"Xavi..."
A dream. Had to be. No one called him that anymore. Not since—
"Xavi..."
The voice tugged at him, sweet and insistent. But this sleep was deeper and more peaceful than anything he'd known in years. Maybe ever.
"XAVI!"
Xavier's consciousness surfaced reluctantly. His eyelids felt weighted, refusing to open as his mind catalogued unfamiliar sensations: soft sheets against his skin, morning light warming his face, and... pressure across his hips?
He cracked one eye open. Then both shot wide.
Calypso straddled him, her silver hair cascading around them like a curtain catching the morning sunlight. Her bathrobe had slipped off one shoulder completely, barely containing what little it covered. Her hands pressed into the mattress on either side of his head, effectively caging him.
The angle of the sun through the window caught her just right, rimming her silhouette in gold. Dust motes danced in the light around her like tiny stars.
Xavier forgot to breathe.
He'd seen beauty before. He'd made a career of it—both appreciating and exploiting it. But this... this transcended the physical. For one suspended moment, he understood why ancient people built temples.
"Morning, sleepyhead."
Xavier's mind raced through possible scenarios. Had they...? No, he'd definitely remember that. Was this some divine test? A game? A dream still?
He decided not to question it. Questioning good things was how you lost them.
"Morning."
Calypso shifted her weight, adjusting her position, and her eyes widened suddenly. She glanced down between them, then back to his face with a delighted gasp.
"Well, good morning to you as well little Xavi."
The moment shattered. Xavier's expression flattened.
"That's big Xavi to you." He propped himself up on his elbows, face inches from hers. "What do you want, Calypso?"
"Well, it's 7 AM! We have five hours to get ready." She bounced slightly, making Xavier wince. "And I'm hungry!"
Xavier dropped back onto the pillow and rolled away, dislodging her to the side. He pulled the blanket over his shoulder.
"Make your own food. I thought goddesses didn't need to eat."
"But I do now!" Her finger poked his shoulder blade. "This is your fault, you know. Being stuck in this mortal-adjacent body means I need mortal things. Like food." Another poke, harder. "You need to feed your beautiful goddess!"
"Zzz…"
"Zzz…"
Xavier responded with exaggerated snoring sounds, complete with a theatrical sleep-mumble.
The mattress shifted as Calypso stood up. He felt her weight leave the bed, followed by the soft padding of feet.
"Fine! I'll make the food myself!"
She paused at the doorway, one hand on the frame. Her hair caught the light again, silver turned to liquid platinum.
"How hard can mortal food even be to make?"
The door closed behind her with unnecessary force. Xavier's eyes snapped open immediately. A chill ran down his spine—the same feeling he used to get before a job went sideways.
He almost got up. Almost.
"Eh, it'll be fine," he muttered, nestling deeper into the pillow. "She's a goddess, after all."
Ten minutes passed in blissful silence before Xavier's nose detected something... concerning.
Smoke.
Not the pleasant kind associated with cooking. The something-is-definitely-burning kind.
"Shit." He kicked off the blankets and grabbed pants from the floor, pulling them on as he moved toward the door. He didn't bother with a shirt.
In the hallway, the smell intensified. A high-pitched beeping joined the olfactory assault—the smoke alarm doing its job admirably.
"No, no, no! You stupid mortal contraption!"
Calypso's voice carried from the kitchen, accompanied by the clatter of something metallic hitting the floor.
Xavier rounded the corner and stopped dead. The kitchen looked like a war zone. Every cabinet door hung open. Flour dusted most surfaces like fresh snow. Eggshells littered the counter. Something dark and smoking occupied a pan on the stove, while a pot on another burner boiled over, hissing as liquid hit the heating element.
In the center of this chaos stood Calypso, wielding a wooden spoon like a weapon, her bathrobe now supplemented by an apron that read "Kiss the Cook" in glittery letters. Her hair had partially escaped its bun, and a streak of what might have been pancake batter decorated one cheek.
"What did you do?" Xavier asked, his voice barely audible over the smoke alarm.
Calypso whirled toward him. "I'm cooking! Obviously!"
"You're burning down my apartment. Obviously." He crossed to the stove and switched off both burners. The smoking pan he moved to the sink, where it made an alarming sizzling sound upon contact with water.
"I was making pancakes," she explained, gesturing toward the charred remains. "And coffee. And eggs. And toast."
"All at once?" Xavier grabbed a dish towel and waved it under the smoke detector until the beeping stopped.
"I was hungry for everything! How was I supposed to know mortal cooking takes so much attention?"
Xavier surveyed the damage more carefully. The "pancakes" resembled hockey pucks. The coffee pot contained a sludge that might qualify as a biological weapon. And the eggs...
"Did you put eggshells in with the eggs?"
"Of course not." Calypso crossed her arms. "They fell in. Accidentally."
Xavier leaned against the counter. His expression hovered somewhere between amusement and exasperation.
"I processed millions of souls," Calypso continued, waving her wooden spoon for emphasis. "I designed a revolutionary reincarnation system. I can calculate probability matrices across multiple dimensions simultaneously. But this..." She gestured at the ruined breakfast. "This is unnecessarily complicated."
"It's really not."
"Then you do it!"
"I was planning to. Before you decided to stage a culinary apocalypse."
Calypso's lower lip jutted out in a pout that could probably start wars in ancient times. "I was trying to be nice."
"By burning down my kitchen?"
"By making you breakfast! Because we have to go to the academy soon. We're students now."
Xavier, who had been filling a glass with water, paused mid-motion. "We?"
"Students!" Calypso brightened, disaster apparently forgotten. "At Catalyst Hunter Academy. Class 1-D. Orientation starts at noon."
Xavier set the glass down carefully. "And when, exactly, were you planning to tell me you were a student as well?"
"Just now!" She smiled brilliantly. "I was going to serve you delicious pancakes and say, 'Surprise! We're going to school together!' But the pancakes betrayed me." She glared at the smoking ruins in the sink.
Xavier pinched the bridge of his nose. "Calypso, you can't just enroll in—"
"Oh, but I did! Isn't it perfect? We need to stay close because of this whole tethering situation, so now we have a perfect excuse. Same class, same schedule..." She clasped her hands together. "We can be school buddies!"
Xavier stared at her, processing. Part of him wanted to be angry at the presumption, at having his life rearranged without consultation. But another part—the part that had spent a lifetime adapting to whatever the world threw at him—was already changing his plans.
Catalyst Academy was the premier institution for Awakened training. Graduates had connections, opportunities, and resources that independent hunters could only dream of. And if he was stuck with a divine babysitter anyway...
"Fine," he said finally. "But I'm making breakfast."