Chapter 7.
Reuben
I pass Christian’s measurements along to Julia, who helps him pick out some custom pieces, and by the time he steps out of the store, he looks like a completely different man.
I almost regret the moment I considered shipping her to the North Pole; Julia is a genius at her work.
Christian’s long coat is a dusky grey that brings out the colour of his eyes. His matching grey pants and collared white shirt hug his body tightly, and just those differences are enough to make me bite my fucking lips.
Since the moment he’d stepped out of the changing room, I’ve been forcing myself not to stare, like all the other ‘feral city people’ as Xavier puts it.
After the first few weeks I’d thought this shit would go away on its own.
But it’s like I’ve been fucking starving the entire time.
Settle down, settle down, settle down—
I have to chant it in my head because there’s no way by now this shit is normal.
Maybe I’ve been working too hard.
Abuelita’s shop isn’t far from the Louis Vuitton store in the city. Back then, the owner tried to rent out the ground floor, but she haggled with him until he agreed to rent out the second floor instead. Something about not wanting bad energy to leak down through the ceiling.
The Chinese restaurant on the ground level came after. Before I can blink, Xavier and Tobias have disappeared inside to order food, and Gabriel is sucked into a card game at a rowdy table. So it’s only Christian and I treading up the stairs to visit Abuelita, with me leading the way.
“Abuelita—” I call for her as I step into the shop, and the moment I do, salt slaps me in the fucking eyes.
“Fucking—” I curse in Spanish, and it earns me a hard smack on my head with her paper fan.
“I’ve told you a thousand times not to bring that language into my store.” Her Japanese falls from her tongue unforgivingly.
“The curse or the Spanish?” I wince, still trying to get the salt out of my eyes, but the comment only earns me another strike over the head with the fan.
“Both, and you know better.”
I groan as I step further into the shop.
Abuelita—Baachan’s—presence always commands attention.
She’s taller than most women, wrapped in a plaid brown coat that sticks to her frame over long black pants, and her long hair, tinged with varying shades of grey, is pulled into its usual ponytail.
There’s a quiet authority woven into the air around her, and even at 72 years, I can tell she was a beauty, with high cheekbones standing proud beneath porcelain skin, touched only by the faintest traces of age.
Her almond-shaped eyes narrow on me like cold, tempered steel, painting an icy exterior that seems to be shared amongst our family’s women—a subtle blueprint of the type of women favoured by the men in the family.
“Barely anyone in the family speaks Japanese around the house anymore.” I switch to Japanese as best I can, but I admit it’s rusty, since I only ever use it with her.
Abuelita—Baachan—snorts, “And I’ve spoken to your father about it many times.” She begins the same spiel she’s been repeating for the past—
“—Thirty-one years, and I still don’t know what possessed him to choose an Argentinian woman.”
“Baba—” the impolite title falls from my tongue before I can stop it, and before she can raise her fan to hit me again, I catch it in my hands with a huff. “Can you not beat me when I’ve brought guests?”
Only then does she notice Christian in the doorway, blinking at the scene speechlessly. If my glare could grant her an early grave, I’m sure it would.
“And how come I’m the only one you threw the salt at?” When I’d brought the team before, no one escaped the salt christening. I’d been hoping by now her arthritis or something would’ve kicked in so she couldn’t throw it anymore.
“I felt your chaotic energy long before you came up the stairs,” she huffs, dismissing me as though she’s completely justified for throwing salt in her grandson’s face, before circling Christian with a curious expression.
Christian shuffles his feet uncomfortably and there’s a bright spark in Baachan’s eyes as she takes him in. Her every movement is controlled, tempered from her days as an assassin for her father’s clan in Yokohama, and I wonder if she sees it too.
How beautifully bright Christian’s energy is compared to others.
“Interesting.” She stops her circling to watch Christian thoughtfully.
“Most people have a lot of spirits clinging to them, their ancestors, their deceased, the people they’ve killed—my brat of a grandson is the worst of them, but you…
” she tilts her head, “you only have one spirit sticking to you.”
Christian’s eyes widen.
“You’re sure?” He steps forward, almost hopeful, “Is it—Do you know who it is?”
“Of course not, child, but I’m sure you do,” her voice softens. “He’s not pleased with what you’re doing.”
Christian’s face falls.
“But… But I…” His energies take on this desolate hue that makes me step forward, instinctively, but Baachan gives me a stern look and I’m forced to stop.
“Is he… angry?” Christian asks softly.
“He’s worried about you,” her response is strangely gentle, “But do what you think you must.”
Christian’s entire body relaxes with his relief. His mask falls for the first time to reveal this… affection, plastered all over his face and his energy—Bright colours of purple and rose that light a jealousy so stark it burns me up from the inside.
Baachan raises a brow at me, as if sensing what I’m feeling, but she doesn’t say another word.
To this day, I’m not sure if she sees what I see, or something else entirely.
But who am I to tell her she doesn’t? When I can’t even explain my own shit.
Her store sells a variety of trinkets, charms and antiques, as well as rows on rows of herbs and cookbooks. It’s a classy place for all its shady products, with a smooth mahogany interior and shelves of books on the spiritual world and self-reflection.
