That weekend at the cabin was surreal to the point of being -- well -- magical. A strange lovely trip or a dream and when Eileen wakes up in her soft cushy bed surrounded by its almost-sheer white curtain that diffuses light from city at night and then creates an airy, ethereal glow around her when the sun rises. She squeezes her pillow gleefully as consciousness begins to let in the sound of an airy, folksy song that is actually sung by Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara. It's sweet and hokey and for a moment she just curls up there, hugging her pillow and smiling and snuggling back against Dane's chest, further into his arm, the reality of which does not for one moment suggest to her half-sleeping mind that anything at the cabin actually happened.
She yawns, and only smiles more when it all settles in: yup. They went to a cabin and he played with the stars and they went fishing and she swam and she took some E and wandered around and they played Two Truths And A Lie and she won but really they both won because the whole point of the game is to know each other better and then they made -- something that yes, yes, she would describe as -- sweet love and they have slept together THREE WHOLE TIMES NOW.
Eileen sniffs deeply and slips her hand under his hand, wherever it has fallen. She squeezes it gently until she's certain he is at least slightly awake and whispers that she's going to go to work soon. He doesn't have to get up. He can stay here if he likes and she'll leave him a key. But she's already wriggling away as carefully as she can because if he's drowsy she has no intention of making him alert because it just seems so nice to think of him lazing away in her bed even though that also
makes her want to strip them both naked and -- well, to tell the truth, just rub their bodies together, slowly and warmly and lazily the way you should on sunny mornings.
So she gets up, and she goes to take a quick-quick shower in her tiny closet of a bathroom, brushing her teeth with her ladybug toothbrush because she'll get a matcha green tea thing and a pastry at The Balcony Cafe anyway. Eileen transforms, whether Dane is up to see it or not: she straightens her hair, which takes for. ev. er. She pulls the top half back and behind her ears, twisting the locks and clasping them in a barette across the back of her head. She puts on light makeup, focused mostly on her eyes, and she dresses conservatively, in dark colors, which add a healthy 5 years to her appearance. Her heels aren't too high. She has a small purse and blazer that matches her skirt folded over her arm when she's ready to leave, and on that blazer is a little magnetic name plate with her name, title and department next to the seal of the Art Institute of Chicago:
Eileen Cotton
Assistant Coordinator, Architecture & Design Society
Architecture & Design
Maybe he drives her to work. Or sleeps in her bed and she takes transit the way she always does. Either way, or in some entirely other way, Eileen seems very happy.
--
The next time they get together is a couple of weeks later, early June, and they've been quiet. He's a little more communicative this time, if only to avoid getting smacked seven times in a row. Then he asks her for coffee, and:
I'm in SF!
A few moments later his phone chimes again, not with another text but with a picture of Eileen outside, in sunglasses, giving him a double thumbs-up with her mouth in a wide open HEEEEY! sort of grin. Her fingernails are powder blue. The picture is crooked. Behind her is wide open sky, a grassy lawn, some trees: a backyard.
And a third message, a third chime:
Visiting family! Back on the 16th!
He gets other pictures during that time, at random. Sometimes it is sushi. One time it is a picture of her and her brother Colin standing on what looks like either a deck or a gazebo. Colin is blowing bubbles. Eileen is standing nearby in a blue flannel, looking rumpled and analytical, like they are in some kind of competition and she's sizing up her opponent's technique. That is probably not what is on her mind, but WHO KNOWS. She sends him a picture of a page in a book, of all things, only that page is photography of stars and that picture is of Sirius and its orbiting white dwarf and her message is a forlorn little:
miss you :(
Hell: one photo later that same day is of a backgammon board. Its message states PWNING DAD'S FACE AT BACKGAMMON WHAT WHAT so she must be okay despite the sad-face.
--
So on Saturday the 16th, it's something like nine-fifty-two at night, Dane's phone rings. Rings! Like an actual call is coming in. Which it is. From Eileen.
"I'm back!" she says, as soon as she gets him on the phone, chipperly. Where is she? Oh, she's on the plane still. "We just landed. There are like four billion people between me and the... bridge-thingy from the plane to the...the whassit. The terminal. But we're all standing up!" she sounds positively gleeful about this. "Can you come see me? You don't have to. I'm just back and we could have coffee or something. We should hang out and stay up all night and if you don't like going out -- you don't seem like you like going out, sorry, but you don't -- we can hang out on my balcony or something or go to a playground. Do you want to?"
There's a long enough pause that she seems like she's going to let him talk, then: "Please say you want to, okay?"
Thomas DaneEileen's apartment is a tiny cove of miracles. It's miraculous that so much fits into so little space. It's miraculous how the city lights are transformed into something diaphanous and lovely by the bedcurtains. It's miraculous how dawn turns everything rosy and warm, and
it is miraculous when, before Dane's sleepy eyes, Eileen makes herself someone completely different. Someone conservative and professional and ... well. Not at all the sort of girl you'd expect to live in a tiny, magical shoebox. And go on spontaneous fishing trips. And be charmed by tiny stars dancing around her lover-to-be's fingertips.
He reads her nametag as she stretches over him to reach something on those shelves behind the bed: actually lifts the nametag with a finger and squints his bleary eyes to see it. Assistant Coordinator. He thinks it sounds rather impressive. "I love the art institute," he murmurs, yawning. "I had no idea you worked there."
A little later, he is schlumping out of bed and into last night's clothes. Some of them, anyway. Enough that he won't be arrested on the streets. "I'll drive you," he insists, when she says she can just take public. "I'd love to stay in your little nest, but I'll drive you."
And so he does. They part in front of the Art Institute, their tender little goodbye kiss watched over by those stone lions on their pedestals.
--
The next time he contacts her, she's in San Francisco. And she's sending him pictures, and one of them makes his heart twinge, but most of them make him laugh and maybe roll his eyes just a little. In a good, fond way.
--
His phone rings the night of the 16th. This is a rare occurrence, which perhaps surprises no one. Dane, with his rather forbidding demeanor, can't really be expected to be popular. It's so rare that he's briefly bewildered by the sound, and then recognizes it. Picks up:
"Thomas Dane."
-- she's back! He's confused. Where is she? Oh: on the plane still. Just landed. Standing! Come see her?
"I'd -- "
-- but she goes on, she excuses him preemptively, she tells him he's sort of a recluse, she says they can hang out on her balcony or go to a playground. He's a little stunned. He starts to answer again:
"I'd -- "
-- but no. Please say-- she says, and this time, he interrupts her:
"I want to." Very firm, that. Very Thomas Dane, Adeptus Majoris. And beneath that: very subtly, very slightly Thomas Dane, who isn't all sorrow and flame, who is sometimes -- secretly -- still hope and starlight and crippled, cramped tenderness. "I'll come pick you up right now. Which terminal?"
--
So it's about ten thirty at night. Traffic was light on the I-90. O'Hare is getting quiet for the night, though not quite shut down yet. Dane's Audi pulls to the curb and the driver-side door pops open. The man himself comes curbside, a rather nondescript man all told: moderate height, perhaps a hair taller than average, though he carries himself with a slight stoop to his shoulders; moderate build, perhaps a touch on the thin side if anything. Moderate brown hair in a totally ordinary cut. Dark, lambent eyes, though. And a perpetual quasi-frown as he scans the crowd which, at the sight of Eileen,
miraculously turns into a smile that he is quite obviously controlling, lest it turn into an outright grin. Perhaps it's not her apartment that is a cove of miracles after all. Perhaps it's just her.
eileenYes, getting her keys necessitates picking them up from a bit of glazed pottery that sits beside an all-white Buddha on Eileen's built-in shelves, and getting to those shelves necessitates crawling back up onto the bed in her skirt and blouse and heels and leaning over Dane who she is trying very hard not to completely wake up, but he plays with the nametag on her jacket and says he had no idea. She wrinkles her nose at him, squinting her eyes, pursing her lips, essentially screwing up her whole face, and says:
"I thought I told you. Well: I work there!"
Which she is, especially getting out of an Audi in front of her workplace not so very long later. She's even a few minutes early. Dane kisses her in the car, and it always surprises her when he kisses her, delights her: she is leaning over to hug him and thank him again for the weekend and the cabin and the fish and all of it because it was really really really wonderful, and he kisses her. Eileen breathes in at the feel of it: of lips on her lips, of Dane's lips on her lips, the warmth he contributes to the process, the way he makes her heart start trip-hammering like he's flicking a switch.
She's smiling, eyes alight and lips pursed, when they draw apart, and she kisses him again. This second one is quick and as darting as a tropical fish, and then she's off, smoothing her skirt when she gets out of the car and slipping into her jacket as she heads inside.
--
It's nearly a month before she actually sees him in person again, and that's when she's hanging out outside of the terminal at O'Hare. All that hair of hers is bound up in a bun atop her head and it's messy and youthful. She is wearing flip-flops. She is toting a roll-along hard-shell suitcase that pictures a field of multi-colored tulips beneath a blue sky and puffy clouds. There is also a cross-body bag hanging at her hip, the strap and the purse all of a single piece. She is wearing very wrinkled blue shorts with white stars on them, these soft things that are just shy of being boxers -- actually, no, those may be boxers. Okay. Her shirt is an enormous silver thing that seems more like a pillowcase with some advantageous holes cut into it, it's so loose and shapeless and hanging off her shoulder where he can see a tank-top strap and all of this is schlubby and pajama-esque and she's pulling it off like it's couture.
