#but sometimes he overestimates his politeness and ends up coming off really weird and obvious lololol

[wondersbeyondcompare]

Underpaid Security Guard

Word Count: 2929

Characters: Majid, Jamil, some mentions of Kalim

TW: None

Some Notes: An explanation on how Majid became a “security guard” of Scarabia; basically the boi is a stubborn first year brat and Jamil is taking no shit smh

Majid lay upon the pavilion located at Scarabia’s entrance, gazing at the stars that peeked out from the awning above him. The coolness of the marble against his back pleasantly numb his stinging muscles from the accidental impact he had with the floor just a few moments ago. 

In other words, Majid had fallen and couldn’t have cared to get up. 

Besides, it was a nice night to be outside. It wasn’t unbearably hot (as the dorm could sometimes get during the day) nor was it too cold. There was a bit of wind that picked up once and awhile, but it only passed as a light breeze, ruffling through Majid’s already unruly blonde hair. 

The night sky, or at least the part he could see, was lovely that evening too. Despite there being no moon in sight, the multitude of stars that he saw made up for its absence, putting even the finest of gems to shame in their brilliance. Majid was almost tempted to reach out and snatch a handful of them from the sky just to add them to his collection of wealth. Surely no diamond on Earth could compare to these glittering lights so far beyond his reach. He wondered how many constellations he might be able to hold within his grasp, how the celestial bodies would look scattered and eternally dancing between his fingers.

It must have been getting really late in the evening for him to have such sentimental thoughts. 

Unfortunately, his perfectly sentimental evening was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Majid lifted his head as much as he could from his place on the ground to see who it was. Upon catching a glimpse of sleek black hair pulled back into braids and a disapproving expression, he just as quickly lowered his head and shut his eyes. Darn. It was the vice dorm leader. He was definitely going to get scolded by him. 

The footsteps stopped a couple inches away from him and was followed by a sigh. “It’s you again. You do realize we have bedrooms back at our dorm, correct? Or perhaps you got ‘lost’ and ended up passing out from exhaustion again? That trick will only work once, Majid. It was troublesome to carry you back to the dorm, and Kaiden still complains of back problems to this day.”

‘Well, it wasn’t as if I asked him to carry me in the first place,’ Majid mentally protested, keeping his eyes closed. Maybe if he stayed still long enough, Jamil would give up and go away. That would be the best case scenario despite having to listen to his reprimands. Worst case scenario: Jamil somehow manages to convince him to get up by his own accord, but that was even more unlikely than the first option. Simply put, the odds seemed to be in Majid’s favor for the night.

“Then if it’s not that, could it be… ah, yes. You were waiting to stick your arm out the entrance mirror to scare students on the other side. As much as I respect your determination to wait until the morning to do so, I cannot condone such childish behavior. I’ll have no choice but to put you on dish duty for a week-”

Knowing how many parties Scarabia normally holds in a few days and feeling his arms already begin to ache, Majid shot up to a sitting position, casting a scornful glare at Jamil. “I only tried doing that once, okay? The rest of those times were just Amir and his stupid group of dumbass friends,” seethed Majid. 

Jamil, however, didn’t seem fazed by the younger boy’s irritation. In fact, he looked bored. A first year’s minor offenses were nothing compared to the shenanigans Kalim got up to. He placed a hand on his hip, slightly lifting up his chin as he noted, “Oh? Seems like you were awake after all. If that’s the case, why don’t you go back to your dorm room, Majid? With your own two legs of course.”

Majid’s expression soured at that last comment. So in the end, Jamil ruined his plans anyway. He even managed to get Majid to fake wake-up. How annoying.

But he wasn’t going to give up just yet. Majid laid back down in a childish act of rebellion. “I’m graciously sorry, Jamil-senpai, but I’d much rather prefer to stay out here for tonight. I promise I won’t pull any pranks with the mirror-”

“That I can’t allow,” Jamil immediately shot back, causing Majid’s brow to twitch. Well there goes his ‘be overly polite and maybe he’ll let you do whatever’ plan. “All members of Scarabia must follow their curfew to prevent any student from sneaking off to places they shouldn’t be in. Not only that, but you’re also a first year, so I can’t possibly trust your promise not to cause any trouble. Furthermore-”

“Aaaaa, I GET IT, I GET IT,” Majid groaned as he slowly sat back up. Geez, how did Kalim put up with this guy’s constant nagging? Majid felt if he spent even a second longer listening to Jamil that his head would explode. 

Actually… his head exploding seemed much more preferable than having to listen to his senior. He wondered if it was possible for one’s head to explode from constant nagging and what that would feel like if the moment ever came. 

Wait, no, he was getting off track.

Although he had been caught and pushed into a corner, Majid decided to try this again one last time, still refusing to stand up. He confronted Jamil with narrowed eyes. “Why are you even here in the first place? Shouldn’t you be following that all important curfew too?” he bitterly remarked.

