Chapter 8 #2
“You’re hurt,” Zan says with a hint of exasperation. “Do you think I didn’t see the scratches on your hands and arms?”
“Oh, those are fine.” I was trained to withstand a lot of pain, and I barely notice these. “I’ve had worse—”
“That doesn’t mean you have to accept bad,” Zan growls at me.
I blink a couple of times, working through my feelings about that.
I was raised for it to be a point of pride to not need coddling.
But at the same time, I wasn’t raised to do my own cleaning, which arguably is a different kind of insulation.
Is being able to withstand or ignore pain good? In a battle situation, certainly.
But best practices for battle situations are not the same as everyday life. If it were, I’d have treated the press of bodies around me in Crystal Hollow as threats and attacked them, which is an instinct obviously inappropriate for the situation.
And I’m not in a battle situation right now.
Will addressing physical pain in everyday life make me soft, though?
Ohhh shit, that’s the real crux of it, isn’t it?
I deserve to be allowed to be soft.
“Yora? May I?”
The moment of my racing thoughts drags on long enough that now Zan is kneeling before me with a jar of ointment.
My mouth goes dry at the sight of him there. I nod mutely.
His gentle touch on my hands sends those tingles through where we touch again, but it’s more than that.
There is something about being tended—about him tending to me, like this.
This, too, is intimate.
I feel his care in my heart, and it’s that that has me unable to speak.
But when he gets to his feet, I stand, too, and grab the jar from him. “Now you. Your human form skin got the same scratches mine did.”
He opens his mouth to protest.
I jab a finger in his chest and echo in an exaggeratedly growly voice, “You don’t have to accept bad.”
He scowls but switches places with me, sitting down as he mutters, “I guess I deserve this.”
I narrow my eyes, kneeling in turn. “Being taken care of?”
Zan stills.
“No,” he says softly. “Being called to account by you.”
Argh. Maybe we’re not done with difficult conversations today after all.
I get to work, trying to be businesslike, hoping that might make this easier for both of us to talk about. “If you’re just staying out of guilt for turning away from a complete stranger approximately a million years ago—”
“Oh no, I got over that after a few decades.”
Decades?
Not sure I believe him, I tease lightly, “Not quick on the uptake, I see.”
“Some of us don’t have the benefit of five hundred years of meditation behind us to help assimilate revelations quickly,” Zan says dryly. “And dragons... are not especially emotionally balanced, in general.”
Hmm. Maybe that’s why he thinks he has to shut down by default.
But I of all people can handle volatile emotions, and maybe someday he will trust me with all of his.
Regretfully coming to the decision that I’m out of excuses to keep touching him, I close the ointment jar and stand.
Zan stands with me and catches my hand before I can retreat.
That point of contact sears through me on every level.
Our eyes are even with each other; locked.
“I do regret my decision back then,” Zan says in a rough voice. “If I had been able to open my eyes more, so much might have been different. But I hadn’t unpacked enough of my own upbringing yet, and I didn’t have the information then that I do now.
“But I’m not here because I feel guilty about having once been young and foolish. I’m here because I want to be. And whenever you want me to go, you say the word. I will not overstay my welcome with you.”
My gaze searches his. He says that, but given how harshly he judges himself, I’m not sure he fully believes it.
Rather than point that out, I say, “This is more your home than it is mine.”
“Let’s fix that.”
I want to say that I don’t want to fix that, that I want him to have a home, but he tugs me back toward the kitchen before releasing his hand.
“It may take me a long time to evolve emotionally, but I can wash a dish faster than you can imagine,” Zan tells me, then pauses. “...That will seem more impressive once you’ve ever washed a dish.”
“Will it?” I echo dryly.
He nods seriously. “There are many things you weren’t able to do before, but there were also many things that were done for you and you probably don’t really understand the labor that goes into them yet. Many people find the endless nature of it frustrating.”
An echo of my earlier thoughts. “Do you?” I ask.
“Some days. But I am always aware of what the alternative would look like for me. Dragon society has its own form of rules and limitations, and I would not be able to make the same kinds of choices if I returned to it. What shape do you want your home to be?”
He gestures around us at the living area.
Now that I’ve seen the inside of Nomi and Teren’s home, I can see that the cottage is very spare; functional but neutral, lacking the same imprint that feels like a specific person lives here.
How do you even begin with that?
“I don’t know,” I say softly.
Zan just nods. “And that’s fine. But when you want to choose, everything here can change. It’s your space.”
“And yours,” I tell him forcefully. He is willfully missing the point on this.
“It’s your house too, just as much as it is mine.
More, even. I am absolutely not throwing you out, and if I want more space from you or a different space, the temple is right there—I can always stay there until I find one. ”
“You are not going back to your prison,” Zan bursts out.
I wave my hands. “I’m not trying to! I’m just saying you need to stop behaving like I have the right to evict you from this house.
It is also yours. And I don’t have any idea how to decorate or keep furniture from getting sticky or anything so if you want your house to be different, you should choose.
Or just get used to the idea that I will either not make decisions about this forever or will just ask you what you’d be happy with anyway. ”
He growls, “I’m trying not to trap you with me when you’ve barely gotten started—”
Aaand my eyes are glowing again. “You’re not a trap, Zan! Who was it that wanted me to trust my instincts and gut choices earlier today? Convenient if the only exception to that is where you’re concerned.”
Zan glares at me.
“And you may not be young anymore, but if you think I’m going to change my mind, you’re apparently still foolish,” I tell him coolly.
Zan snorts, and some of his tension dissipates. “We’ll see.”
“Yeah, we fucking will.”
“Do you have favorite colors?” His gaze is oddly intent.
I blink at the abrupt topic change. “No? But...” I glance around. “Maybe just—I like color, I think?”