That's her, standing outside in wait, looking this-a-way and that-a-way annnnd this-a-way again and AUDI HELLO. She bounces on her feet and then comes his way as quick as her feet can go, and it's not so busy now that they are being irritatedly waved on by one of the people working there but still it's a lot of cars and people and so when she stops beside him and wraps both of her arms around his waist and squeeeeeezes him it's only for ten seconds instead of one hundred seconds.
"Hiiiii!" she's saying, beaming, tears in her eyes out of nowhere from the sheer rush of kaleidescopic emotion. She breathes in very deeply, her face pressed into his stomach, then they really have to scoot: put the suitcase in the trunk and put Eileen in the passenger seat and put the car into gear gogogogogo.
Thomas DaneWell. The traffic cops want him to gogogogogo. Eileen might want him to gogogogogo too, just because she is bright and frenetic and so very Dynamic that she practically defines the term. But Dane, damn it, has his dignity to preserve, and after that sudden onrush of a hug, after lifting Eileen's suitcase into the trunk, he actually goes back around the car at a purposeful-but-not-hurried pace. He pretends not to see the waving person. He puts the car in gear and puts down the handbrake and -- after checking carefully over his shoulder and in the mirrors -- pulls steadily into traffic.
There's no conversation for a while as he focuses on driving. On changing lanes, on finding the I-90. When they're comfortably on the road -- on the same road, for that matter, that they took back into the city when they came back from camping -- Dane reaches behind Eileen's seat and pulls out a bottle of water. Hands it to her mutely.
"So, San Francisco, huh?" The conversational opener sounds a little stilted even to his ears, but he can't help it. He's not very good at this sort of thing. Picking up his ... friend/lover at the airport. After a month of not seeing her. Or maybe just: having a normal conversation.
eileenWhat Eileen wants... well yes, fine, okay: dynamic. She wants to see him and then she does and so she wants to hug him and so she does and she wants him to hug her back and maybe he does but it's okay if he just awkwardly pats her back or her head or stands there at a loss because all of those would be Dane and she just wants to hug Dane, mainly. And then she wants to pull down his pants and unbuckle his belt and give him a blowjob which startles even her. Startles! Because she's perfectly sensual and sexual and they're both quite aware of the fact that she's Very Attracted to him, but it's not a thought that has ever entered her mind before: greeting a friend/lover at the airport and promptly dropping to her knees. Eileen puts it away, because there are myriad reasons not to follow that desire to its enactment, but there are also myriad questions she has to ask herself around having the desire in the first place.
Never let it be said that Eileen isn't thoughtful. She's extremely thoughtful. And considerate. And tries so hard to be kind that killing a fish made her break down in heart-wrenching sobs.
So it's a rather thoughtful and less frenetic Cultist who scoots her butt into the seat of the Audi, slips her feet from her flip-flops, and curls up in the passenger seat. She is overwhelmingly tired all of a sudden, or maybe just cuddly -- she's still working that out, which it is, or if it's both, or if it's a sine wave of one to the other -- when Dane hands her that bottle of water. Her eyes brighten as she takes it. "Thank you!" she says, twisting off the cap to take a few long drinks.
Oh, he's so awkward. She grins. "Yup. Vacation time to visit the fam. We had sort of a mini-reunion, I visited some friends, all that. There's this huge -- like huge -- Cultist collective out there. I mean they work a lot with Akashics and Dreamspeakers and even Verbena --"
like the Verbena are so different from the Cultists, some Hermetics might say,
and yes they fucking are, Eileen might say, because the Euthanatoi have a closer mindset to the Cultists than most Verbena do,
"-- but they have a lot of crashpads and festivals and they're all over the whole place just like... feeding on the historical energy there and creating new energies and some of them do this thing where they magic-sneak themselves over to Alcatraz and like, steep themselves in the spirit-memory of incarceration and injustice and violence and fear and all that stuff so they will embrace and appreciate freedom that much more. We didn't do that when I was out there, I was mostly with family and all, but I spent some time with them and made a bunch of friends who might come visit later, like some are coming for Lolla and might crash with me."
Not tired anymore then. She beams at him. "Isn't June, like, the best month? It's beautiful. Pretty much everywhere." Then again, knowing Eileen: all the time is beautiful everywhere.
Thomas DaneCultists and Verbenas and Dreamspeakers and Akashics in San Francisco. Dane's cynical side is just so very surprised that he can't even vocalize it. Eileen might catch a tiny little smirk on his face, though, for which she would be wholly justified for thwacking him, though perhaps not seven times.
She tells him what she's been up to. He points to the cupholder in the dash when she starts looking for a place to set the bottle. They pass under highway signs pointing out Chicago, Rockford, Milwaukee. They take the branch leading to Chicago.
"It's been pretty hot here," Dane says, thoughtfully. "I guess it's been nice, though. Who's back home for you?"
eileen"This!" she says, aghast. "This is not hot. You just wear too many clothes and don't drink enough smoothies."
She doesn't smack him. A bit of wryness at a bunch of hippies and tree-huggers and medicine men and meditating monks in San Francisco is nothing she hasn't experienced. She just smirks back at him, exaggeratedly, wrinkling up her nose like an angry squirrel and waggling her face at him to boot.
In actuality, she doesn't set the bottle down. She hugs it to her chest, all curled up on the passenger seat like it's okay to put your feet on furniture. Which it totally is, were you raised in a museum? Ugh.
"I just said! Family and friends and people from school and Cultists and all that." Eileen leans over and quite suddenly but quite uncomplicatedly inhales him, taking an enormous deep breath and then releasing it softly with a shiver. She puts her chin on his upper arm and smiles at his earlobe. "How have you been?"
Thomas Dane"Well, I meant -- "
see: he wanted to say he meant who was this amorphous friends-and-family of hers. Her mom? Her dad? Brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents... he doesn't get that far, though. He starts and suddenly she's right there, startling him with her sudden proximity and her vibrance and her chin on his arm. His bicep stiffens a little in her grasp, then relaxes.
"I've been well," he says, conservatively, giving it some thought before he continues: "The Chantry had an assignment for me last week. I found myself a little surprised to discover you weren't my partner. And a little disappointed. I think I missed your incessant chatter." -- and he smiles, faintly, to show this is a joke.
He doesn't complain about her feet on his upholstery. It's leather: as much as people freak out over leather getting dirty, the truth is it's actually fairly easy to wipe clean. Unless you bleed on it or something. Then all bets are off.
"Have you had dinner yet?"
eileenWell of course her mother and father and at least one of her brothers and maybe other people who knows but who wants to hear about a mini-reunion or her highschool friends? Eileen doesn't assume he wants to hear about that, though sometimes she thinks he might want to hear about a million other things. Or maybe it's just so normal to her: family, friends, brothers, parents, whatever. That's just life stuff, but she forgets that his daughter is dead and his wife is... wherever she went. It's not normal to him.
"I had peanuts," she says brightly. "And a coffee. And a little thing of Jameson. And then some more peanuts."
This, after everything else. Then she circles back around, after taking another drink of water: "What was the assignment? Who was your partner? Did you see Charlie at the chantry? Is he still growing the little paradox-plant from your hand? Oh! Did you know that you can bind a person's soul -- their essence or pattern or whatever word Hermetics use for it -- into objects against their will?"
Thomas Dane"I'm not too fond of peanuts," Dane says, which is of no consequence at all except: well. It's one more thing she didn't know about him before that she does now.
And then:
"It was a cookiecutter treasure hunt. I was paired with a Dreamspeaker. Totally incomprehensible fellow. I think I was just there to provide firepower, no pun intended. In the end I wasn't strictly necessary. We were in and out in under an hour."
Even in profile, she can see his mouth curl, slight as it is. "I've seen him around," he says. "And yes, he's still tending to that bizarre thing. I keep waiting for it to grow fangs and eat him alive, but so far so good."
Quirk. A sidelong glance. "I've heard of it. What makes you bring it up?"
eileen"I'm not either. I was just hungry." She pauses, thinking, then musing: "I like cashews and almonds and I like butter pecan ice cream but that maybe doesn't count. I think everyone likes cashews though. That's why they're so expensive."
Eileen reaches over and puts her hand on his leg. That's where her hand is while he's driving and telling her about the treasure hunt and the Dreamspeaker and Charlie and the plant that is not growing fangs but, Eileen might suggest, probably likes classical music. She isn't stroking him off. She isn't sliding her hand slowly upward and shuddering when she finally touches him. She's not doing a damn thing, in fact, though her touching him at all was probably startling. It was a bit out of nowhere, her hand coming to rest on top of his thigh. Also: it's completely awkward. Since she's not massaging him and she's not just resting her hand there like an old lover, there's an inherent tension to it that vibrates under her skin, makes her heart thud harder if not faster, makes her feel curious indeed, which is why she keeps it there.
It's out of nowhere, and startling, and awkward, and curious, and it feels about as poignant as holding hands.
