmly, “Sure, if that is alright with you.”

“It’s all fine. I owe you, buddy.” He turns back towards the kitchen, seemingly unaware of the tension in the air that’s only slowly dissipating as his voice gets lost in the hallway. “Looking forward to seeing what you’ve got in five months!”

They’re all tense and silent until they’re certain he’s too far to hear them, and then they all sigh in unison.

Nya’s shoulders deflate visibly in relief.

“Okay, now I feel guilty,” she sighs.

Lloyd turns to look at her. “Why did you say that?” he asks. “Can’t we just ask him about it? Tell him that we know?”

Nya doesn’t respond, instead letting the question hang in an awkward silence around the room. Pixal tilts her head, reflecting.

“To be fair, we aren’t supposed to know,” she admits. “If Zane and Jay’s research is correct, this hasn’t been going on for that long. And we still don’t know whether this new partner is effectively in the closet or not. Perhaps this is just not the time. He might tell us when he’s ready.”

“Yeah, sure,” Nya shrugs. “And in the meantime, while he doesn’t know that we know, we might be able to secretly legally gather some more information on this mystery boyfriend that we hope isn’t a murderer with an ax.”

“Or a prince,” Lloyd mutters under his breath, as if reluctantly.

“Or a prince,” Nya nods.

She does sound a little too enthusiastic about her boyfriend’s ongoing investigation, a fact that does not go unnoticed.

Kai casts her a look. “You’re feeling so guilty, I see.”

“Shut up.”

Normally, he would be a lot more pressing about just ignoring all privacy rights and stalking someone’s secret partner. He definitely would’ve done it for Nya years ago had Jay not been his friend before and had he known how to use a phone back then. Now, though, he has to admit that the risk of potentially outing someone might cross an ethical line for him, if there ever was such a thing in the first place.

“I don’t like this,” he says nevertheless. “There’s a million different ways this could go wrong.”

He can think of a few: the guy could be a cult leader, a cult leader’s offspring, another Elemental Master with ancient powers that they didn’t know existed, another one of Wu’s former students wanting to take revenge on his master by dating one of his current students… Kai wouldn’t be even surprised if another ghost came back with a tactic of seduction this time.

“Yeah,” Lloyd acknowledges, “but maybe Pix is right. I mean, this is Cole we’re talking about. We trust him to take care of himself, right?”

“Historically, he is the one who’s been involved in the least drama,” Nya comments.

Kai coughs up something that sounds suspiciously like love triangle and barely manages to escape a smack from her on the head.

“That doesn’t count,” she hisses. “We didn’t know he was gay back then.”

“Yeah, well,” Kai sighs. “I just wished we knew more now. Instead, we have Pixal gatekeeping everything from us—”

“For a pretty decent reason,” Lloyd adds. “And if there’s anyone I trust to jump into danger at the first sign of trouble without the need to contact us or the rest of the team, that’s Pixal.”

Pixal gives him a fist bump and then leans in closer to Zane as he gives her a kiss on the cheek. Kai rolls his eyes.

“Jay?” he asks. “Are you okay with this?”

The Master of Lightning (and apparently new Master of Noir Cinema right now) just shrugs, sitting beside Nya to wrap an arm over her shoulders. “I think I can handle waiting a bit longer. I mean, I’ve known for a while now, and I didn’t explode.”

“Barely,” Zane says, amusingly, but Jay ignores him.

Kai scans his team with his gaze, incredulous. “I can’t believe it. When did y’all turn so emotionally mature?”

“What else would you have us do?” Zane asks. “Besides hunting this person down and threatening them into being a respectful romantic partner to Cole.”

“I dunno. A bit more stalking, I guess. Some kind of failsafe. A little bit of elemental intimidation. Like a protocol or something for when one of us falls in love with, let’s say, an evil princess…”

Lloyd kicks him again. “As if you could talk about falling for the enemy.”

Kai does blush at that.

“So that’s what we’re gonna do?” Jay asks. “Keep watching and stay alert?”

“I think that’s how we should proceed, yes.” Lloyd sits upright, going back from little gremlin of a brother mode into leader mode. “We will keep an eye out for any potential clues on this guy, and we will watch Cole from up close to make sure he’s not in any danger, but ultimately, we will not actively engage on the matter unless Cole specifically asks us to, or otherwise gives us a reason to get involved.”

“Please go back to talking like a twelve year old,” Kai pleads.

“Shut up, Kai. Understood? Until Cole himself tells us about this mystery boyfriend, we will not bring him up. We will be considerate.”

