𝐎𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐞 [𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫 - 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭]

9 | Suspects

— "IT'S VISITING DAY TOMORROW." Four drawled from the kitchen, fixing their drinks (one horrifically sugary earl grey and one very strong, very bitter black tea). Vega was slumped back into the arm of the sofa, Bram laying his big head on his stomach as he used the available snout to hold up his book. Four had opened his rather extensive collection to him and he was quick to indulge, cracking open the first book to finally shut on the coffee table — Dickens' Great Expectations.

He had learned Four's reading system quite quickly; it turned out he was the type to consume multiple books at once (hence all the open and strangely bookmarked novels on the coffee table) and often just left them closed and dropped somewhere when he'd finished with them.

Vega also learned the true vastness of his private library when Four pulled back the orange rug and revealed hatches of storage space. Where some would've filled them with, say, a kitchen table, Four filled it with old, unheard of and most likely forbidden literature from an age long gone. He stacked his books in alphabetical towers, leaving just enough room in the centre for him to drop down into the waist-high hollow and pick out his choice. Vega found it strangely endearing that this stoic, slightly intimidating Dauntless was actually a massive bookworm — almost obsessively so. On closer inspection one would find that most of the sticky notes on the fridge were lists of books he had yet to read.

"It is." He hummed, sitting upright slightly and folding the book over Bram's nose to take the mug in hand, enjoying the comforting beverage as Four lifted his feet and sat down, placing them back in his lap and taking a sip of his own drink. On his side of the sofa, a stack of paperwork teetered on the thick arm.

"Are you nervous?" Four ventured, picking up his pen and returning to the files he'd begrudgingly resigned himself to scanning that evening.

Vega cracked a smile, leaning over to put his mug on the floor but not going back to his book just yet. Rain pattered against the window and a vinyl record (just another one of the rare items Four collected) murmured in the corner by the bathroom door — some acoustic folk music that sounded startlingly similar to the songs they sung at Amity weddings. Songs of devotion.

"How could you tell?" He teased lightly, watching raindrops race against the tall windows, catching on the black edges of every square pane. Outside yet another storm brewed as early Autumn approached, leaving grey clouds tumbling over each other lazily. He thought that that's what the white whales in Moby-Dick would look like when swimming in a pack.

"Because I know you." Four said it so casually but Vega swore his heart stopped mid-beat then went into rapid-fire. It was so simple yet somehow the sentiment meant the world. Four could make his heart sing without even looking up from his paperwork, pen scratching hastily against the folders of tiny text. "Would you like to talk about it?" He quested, shutting a black file and throwing it on the armchair adjacent, flicking another open and starting all over again.