"I was doing research while I was in California," she says, looking at her hand and her chipped powder-blue nail polish. "And as it turns out, William Wentworth the First wrote a treatise on it like a hundred years ago,"
which may mean 100 years ago or may be Eileen's typical hyperbole. She looks from her hand to his face. "I don't know what happened to William Wentworth the First, but he wrote a whole book about pattern-binding. It was all very abstract and talking about spirits and stuff, but I read some excerpts and dude, it is completely clear that he was talking about binding people. Even Awakened people. If I had to guess, I'd guess that William Wentworth the Third's grandfather got himself blacklisted pretty hard after writing something like that and actually showing it around to other mages."
Eileen shrugs. "I wasn't looking for stuff about his grandfather, just nosing around about dubya-dubya three, and sort of stumbled onto it. And by 'I read some excerpts' I mean that it is really hard to read a Hermetic book from ridiculously stupid long ago about something that freaky-deaky while the room is full of ganja and someone is trying to paint your toes." Not toenails.
A beat. "It's really ticklish. And cold."
Thomas DaneThat hand on his leg doesn't make him jump, but perhaps the possibility is there beneath his skin. A tightening of that muscle group. A prickling awareness in his skin. It is awkward and it is startling and neither of them are moving, they're both like deer in the headlights of What Happened Last Time.
Then Dane takes his hand from the wheel. She might think he's about to shift her hand carefully and unsubtly back to herself, but -- then his hand simply covers hers. And the awkwardness eases just a little.
A moment later, an entirely different tension ripples through Dane. He frowns, those dark fire's-heart eyes of his glowering through the windshield.
"Why am I completely unsurprised that Wentworth's grandfather was involved in that sort of thing?" It's a rhetorical question. He's quiet a second. "It worries me a little that you were digging into his past. It makes me paranoid that word might get back to him somehow. It's bad enough that you were there with me that day. I don't want you to become a target."
eileenWhat Happened Last Time was that Dane nearly mauled Eileen alive in that bed in the cabin. And even when he recoiled from mauling her, he brought her off so... sensually, so erotically, that she hasn't forgotten a moment of it. Nor has she forgotten the way he breathed in and rubbed his face the morning after when she was stretching on the bed or telling him to look for her panties. Nor has she forgotten how very nice it was to wake up to him three mornings in a row, each one with his arm around her. Or how his lips feel, even if it surprises her every time he kisses her.
On the mouth. Or any old place.
All that is to say: of course she's thinking about it, stuck on it, stuck on him and conveniently forgetting her worries or uncertainty that came about in a diner over pie when she was like hey I don't wanna be with anyone but you and the thought of you being with someone else makes me freak out a little and he was like hey it's cool if you're with other people I JUST WANT YOU TO BE FREE and she was like wait what I kinda want you to freak out a little too WAIT I DON'T WANT YOU TO FEEL BAD LIKE THAT and she was kinda augh and confused for a while.
Why bother thinking about all that? Well, obsessing over it. When she's been high she's thought about all that. She's considered it. She hasn't run from it, she just... chooses when to run towards something else for a while.
Eileen lifts her fingers up and laces them with his from underneath, smiling. The song The Ants Go Marching pops into her head out of nowhere, but she refrains from humming it aloud.
"I wasn't digging into his past," she insists, "I was just looking up stuff. You don't get a magical alert every time someone magic-Googles your name, do you?"
A beat. "You don't, do you? That's kinda overboard, Thomas."
She scoots over on her seat, a little closer to him all over again. Her tone is peaceful. "If I'm a target, I'll be a fast-moving one. Plus, I'm kind of a badass. Did you see the destruction I was wreaking on my father at backgammon? Wentworth won't know what hit him."
Another beat. "If we play backgammon." Brightly: "Which I would suggest, as a healthy alternative to a duel."
Thomas Dane"I don't," he assures her -- insisting a little because he doesn't want her to think he was paranoid or something. "But I have colleagues who very likely do. So it's possible.
"And," he adds, wry, "somehow I doubt Wentworth would find that an acceptable alternative. -- Hey, do you want to come back to my place?" This comes sort of out of the blue. "It's not a playground and it's not your balcony, but it does have a balcony."
eileenShe grins. She teased, he bit. She wants to hug him, but he's driving. So she'll wait. She'll hug him again later and think about this very moment, looking at him in profile, looking at that dimple that so rarely becomes visible because he so rarely smiles enough to draw it out, and how he insisted that he's not paranoid, he's not! And she believed him, utterly, and wanted to hug him anyway because... because, because. Because he's Thomas.
Out of the blue, which shares a border with whatever color they're in now while they talk about horrific practices from hundred-year-old Hermetic documents and so is an easy transition for Eileen to make:
Hey, do you want to come back to m--
"Yes."
y place? It's not a playground and it's not your balcony, but it does have a balcony.
Eileen is nodding after her interjection to the affirmative. "Yes. Yes I do. Also my balcony is technically maybe more like a fire escape."
She breathes in deep and her hand is sliding down from the top of his leg to the inside of it, a firm pressure that indicates the resistance it takes not to do anything else, just as her withdrawing her hand after that indicates the same.
"We can go now," as though her ready-for-whatever-ness weren't something he could probably rely on pretty easily, "we don't have to go back to my place first. I don't have a cat or dog or fish or anything. I got some of those air plants that live in little terrariums and don't need much water, though. They're awesome."
Thomas DaneAs with so many things out of Eileen's mouth, Dane isn't entirely sure what she refers to when she talks about air plants in little terrariums that don't need water. That makes little sense to him, and so he chalks it up to Eileen and just leaves it be. There are too many things, typically, in any given sentence she speaks for him to respond to them all. He picks and chooses.
"Technically maybe like a fire escape, huh?" he echoes, that repressed little smile of him turning smirk-like for a moment. He glances at her again, sidelong. She is close to him. He kisses her between her eyebrows, spontaneously. "Well, my balcony is the real deal. But I think your apartment, and its fire escape, are perfectly charming nonetheless."
Her hand runs to the inside of his thigh. She hears him take a small sip of air. Then his hand tightens on hers -- it's hard to tell whether it's meant as a fond squeeze or a gentle deterrence. Either way, she's drawing back a moment later and he's looking again at her, a brief glance that mingles gratitude and disappointment.
"Almost there," he tells her, though she hasn't asked.
--
He lives, as she might recall, in Lincoln Park. Not far from the zoo, actually, and certainly not far from that enormous, oceanic lake. This late, the water is black; the far side is too far away for any lights to reflect across the water. There are boats and ships out there, though, tiny pinpricks of light on the black. She would be able to see them later if she looked out his windows. Off his balcony.
They park in a small, cramped lot beneath the building. It takes real skill, or at least a lot of practice, to wedge the Audi in between his two neighbors in one try. Both of them have to turn their bodies sideways to squeeze out of the car. Dane pops the trunk and pulls Eileen's luggage out, and he insists on carrying it or pulling it along for her.
The building is neither the tallest nor the newest nor the fanciest in this area. It is nice, though: an early-90s affair of glass and concrete, with elevators that at least make a reasonable attempt at luxury with their hardwood panels and muted lighting. They ride directly up from the garage, Dane swiping a keycard to get up to the residential floors. He lives on one of the uppermost levels, though not the very top. The hallway is quiet. He's quiet too, taking her down the hall and around a short corner to his door. 2105, his unit number.
"We can order some delivery," he says as he opens his door and pushes it wide for her to precede him. "Do you have a preference?"
His apartment isn't terribly large. It's not miniscule either. It sits on the corner, one wall looking out over the lake, the other looking south to the lofty towers of the city. There's a nice kitchen, a single bedroom. A guest half-bathroom and another bathroom inside the bedroom. Also, a small living room, where he has a single lonely couch and a flatscreen TV that looks very, very rarely used.
And a treadmill. For those days when it's just too damn cold to jog along the lake.
eileenAt some point she will take him back to her sunny cove of miracles and show him the miraculous air plants that only grow roots for stability, that live and breathe and breed like any other plant but do so without soil. She'll show him the blown-glass ornaments with open sides that she has put a bit of gravel and a bit of moss and tillandsia into and how she has also adorned these little terrariums with miniature rain boots and garden tools because fairies.
And it will be hard to tell if she actually believes in fairies or not.
Kissed between the brows, Eileen scrunches up her face but it actually makes her glow inside, warmth spreading from the center of her chest outward, everywhere, still she's pretty sure she's glowing golden and soft in the car. Maybe that's why she touches him like that, aching and not bothering to conceal her aching. She draws back though, as she does, and soon enough they're in his parking lot.
She carries her shoulder bag and he telescopes the handle of her tulip-covered suitcase. There's not much need to insist; Eileen seemed to forget she had the thing until Dane went to take it from the trunk. "Oh!" she says, seeing him wheel it along. "Thank you!" And carries her water bottle up with her, wiggling in place from side to side to some music in her head as they ascend in the elevator. She looks everywhere, at everything: the sort of lights they use for his elevator buttons, the ceiling, the paneling, all of it.
"I forget what you do for a living," she says, which isn't really the same as asking, since it actually sounds very much like she's not concerned about discovering it, or rediscovering it. She beams when he mentions delivery. "We could get Thai food! And there's this place called Insomnia that will deliver cookies, Thomas. They come in like, a pizza-ish box. It's so coo--hey!"
