"Please drive."

Alberu Crossman absorbed the surprise he felt and digested the situation with impressive speed. He'd spent a significant portion of his life having to quickly grasp situations and act accordingly after all and this situation didn't take a genius to figure out.

The man who had slid into his passenger seat uninvited smelled foul, bruises lined his face and disappeared underneath a disheveled shit, and his voice vibrated with the harmonic of fear.

He was running from someone or someone and he needed help.

Alberu started the engine, considering what he'd do if this was some sort of trap. Well, the best course of action was to drive towards the police station for the time being.

Alberu barely got sight of some unsavory characters in the rear mirror who were searching the parking lot as he pulled away. His uninvited guest sank in his seat and Alberu was even more confident in his initial assessment.

"Where to?" He asked as calmly as he could. It wasn't that he was unshaken up by the sudden appearance of a stranger in his car. He could just properly manage and prioritize feelings like shock or surprise.

"...anywhere..."

Worry pinched Alberu's heart. Most people would ask for home or a hospital. Most people wouldn't be so desperate as to jump into a stranger's car.

There was something so distinctly broken about the man that Alberu couldn't just leave him be.

"How about the hospital?" He suggested, those injuries really did look nasty and he was worried there were more severe ones being hidden.

The man shook his head morosely and it looked like he was attempting to gather his composure. Alberu could see out of the corner of his eye how the man kept gathering his expression and then it would crumble all over again.

It was a bit heartbreaking.

Alberu didn't know him. He didn't know what happened to him or how he got so fucked over. He didn't know why he didn't want to go to the hospital and he didn't even know if he was a dangerous individual.

Rationally he should have taken him to the hospital or to a police station, regardless of what he said in protest.

Maybe he was inspired by the stranger's initial irrational decision to enter his car but Alberu wasn't interested in making the rational decision.

"Want to come home with me then?"

He didn't have any other intentions other than to help him clean up and gather himself. They were still strangers and this brief encounter would just become a strange story one day to tell. There was no reason for them to get to know each other better.

But Cale Henituse left an impression.

And even though it was pure chance that had caused their paths to cross, it was through their own decisions that they wound up staying together.

Alberu awoke with a frown.

It had been a few years since he'd slept on the couch like this. Perhaps that was why he couldn't help but remember it with burning clarity.

The day he'd taken Cale home on an honestly foolish impulse. How he'd wound up surrendering his bed for the night because it really didn't seem like Cale had anywhere else to go.

How things had just sort of evolved from there and despite all his best attempts, Alberu wound up pulled into Cale's gravity.

It was a really stupid story that he didn't really tell that many people. He liked Cale's version better. The one where Cale would dramatically describe being a bank robber and Alberu was his getaway driver. It was fantastical and ridiculous and a lot less tragic than the truth.

Alberu sat up on the couch and sighed.

It really was like going back in time with Cale. Except this time it hurt so much more to see him injured, confused, and scared. Standing outside the bathroom while Cale took his time to clean up and cry when he thought Alberu couldn't hear–

It really was reminiscent of that time.

It was why he absolutely couldn't turn away or abandon this Cale, even if he was... wrong. It was all the subtle things that most people wouldn't notice but Alberu couldn't help but notice with painful clarity.

This Cale was a different man who had led a different life. A surprisingly similar life from the looks of it but still different.

Alberu looked down at his hands as he tried not to let the fear control him.

It was like that heartstopping moment when Cale had first asked him to drive.

He couldn't afford to spend his time being panicked or scared if he wanted to protect this man. Or to see his Cale again.

A noise from the door leading to his bedroom dragged Alberu from his thoughts and he looked up at the bedraggled form of a Cale who'd had enough rest to regret his behavior. It was a familiar sight.

"...morning." Cale greeted gruffly, leaning against the door jam and staring down at the floor.

He always did that when he felt insecure. Cale had once confessed to Alberu it was because the ground was consistent.

Everything else might change or get taken away but he always had the ground under his feet.

It was a sentiment that made Alberu's heart ache.

"Good morning." He replied, feeling bad that he couldn't comfort this Cale the way he would his own Cale when he was feeling insecure. "...would you like some breakfast?"

Cale stood in silence for a moment before nodding sullenly and it really did bring to mind Cale from all those years back.

Cale had been fighting with how to behave or what to say and he'd become uncharacteristically meek as a result. Unable to summon his 'trashy persona' as he put it or to embrace his own sincere emotion.

Alberu stood up and made his way to the kitchen, grabbing some eggs and a pan as he spoke. "It's still the weekend so everything is okay for now but..." Alberu stopped himself. Was now the time to think about those sorts of things? Was this him having his 'fucking stupid priorities' as Cale had so eloquently put it one day when Alberu had forced himself to go to work sick as a dog?

"But?" Cale's voice reached his ears and Alberu sighed.

Well, it would be best to explain the situation and then come up with a solution together. "You have work on Monday. Also you were planning to meet with friends."

"You mean the other me." Cale said and there was a frown on his face that Alberu couldn't read.

