Welcome to Gaia! ::

Long term, he’d need to get into the room. For now though it didn’t matter. For now he simply waited to be sure that there was no one home, and then slid something under the door. Hands placed back into his pockets he moved away again, on with business as normal.

He didn’t wait around to see the results, he expected that the object would be crumpled up and tossed into a trashcan, but it was worth the favors he’d probably be giving out in return later.

Nothing destructive, it likely wouldn’t even cost Ever any sleep, but it would, he was sure, be worth the build up.

Waiting inside Ever’s room, on the floor was a post card, fake postage included with a mocked up delivery address to Ever’s room, Deus Island, Bermuda Triangle.

The message written there in blocky script and a heavy hand was simply.

“Miss you terribly!”

and signed ‘The Rack’…the photo on the front was some ambiguous photo of a tropical island, and the signature looked like someone had pressed a thick corner of wood into ink, and then onto the card.

It took a handful more days for the next card to appear. Just enough time that the ‘rack’ might have had time to travel to some new and exotic location, this one looked like some city, New York if that one building was anything to go by. It was a pretty ridiculous picture of some guy on a moped in the crowded streets.

The back said

“Not the same without you, do you miss me too?”

Again that heavy printing with the chunk of wood ‘signature’

Once again the card was slid under the door when he was sure that Ever wasn’t going to be ‘In’. Really he thought it rather marvelously convenient that Ever seemed to have so much to do out of his room these days.

There was another thing slipped under his door about a week later, this one was more of a letter, from ‘the Rack’ saying how much it missed him, how sad it was when he’d had it taken away. It also had a few comments about polishing its wood that could be taken a few ways.

So far other than awkward, heavy handed writing, and letters from a ‘rack’ that from a person could be considered somewhere in the kinky range, and a lot of wood puns it seemed to be a harmless ‘revenge’ that was doing more damage to the paper.

The next time there was a card, it was pinned under the others, it seemed harmless enough, really no different than any other except that it didn’t have an ‘I miss you message’, this time it said…

‘Welcome Home’.

There were a few other differences too, like the fact that he was being discretely observed from another doorway down the hall, just slightly ajar.

Nothing –really- alarming until he’d open the door though, and that is where it was waiting.

Zac had definitely gotten help for this, there was no way he could have gotten the Rack up the stairs and into the room on his own.

There was a sound just outside the door, a sort of clank-clump as something settled in place, a brief chuckle half muffled by door, amused in tone.
A knock on the door came shortly after.

Zac stood outside the door leaning gently against an Iron maiden, who… had a suit case and a small sign that said ‘Mother in Law’.

“…Hey… How goes your happy reunion!”


"Also…congrats again man."

Eyebrows arched, Ever got a very distinct ‘once over’ kind of head to toe glance that lingered on the red mark low on his throat for a moment, a twitch of a smile at the boxers and then a slow nod.

“…I knew I shoulda had someone swap out the spikes with something more… interesting.” He quipped.

“And here I was gonna say the Rack was your new husband, cause it always had wood. I’ll make sure your mother in law is out of the way.”

There –was- a blush warming the dark warm brown of his skin though “Cheers.” He added, shifting to apparently find someone to help move ‘the mother in law’ again, and hopefully, letting Ever close the door on the eyeful.

That made Zac stop and blink, He hesitated a moment, thoughtful before giving a small nod. “Yeah, think so.” He replied with just an edge of caution.

He didn’t frown or shake off the hand though, so the pause was just caution.

“Yeah, but over I think, what can I do for you mate?”

He shifted back to give Ever more of his full attention, though his gaze did drop towards the red mark again and then lifted again to a spot just past Ever’s ear. It lingered there for an awkward moment before he wrenched it back for proper eye contact.

“Nah, not yet.” He admitted. “You…going to the mainland?” He assumed that they’d likely hit up the States, the fact that Ever was bringing it up at all was a surprise, so either he meant to play the ‘oh too bad’ card, but he was hoping, he really could use some new ink.

“I need to pick up some more tattoo ink.” He admitted. “… You and ahh…” He nodded his head back towards Ever’s room, not knowing the name of whoever was within but not wishing to exclude out of hand.

“You two heading off island soon?”