They are at 2105, and going into 2105, and she is going in ahead of him, darting into the darkness. She turns in place in the middle, looking at everything, lights on or off, then smiles at him. "No model airplanes!" Which she knew. She was right about that one.
Thomas Dane"My income tax return says I'm a self-employed private consultant," Dane says, "which is an evasive way of saying I get paid by various parties for my services. I get most of my compensation directly from the Order and the local Chantry, but the Sons of Ether pay fairly well too. The Dreamspeakers, not so much. And the Akashics keep trying to pay me in so-called artifacts that I'm pretty sure are worthless, and probably fake."
There's a wry sort of smile on his face as he hangs up his keys, takes off his shoes. She's darting into his condo, looking every which way. He flicks a light on for her. She discovers he has no model airplanes. He quirks an eyebrow.
"Did you really think I had model airplanes?"
eileenThat makes Eileen sad. She seems like she might say something: her mouth is screwed up, lopsided, uncomfortable. Her hands rest on the front strap of her bag. He asks if she really thought --
"No," she says. "Just. I was thinking about our game by the lake is all."
Thomas DaneTurning away from the minutiae of getting home, Dane frowns as well. "Did I say something?"
eileenHer mouth's corners are turned down. It's not a natural, normal-seeming expression. She wrinkles her nose a little, which takes the oh my god what is happening edge off a bit.
"Just... how much people pay you. And like. How it kinda sounded racist. Only Tradition-ist. It's the most stereotypical Hermetic thing I've heard come out of your mouth and it was weird. And then it was like you forgot... playing with me and talking to me and stuff. Which is sad!" she says, her eyebrows going up, her shoulders going up and then down, despite the brightness of her tone.
Thomas DaneAll of which leaves Dane awkward, at a loss. They are across the room from each other, but even if they weren't, he wouldn't know what to do. He's hardly the type to instigate hugs of apology.
Instead: a small movement of his shoulders, unhappy and unsure. "It's true I was extrapolating trends into generalizations," he says, "which is usually a good way to get proven wrong. But I didn't mean to offend you. As for playing -- I have to admit, I'm not sure... I don't..."
He trails off. There's no easy way to say it: I don't remember what you're talking about.
eileenEileen is stunned and hurt and both of these things are so evident on her face that it's painful to look at. "Two truths and a lie! You don't have model airplanes and you didn't go skydiving for your twenty-first birthday and you once won a hot dog eating contest!"
Thomas DaneThomas
blurts out a laugh.
And then, obviously horrified, he jams a fist over his mouth and tries to make it a cough.
eileenWell, she doesn't storm across the room to start hitting him. She doesn't burst into tears, either. She just looks at him, wanting really bad to join in the laughter even if she doesn't know where it comes from, not wanting to dampen it, but ow and that's why he was asking about who is back home because he doesn't even remember and it's only been a month and ow, ow, ow.
So she looks, again, like she's momentarily frozen in time, elongating this moment like pulling taffy, feeling the crushing ecstasy of pain rooted in things like rejection, which is rooted in Fear, which makes her remember:
-- it is folly to bow to terror.
Eileen sniffs deeply. If she were a stronger time mage that endless loop of a moment would have been an eyeblink for Dane and an eternity for her, but since she's just an apprentice, it's an uncomfortable eternity for him while she stretches that moment with the simple magic of thought and silence and internal reflection. She still looks unhappy, but the fear is leeching out of it, the sharpness of the pain, bringing a shoulder-rounding calm that is
like watching a miracle.
"What do you remember?" she asks softly.
Thomas Dane"I remember the stars." This is no less a blurt than the aborted laugh. It does not stumble on its way out, though, and it is not loud. "I remember waking up with you and feeling happier than I had for a long time, every time."
He thinks a moment. "I remember going to the store because neither of us had remembered to bring food. And fishing. You cried when you killed the fish. We fought too, at some point. You went off and you came back. I'm almost certain you got high as a kite out there. You were back down when you came back, though. We had dinner.
"I can't remember if that was the night when we -- " he leaves off there. The corner of his mouth moves a little, rueful, embarrassed.
eileenThe apartment is small, but they are still several feet away from each other within it. Eileen, he may have noticed in the elevator, left her flip-flops in his car. Or maybe he notices it now, where she stands barefoot in his living room, tendrils of hair hanging around her neck. It's summer outside, but it's cool in here, cool and dry and clean. Everything here sort of fits where it is, except for her tulippy suitcase and her: all of her, messy and barefoot and young and raising her eyebrows at him when he trails off, as if to say and?
But she doesn't wait for an answer before she asks, with genuine concern, her brow furrowing and her head tilting: "Do you have brain damage?"
Thomas DaneDane is caught somewhere between affront and confusion. "No. What?"
eileen"I didn't mean it bad!" she says, looking miserable again. "My brother --"
the one that now she thinks he has forgotten completely,
"My brother Colin?" Eileen repeats, searching his face. "He's brain damaged. From when he was born. I would not say it like an insult or to be mean. Just... you don't remember all this stuff I told you or everything that happened and it wasn't that long ago and I thought maybe something happened to you.
"My grandfather had a minor stroke and he actually recovered really really well but his memory was shot, and Colin takes a long time to get things in his head well enough to remember them, so I wasn't -- I wasn't -- asking that to be rude, I'm just really sad because you don't remember much and if it's because something happened to your brain I don't want to be impatient with you or take it personally but if that's not it then I'm kinda taking it personally."
Eileen takes a breath and holds it a moment. "And it hurts my feelings."
Thomas Dane"I'm not brain damaged." He's repeating himself, he thinks. Great way to prove he doesn't have brain damage. "I just don't have every little detail carved into my memory, Eileen. It's not because it wasn't important to me. I just don't work like that. I like to think I remember the important things. Maybe not every word that was said or what came before what, but -- I remember the important things."
He's repeating again. He exhales. It's almost a sigh. "How about we just sit down and maybe order some dinner?"
eileen"I know," she says quietly. "It just hurts my feelings."
Eileen shrugs. She can tell he's mad. Or annoyed or frustrated or something. But that's the truth of it: he doesn't remember every detail. He remembers the important things, or at least the most important things, the things that are Most Important to him, because that's not how he works. And her feelings don't stop being hurt, because that's not how she works.
She looks down at her toes for a moment when he suggests just sitting down and eating dinner. She looks at him after that moment. "I'm not saying this to be passive aggressive or whatever, but I could also just go home. I know it's gotten weird now, and it seems like it's over nothing, but for what it's worth, I'm not mad at you or anything, I'm just a little hurt and sad and confused. A lot of it is because I have feelings for you, and it makes me pretty sensitive. And it might be better if I leave if that's pissing you off, because then we're just gonna end up in this... sort of loop, where me being sensitive annoys you and you being annoyed makes me sensitive and so on."
Taking a deep breath, she exhales slowly and shakes her head. "I can try to not be so sensitive, but I think that'll only work if you try not to be annoyed about it."
Thomas Dane"I'm not annoyed," Dane says automatically, and then stops. "No; I am annoyed. I'm sorry. But I don't want to be. I just don't want you to read so much into everything. I suppose that's a fundamental difference between us, though. You see all the details, and they all mean something to you. I think that's a good thing. But I'm not ... like that. And it doesn't mean that you don't mean something to me."
All of which is a lot of talking without quite getting to the point. The answer to her question:
"I don't want you to go. I'd rather you stayed. But I would understand if you left."
eileenIsn't that just the major difference between them, in any sense that matters? It's not that he's an Adept and she's an Apprentice. It's not that he's a Hermetic and she's a Cultist. It's not their ages or their upbringings or their histories or jobs. It's not that the very essence of their souls are different. It's this: the heavy, intense spikes of not just his magic but his outlook against the broad, sweeping look she takes at the world, and yes: every detail is so important to her and means so much and is written into her very bones by the time she has finished absorbing it. Including, but not limited to, the fact that he once won a hot dog eating contest, he is not afraid of chickens, his parents are divorced, all of these details only made more important by the fact that he is more important to her.
"I'm sorry I'm sensitive," she says, just like he apologized for being annoyed. Neither of them can truly help it, and neither of them truly want it. She doesn't apologize for reading so much into everything, and her brow flickers with a frown at the way he phrased that, the way it did at his phrasing of every little detail carved into my memory, Eileen. He says it's a good thing a moment later, which might mean he's just talked himself into a circle, negating the statement that he doesn't want her to do it.
Her head tips, because she's confused.
She decides that it doesn't matter if he doesn't want her to read so much into everything, because what he said after is truer: it's a good thing, and she thinks it's a good thing, so it's not like it's going to be something she stops doing in hopes that it will make him like her more.
Even if she really does want him to like her more. So much that it makes her chest ache.
Eileen shrugs, shakes her head. "I don't wanna go, even if things feel kind of awkward right now. I think it would help if you came, y'know. Away from the door a little."
Thomas DaneIt's a little backwards: she's the one standing smack in the center of his living room. He's the one edging around the door, like maybe he'll bolt any second. But then maybe that's the truth. Eileen: open, curious, adoring and attentive of every little detail, everything life has to give her. Dane: closed, cautious, wary and defensive more often than not. Wounded, battered, hardened until his view on life is like the thrust of a spear.
