Xellos pushed off of him and scooted away in a panic, ending up plastered wide-eyed against the wall next to the door while--
Panic? Wide-eyed? Xellos?
He looked more closely. The man looked like Xellos; a lot like him. He had the right thick, tapering eyebrows, and his wide cheekbones slanted down the right way. He had the right pointed, elfin nose and chin, the right strong jaw, long neck, and compact stature. He even had the right unfashionably slick, effeminate haircut.
His hair was the wrong color, though, and so were his wide, startled eyes. They were both purple, yes, but too dark, more violet and black plum then Xellos's weird greyed-out grape color. The cat-slitted pupils and diamond irises that swallowed light were replaced by perfectly ordinary round ones, so wide with caution as to catch a reflection of the entire window. He lacked Xellos's appearance of glowingly innocent, ageless immortality. His face was still pale and sallow, but not dead white anymore, nor Xellos's odd corpselike buttermilk shade, and it had faint smile lines and tired pouches under the eyes.
Too, he was thinner than Xellos, unhealthily bony, and his shirt was as black as his pants where it seemed that Xellos never took off his yellow turtleneck. Where Xellos wrapped rags around his middle and his ankles, this man wore a rough rope belt, striped gold and black, and whatever he used to secure his loose pants to his boots with was covered in the fall of the fabric. And he wasn't smiling.
"You're the man from last night," Zelgadis stated, letting the astral energy he'd called up dissipate. "What did you think you were doing?"
"Sleeping?" The voice was a very familiar husky tenor, but perhaps a touch lower than Xellos's, resonating in the throat rather than the nose.
"Did you have to do it on top of me?" he grumbled.
"Yes," the man said, relaxing a little. "But remember, Zelgadis-san, I got up the moment you objected."
"How do you know my name?" he demanded suspiciously.
"Ah," the man said, winking, looking so much like Xellos that Zelgadis caught his breath. "That... should be fairly obvious, Zelgadis-san."
Lina and Amelia, right. He let the breath out. "Do you know Xellos Metallium?"
"Intimately," the man assured him, with a perfect solemnity that made him suspect he was being teased.
Amelia came pounding in, then, cloakless and ready for anything from bandits to unknown mazoku, but not for the unenthralling scene she found. "But Zelgadis-san," she blinked, "you screamed."
"I did not."
"But I heard--"
"I startled him," the man admitted, head dropping so that his hair obscured nearly all of his face in contrition that absolutely could not be genuine--and, given the suppressed laughter under his regret, probably wasn't. "Is it a punishable offense, Amelia-san?"
She turned pink and stammered out a negative. "Breakfast's nearly ready," she added, on more secure territory now, and left.
The man lifted his head and grinned at Zelgadis. "Shall we go watch the carnage?" he asked cheerfully, and bent to pick up his cloak. Clean and dry, it glowed a soft, rich gold where the morning light hit it, and his black shirt under its cut-out pattern was a suggestion of deep, dark waters in the sun.
Zelgadis stared in fascination as he swirled it onto his back. "Is that leather?"
"A preparation largely forgotten, I'm afraid. It used to be popular in this area, but that was a long time ago. It's fairly weak, as leather goes, but it's still tougher than most cloth. It's also soft, light, and warm, and it keeps the rain off."
"You handled Amelia well," Zelgadis said, almost friendly, straightening out his own cloak. "My name is Zelgadis."
The man bowed a little, appreciating the gift. In an almost apologetic tone, he said, "You may as well keep calling me Xellos," and closed the door behind him.
Zelgadis caught up to him at the bottom of the stairs. "You're Xellos?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Xellos Metallium?"
"Ah, no. O-kage again, actually."
"Oh-whoozit?!"
"Well, I am a Mystery Priest, you know. Shadow Guild. And since I've been transferred back out of the serv--"
"But--but--but--I mean, our Xellos?!"
Xellos spun on his heel and tackle-glomped him. "It's so sweet of you to say that, Zel-k-uh, -dis-san!"
"All right! You're Xellos! Fine! Get off!"
With an amused pout, Xellos obeyed.
"But you're human!"
"Try not to think about it too hard," Xellos advised sympathetically, patting his wrist. "You'll only start brooding. I'm going to go watch breakfast and see if I can keep some tea down. Er--Zelgadis-san? Zelgadis-san? I don't mean to disturb you, but I was planning on leaving now, so would you very kindly please let go of my cloak? It's not that I mind, it's just that death grips are bad for the material."