“Of course. But since one of our first years decided to go on a late night stroll and leave one of their personal belongings behind in the lounge, it’s not as if I could,” responded Jamil. 

Personal belongings…? What could he possibly mean by that? It took a couple of seconds before Majid realized that his left arm felt lighter than usual. In a panic, he grabbed at his wrist and upon feeling only a beaded bracelet, he quickly got to his feet. He extended a hand towards Jamil, trying (and failing) to keep his countenance under control. “Please give it back, Jamil-senpai,” he requested in a steely tone.

Jamil studied Majid’s face carefully before folding his arms against his chest. Oh? What an interesting reaction. “Does that bracelet hold some sort of significance to you?” he inquired.

Majid’s face twisted and turned as he tried to think of what to say next. There was always the option of lying, but he wasn’t exactly fond of that. Plus, he had already shown too much emotion to hide anything now. But to tell Jamil the truth wouldn’t give him much of an advantage either…

The junior grit his teeth, agonizing over these options before stiffly bowing to his senior. “...Please give it back. I promise I won’t come out here again after curfew,” muttered Majid, his words just barely audible as they left his mouth.

Unfortunately, Jamil remained unmoved. “You didn’t answer my question, Majid. Is this bracelet important to you or not? We don’t have all night.”

“...”

“Glaring at me like that isn’t going to help.”

Sighing, Majid closed his eyes and irritably ran a hand through his hair. So there goes the good ol’ intimidation tactic. Now what? Refusing to explain wasn’t getting him anywhere. His hand found its way to the back of his neck, gripping at the hair that grew around there as he worked his brain to the max. Well, there was always the option of using magic, but starting a fight against the vice dorm leader seemed like a bad idea. Physically knocking him out would be even worse. 

If only he hadn’t panicked when it was first brought up!

“It’s… important to me, yes,” was what Majid decided to answer with, speaking as vague as he could possibly be. 

“Hmmm… I see…” Jamil mused, bringing one of his arms in front of him as if checking the time.

But Majid had never seen him wear a watch before. His eyes widened when he recognized the familiar golden glint of the scarab beetle bracelet around Jamil’s wrist. When did he-?!

Majid almost felt his heart leap out of his throat as he watched his fingers alight upon the two separate halves of the beetle. There was a strange expression on Jamil’s face as he did this. A mixture of disgust and curiosity. “I could have sworn this beetle was whole before. Did I break it or…?”

Seeing him begin to slide the halves toward each other, Majid instinctively lunged at him with an outstretched hand. “WAIT-”

The scarab beetle’s parts came together with a satisfying click of the metal. The entire bracelet began to glow with an intense golden light, and the little beetle beat its wings twice, as if preparing for lift-off, before Majid promptly dissolved into a flurry of sand. 

It took much too long for Jamil to register what just happened. For a good chunk of that time, he thought he had killed Majid and genuinely worried over how he was going to explain this to the headmaster. To say that he was just messing around with some bracelet and somehow ended up murdering his junior in the process probably wouldn’t be a sufficient explanation. There was no body to recover either.

Trying to keep calm, Jamil looked back down at the bracelet. Ah. The scarab beetle had come apart again. He placed his fingers upon the two halves once more. “Maybe if I do this again-”

He was quickly startled out of his thoughts upon hearing a raspy “NO” followed by a series of dry coughs. 

Jamil turned to see Majid kneeling on the ground behind him, his hand gripping at his chest while he continued to cough, hacking up some sand from his throat as he did so. This caused the former to look upon the scene with alarm. “Are you alright?! Did the sand make its way into your lungs? I’ll call for Kaiden to take you over to the infirmary-”

“NOT KAIDEN.” Majid looked up at Jamil with a scowl and a hand twisting even harder at the fabric of his shirt. Anybody but Kaiden. “I’m fine. Just swallowed some sand when I shouted at you earlier. It tasted awful, but I’ll live,” he grumbled.

After making sure that he was mostly okay, Jamil relaxed his shoulders. Ah, good. He didn’t kill him.

But what exactly happened at that moment?!

“Majid, do you have an explanation for this?” he asked, gesturing to the bracelet around his wrist. Seeing him begin to say “no”, Jamil placed his hand on the beetle once more. “If you refuse to explain, I’ll continue to do whatever… this is, “ he added.

This caused Majid to shut up and actually try to come up with a better response. A full minute passed until he finally decided to tell the whole truth.

“I’m cursed.”

“... Come again?”

“It’s not that serious, it’s just…” Majid gave a pained expression, seeming as if he really, really didn’t want to talk about it, before letting out a heavy sigh and standing up. “When I helped out this one guy, he gave me that bracelet along with a couple of other things as payment. Turns out by doing so, he passed both the ownership and the curse that it carried onto me. Whenever you join the two parts like that, I teleport to whoever’s holding the bracelet,” he explained.