“Sure,” Nya scoffs, like she’s unconvinced. “Let’s see for how long we can keep that up.”

The answer, as it turns out, it’s not too long.

Lloyd thinks they would’ve gotten away with it, had Cole not come into the dining room that morning looking like he did and searching for a very specific item.

“Has anyone seen an orange hoodie?”

Lloyd freezes from his place at the table. He looks at Jay, who’s standing beside Pixal and the coffee machine. He frantically mouths the words, I thought you put it back.

Jay mouths back, I forgot.

Lloyd resists the urge to roll his eyes so hard they fly out of his skull. So much for being considerate teammates.

“Why do you ask?” Pixal wonders.

Cole stares at her, frowning a little, but ultimately apparently deciding that is not the most suspicious thing she might’ve asked. “I borrowed it from my dad the other day when I was at his place. Now I’m supposed to give it back, but I can’t find it. Did any of you take it?”

Lloyd swaps looks with Pixal. She very subtly shakes her head at him. Cole isn’t a terrible liar, but everyone is when it comes to Pixal and her ability to read a human’s vitals with her eyes. It makes her basically a living lie detector, and a much more useful one than Zane, who insists that applying his programmed functions for such a thing would be unethical.

At this point, Lloyd hasn’t yet fully processed how Cole looks like this morning. He’s much more of a morning person than Kai or Nya or Jay, but today he looks unusually disheveled and tired, like he didn’t get much sleep. He’s wearing the same t-shirt as tomorrow and his hair is all tousled, but there’s also the faint ghost of a smile tugging at his lips, like he just woke up from a nice dream.

“I think I picked it up the other day,” Lloyd says, taking a sip of his coffee, if only to hide the telling look on his face. “And then I left it with Jay’s laundry in his bedroom.”

“Okay, great. I’m gonna go get it and then bring it back to my—”

“Orange is a new color on you,” Pixal points out.

Cole stops dead on his tracks towards the hallway. “I like orange,” he says.

“When exactly did you visit your dad?” Jay inquiries. His fingers tap at the cup in his hands.

Cole seems at least a little bit phased by the question. He looks around, scanning all three of their faces.

“Dunno,” he speaks slowly. “Monday or Thursday? I’m not sure. I’d promised to meet him, but it was right after a mission we had uptown, so it was kind of rushed, maybe—”

“Would you like some coffee?” Jay cuts him off.

Cole stares at the coffee machine, then back at him, then at Lloyd and then at Pixal. Lloyd feels the need to look away.

“I’m good. I don’t really like coffee that much.”

“Does your dad?”

“… No?”

“Curious.” Jay grins. “The hoodie had coffee stains in it.”

There’s a beat of silence. Lloyd attempts to drink from his cup. He finds it nearly empty.

Over his shoulder, he continues to see Pixal and Jay staring into Cole’s eyes.

Another moment of silence.

Then, Cole promptly runs into the hallway.

“You didn’t even have breakfast!” Lloyd yells as he gets further away from them.

His friend ignores him.

Lloyd turns back to look at the remaining two. “You think he noticed we noticed?”

“I—” Pixal’s sentence is cut short as Cole doesn’t take too long on his search and is back into the dining room in a matter of seconds. He’s squeezing the orange bundle between his arms, which apparently was, effectively, in the pile of laundry in Jay’s bedroom.

Lloyd resists the urge to hit his head against the table. His teammates are really the worst detectives ever, he can’t believe he’s leading them.

Cole unceremoniously drops the hoodie over a chair’s back, like it’s not the thing Jay and Zane and Nya swear it is, and walks up to the fridge in silence. He looks around and ultimately takes out a few oranges that he holds in his arms. He is seemingly unaware of the discussion happening behind his back, where Lloyd and Jay and Pixal are all arguing as silently and expressively as they can.

What. Do. We. Do, Lloyd mouths.

Abort mission! Interrogation! Wait for more information!, Jay seems to be saying.

Which makes little sense to Lloyd, so he turns to look at Pixal.

She just points at him and mouths the word, Leader.

Lloyd bites his tongue so as not to stick it out at her.

“You guys want some?” Cole asks, turning around suddenly, pointing to the jug of orange juice he just made on the counter.

“No, thanks, I’m good,” Lloyd says, a little too quickly. He’s starting to regret picking coffee, though, he doesn’t like it that much either. He’s supposed to be like fourteen, dammit.

Pixal looks at the coffee machine, then at Jay, then at her own cup and then back at Cole. “Sure,” she says. “Thank you.”