He huffs a humorless little laugh. And he comes away from the door a little, shedding his shoes at last. He turns on a couple lights, too. The night outside, the beautiful skyline and the black lake, are replaced by their reflections in the glass.
"Don't apologize for being sensitive," he says, gruff-quiet. "I'm sorry I didn't remember."
eileenHe's taller than she is by quite a bit, and so far he has only seen her in some heels of a reasonable height when she left for work the last time he saw her, which -- other than in photos from her phone -- was a long time ago. And she looked so tidy and conservative and pretty then. Now she looks messy and wild and pretty. He steps out of his shoes, which makes her smile. The lights come on, and Eileen wonders in the back of her mind if this is a bit of defense, too.
If it is, or if it isn't, she leaves it alone. She smiles up at him as he steps away from the door a little bit, standing right where she is. That smile still in place, she lifts her hand up and beckons to him, palm up and fingers fluid in the air, curling towards herself encouragingly.
Thomas DaneThomas Dane. Dane the bringer of fire. Dane the destroyer of worlds. Dane the socially stunted, Dane the awkward: Dane the wary, looking at her beckoning fingers as though uncertain of what subtle magic she might weave next.
He does come to her, though. After a second of pause, and then with a faint self-deprecating huff. It's almost like he's afraid of her, he thinks, which is of course absurd because
he's not afraid of her. He's afraid of what she might do, what it might mean, what he might want, what that might mean. Above all, he's afraid of attachment, those bonds humans can't help but form, that hurt so badly to break.
Two or three steps take him to her. And he spreads his hands in a little gesture: here I am.
eileenHe is totally scared of her.
She smiles up at him, at his gesture, and then she hugs him. It's not a tight, firm squeeze with her face buried in his stomach as at the airport, over quickly because they needed to load up in the car. She wraps her arms around his waist, rests her head against him, and closes her eyes, and just stays there.
"Shh," she says after a while, though he didn't say anything. She's whispering: "I'm listening to your heart."
And so she is, the steady lub-dub of it that resonates inside of him even when her ear doesn't quite reach his chest. She stays where she is for some time, keeping him in her embrace, until such time is Time and always was the time for her to tell him quietly, not-whisperingly: "I forgive you, Thomas."
Thomas DaneSo there he is: a little stiff in her embrace, uncertain of where this is going or what she's doing or --
and then cautious, cautious, cautiously putting his arms around her. Uncertain. Cautious. Wary, awkward, afraid: these are the words that describe him tonight. Every night, really, beneath that hardened exterior, that stony shell of mighty fire-mage. She tells him what she's doing. She's listening to his heart. "Don't be silly," he starts to say,
but then stops. No. She can be silly if she wants. It's not silly, anyway.
A little later, she does something wholly unsilly, unchildish, unfrivolous. She forgives him, and a sudden sting springs to his eyes. He can't quite explain it, wouldn't be able to put it into words if he tried: how badly he needs to be forgiven. For hurting her. For hurting anyone, everyone, ever. For everything.
His arms tighten suddenly, almost involuntarily: like spasming to protect a wound. He says nothing, but he buries his face in that thick hair of hers.
eileenIt would only be silly to listen to his heart if he didn't have one. He does, though, and she could prove it to him if she moved his hand to his own pulse to make him feel what she's listening to. And she could prove it to him if she could share her ability to see every layer of the universe the way she does, show him what it is like to expand the senses so utterly that you perceive colors without names, hear noise like song, sense the health or the lack thereof in the body, the mind, the soul. She has never made him the subject of how extra her sensory perception really is, because if she did, she might know him better than he knows himself for that moment, and that isn't a right he's given her.
It's not silly to listen. It's Sleeper magic, the simplicity of nature itself, the wonder and awe that comes with it. How incredible, the heartbeat, the mechanics of respiration, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, sunrise and set, the orbit of the moon. How miraculous he is, to be so wounded and so living, so vicious and so tender, so horrific and beautiful. She
loves him a little,
as she loves so many, so much, so entirely.
--
Dane only gradually enfolds her in his own arms, but when she says what she says, his reaction is as spasmodic and automatic as the internal functions of his body keeping him going, the clench of his heart, the bellowing of his breath, the rush of white blood cells to the rescue upon receiving a wound, the release of endorphins and adrenaline rushing through you to try and save you, even when you don't need saving.
He holds her tightly, and buries his face in her messy top-knotted hair.
"It's okay, Thomas," she says quietly into his chest. "It's all okay."
Which is what she's said to him before. The night when they --
Thomas Dane"I'm sorry," he says again, muffled in her hair. Every time he says it he sounds like he means it more. Means more by it. "I'm sorry. I wish I wasn't like this--"
but then he cuts that off because he doesn't even know what that means. He's quiet then, quiet but with a shudder to his breath as he pulls it in. For a long time after he hugs her tight like that, and now he wishes he hadn't turned on those lights because they're so bright, he feels so exposed.
It's a little easier when he closes his eyes. When he turns his face to her and hides, if only for a little while.
eileenShe goes on holding him. What else would she do? Not what else would anyone do, but: this is Eileen. She doesn't tell him to stop saying he's sorry and she doesn't tell him that how he is is just fine and he shouldn't want to be otherwise and she doesn't tell him how to not be like he is. She holds him, her hands on his lower back, lights or no lights, and she thinks maybe she won't go manage to miss seeing him for a whole month because clearly he should see her on a regular basis like therapy and that makes her a little amused and happy but she's not about to say it aloud.
A rather long time passes before they part, and when that time comes, it's initiated by Dane. Drawing a breath or loosening his arms or whatever he needs to do, in the end he starts to ease back and she tips her head back to look up at him, smiling. Gently. A little achingly.
"If you ever wanna talk to me about wishing you weren't like... however you think you are? I'll listen. But if you don't, that's okay too. Sometimes the past needs to be explored, and sometimes the past just needs to be the past."
Thomas DaneIt's quite some time before they part. Before Dane re-gathers what strength he needs to draw that breath,
loosen those arms,
straighten his back. He lets go with something like a sigh, quite different from those exasperated and annoyed sighs a moment ago. A quick scrub of the back of his hand across the tip of his nose, and then --
-- then Dane aches. Furrows his brow, makes him frown that pained frown of his. "Sometimes I wish you wouldn't be so unconditionally giving," he says, which is quite possibly one of the stupidest things he has ever wished for. "It makes me feel like I'm taking advantage of your kindness. I can't imagine that I'm bringing anything to the table that's worth what you're so willing to give me."
eileenShe lifts her shoulders in a very big shrug, her hands falling away from his back and sides to sit palm up in midair. "A nice car? I don't know. Figure out something you like about yourself and then tell yourself that's what I like about you."
Eileen beams at him. "I just like you. And I don't think being kind is something I'm bringing to the table or whatever, it's just... what I'm like. You don't have to be like me and I'll still like you."
Thomas DaneIt's hard to argue with that sort of uncluttered sense, even if Dane suspects it's doesn't quite make sense at all. He thinks about it a moment, and then he laughs under his breath.
"Well. I like you too, Eileen," he says. And on that note: "Let's get some food, huh? Before you drop dead of eating nothing but peanuts."
eileen"I will not drop dead of eating nothing but peanuts," she tells him firmly. "I am not allergic. Do you know some people are allergic to pickles? Not cucumbers. Just pickles. And not the pickling... juice... stuff. The brine. It's something about pickles specifically."
She shakes her head, shrugs: "Science," like you might say Men! or Women! or Insert Group I Just Can't Even Deal With Anymore Here.
"Are we getting Thai food and cookies?" she asks, slipping her bag off, swaying it over to drop it on the couch.
Thomas Dane"We can get Thai food," Dane says, "but I'm not sure about cookies for dinner."
Her bag goes onto the couch. Dane's place looks barely lived-in: like he has a housekeeper that comes by once every two weeks or so, straightens everything out, and then he just leaves everything straightened out. That bag on the couch is the messiest thing in the room. It's also the one thing in the room that makes it look like something other than a model house.
For his part, Dane goes to sit on that couch. He picks up the remote control for the TV. Then he sets it down again. He reaches under the coffee table and he pulls out a laptop, sleek and lightweight, which he flips open and directs to Grubhub. Pulls up some local Thai place -- and they are not few, not in Lincoln Park -- then flips the computer around and hands it to Eileen.
"You first," he says. An deadpan: "No pickles. I'm allergic."
eileenThe look Eileen gives him is both patient and a bit aghast. "The cookies would be for dessert, Thomas." Duh.
He goes to the couch, sitting a cushion or two away from her bag. The laptop comes out and she leans over, scrolling quickly and then picking so rapidly that it seems like it must be random and maybe it is and maybe she just knows exactly what she wants, which happens to be ram long song with chicken, a potato curry puff, and a Thai iced tea. She wants the ram long song to be a 4 on a scale of 0 to 5 in terms of heat and only when she has tapped in her order does she straighten up and look down at him for a moment.
"You're not really allergic to pickles, are you? I didn't mean to make fun of you if you are." So worried. So tender. So concerned. So utterly and completely full of shit that she can't even help but grin a moment later.
Thomas Dane"I'm not--" he starts to reassure her, but then she starts to grin and he realizes the joke is on him. "Oh, very funny." He grabs the laptop from her -- "grabs" -- and then makes selections of his own. Basil duck. Coconut-curry shrimp. Some sort of drink.