Christian’s eyes land on a small charm with a black cat in its centre, and I note the way his gaze lingers on it. The way he reaches for it almost unconsciously, before pulling his hand back, catching himself.
Baachan practically forgets all about me to hover around Christian, going on and on about her strange things, and Christian is the only one who listens with genuine intrigue.
The whole time, I can’t possibly take my eyes off him—at how much softer he looks when he speaks with her. Relaxed. But even though it’s gone, that affection I saw on him lingers behind my eyelids.
It fills me with something… unpleasant and unfamiliar.
I almost feel regret when I have to cut their time short, “Come on, Baachan, if we don’t leave now, you’ll be late.”
“Ah,” she glances at the antique clock across the room, before waltzing into the backroom, muttering curses about an ‘insolent grandchild’.
Christian raises a brow at me when she disappears, “Where are we headed now?”
“The theatre,” I explain matter-of-factly. “Every year, her favourite orchestra from her hometown comes to Seattle. She never misses it.”
The truth is, after losing in a game of rock-paper-scissors with Aster and Baal, I was the one who got the short end of the stick to accompany Baachan to the Seattle theatre. If not for my boredom, I wouldn’t have bothered to take Christian out today with the rest of the team…
Now I’m glad I did.
“She’s just like you,” he says, scanning a row of jewels in a glass case on the counter, and I blink at him, dumbfounded.
“I have more in common with my old man than her, I assure you.”
“Maybe.” The corners of his lips tilt upward, the closest he’s ever gotten to a full smile in all these weeks. “But in my eyes, you’re just a mirror of each other. Strong-willed and stubborn.”
“… And a little bit crazy?”
The world suspends as a light chuckle falls from Christian’s lips. A rich, molten sound in the air.
“For sure a little crazy.” When he looks back at me, his smile has widened, brightening up his face so unexpectedly…
It’s the most relaxed version of him I’ve ever seen. His energies that were so agitated and anxious in the shop today—that sink into sorrow whenever he thinks no one is looking—
A peaceful white shimmers in them now. A shimmer around his body that mesmerizes me completely. My breath catches in my lungs... and for the first time, I think I finally understand what has happened to me.
I think…
I think I’m fucked.
When Baachan returns I can’t seem to… remember myself.
I’m in a daze. A state of denial? Something… strange has clicked into place inside me.
By the time we get down the stairs, the rest of the team is already wrapping up; they’re on their best behaviour for Baachan, who sprinkles crushed yomogi over their heads ‘for good luck and protection’.
Try as they might to get it out of their hair without her noticing, they all still end up on the receiving end of strange looks from the personnel manning the theatre’s ticket counter.
Their mouths open and close soundlessly, attempting to protest and failing, before inevitably giving up and letting us through.
When Rachmaninoff’s concerto starts up, I swear it’s going to be just like every other night at the theatre.
Xavier will fall asleep within the first five minutes, and Tobias will smack him in the chest right as he’s about to snore. Bored hues will ebb from Gabriel within the hour, but unlike Xavier, I can at least count on him to be well-behaved in his seat.
Baachan will be watching me like a hawk to make sure I don’t slip away—to ensure the music ‘cleanses me with pure energy’—and the hours will pass by at a horridly slow rate.
But the moment I glance at Christian, I know it’s nothing like those other nights.
Because his eyes are fixed on the stage, utterly enraptured.
His energy, luminous shades of blue and silver, is the brightest I’ve ever seen, dancing around him with the ebbs and waves of the strings.
It’s filled with hidden wonder, only the barest of hints crossing over onto his features, the frozen stillness of his body, the slight parting of his lips, the fragile gentleness in his eyes.
I can’t possibly pull my gaze away. I know the exact moment when he stops breathing.
When I lose him to one of the heights of the piece and the caresses of piano, strings and wind.
When it becomes erratic and fervent, his energy shivers, and when it finally calms down, he remembers to breathe again.
And the longer I watch him the more I want that gaze instead. The more I need it.
When I hook my fingers beneath his chin to pull his gaze to mine, that’s all I can think of. I can feel my insides become more and more frantic—more desperate—in tandem with the sound of the piano.
And the moment Christian’s blue eyes meet mine, it is my breath that is stolen.
He’s still lost in the music around him, I can tell because he isn’t seeing me at all, his soul is completely far away. But he looks so completely lovestruck, I become weak in the face of it.
I want to kiss him with that look on his face.
I want to force myself so deep inside him while he looks at me this way. I want to feel his skin and the warmth of his body both against and around me and watch him whisper my name while entranced like this.
But the moment Christian returns from that faraway place and focuses on me, the spell breaks.
He frowns, but instead of irritation, he pulls my hand from his chin slowly with hues of curiosity in his energy, “Why do you do that?”
I pull away quickly, because there are two realizations, making my blood pulse loudly in my ears.
One: Christian Adler may be the densest man I’ve ever seen in my life.
And two:
There has never been a flicker of attraction in his energy towards me.