Chapter Text
Cale wakes up before the sun rises--well, wake is a misleading word. The awakening was not gentle, nor was it kind. No, Cale had dreamed the briefest flash of a smile that even in the dreamworld had given him the heebie-jeebies and the next thing he knew, he was staring down at his own body.
A ghost, for lack of a better word.
Cale sighs--then wonders if ghosts even have lungs to sigh with. He decides he's not going to waste braincells thinking about it.
What a pain in the ass, he thinks, running his fingers through his ghostly hair. Touching himself feels like touching something physical, surprisingly, though--and he'd checked multiple times--he simply phases through the living world. The water glass can't be grabbed, the bed can't be sat on, and his body- well, he hasn't tried. He's been avoiding it. Most of it is sequestered under the blanket, still. The blanket he can't touch or move.
At least it'll be over quick enough. Cale doesn't know how he knows this, that this- this- this status condition is only temporary, but he does. Fuck the gods and their fucking mindfuckery and their cryptic-ass messaging. Cale isn't sure which one is to blame, so he curses out each and every one he remembers exists.
Eventually, he gets bored.
The sun's just started peaking out from beyond the horizon. The curtains are drawn but through the slips in space, the morning has started bleeding through, puncturing the darkness of the room with cast rays of that cool, blue-gray hue of night meeting the morn that Cale associates with walking out onto the balcony in thin slippers into the morning damp and taking a breath of crisp grass-dew scented air.
The birds are singing; a series of high-pitched chirps and tweets and whistles, with short pauses between responding calls, that are muffled through the closed window and layers of thick curtain fabric. But it is there.
Cale hadn't known--he's never awake this early, not normally. It's nice.
A sudden clamoring, the tinny but unmistakable sound of a small army of staff rushing back and forth, footfalls muted on soft carpet, brings him back to reality.
Cale startles. Thursday has just begun, for real this time, and not just a hand on the clock pointed past twelve.
He is, he's only just realizing, floating. Slowly, carefully, Cale lowers himself down, until his feet are skimming the floor. A careless eye, if it saw, might have mistaken it for walking instead of Cale dragging his feet through the literal flooring. Piloting this form is as easy as walking, as breathing; it comes naturally and without much thought. He just does it. It's hard to guesstimate where all his limbs are, however. Good thing he can't exactly knock anything over in this state.
Cale blinks. He is by his side. He had wandered there for reasons even his mind cannot say. Maybe there isn't any reason at all. He bends down, creeping closer, until their noses are almost brushing, barely a finger's length apart.
For obvious reasons, he's never seen himself asleep before.
Cale- he- Cale looks peaceful asleep. It's easy to forget this isn't his actual body when he's living in it, all the time he spends not looking into mirrors he forgets.
Again, he's not sure how to feel about that. So, he doesn't.
Cale Henituse has a slim face with fine, fair, highbrow features. And, when Kim Rok Soo had first arrived, a lean and subtly but undeniably fit physique, with washboard abs appropriate for a character from a revenge-driven power fantasy novel. Of course, since then, the edges have softened with his lazy lifestyle.
If he can just ignore that it [the body] is still, that the chest under the heaps of blankets the body is buried under is unmoving, that the mouth is slightly parted in sleep but no breaths are being drawn, that it is not tossing or turning, that hands and feet aren't fighting to get out from under the covers for cooler, fresher air, and if he can just ignore that the first time he'd laid eyes on it, he had immediately started cateloguing the signs of life or the lack thereof, if he can just ignore all that, then: Cale Henituse, body sinking into a plush bed easily worth Kim Rok Soo's paychecks in its entirery throughout the four-five years he'd part-timed and then some, pretty face slack and unguarded in sleep, fine hair spread out like a halo on a silk pillow case, stray strands falling gracefully over his forehead and framing his face wonderfully, looks positively angelic.
Angelic. Hah. In more ways than one, this morning, it rings true.
He stares and stares. Then stares some more.
A hand reaches out before he can think better of it. And he is given the dubious honor of being one of the very few who can claim to have seen and felt anything of this sort.
There is a morbid sort of fascination that sparks in his chest as his fingers sink past the cheekbone all the way down to the knuckles and dig under the cheeks as he drags them back up and out again. Shockingly, he feels nothing at having phased through himself, at feeling air where flesh and viscera should be. Just...
Huh.
At least, he thinks, he doesn't drool in his sleep.
There is a clock in the room but he's too lazy crane his to check from where he's already settled down facing the wall, so instead, he tracks the time's passing by the brightening of the room. Spacing out is easier without a physical form, he finds. Without an aching in his bones and in his head, without hunger or thirst, without clothes catching on skin, without any sensation at all, it is easier to just let his mind wander, and his self float away. Shadows stretch across the wall, the sounds of people from outside the closed door come and go in crests and swells, and sooner rather than later, the door cracks open, flooding his bedroom with the light that spills from the corridor.
It's time for one Cale Henituse to wake up, it seems.
It's Ron.
Cale stares as the elderly butler strides up to his bedside without a moment's pause. He knows, of course, that this happens every day, that Ron's face is oft the first one he sees each morning when he wakes him, but it's still a shock seeing it unfold in front of him.
He watches as Ron lays a large, steady, gloved hand on the bedding. He stays rooted where he is, floating vaguely somewhere perched by the foot of his bed. He holds his breath for some odd reason--exhaling quickly the moment he realizes that he is.
There is nothing to be afraid of, Cale is certain, as he watches Ron shake him gently through the blankets. He's going to find him asleep, leave him be the entire day, and tomorrow Cale will wake up back to his own self, and he's going to eat enough meat to send himself into a food coma and he's going to have the best sleep of his two lives.
It's going to be fine.