"I have ice cream bars in the fridge," he says. "That should suffice for dessert." And he hands the laptop back. "Just send the order in when you have everything you want. My credit card info is in there."
eileen"But Thomas, they deliver cookies until three a.m.. Why would you not take advantage of something like that!" She shakes her head, mindboggled at him. He starts to hand the laptop back to her and she looks at him, then looks at her order, then looks at him like she wants to ask him how much he thinks she eats.
Instead, she pulls up her top, and the tank top underneath it, enough to expose a couple of inches of her belly. It's nothing he's not seen before. He knows she doesn't have piercings on her navel or her breasts or further south. He knows she has no tattoos. She waves her hand around her midsection. "It doesn't fit very much," she explains, "unless it is cookies, and then it fits everything. I probably won't even finish the ram long song, to tell the truth. But then I have leftovers!"
Yay!
The tank is tugged down, form-fitting as it is, and the larger overshirt is dropped. "Silly."
Thomas Dane"Oh fine," he surrenders, "we can get cookies if -- "
oh god she is taking her shirt off again. Dane does that thing where he goes quite still and looks anywhere-but-at-Eileen; draws in half a breath and holds it until he reminds himself not to hold it. He lets it out, slow and steady. She's dropped her shirt by then, and he covers up the moment by fiddling with some bit of lint on his pants.
"We can get cookies if you really want," he finishes. "But if you end up bouncing off the walls from the sugar, it's not my fault."
eileenIt's hard not to notice how frozen he gets, how deer in the headlights, thinking she might be undressing in his living room, oh god oh god oh god don't look don't look don't look. She feels a surge of -- let's call it as it is -- pity for him, but it's not a condescending emotion in Eileen. It's just compassion, even when it doesn't stop her from showing him her stomach anyway.
They could talk about cookies, and he does, and she smiles. "I bounce off the walls anyway. You miiiight have noticed." Eileen gets on her knees on the couch, her feet hanging off the end, facing the back instead of the television. "We don't have to get cookies. It's like a dozen at a time and it's ridiculous, because they're huge."
She tips her head. "Do you mind if I go wash up? And wash my feet?"
Thomas Dane"We can get them," he's all insistent on cookies now, as if this might prove that he's not all stilted and dull. "You can bring a bunch home if we don't finish them. Which we won't.
"Go ahead," he nods her toward his bedroom, then realizes he's being an awful host and gets up off the couch to show her the way. "Bathroom's this way," he says over his shoulder, leading her into his bedroom with its nice modern furniture and its barely-lived-in atmosphere. His bed is large and neat. There's a small desk in here with an all-in-one computer on it. Also, the promised balcony.
"Do you want to shower?" He turns on the bathroom light: granite counters, glass and tile in the tub/shower. "I'll find you a towel."
eileen"Let's wait until like, one in the morning," she says, grinning. "They'll taste better."
She has not sat down since they came in. She only kneels now. Dane nods her in a direction, and she looks over her shoulder curiously. But oh: he's not such a bad host. Or maybe he just doesn't want her rooting around in his bathroom. Eileen slides her legs back and puts her feet to the carpet, standing up as he does and following him.
Everywhere they go she looks and looks and looks. She looks at his bedroom and his bed and the balcony and her heart does a little backwards somersault. He asks her if she wants to shower when he flicks the light on in his bathroom and it does it three more times. She exhales a breath, slightly vibratory, and then smiles, her cheeks pinking slighlty. "That's okay," she says.
There's a sight of the tip of her tongue when she licks her lips. "Wanna pick a movie or something to watch while we wait for food? And eat? Something you haven't seen. I don't talk during movies! So you won't have to worry."
Thomas Dane"I like it when you talk," Dane says simply. "I don't mind if you talk during the movie. I'll go pick something out."
The bathroom isn't large. They shuffle around each other so she can get in to wash her face, wash her feet. Her feet, he thinks bemusedly, as though she were some pilgrim from the old testament. He leaves his bedroom door open, the lights of the living room a faint square on the ground.
--
When she comes back out, he's on the couch again. The TV is on, and he's put on -- it looks like Lincoln. Of course he'd pick a movie like this. He looks up as she approaches, smiling a little. "Hey," he says. "Food's coming in about twenty minutes. And I put in an order for cookies at one."
eileen"Okay," she says, smiling like that, soft and hopeful, as he skirts by her. She mostly-closes the bathroom door and then all-the-way closes it, resting her brow against it for a moment and exhaling. Her entire body feels like it aches suddenly. She thinks of touching herself, certain that if she does she'll come in a moment, come as soon as her fingertips slide over her skin, until her skin and the universe meld together and she holds entire galaxies inside of her, and there is no edge.
She breathes in and exhales a second time, and she uses the toilet. She washes her hands and then she hops up on the counter, feet in the sink, washing her soles and between her toes. She dries them on a towel, hopping back down, and then swishes hot water in her mouth a bit. She reaches up and undoes the bun in her hair, finger-combing that long thick hair into its long thick waves.
For a moment, she thinks about taking off her shirt. Just the top one. Because the tank top underneath skims her body and hugs her breasts and she knows it would be too much so she leaves that draping, hanging pillowcase on, smiling a little before she turns off the light and slips out of the bathroom. She wants to throw herself on his bed and muss it up and roll herself into the blankets but she doesn't do that, either. She walks out to the living room again, her hair down being the most visible difference, and then crawls onto the couch beside him, right beside him, curling up against his side and resting her head on his shoulder like that's what he's made for.
"That's like two hours from now," she muses thoughtfully, and the 'like' is ridiculous: right as she's saying that, the clock behind her is flicking from 10:59 to 11:00.
Thomas DaneMaybe she expects him to stiffen at her head on his shoulder. God, he wouldn't blame her if she did expect that: he's acted like some sort of repressed monk every other time she's come close to him. He doesn't stiffen, though. He watches her as she comes closer, her hair down, her feet probably still a little damp from being washed. He can't get over that: washing her feet. He doesn't know why it charms him so.
She curls up on the couch next to him. And he opens his arm, and she lays her head on his shoulder, and he folds his arm around her and
it's all very natural. Very nice.
"It's exactly two hours from now," he corrects her gently, smiling. "I thought you were a time-mage." And he clicks play on the movie, reaching back behind his head to turn off the last light in the room. It's dark, then, nothing but the flicker of the television's glow and the distant downtown lights.
eileen"I'm an everything," she says blissfully, sinking into the comfort of Dane not-stiffening, not-flinching but just accepting her as though this is the most natural place she could rest her head, which it totally is. She
is asleep in eleven minutes. Not because she finds the movie slow or boring and not because she's even particularly tired but because she starts thinking about being wrapped up in his arm at the cabin and how long it's been and how well she slept after days in the sun, in the water, after the fire and s'mores and fish and how glorious she felt when he leaned over her, kissing her and her body, fingering her to make her feel good, to make her arch, how warm he was and how settled she felt. The thoughts sink her down with them into that heavy, languid comfort that the darkness only seems to encourage, and like casting a spell on herself, she tries to recapture it by falling asleep against his side.
Of course she wakes when the intercom buzzes or his phone goes off or someone knocks, whatever happens. He has to go let the delivery person hand over the enormous brown bag of food, stapled at the top with a receipt, and Eileen yawns and stirs and blinks her eyes many many times, rubbing them out and then she's
Eileen again, gleeful at the Thai iced tea and the curry potato puff. She completely interrupts the movie at one point because the heat of her food makes her get up and do a strange little dance, but then she just eats more, because it's very very good. She eats almost all of it, drains that iced tea, then some water, then asks for and thanks him for a few bites of his shrimp and his duck. It's shortly after midnight and they are done eating -- though they perhaps have not eaten everything -- when Eileen, once again curled up to his side, twists her head up to look at him and whispers:
"Is this boring?"
Thomas DaneDane is well aware when Eileen drops off into sleep. Her breathing evens out; her head grows heavy on his shoulder. He smiles to himself. He doesn't wake her.
Not until -- twenty minutes later or so -- his doorbell rings. Then he gets up, easing her off his shoulder ever-so-gently. She hears him going to the door, hears him thanking the delivery man. Hears him coming back with their food, undoing the stapled-shut bag, opening it to take out all the many things they ordered.
They eats. Eileen ordered something ridiculously hot, and she does a ridiculous little dance because of it. Dane just looks up at her with a faint little smirk, clearly biting his tongue on a serves you right or similar. For his part, his curry is mild and his duck is tangy-sweet. He certainly doesn't need to get up and dance until his tongue stopped stinging.
Eventually they've had their fill. Dane has some of his dinner left, and Eileen is curled against his side again, and the movie is playingplayingplaying and Lincoln is freeing the slaves, debating the Senate --
is this boring? Eileen wants to know. Dane starts awake because: yes, he was also asleep. "Hm?" A hand rises, wipes at his face, his eyes. "Is what boring? The movie? I don't know. I fell asleep. So ... maybe that's a yes." And he yawns.
eileenIf she had realized he was asleep, and not just still and settled and warm and perfect and absolutely everything she thinks she could possibly want in that moment, Eileen would not have woken him. As it is, she does wake him and she doesn't regret it at all. She smiles at him and yawns, too, because -- did you know this? -- they are contagious.