Zan nods thoughtfully.
Yeah, that probably doesn’t take a genius to work out that I maybe don’t want to spend another lifetime in a stark gray box.
It also occurs to me that for all Zan appears to know about arranging a house, despite the existence of the Guardians, he’s never had one he considered his own before. For me, all the choices to make a home seems like an overwhelming chore, but for him...
I wonder if he’s secretly been preparing to make a home for hundreds of years and has never let himself actually do it.
“Fine.” His tone is trying to be matter-of-fact but not quite managing it, which compounds my theory—this matters to him more than he wants me, or possibly himself, to know. “I’ll pick some out the next time we go to Crystal Hollow, and you can approve or not.”
Oh.
I guess we’re done fighting then??
Teren was right, before.
I can keep up with Zan, but he can also meet me where I am.
“Sounds good,” I say. “So now what?”
And then his tension is back.
“Now,” Zan says, “let’s unpack the supplies.”
Why in the world would that make him upset? He’s the one who packed them!
Is talking with people such a spellfield for everyone, or am I uniquely bad at this?
That’s a question for Nomi or Teren, I think.
But whatever set Zan off eases as we get caught up, Zan identifying objects for me and explaining what they’re for and where they go.
Right up until I get to the bottom of my pack and pull out a wooden bucket with a handle and another smaller bucket inside, and Zan goes still again.
“What’s this?” I ask him.
“An ice cream maker,” Zan answers neutrally.
My eyes widen, and for a moment I can’t speak.
Once again, even when we were at odds, he saw deeper into me and found a way to help me help myself with the first thing I have ever been really, truly excited about, that I didn’t think I deserved to even ask for—
“This isn’t an obligation,” Zan says quickly. “I’m not trying to make you do anything, and you absolutely don’t have to use it if you don’t want to—”
Aha.
That, finally, breaks me out of my shock and a big smile blooms on my face.
He listened to me, earlier.
And he made it possible for me to keep moving on my own path.
“Zan, thank you,” I interrupt him. “Really. Thank you.”
Zan breaks off mid-qualification. “Does that mean I can show you the milk and cream and sugar in my pack?”
I burst out laughing.
And here, another clarity:
I want to keep him.
I want to keep all of him, his edginess and the fire underneath, his intensity and his assured calm and his hidden playfulness.
And here is a way I can start moving, not simply standing still while I absorb information, to get started.
Maybe I should take my own advice to Teren and start moving, first, and refine from there.
A sudden yawn catches me by surprise. “What in the world? I haven’t been awake that long!”
“You’ve been awake a lot longer than you have at any point in the last five centuries, and your mind has been doing a lot of work to process,” Zan points out. “I’m surprised you lasted this long.”
Perhaps I was pulling energy simply from being in his company.
That seems like a weird thing to say to a person I’ve only known for like a day, though?
Another yawn catches me, and Zan’s lips quirk as I scowl in vague irritation. “Want to try making ice cream tomorrow?”
At that, I smile for real, if tiredly. “I’d love that.”
Sleeping is easier said than done.
“My” room is... soft, is the thing.
And while I may deserve softness, I’ve spent the last five hundred years on cold, unforgiving stone, and I’m paradoxically not comfortable here now.
I try the bed. I really do. But it’s like sinking into a pillow and triggers a weird panic in me, like the softness will swallow me and I’ll never be able to escape.
I try to breathe through it, but I am stiff and tense and now my body is locked in a contorted position and I can tell I won’t be able to move well tomorrow if I stay like this.
I get up and do a calming kata to restore my equilibrium, to work the tension and panic out of me.
Looser, I try the bed again, and instantly it’s the same.
My eyes flare with frustration. I just want to sleep, so tomorrow I can make ice cream with Zan, and there is a bed right here. How am I too picky for it after centuries of stone?
As I perform another kata, I wonder if maybe the problem is that it doesn’t feel like mine.
The temple may have been my prison, as Zan judged it, but it’s one I chose.
This room, I didn’t.
I would probably be more comfortable going back to the temple.
But that would be giving up, surely? Returning to my prison of my own volition—to the world that others decided was what—was all—that I deserved.
But simply sleeping shouldn’t be this hard.
Frustrated, exhausted, I sit down on the floor and pat it.
Firm. Okay. Maybe baby steps.
Moving at all is better than not moving, right?
I drag a blanket off the bed and put it on the ground. There. That will be my concession.
I lie down again and after a few minutes of holding myself still I want to cry.
It’s not working.
I don’t have a kata for this. Sleeping has never been a problem for me before. Why now?
Do I not remember how? Will I have to physically or magically knock myself unconscious whenever I need sleep?
I get up and try putting a blanket over me. After a few minutes I kick it off—too constricting—but now I’m cold.
And so tired I can’t think well enough to try to develop a new kata for myself.
Am I going to have to energize myself first?
I bang my fists on the floor in helpless frustration. I just want to sleep!
The door creaks open, and I freeze.
Zan.
He’s wearing different clothes now—loose shirt and pants—and looks tousled. Touchable.
And like the noise I’m making is keeping him awake.
“Sorry,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut.
Zan takes in the room—my deconstructed bed, the mess on the floor, and me; hunched, huddling, and shivering in the corner, drooping with weariness.
He doesn’t say anything as he crosses to me.
He just scoops me up right off the ground, cradled in his arms, and carries me out.
My brain fully stops working and I just stare at him as many feelings rush through me.
As he brings me to his room.
Still holding me, Zan sits on his bed and maneuvers my shocked and exhausted unresisting body until I’m facing him. Then he lies back so I’m lying across him, my cheek on his hard chest.
His arms loosely around me, holding me in my place.
His warmth seeping into my bones.
“Sleep, Yora,” he murmurs.
And wonder of wonders, I do.