Lloyd gets a better view at Cole’s face as he turns around, allowing for Pixal to pick up a glass and fill it with juice. He frowns at the sight of him in his wrinkled t-shirt, his unkempt hair and…

“Hey, are you hurt? You got a bruise on your neeeeck I’mgonnago, bye, see you later.”

“What?” Cole turns around, looking confused. “What did you say? What is it?”

Lloyd nearly trips on his chair as he attempts to get up from the table and as far away as possible from his friend. Pixal stares at Cole, and she must’ve noticed the bruise before, because she comes with supersensitive sensors that are able to see just about anything, but she still swears under her breath when she faces him again. Jay is somehow keeping a straight face while all of this is happening.

Cole frowns at them, taking a sip from his juice.

“So,” Jay asks cheerfully, “when are we gonna meet the new boyfriend?”

Cole chokes on his drink.

So, so much for being considerate teammates.

Pixal can be seen facepalming in the background.

And so much for Lloyd being the innocent little baby of the team who’s completely unaware of everything and doesn’t know how adult people do things, the kid thinks bitterly as Cole coughs and splutters and Pixal bumps him in the back with a deadpan expression.

Jay remains absolutely still, not looking guilty in the slightest.

Cole coughs a little more, looking around the room and scanning their faces. Lloyd just wants to look anywhere else. “How — when — did you —”

“We were waiting for you to tell us,” Pixal sighs, half-apologetically. “It’s just…”

“What?”

She points to her own neck with a grimace.

Cole slaps his hand over the purple marks on his as if it were an insect that he could kill.

He looks at Lloyd, for some reason, with a very mortified expression.

“That,” he says slowly, “is why I needed the hoodie.”

Lloyd glances upon it, hanging from the chair, debates whether to touch it or not to grab it, and ultimately decides that screw it, his childhood is ruined anyway, one sight of what very much isn’t a bruise less is not gonna change that. He picks it up and throws it in Cole’s direction. He puts it on over his t-shirt, looking like a blushing mess.

“This isn’t — by the way, it’s not — I mean, I was training. And I got hit. I fell. Over a mosquito. Wait, no—”

“Cole, please,” Lloyd all but begs, sipping from his coffee like Kai does when he wants to be dramatic. “Please, just stop talking.”

“Gladly,” Cole blushes, burying his head under the hood.

Lloyd really, really wishes he was the sweet innocent summer sunshine child everyone but his uncle seems to think he is.

Pixal rolls her eyes with a loud sigh.

“I think you are overreacting a bit,” she says. “It is merely a hickey. It’s not even necessarily—”

“No, you see, it’s the implication of—” Lloyd squeezes his eyes shut. “Look, it’s too early for this…”

“Too early for what?”

Kai peeks his head out from the hallway with a yawn, looking around the room.

Only Pixal looks back at him, Lloyd’s eyes pointing at the ceiling to meet his grandfather and Cole looking like he’s desperately trying to make the earth swallow him.

Jay is pressing his lips like he’s trying not to look too pleased with this. If anyone even cares.

Kai asks, “What just happened?”

Lloyd sighs, “Secret’s out, so is Cole, he’s having sex, and my life is ruined.”

“Lloyd!”

“Cole!”

“I’m not—”

“Boys.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Jay mutters under his breath, staring into his coffee like there’s an abysm down there.

“Can’t a guy get his neck bitten in peace?” Cole barely manages to escape Kai trying to catch him over the table, presumably to strangle him as punishment for killing whatever little ounce of innocence Lloyd had left in him.

“No. As a matter of fact, no, he can’t,” Kai says, “because the guy lives with people, and he could at the very least respect those people by not showing the, the lustful sinful bite marks on his skin in the place where we all eat—”

“Would you please cut it with the conservative country boy values?” Cole all but begs of him. “It’s literally nothing.”

“It is pretty much nothing,” Pixal agrees, looking absolutely done.

“We can just stop talking about this,” Lloyd begs.

“What do you mean, conservative country — do you know what you’re talking about, you little—”

“So!” Jay exclaims, a little louder this time, enough that it actually gets Kai to shut up and for Cole to listen to him. “When are we, uh, gonna meet him?”

He’s a little more hesitant to speak this time, but Lloyd realizes there is actual excitement bubbling under the surface of that. Like he’s actually looking forward to meeting this mystery guy that Cole almost certainly snuck out in the middle of the night to meet. Speaking of, they should probably start setting up cameras or something, if the investigation’s gonna be a serious thing. Lloyd just hopes it’s not this kind of serious…

Cole’s head snaps in Jay’s direction and he meets his bubbly, happy, expectant eyes.