"Kiss me instead," she whispers.
Thomas DaneDarkness or sleep or the lateness of the hour has lowered his guard. Or maybe it's just that he wants to, and so he does:
does as she asks, though not immediately. There is a small pause. Lights from the flatscreen glow off the side of his face, shift the shadows beneath his brow, lateral to his nose. He takes a small sip of breath, and then -- leans in, closes his eyes. His lips touch hers very, very softly indeed. It's the most tender, gentle kiss one can imagine, as quiet and sacred as a psalm.
eileenBy now she has come to expect that he will hesitate, achingly, pull back, say her name with a trio of dots after it, followed by a sigh. But then: she half-expected he would tense up and withdraw from her when she curled up beside him. She never seems to stop seeking that closeness with him, even when time after time it seems he is rejecting it. Maybe she just knows that he wants it, too, or that he needs her to keep trying even while he struggles, or that he does not mean it as rejection. Or she can't help herself.
Or doesn't try to help herself.
He doesn't hesitate, or pull back. He kisses her, and she breathes in as he does so, because the fact of his kissing her alone is enough to make her breathing hitch. But god: the way he kisses her, the way he has kissed her some small handful of times. She loves the way he kisses her, and it makes a soft shiver go through her even before she starts kissing him back, moving her lips under his, parting them gently in invitation.
Thomas DaneOh, but that's an invitation he doesn't --
cannot
-- take. She feels it then: that hesitation she has come to expect. That pause, that pulling back. It's in a stilling of his lips, the faintest quiver there. It's in his hands coming to her face, cupping her jaw ever so gently as his mouth parts from hers.
Not his brow, though. That remains as it is, skin to skin. His eyes are closed. He breathes slowly, steadying himself for a moment. "Eileen," he whispers, and it is regret, it is ache, it is want, it is apology. "Eileen."
A moment goes by. Another. With an inhale he draws back a little. Enough that he can see her by the light of that flickering television screen. Lincoln speaking to the Senate. Lincoln speaking to his wife. Lincoln and his sons, Daniel Day-Lewis's craggy face so inhabiting his character that one almost forgets the actor. Neither Dane nor Eileen are paying any attention, though.
"I like you so much," he whispers. "And I wish I could meet you where you are right now. But... I can't. Not yet."
eileenIt's hard not to think of it in terms of what she could do differently to make him do something differently. If she didn't part her lips, if she didn't let her hair down, if she could make herself stop looking at him the way he does, maybe he would... something. Be okay. Maybe he wouldn't pull away.
She's accepting it though, even as he's stilling his lips. She gently closes her own to kiss him again, and that is when his hands come to her face, touch her skin, making a shiver of tenderness and want go down through her. God, she wants him so badly. She loves him, quite dearly and uncomplicatedly. He doesn't think he can please anyone, make her happy, make anyone happy, even himself; he makes her so happy, though. It's everything she can do not to slide herself onto his lap, wrap him in her arms, try to make him feel as good as he makes her feel.
As he says her name, her eyes flicker open, catching light from the television screen and reflecting the pictures back in her irises. Her lips are parted, her expression waiting.
Does it hurt that she doesn't look surprised?
Perhaps a little confused. Saddened. A little wounded. "Where am I?" she asks him, matching him whisper for whisper.
Thomas DaneThe smile that touches his face is sad. They are still so close. He hasn't drawn away; he hasn't locked up in himself. Shut down. Reeled back.
Maybe that's something.
"Somewhere bright." They're both whispering still. "Somewhere beautiful and full of love. Sometimes I think even your sorrow is bright, Eileen. And that's the opposite of where I am right now. Where I've been for so long that I think until I met you, I forgot what it was like to not be here.
"I don't want to be here forever." His throat moves; he swallows. There's a glimmer in his eyes, a shine that he blinks away as he -- for the first time -- looks away. Just for a moment. Then those intense dark eyes of his are back on hers. "But I'm not ready to come out yet. I don't know ... how to take that first step."
eileenThere's no way she can understand. The relationships she's had in her life are nothing like what he had with his wife, whose name he doesn't -- or can't -- say. She has never had a child, only to lose that child. Eileen is not a stranger to sorrow, but the things that have been cut and torn and burnt hollow in Dane are still living, rooted, and vibrant in her chest, in her mind, in everything she touches. There's no way she can understand.
At least she knows it.
She looks so sad, but then: nothing she feels, nothing she experiences, is ever very hidden. She looks sad, and when he says he doesn't want to be where he is forever, she remembers him saying I wish I wasn't like this. He can't know it, but the sadness in her eyes isn't, right now, even for her own benefit.
Eileen moves up on her knees and wraps her arms around his shoulders. She puts her face against his jaw, closing her eyes, while Lincoln talks to people. For several long seconds, she just holds him, and only after that long while, she murmurs:
"I think you're already taking it." She sniffs, and draws back gently, her hands resting on his shoulders. "There's just a lot coming after."
Thomas DaneThis embrace, he gives himself over to without reservation. He returns without hesitation. His arms slide around her, close tight. He's lean and wiry against her body, his immense strength leashed in mind and will rather than muscle and bone; those hands of his that pulled glimmering stars from the depths of his own despair spreading over her back.
When she draws back, her hands rest on his shoulders. It feels a little like a blessing, he thinks. He smiles that aching smile of his again. "Do you think so?" he echoes, gently teasing; then it subsides. He looks at her. "Yeah," he agrees. "Maybe I am."
A small pause. He shifts, he settles his back against the couch; stares unseeingly at the television, his thoughts turned inward. "I don't expect you to stay with me and wait," he says quietly. "I'd understand if you didn't want to see me anymore." There might be more to say, but the rest is selfish. He keeps it to himself.
eileenThe truth is that the oft-denigrated, sometimes too-accepting, usually too-much-of-everything-and-that's-the-point Cult of Ecstasy has always been a gathering of shamans. They are the other side of the same Wheel that the Euthanatoi turn. They are not usually healers of the body, as the Verbena and some Choiristers, but some of their greatest rotes have the ability to unfold time while reaching into the heart and show someone the outcome of their actions, the consequences tomorrow, next week, a year from now, ten years, a lifetime. They can unfurl it the other way and show themselves and others how things came to be as they are, and when you can look at someone as a child and know their heart then, hold that truth in your mind simultaneous with the truth as it is now and the truth as it could be in the future,
one might understand why they are so slow to judge.
Of course it feels like a blessing, when she holds him, lays her hands on him, and tells him that the road is long, but he is already on it. And what a selfless, holy blessing it is: because his arms around her make her want to weep, make her want to dissolve, make her want to bless him a thousand other ways. She doesn't. She gives, because he needs, and because he needs more than she does. And so shall the seer recount their deeds.
Those hands slide gently, slowly away from him, even as her chest feels as though it's caving inward. Her brows tug together, and her voice is quiet:
"I don't think I should."
Thomas DaneAs expected, as wise, as practical as that is -- it makes something in Dane crumple on itself, too. A fundamental truth: it is hard to let go of what you like. What you adore. What makes you hurt less. What makes you remember what it's like to stand in the light again. He winces, and then he tamps it down. Her hands leave his shoulders. His palms graze her forearms for a moment, and then he
lets her go.
Just a couple of nods, first. It's all he trusts himself with. And a little later: another nod, slower. "I think maybe you're right. I think anything else would be selfish of me, and self-sacrificing of you." A small pause. "I'll look for you, though, if you'll let me. After Wentworth. After ... all of it. If and when I make it out to where you are."
eileenIt's when he's nodding that Eileen can't bear it. She says, aching but rushing: "For a while. I --"
And there are tears in her eyes, of course there are, but she smiles anyway, which makes the tears something beautiful and miraculous, or maybe the smile is. She says it quietly, for the first time and just in case and not to argue with him or convince him otherwise but because it's true and he should know it especially if she's going to go curl up in her cove and her job for a few months and just cry every time she thinks of him:
"I love you."
The tears well up as though from a spring before pouring out of her on those raw, tender little words, drip-rolling down her cheeks while her throat closes up.
Thomas DaneSo he doesn't get past those first couple nods. Those uncertain ones where he's at a loss with himself, unable to quite look her in the eye, unable to figure out where or why or when or how everything might be able to come back together again, be okay again.
She interrupts him, though. The words rush out of her, bring his eyes back to her, light those eyes up with something that aches to see because it's not fury and it's not wrath and it's not bitterness and it's not grief. It's not even guilt. It's
hope,
and an aching sort of joy, and
by the time she says what she says the corner of his mouth is turning ruefully up. He reaches out to her, wipes those tears from her cheeks as gently as he kissed her a moment ago. Wants to pull her to him. Fold her in his arms. Hold her to his heart. Wants to -- doesn't. He doesn't think he has the right, or the ability. Not right now. Not yet.
"And I think I love you, Eileen," he says softly. "I just have to remember how. And I have to ... forgive, forget, let go of everything else."
eileenDane does see the truth for what it is, just then: he doesn't have the right to hold her right now. To pull her close and give her comfort, to make her feel loved and wanted and close to him. Not when with the other hand he is pushing her away, no matter how gently he's trying to do it. It would be a sort of lie, to offer her that while withholding what she really needs from him. A cruel joke, a clumsy twist of a knife.
