Kass woke up to the scent of something incredibly sweet. It was most likely coming from the kitchen, but Kass hadn’t bought anything sweet in a while. He was supposed to have been on a brief, sugar and alcohol free diet after he got a little too drunk the week before. Of course, because this week was his week off, he’d decided to only partially follow his new diet, but that didn’t answer the question of what the sweet smell was.
Throwing off his silky, lilac blanket, Kass leaned over to his bedside table to see what time it was. Demi-eight in the morning. He’d had a pretty reasonable lie-in. That was fine. Also explained why the rest of the bed was empty. Psiksi would have gotten up and headed off to work about half an hour ago. He did have work today, right?
Apparently not.
As Kass left the bedroom and made his way into the kitchen, he could hear things being moved about. Either there was a home intruder making breakfast for himself, or Psiksi had bunked off work. Either way, Kass wasn’t sure which was more likely, considering how seriously Psiksi took his job.
Thankfully, it was just Psiksi. But seeing Psiksi fumble around with a frying pan was still quite a surprising thing to see.
“Oh, did I wake you up?”
Kass shook his head in disbelief. “Uh, no… What are you doing here, Psiksi? I thought you had work?”
Psiksi smiled as he suddenly flipped the frying pan into the air. A light, fluffy pancake landed perfectly on a plate on the side behind him.
“I did. But now I don’t!”
“Huh?”
With a sigh, Psiksi poured some more pancake batter into the frying pan. “I was a complete cunt yesterday. I threatened violence at you. Over a fucking wristband. How stupid is that? So I called up Captain Vallas, who for some reason put me straight through to the High General, who ordered me to take more time off to be with my partner. And I’ve made these pancakes as an apology for being a cunt.”
Kass pulled up a stool and sat down where the plate was. Psiksi slid a bottle of honey and some cutlery across the counter towards him. On further inspection, the pancake had little coloured bits in it. Psiksi had added rainbow sugar-sticks and sherbet into the batter. That was why Kass could smell sweet things.
“So you’re telling me that the High General of the Retha ordered you to take a holiday? Holy fuck…”
“You act as if I work too hard!” Psiksi frowned. “That’s not the problem or anything. I was thinking I only had the standard holiday time. Elkay reminded me that-”
“Hang on!” Kass interrupted. “You just called the High General by his first name alone!”
“Well…” Psiksi paused. “He IS my big brother. And he did ask me to just call him Elkay…”
“I forgot that the High General has siblings…” Kass muttered. “Si- uh, five of you, all working for him in various ways.”
“Actually, Arksi works for the Great Library now.”
Kass shrugged, then tucked into the pancake. It was actually really nice. Maybe he shouldn’t have put so much syrup on though. “So anyway, you’re taking time off?”
“Yep!” Psiksi beamed as he finished some more pancakes, then sat down opposite Kass. “I’m taking the same days off you are. I’ve got five months of holiday time left, compensation holiday from being a Ksa, but I can use it whenever I want. Whenever you have a day off, I have a day off.”
“That sounds awesome! So, uh, what do you want to do today?”
Psiksi grinned, then hinted to a rather full, plastic behind him. Kass got up and wandered over to inspect it. The bag was bursting with junk food, alcohol and various horror movies.
Kass smiled as he pulled out a movie he liked the look of. “Heh, seems like you’ve already decided…”