“Never. You’re never meeting him, if I have any say on it,” he states harshly, like he wants to crush that happiness. “And how did you even find out? I mean, it’s not like… I mean, it could be a bruise. How did you know I’m—”

“You’re a theatre school dropout, and my boyfriend has a special interest in noir films,” Pixal reminds him. “It wasn’t that hard.”

Cole has the decency to look sheepish instead of burying himself further down a grave of his own making.

He coughs into his fist, tapping on the edge of his glass.

“So it wasn’t the press?” he asks. “Nobody saw us together out there, did they?”

Lloyd swears he can hear Kai’s eyes rolling to the back of his head. “Oh, come on. Don’t try to make us feel bad about this.”

“I’m not. This is a real concern that I have,” Cole claims. “It’s my private life and it’s not — Look, it’s no one’s business. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a guy that I’m seeing. It’s nothing.”

“It is not nothing! We don’t know who this guy even is!” Kai yells, holding up his arms.

“So? Should I ask you for your consent before I engage in anything with anyone?”

“I’m gonna strangle you,” Kai states. “I’m actually gonna kill you.”

“See, this is why I never tell you things. Your first response is always gonna be violence or arson.”

“Oh, like you’re so much better.”

“I didn’t try to bury Skylor underground after that time you showed up with lipstick marks all over your neck—”

“Cole, there’s a child present.”

“—and she actually did try to kill you once, so. I can confidently say that this guy hasn’t.”

“Well, that’s an improvement,” Pixal acknowledges under her breath.

“Please stop talking,” the child present pleads. “I wanna be the baby brother again, I don’t even care.”

Jay sits upright on the counter. “Lloyd, cover your ears. Kai, shut up. Ignore them, yeah?” he turns to Cole, affectionately putting both hands on his shoulders. “We’re happy for you. We really are! We just wanna know who this wonderful guy is. We have to know who in the world could possibly be good enough to deserve you, our awesome brother, amazing ninja, unrivaled fighter and elemental master, decent cook in progress—”

“Sweet,” Cole crosses his arms over his chest, slightly pushing him away. “I’m still not gonna tell you.”

Jay’s smile fades and he groans loudly into his shoulder. Considerate, my ass, Lloyd thinks to himself.

“Come on, Cole,” Jay begs. “We didn’t find anything from the press, we don’t even have pictures from the guy. Can’t you at least give us a name?”

“Where did you even meet him?” Kai goes on to ask before Cole can even open his mouth. He leans on the table towards them as close as he can. “Is it someone we know? Is it an elemental master? Griffin? Neuro? Karlof?”

Cole gives him a blank stare.

“You’re not getting a name. You’re not getting anything. Last I need is you guys scaring him away with fireballs or lightning bolts or something.”

Kai glares right back at him, and Lloyd can only sigh into his mug. He’s out of coffee to sip dramatically in the quiet.

There’s a moment of silence. And then…

“Is he nice to you?” Kai asks quietly.

Cole hesitates for a second. “… You’re not getting anything.”

Kai’s entire body goes tense. “I’m gonna scare him away with fireballs,” he states.

The threat isn’t really that terrifying when coming from an Elemental Master of Fire who’s wearing nothing but pajamas. To Cole it doesn’t seem to represent anything more than utter annoyance, as it shows when he groans at the vague direction of the ceiling.

“First Master, Kai, yes, he’s nice! Of course he’s nice to me! You think I’d be with someone who wasn’t? Who do you take me for? Lloyd?”

“Morning makes you mean,” Lloyd mumbles under his breath.

“Sorry, Green Bean,” Cole says.

Kai continues to cast imaginary fireballs towards him with his eyes, Jay continues to smile next to him at the imaginary prospect of somehow convincing him to introduce them to his boyfriend and Lloyd stares at pure nothingness as he mourns the imaginary childhood he once had.

“Good morning,” they hear coming from the hallway, as a way-too-cheerful Zane and what can only be described as the zombie reincarnation of the Water Ninja walk into the dining room, smiling and yawning respectively.

“For you, perhaps,” Kai hisses, mockingly, at the same time that Cole says, “I’m going out.”

He grabs half an orange from the kitchen counter and runs as fast as he can from the scene, passing a somewhat confused pair of a Zane and a Nya as he does so.

“You better be back before nightfall, or I swear I’ll find him!” Kai yells after him.

“Go to hell!” Cole responds.

Jay leans in from his place on the counter. “We love you too!”

“Yeah, what he said!” Nya agrees. Then she winces, feeling her throat, and looks at the rest of her team with blurriness in her eyes. “Everything okay?”