"You don't have to. We can cancel it for now." He winced a bit, he didn't want Cale to come home to a lost job or fractured friendships but... well, he needed to handle the Cale in front of him and putting pressure on this man might just break him. "You can rest as long as you need."

"You're a shitty liar." Cale said, sitting up on a countertop and completely accidentally taking over Cale's normal spot where he watched Alberu cook from.

...this really was going to be a special form of gut-wrenching. So similar and so different and it was confusing for Alberu to conceptualize.

He still didn't know how to understand the world that Cale had described to him either.

"Who the fuck is the friend I'm meeting with anyway?" Cale sounded skeptical at the concept that he even had friends and Alberu had to admit, when they'd first met he really didn't.

"Eric Wheelsman, you, the other you, have known him since childhood."

Cale's silence was somehow very loud.

"...I take it that you also have certain unfinished grudges with him."

After Cale had gotten his life together and started repairing the relationships in his life, Eric Wheelsman had been a strange sticking point for him.

"He's a hard-headed asshole." Cale said, perfectly quoting his other self's feelings on the matter.

Alberu let out a small laugh despite himself. "Yeah. You've said."

"Ugh. I don't want to meet that guy. Ugh, fuck that guy."

"...you said that too."

Cale looked up at him sharply with a frown. "You don't need to keep mentioning."

There was a tense silence and surprisingly, it was Cale who retracted first.

"...sorry." He didn't normally apologize. Alberu knew he must legitimately feel bad for snapping. "It's just still... weird."

Alberu nodded in understanding. He couldn't imagine how he'd feel in Cale's shoes.

He still hadn't had time to process or digest how he felt in his own shoes.

"The point is, you don't need to meet with him." Alberu offered, bringing his attention back to the meal and changing the topic for Cale. Cale always hated it when topics lingered on things that made him uncomfortable.

"If I cancel last minute, that psycho bastard is liable to burst in here and demand to know why before coming up with some alternative plans without listening to a word I fucking say." Cale said.

Truly, Eric and Cale being friends made sense. They were equally hard-headed, stubborn, and absolutely unwilling to change for anyone or anything.

Alberu made a point to get out of their way when they made up their mind for a task. He was halfway sure that one of these days he'd be called to bail them out of jail and the reason for it wouldn't even be that they broke the law, it would be because Cale did something that looked like he did and Eric decided he was going to argue with with the police because he was right and then things would just escalate and... well, Alberu worried about Cale and his ridiculous best friend.

"...good to know that Eric doesn't change much." Alberu confirmed with a nod. "Still, if you really can't meet with him, I can hold him off."

It was such a silly sentiment. Random and thoughtless and said as though Alberu had offered a dozen times before and it made Cale feel strange.

He didn't know why, but the idea that someone would face off with Eric for him was touching. It wasn't even that Eric was that awful. Frankly, Cale was a bit curious about how similar or different Eric would be in another world.

It would give him a clue as to whether the crown prince was anything like Alberu too.

It was just the notion that someone would so effortlessly offer to protect him, even from his own 'friends' if need be.

The emotions it inspired made him uncomfortable so he jumped to the next issue at hand. "You said he also had work on Monday? What does he do?"

Cale still hadn't decided whether he'd actually go to work or accept Alberu's offer to just drop everything but he was curious about what he did for a living. It was hard to imagine that he worked at all, he came from an extremely wealthy countdum and Cale Henituse had never had to consider the prospect of working a day in his life.

Alberu plaited the omelets he'd been making and gestured for Cale to follow him towards the table. "You're an actor."

"He's an actor." Cale corrected, disliking Alberu's insistence on using a singular pronoun for describing two very different people.

Alberu's Cale had to be a very different person. This wasn't a life that Cale could even imagine having and the person in the photos looked like a near stranger.

Then the words digested and Cale's face scrunched up in distaste. "...you mean for theater? On stage? Playing pretend? Really?"

Why the hell would he ever pursue a career like that?

Alberu chuckled, shaking his head at the reaction. "You... He said it was easy because he's already spent most of his life acting like something he's not."

The silence that stretched was uncomfortable.

Cale looked down at the lovingly cooked meal and took a bite, resenting that it was quite good.

Resenting how exposed he felt.

"What would I know about him." He grumbled.

"I'll contact your–his agent." Alberu said, sliding onto the next matter with ease. It was frustrating how good he was at handling Cale's moodiness. "I think until we get an idea of what's going on, it's best if we don't have to worry about work."

Cale nodded and wondered yet again if there was any figuring out what was going on. Was there any way to set this right?

He felt like a thief.

He didn't even know if he wanted to make things right.

If he compared waking up in an alley covered in grime to this home cooked meal.

The broken relationship he had with his family versus the happy family photos that were framed and displayed.

Cale's chaotic thoughts had never really calmed down and he didn't know what to think or what to do.

He knew that it was hard not to see why his other self had liked Alberu so much though.

Which made it hurt all the more that he was just an interloper here.

Cale took another bite, the taste bittering with his miserable thoughts.