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commonplace2012-08-23 10:54 pm
Picking Up Where We Left Off
How long did I have before Melanie went ballistic and said something? Or before Dr. Sharpe figured out why Melanie was interested in me? How long could I pretend to be a functional adult? Because I sure wasn’t feeling like one.
When I finally got to my apartment, I kicked off my shoes and flopped onto the pull-out bed. I stared at the wall for fifteen or twenty minutes, hoping I could fall asleep and forget it.
No such luck. Eventually I dragged myself back off the bed and started peeling off my work clothes. If I wasn’t going to get a nap, the next best thing was a shower.
Despite my best efforts at waterproofing, showering was still occasionally a fraught activity. I took off my leg easily enough, but the wiring for my eye and hand was too difficult to remove, so I had to do my best to keep them from getting too wet as I sat on the edge of the tub.
The hot water felt good, though, and I felt my back start to unclench. Instead of running in the same tight circles, I let my mind wander through distant topics. Sure, it kept circling around to the question of who to listen to at work and how to handle them both, but it slowed down and took longer to get back to it.
For a moment, I thought I heard footsteps outside, in my apartment.
“Hello?” I called, but no one answered.
I figured I must have imagined it and went back to my shower. I stayed there under the showerhead until the hot water finally ran out.
When I turned the water off, I didn’t hear anything. I stepped out of the shower and toweled off, then changed into a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. I still didn’t hear anything, but I smelled rice cooking and wondered if I’d started dinner in my half-asleep haze.
I stuck my head in the kitchen to check and about jumped out of my skin when I realized someone was standing at my kitchen counter.
And okay, maybe I screamed like a little girl. Just for a second.
Then I realized who it was.
“Jian?”
“Yes, Blaser?”
“What are you doing in my kitchen?”
“Slicing cucumber, at the moment.”
“In the slightly more abstract sense.”
“Making dinner. The selection in your icebox left something to be desired, by the way.”
I sighed. Every reason I’d left came crashing back. And yet I couldn’t fight the feeling that I was glad he was here.
“How did you even get in? It’s not like I left my keys under the mat.”
“Elemental masters and dragon lords don’t generally stress over <i>locks</i>, Robin, and you know I can fly when I choose.” He began arranging the vegetables on a plate. “You were a lot more excited to see me last time I appeared from nowhere out of concern for you.”
“Yeah, well, last time I was in the hospital. Everything was more exciting. Are you hunting me down or something? Why are you here?”
Jian set two bowls of rice on the table along with the vegetables, which I was forced to admit was pretty much the entire contents of my kitchen. The bowls didn’t even match.
“Sit.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Eat.”
“That isn’t one either.”
I sat down anyway, telling myself that it was just because it would be a waste of food if I didn’t. Jian had set the soy sauce bottle next to my bowl and I watched him as I emptied an unhealthy amount into the rice. I watched his face as I did it, and I was rewarded with a tiny smile. I risked a smile back.
“Nice to know some things don’t change, even out here,” Jian said, picking up his own rice bowl and digging in. “I came because I had the impression you were in trouble. I thought I might help.”
“I- How did you hear that?”
“I have kept an eye on you, Robin. I respected your choice to leave but that didn’t mean I stopped caring about you.”
I nodded. “Why now, though? This is just… office drama.”
“There are greater forces than you are aware at work here. I would not see you taken advantage of.”
“Ah, there’s the imperious, possessive dragon I fell in love with,” I said, grabbing a snow pea off the plate.
“I do believe that’s the heedless young man I fell in love with,” he answered.
We ate in silence for several minutes while I waited for him to say something. Nothing was forthcoming, apparently, but it gave me a chance to think.
When I’d left, I’d done it because his nothing land had been driving me crazy. It wasn’t because anything had changed between us. And that was precisely the problem – the fact that I’d grown to hate it there didn’t matter to him. His days went on pretty much uninterrupted by me, his routine unchanged, and he didn’t listen when I told him what I needed.
Smug dragon knows best and all.
But I missed him. And if he was willing to come here, well, that had to mean something. Either he genuinely missed me or he really believed I was in great danger.
Either was, I figured I could give him a chance.
I was about to say so when he started talking. “I had a lot of time to think when you left. Regardless of any power imbalance between us, I can’t treat you like a vassal and expect you to like it.”
I nodded, not wanting to interrupt.
“Besides which, the power imbalance is much smaller than I thought.”
“Oh?”
“When you left, I realized I missed you. You have more power over me than I like to admit. I would like the…” He hesitated. “The opportunity to make up for my mistake.”
Well. That wasn’t something I’d heard before.
“Why now?”
“When it came to my attention that you were in danger, I understood that I couldn’t just wait. I needed to act.”
“I appreciate that.” I hesitated, wanting to choose my words carefully for once. I flexed my off hand, feeling the pull of skin against metal and soothed by it. “Nothing about how I feel for you has changed. I’ve changed, though, and I think how I feel about myself has changed.”
“Yes, it seems like every time I turn away for a moment, you’ve changed.”
“Us mortals tend to do that.”
Mirrored from Jack-a-dreams.
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