You could tell that something was up.

Maybe it was stress from his thesis. Maybe he finally got banned from putting permanent marker over words in his parent’s self-help books in the University library. But something was up. You could tell.

He had no urge to tell you, of course. The existence of ExtraOrdinary individuals? Oh, you’d find it absurd. And to even prove it to you, he’d have to tell you that Eli had achieved it by, well…dying in a bathtub and just barely being brought back to life. And he’d have to tell you that the reason he’d been in the hospital was because he’d done the same—intentionally overdosed for a near death experience, although Eli, the conniving bastard, didn’t wait long enough to let him actually die.

And now Eli and his stupid smirk was depriving him of his idea. He wanted to push the limit. He turned a theory into reality when his roommate was too scared to take the risk—and now that they’d proven the theory, he was refusing to help Victor get an NDE. Eli was hoarding all the power to himself, as if Victor were just some sort of sidekick.

And Victor Vale wasn’t a fucking sidekick.

Under Victor’s blank face, he was seething. You could tell. He knew you could tell—you always did, but he wouldn’t address it. You’d get mad at the entire experiment anyway, and that was a whole other kind of headache that he didn’t need right now.