Jay jumps from the counter to greet her with a kiss on the cheek. “Your brother just scared Cole away with his conservative sensitivities,” he informs her.

“I would say brothers,” Pixal clarifies, looking at Lloyd. “In plural.”

Lloyd shakes his head to himself.

It takes Nya a while to process the information, only after processing the fact that she’s awake. Once she does, she opens her eyes wide and gives Lloyd a look of pity.

“Oh, you sweet ray of sunshine,” she says.

Lloyd groans. “I wish I was. I know how sex works.” He ignores Kai’s expression and tone of surprise when he reacts with a, “Wait, you do?” He tells them, “That’s not the problem. I just don’t wanna know it works… on Cole. Or anyone in this family, for that matter.”

Nya turns from him to Kai in search of an explanation. Kai moans into his hands in despair, like the words he has to say are physically painful.

“He had a, ugh, a love bite.”

Nya frowns.

She turns to Jay before saying anything in response. “Not all of us from Ignacia are like that, by the way. He’s making me look bad.” Then, she glances back at her brothers. “You’re overreacting,” she tells them.

“And being homophobic,” Jay chimes in.

Lloyd shakes his head. “No, if anything I’m Colephobic. Or siblingphobic. I don’t wanna know what Kai’s doing with Skylor either. I don’t wanna know anything. I wanna live in blissful ignorance for once in my destiny-messed up timeline.”

Nya tilts her head with a yawn on Jay’s shoulder. “Well, too bad, because we’re conducting an investigation here,” she says, “and now our suspect knows that we’re onto him.”

“Indeed,” Zane agrees with a pensive expression. “I presume that will get in the way of our research from here on now. We will have to increase the subtlety of our methods if we wish to continue—”

“Or,” Pixal interrupts him a little too sharply, “we could just ask him about it.”

Kai frowns in her direction with an unimpressed stare. “That is literally the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah, he’s clearly not gonna tell us anything,” Lloyd agrees, because arguing with Kai’s statement on semantics and hyperboles is not gonna get them anywhere. “Unless we want to actually interrogate him or look through his stuff…”

He shakes his cup a little, staring at the remaining dark liquid as it dances on the bottom.

Then he looks up and he sees that everyone has gone quiet and they’re all staring at him. “Wait, really? What happened to privacy?”

“Hey, you’re the boss, pint size,” Nya shrugs. “If you say the word, we do the word. So what do you think we should do?”

Lloyd briefly considers if he should be worried at how quickly his team will turn on each other and be willing to violate someone else’s boundaries if there is romance anywhere involved. He concludes that he’s lucky nobody decided to go through his drawer when he first expressed an interest in Harumi.

He puts down his mug, sitting up straight.

“I think we should ask him about it if given the chance. Now that we don’t have anything to hide. And we should look through whatever clues he might leave behind, he isn’t exactly being careful about the whole thing. But also, uh. You might wanna take the, um, more explicit leads,” he adds in a low voice. “Just to protect your baby brother for whatever messed up childhood he has left.”

“Enough with the guilt-tripping,” Kai moans. Morning makes him mean as well. “Let’s just get the job done.”

“Yeah! We should also start tracking his location or something,” Jay says, a little too cheerfully. “See where this mystery boyfriend really lives. Just to make sure it’s not a palace, or to keep tabs on his criminal activity, or to make sure that Cole doesn’t end up dead in an alley somewhere in the city…”

Zane looks at his detective partner with a frown. “Should we keep eyes on him at all times?”

“Yes,” both Kai and Jay affirm, on this rare occasion in which the two of them are somewhat in agreement.

“In that case, somebody should probably see where he just went off to,” Zane says.

Jay blinks. “Oh, shoot—” He quickly sets aside his half-finished breakfast and takes the hallway down to the garage at the speed of lightning. They hear him yell as his voice gets lost in the distance. “I’m taking Pixal’s new jet!”

“I’m coming with you!” Nya yells with renowned energy, chasing her partner down the hallways. “He can run but he can’t hide!”

Eventually, the sound of them becomes inaudible, and the next thing they hear is the engine of the jet firing up from the outside as it leaves the monastery through the garage door.

Kai’s forehead hits the table with despair. “I need coffee right now,” he says.

“And I need a lobotomy,” Lloyd adds, setting down his mug.

Pixal picks an abandoned orange from the counter and throws it in Zane’s direction with an exaggerated sigh. “Allosexuals,” she says.

Zane catches the orange, giving her a fond look. “Tell me about it.”