There's hope and joy in his eyes, but only tears in hers right now. She turns her face from his hand brushing over her cheek, pulling in a shaky, sharply pitched breath because she is trying so hard not to sob; her head shakes a little, her eyes closing when he tells her
what he does.
"I have to go," she says, her voice strained from sadness, her lithe little body unfolding from the couch. Her bag is on the other end; she's picking it up as she stands, wiping her cheeks with the blade of her hand, sniffing. Her feet are still bare because her flipflops are still forgotten in his car downstairs. "Please don't... offer to drive me or walk me out or... or call me or text me or anything, okay?"
Eileen isn't looking at him, not til those last two syllables. He's seen her cry from beauty and joy and empathy but not like this, not just pain, and it's horrible. Her hands go out in front of her, low by her hips, pushing at the air a little. "Just leave me alone for a while."
Which isn't angry. But isn't a question. Or a request, despite the pleading note underlining the words. She thinks she should sit calmly down and hold his hand and they should talk and she should tell him that she forgives him -- of course she forgives him -- and that eventually it will be okay and maybe later they can be friends, all that, but right now she can't stop crying, and she can't do anything but nod, and walk away like running away, going to her suitcase by the door.
Thomas DaneWhen she stands, so does he. It's some reflex of courtesy, or maybe something more like instinct: to stand because someone you care deeply for has stood; to move with them because they
are leaving.
He doesn't follow her, though. Not when she's holding her hands out, warding him off. He stays where he is, their food on the coffee table, the television lit on the wall. He makes a small, unhappy gesture of his hand. "Okay," he says, very quiet. "Okay, Eileen."
She grabs her suitcase. She was right to tell him not to offer to drive her, see her downstairs, walk her to the door, any of that. He wants to. He wishes they could have gone to the playground. Sat on the balcony. Been together, been -- friends. There's the catch, of course: right now, she wants him, she wants to be more than friends, and he
just
can't.
So he watches her go, instead. Watches her walk away like running away, grabbing her colorful little suitcase. He wonders what she's going to do about her feet. "There are flipflops -- " he says, making a gesture at the doorside closet, but: he doesn't follow, he doesn't show her, he doesn't even stop her if she just leaves.
He hurts, though. Which he supposes is fair: he's hurt her, too, and he knows it.
eileenThere's nothing else he can say -- maybe nothing else she could bear to hear, nothing that would be fair of him to say. Don't go, perhaps, implying that he wants her to stay, they can be here together, when Here isn't even really the same place for them. Just a little longer, maybe, the playground or the balcony or back to her place to sleep together One Last Time, until just a little longer is just a little longer and longer and longer and somewhere down the line she's not just hurting or wounded but turned inside out. He could ask her when she'll see him again or when he can contact her or if she thinks Maybe One Day, but they're questions she can't answer and he does not need answered right this second anyway.
The handle of her suitcase telescopes upward when she grabs it. Now's the time for the dramatic gesture, on either of their parts: to rush together and embrace, to kiss, to promise to try, to apologize, to do a whole lot of very stupid shit.
Eileen sniffs, and opens his door and rolls her suitcase out with her, letting it close behind her. Dimly he can hear the soft thump of the wheels outside, but down the hall the sound retreats from him and he doesn't hear the ding of the elevator. Not until much later, when someone comes by with his cookie delivery.
--
Wild, ecstatic thing that she is, Eileen still isn't going to go back home barefoot at like... midnight-something. She has an app and she summons a taxi from her phone in the lobby, tears still streaming down her face. Whoever is downstairs, even a passerby neighbor, offers her some tissues and asks if she's okay -- she has no shoes, this little hipster -- and Eileen says no, but she's going to go home and she will be later on, of course until she thinks about cookies or someone talks about stars or asks her if she'd like to try the fish and then she's going to erupt into sobs all over again.
The person in the lobby is very confused when she tells them this, and hands her the rest of the little packet of tissues, patting her shoulder and moving on as she murmurs a thank-you and blows her nose. The cab arrives and she asks if she can sit in the front, and the driver is from Haiti and tells her, after a bit of her story, that this is a very sad thing, that man is a fool, he is not going to find a prettier girl, but she will have many boyfriends, yes? Eileen just starts sobbing again, and the driver uncomfortably drives her the rest of the way home, helps her get her suitcase out of the trunk, watches her until she gets to the door because something in him makes him want to protect her.
Eileen loves her apartment, and the mere sight of it when she goes inside makes her break down. She ends up crying herself to sleep in her clothes, sobbing into an ever-wetter spot on her pillow until she feels so worn out, so wrung out, that she can't keep it up anymore. Her insides hurt. Her head throbs. And in the morning, she feels hungover, which is just dehydration, which actually can happen from enough crying. She spends the rest of the day in bed. She checks her mail. She does some laundry. She sits at the edge of her couch with her legs tucked up and her arms around herself and just stares at one of her little air plants for a very, very long time.
--
At the chantry, Dane works with other mages. He sees her once, two or three weeks later and only through an upstairs window, sitting out in the courtyard garden with Charlie. She's not crying. She's just sitting and talking. She even smiles. But she's not there when he gets downstairs again.
If he asks -- though it's unlikely he will -- it sounds like Eileen is assisting mages who do research more than field work. She spends a great deal of time with Roman, the Cultist Master at the chantry. There is a long stretch during midsummer when both of them are gone.
It's nearly October when he hears from her again. Directly. It's a text message, and it's just
hey
followed by a second message, which is just
do you want to go to the zoo?
Thomas DaneLeft behind in that small, well-appointed condominium of his, it's minutes on end before Dane stops listening for -- he doesn't know what. For the elevator to ding. For her footsteps to come back. For her knuckles on the door, any number of impossible things.
None of them come. Eventually, he turns the television off. Turns out the lights. He is in bed, fitfully asleep, when the cookies come. Bleary-eyed at the door, rumpled, for a moment he can't remember why they're here.
Then he remembers, and it hits him like a punch in the gut.
--
He doesn't attempt to contact her. He knows better than that. Months go by, and he works with other mages. He is assigned to this job and that, this partner and that. He is sent here and sent there, a glorified errand boy, a human tac-nuke. Once, coming out of the office of his Order's Master, he sees Eileen downstairs in the garden. His little paradox plant has grown large and strong. Charlie has grown stronger too, even though sometimes he still sits in a corner listening to sounds no on else can hear; even though sometimes at night he still screams in terror until someone comes for him.
Healing takes a long time. Dane knows that better than anyone. He passes on from the window, and when he goes downstairs some ten or twenty minutes later Eileen is gone,
like a fairy,
like she was never there at all. So he talks to Charlie a little while instead.
--
In late summer he leaves Chicago for a while. A job takes him to the eastern seaboard, and when it's done he doesn't come back immediately. He spends a little time, takes a little time for himself. Sees some people. Visits some places. Ties up some ends that have lain loose too long. He's not sure it helps, but all the books and all the movies say it will. So he goes on faith, because really, he doesn't have a lot else to go on. At the very least, it doesn't seem to hurt. Not very badly, and not anymore.
It's late September by the time he comes back, and the weather is turning cool. He asks about Eileen. He declines her contact information when it's offered.
--
It is almost October when his phone chimes. It is a text message, and it is not from the Chantry. The name makes his heart do a little flop. It is just one word.
He's trying to think of a response when a second text comes through. And this one,
this one makes him smile.
I'd love to.
--
They meet in front of the lions. He is wearing a light leather blazer and his hands are in this pockets. His shoulders are a little stooped. His hair is short and his eyes are dark and his body is lean and his nose is a little overlarge; in all, it gives him a faintly hawkish air.
He smiles when he sees her. She is eating cotton candy. They come together, and he doesn't hold her hand, and if they hug it's a little awkward. But the day is bright overhead and the lake is blue in the distance, and the Lincoln Park Zoo is full of children and their families.
Let's go see the polar bears, he suggests,
and strolling side by side, taking the time to enjoy the walk and the afternoon and the company, they do just that.
eileenIt's the first time he's seen her in cooler weather. Her tights are thick enough to count as leggings and her boots go halfway up her calves, wrapped and wrapped and wrapped in leather straps. She's bundled in a flannel so large it's like a dress, is a dress, belted and everything, and a denim jacket over that only it's got a soft warm lining and a hood so it's sort of like a hoodie + denim but it's tricking you. Her hair is still very long and her eyes are still so beautiful and her mouth goes so easily into smiles.
When they hug, Dane is awkward. Eileen is just hugging him, as she has ever hugged him, and then she draws away but doesn't try to hold his hand. She doesn't finish the cotton candy but tosses the cone, hands in her pockets. They go to see the polar bears, and they talk about how they've been.
His trip to the eastern seaboard. Her trip back in time: yup. They talk about Charlie. They end up going to get some soup at a cafe, on a whim because it's cool outside and they're both getting hungry. And it feels okay. There are stiff moments, moments when he can feel her in retreat from him, moments when he can tell he's too close, it's too close.
Would be nice to say that afterward they start spending lots of time together, but they don't. Not yet. But after that first time, when he asks if they can hang out again, Eileen smiles. She nods.
I'd like that.
