Nomi stood at the other side of the kitchen, pressing her bare palms into the cold marble of the counter as a way to wash out the hot summer air filtering in sight of the lack of modern heat and air. Close to the nape of her neck, her dark hair begins to curl from the humidity and sweat.  

"But do you gotta?" She asks the other person in the room, and how rare is it for them to find time all to themselves in a home that doesn't know the quiet. 

He doesn't look at her, just keeps on stirring the brownie batter beside her and only stops to dip his finger in to taste. "Kinda," the man tells her with a bittersweet smile. 

"How much is kinda?" She knows she's asking a lot, might be pushing him too far by her constant bugging, but July is almost over. 

"Kinda is a lot, Noms," He glances up to check on the sandwich beside her, still untouched aside for the one bite she allowed herself. "Nomi," he warns.

"I don't even like ham, Callum!" She pushes away the plate until it clinks on the rim of the sink. Her behavior is less than desirable, all of this moaning and complaining and somewhat passive-aggressiveness towards the older werewolf, paired with the summer heat, begins to tick Callum off more and more with each passing second. 

"Then why did you pick out ham at the store?" His voice probably sounds angry, or at least, a bit annoyed. She hates that, when Callum shows anything but rainbows and sunshine towards her. 

She pauses. "Because you like it." 

"I like you eating," he says like he isn't making a batch of brownies she will absolutely devour within the hour. 

"And I like you here," Nomi confesses in a whisper; abruptly, the sixteen year-old turns on her heels and disappears as if she had never been in the kitchen. 

He doesn't realize he had began a fight until she's gone. It was hard for him to read into situations with other people, never really knowing if he was saying the wrong words or listening to the right ones. 

Callum stands beneath the fluorescent lighting, long light hair tucked behind his ear as he stares after her. The aftertaste of the brownie suddenly tastes too bitter for his liking. He doesn't know if he should go after her, or if he should allow Nomi to sulk by herself. 

He doesn't like the idea of the second thought, so the eighteen year-old wraps the top of his brownie mix and places it in one of two fridges kept inside of the main kitchen. He wanders through the halls, tipping his head in every other door to check in and ask if someone had seen Nomi pass by. 

The rest of the teenagers aside for Red went to the creek, and the Omega sits in a playroom with the windows up and the Alpha's twins gaggling complete nonsense she replies to with gusto. 

"She's with Rand," she tells him with one thin eyebrow lifting up with what he assumes to be silent accusation. She doesn't even look up, as if she had simply been waiting for someone to find her and request common sense. Because of course Nomi's with the Beta.

He follows through the old home and tenses up at every creak he makes. Usually, only the Omegas or human residents manage to make this much racket, but he's worried. Nomi hardly ever allows herself to be anything but quick with wit and laughter in front of anyone; if she's speaking candidly to Rand, the man she practically sees as her own father, Callum may have fucked up in a way he doesn't understand. 

He knocks lightly on the door even if he knows they heard him seconds ago. Nothing follows but silence, and for a frightening moment, he imagines Rand not allowing him in, after all, it is his private corridors. 

"Come in," the Beta's deep voice travels through the air and past the heavy door. 

Callum rushes in, his eyes adjusting to the dimness of the room. Rand always kept his living space unkempt and dark. It happened to be one of the few rooms that had been off limits to most. Rand needed his own things in a particular order, and seldom did he allow anyone aside for Nomi and his own brother Raul inside.

Nomi sits on the frame of the balcony, which is two seconds away from collapsing it's so ancient, and Rand seems to acknowledge this fact by standing directly beside her, his hand touching her shoulder as if preparing himself to catch her. The two of them both refuse to look at him; only when Callum stood directly beside Rand did he offer acknowledgement in a thinly-veiled glare. 

What Nomi and Rand have between one another is strange. A fifteen year-old Rand found her as an abandoned toddler in a hollow log, perfectly human but reeking of wolf. 

Callum always thought they would be mates, it happens, sometimes. The age difference of thirteen years wouldn't do anything to stain the insatiable love between two souls, but when Nomi and Rand came back from a summer spent together as representatives for the pack in California, Callum found himself completely obsessed with anything to do with her. 

She shot up four inches and gained weight, her face thinned and what she calls the miracle of puberty happened in the compact time of three odd months. 

Rand still stuck by her side, but his loyalty and love close to the same he showed to his older brother, Raul. 

"Beta Rand," Callum dipped his head before he took the first step onto the balcony. It creaked beneath his foot, but it held, surprisingly. Soon, the house would absolutely demand for the repairs it desperately needed. "Mind if I speak to Nomi?"

"I'm not Nomi's keeper," Rand replied, although it sounded like a lie. On their first date together, the Beta had been obviously present the entire night. After their first kiss, Callum was aggressively plastered to the wall by Rand. Every time they come remotely close to anything under the shirt or below the belt, the wolf mysteriously shows up with pressing orders.

"What do you want, Cal?"

Oh, thank God she's using his nickname. 

Callum lets go of a breath he didn't realize he held in his lungs and continued. "To talk, about y'know... what's gonna happen." 

"What's going to happen?" Rand, self-claimed not-keeper-of-Nomi, demanded. 

"College, Rand," Callum placed his hands in his pockets, nerves blossoming in his chest. "Can we talk in private?" It sounds like the right words to say. His voice drops only because it gives the false feeling of a conversation solely between the two teenagers.

"No," Nomi's words split the air as she reaches out for Rand's arm, wrapping her soft hand around his bicep and keeping him close, as if she were still the same kid that clung to him until she would be forcefully pried off. "Rand clears my head."

And it's something Callum has never been able to do. Rand calmed her down, pulled a seriousness out of her that she rarely allowed to show. 

Callum's jaw ticked out of frustration not aimed at her, but meant for the simple want to understand Nomi in the way Rand could. "I thought you weren't upset about college."

"Well, I lie sometimes." And she's so damn good at it. Her heartbeat hardly flinches and her voice never changes, it's as if she sees everything as a story she's simply narrating. It's never personal, always happy, laughing, big beautiful grins that are so wide they must hurt. 

"I'm coming home every weekend," he tells her, ignoring the way she digs her nose into Rand's shoulder, as if she's trying to disappear from his gaze. 

"I work on weekends," her words are weak. Callum doesn't know if he should be relieved, or if he should be deathly worried that she seemed to have crack somewhere between 'work' and 'weekends'. 

"I'll get a job at the market like you," he promises with a smile as tiny as her voice at the moment. "Same hours and everything." 

"You do your homework on those days," she goes through his schedule like it's her own, and in a way it is. Most Saturday and Sunday afternoons during the fall through winter are strictly spent on his bed, going over assignments until Nomi wondered into his room and read over his homework for extra measure. 

"So I bring it there," Callum tries. 

She rolls her dark eyes before letting her lashes draw on Rand's skin as she looked down sheepishly. "You'll get fired."

"Then change your schedule," He attempts once again, his eyes beginning to cloud with sadness at seeing her watery replies. 

She finally cracks a smile, just a wee little grin that hardly turns up her lips, so dim her dimples don't even press into her skin. "Then you ain't gonna have much of a reason to work there, Callum." 

He thinks it's a good start. 

Author's Note

Things that are canon: 

Nomi and Rand are basically siblings and there will be many ficlets about their adventures together bc God bless. 

Callum, my sweet cinnamon roll, has autism. (So it was a pretty big deal that he would offer to change his schedule to fit her needs) We will be seeing a chapters of Callum wondering around his college and just discovering things bc I'm a slut for college life. 

Tell me whatcha liked, tell me whatcha didn't.