“Then the reason it’s whole when it’s with you..”

“Well, I can’t teleport to myself, can I?”

“Of course.” Jamil examined the bracelet more closely, twisting and turning the bangle in the light of the pavilion. The metal was in stunningly perfect condition, showing no scratches, dents, or anything else that would indicate wear and tear. “Did this happen recently?”

“It was… six years ago, I think? Around when I was ten or eleven.”

“Seriously?” Jamil muttered to himself, now removing his hand from the bracelet in an almost fearful astonishment. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought of it as new. It seemed way too unlikely for Majid, whose dorm room floor was littered with similar pieces of jewelry, would have been able to maintain such a flawless condition for the item over the years. This must have been an effect of the curse.

His suspicions were confirmed when Majid spoke up again, noticing how much attention Jamil was giving to his bracelet. “I tried getting rid of it at first. Burning it, throwing it away in the garbage. But then some dumb kid got ahold of it while he was digging through the trash and accidentally summoned me. Had to punch him to get it back. Ah, but we were both kids when that happened, so it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”

“...Yes, of course,” replied Jamil after a moment of hesitation. He looked over at Majid to see how he was feeling about all of this. Compared to before, the boy seemed unnervingly unconcerned when talking about this part of his past. With his hands casually placed in his pants pockets and a glazed look in his eyes, any outsider could have thought they were talking about the weather rather than a potentially dangerous object. “You seem awfully calm for someone who’s cursed.”

He received a shrug in response. “Like I said, it’s not that serious. The only reason I freaked out so much at first was because I didn’t want you to get any weird ideas about it, but I guess we’re past that now. Besides, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Anyway-” Majid reached out his hand with his palm facing upward. “That’s why I keep it with me at all times. Can I have it back now? You know what it does, so it can’t be that useful to you-”

“No, I believe that I can think of some use for this, though.”

“WHAT.”

Jamil smiled at Majid, sending a chill down the latter’s spine. This guy… There was no warmth in his expression. So he really did come up with some weird ideas after all. “This is still your bracelet, so the curse won’t transfer to me, correct?”

Although Majid didn’t quite understand where he was going with this, he nodded in response. “Yeah, but does that mean you’ll give it to me?” he asked.

“No.”

“But you said-!”

“Not yet anyway. I won’t claim ownership over this; I’ll simply borrow it for a while.”

Narrowed eyes. “And how long is ‘a while’?”

Jamil pretended not to hear his question and continued to prattle on. “I’ll allow you one benefit, though. You can stay out here provided that you watch for any intruders and immediately report back to me. After all, this bracelet makes tracking your movements much easier.”

“Intruders?” echoed Majid.

“Thieves, for example. Or assassins.”

“Assassins?! At school? I can understand keeping out guys from other dorms, but isn’t that too extreme?” As soon as these words left his mouth, something else clicked in his head. Scarabia was a dorm known for its resourceful attitude and, even more notably, its wealth. This wealth was provided by none other than the famed heir to the Al-Asim family: Kalim Al-Asim. Considering how generously the boy distributed his riches, it wouldn’t have been hard to get to it, so murder was unnecessary. No, the only thing more valuable than the wealth itself was-

“Is this about Prefect Kalim? Do you really think things will ever get that bad?”

There was a beat of silence before Jamil responded, his hand moving to rest on his chest. “Kalim is the eldest son of a multi-billionaire household; it would only be foolish to assume nothing bad could ever befall upon him, especially at this point. My family has served his for many generations, so it is my duty to keep him safe at all costs. That is all.”

Majid didn’t say much after that, simply agreeing to the rest of Jamil’s terms before walking back to his dorm room for the night. This silence could have been mistaken as a sign of him finally becoming obedient or perhaps moved by Jamil’s loyalty.

However, it was quite the contrary.

Unbeknownst to his senior, he had used his unique magic on Jamil as he was speaking about Kalim. Majid’s Measure of Worth had given him insight into what the vice dorm leader was truly thinking in some notions. As far as Majid could tell, Jamil was telling the truth about his duties and his responsibility for Kalim.

But his intentions were a different story. There was a brewing resentment in Jamil’s carefully chosen words. It wasn’t the first time Majid had felt Jamil’s utter frustration with the dorm leader (really, any normal person would have picked up on it as well), but he hadn’t realized how deep it had truly become.

And it wasn’t pure malice that solely ran through Jamil’s veins either. There was a surprising amount of conflict going on within him, almost as if there was something far greater than basic etiquette and ingrained responsibility that held him back. 

For now the boy’s feelings lay coiled like a sleeping viper deep inside its den. When he would finally come out and strike, however, was a day he hoped would never come.