Soujin Birthday Fic!
Title: Untitled.
Fandom: Arthurian Legend (Catechism-'verse)
Characters: Mordred, Bedivere, Zara
Word Count: 2,649 wds.
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: An untitled (and incredibly late) birthday fic for Miss Soujin! ^___^ I borrowed her fantastic Catechism canon, because the idea ate my brain, but I promise I'll put all the characters back in their rightful boxes when I'm done.
When Mordred got home he went through the mail on the table. Mostly bills, a couple of Gareth’s catalogues, and a postcard addressed to him. It was one of those cheesy, touristy postcards with a scenic shot of the ocean and a green cliff full of sheep. Emblazoned across the bottom of the picture was “Croeso i Cymru!” which even Mordred’s rudimentary memory of the language could parse out as “Welcome to Wales!” He flipped it over to read the back. It was covered in a rough but familiar handwriting:
Letting our friends know we’ve moved.
And by friends, I mean you and Kay, since you two are the only ones’ve found us.
Come out and visit sometime, bring the family.
Florida’s not that far from Pennsylvania; least, not as far as Wales is.
It was followed by an address. The card was signed in red ink, a horizontal line with three parallel lines coming down from it, like a sideways E. A red gonfanon. Mordred rolled his eyes and stashed the postcard in the drawer with his passport.
*******
Mordred had the shade his eyes with his hand as he emerged from the Miami-Dade Airport. Damn sunshine, he thought. Hoisting his black duffle in his other hand he scanned the circle of cars waiting to pick-up passengers.
His eyes finally came to rest on a blindingly red Ferrari, top down. The curly-haired man leaning against it had his arms crossed, hiding his hands. Sunglasses hid his eyes and a Bluetooth was clipped to his ear, just like almost every other man in the airport. However, the smirk slowly creeping onto the man’s face was unmistakeable. Mordred made his way over.
“Subtle,” he said, indicating the car.
“Always,” said Bedivere. He took the duffle and tossed it into the back seat. “Just you?”
“Gaheris might fly down in a week or so to join us. I came as soon as school let out for the summer, before they could rope me into a summer lecture series.” Mordred slid into the passenger’s seat as Bedivere started the car. They sped off with a roar.
“So tell me, how does a suicidal drunkard from Wales afford an oceanside house and a Ferrari in Miami?” asked Mordred.
“Ancient Welsh secret known as the stock market,” replied Bedivere. “After a few crashes and cashes, I decided I should do something with my profits. I never really saw myself as a sheep farmer, even back in the day.”
“And your girlfriend?”
“Said she’d move to Miami when I sobered up.”
Mordred snorted. “You’re kidding me.”
Bedivere zipped in and out of the surrounding traffic. “You want to see my damn AA badge? After thirty days we moved, and I’ve barely touched the stuff since.”
“Barely?”
Bedivere ignored him. “I bought a club downtown, and she’s got a boutique full of overpriced handkerchiefs that the tourists like to wear as dresses. Seems to be working well enough. And the house is perfect.”
*******
Almost as soon as they pulled up in front of the house, Bedivere’s cell phone rang. He pulled halfway up the drive, honked, and clicked the button of his headset. “Buddy Dryden speaking,” he said. As he listened to the caller, Mordred watched the house. Shortly, Bedivere’s girlfriend appeared. She was still as skinny and scowly as Mordred remembered from the day they’d met in Wales. Now her hair was twisted into a knot on the back of her head though, and her oversized black sweater and blue jeans looked new. She came down the driveway and leaned in Bedivere’s door, eyes darting back any forth between them.
“Right, sure. Just wait there.” Bedivere clicked the headset again. “I have to run over to the club. Love, you can get Mordred settled in, right?”
“Fine, but don’t be late for dinner.” she said. Bedivere gave her a quick kiss, and Mordred climbed out and grabbed his bag from the backseat just barely before Bedivere sped backward down the driveway and zipped off.
“Nice to see he hasn’t changed,” commented Mordred. “It’s Laura, isn’t it?”
She glared at him. “C’mon inside. There’s iced tea if y’re thirsty.” Without another word, she returned to the house. Mordred followed.
Inside she grabbed his duffle without a word and chucked it unceremoniously into a doorway which he presumed was the guest room. Past that was a bathroom, then a large room full of dress forms and shelves of fabric, before reaching the large kitchen and den. Huge glass doors led to a deck which looked over the ocean, a strange facsimile of the Welsh cliffs.
Laura poured him a tall glass of tea, full of ice. “Sit.” He took a barstool at the counter. She stood on the other side, resting her chin in her hands as she leaned on the counter.
“So,” he said after a long drink. “Bedwyr seems to have adapted pretty well. How do you like Miami?”
“Damn hot,” she said. “An’ the people are stupider than he is after too many drinks.”
“You could always have stayed in Wales,” Mordred offered.
The look she gave him could have lit a fire. “I said they ‘re stupid. I ‘ent.”
*******
The club, called Firedrake, had just opened in time for the summer run. Bedivere took Mordred on a tour in the morning, before the place opened. Mordred noted the logo, Bedivere’s red gonfanon modified into a fiery dragon, and rolled his eyes. At least someone had maintained a sense of humor across the ages. Bedivere spent most of the days dealing with business in the mysterious upstairs offices the public didn’t know about. Mordred visited during business hours the first couple of nights, sitting in the VIP loft with Bedivere above the dance floor, laughing and swapping insults.
As the week wore on, Mordred spent more of his time back at the house, with Laura. It was much quieter sitting in the sewing room with only the hum of Laura’s sewing machine and the clinking of ice in his glass. Some afternoons they would hop in Laura’s car, a much more sedate black Maxima, and drive over to the boutique with a new load of tops and dresses.
By the end of the week, Laura’s glares had softened to cold gazes around Mordred. He first noticed it on the day Gaheris called.
“I told them you’d be here by now. I thought you were coming.” he said as he walked up and down the hall.
“Look, Mordred, I just can’t.” Gaheris’ voice sounded small and far away through the phone pressed to his ear. “Amy broke her arm, so she’s stuck here all summer. I can’t leave.”
“Oh lord. You know, one of these days her parents are going to report you as a child molester or something.”
“Mordred!”
“Alright, stay then, and make sure your heart doesn’t bleed on the couch. You know how Clar gets about that. I’ll say hi to Bedwyr for you. Call if you change your mind.”
As he hung up, he noticed the redhead leaning against the doorway of the sewing room, listening to him. “You brother?” she asked.
“Yeah. Apparently he’s not coming after all. Sorry.”
“You staying?” she asked. It was then that he noticed the softening in her eyes, and that her lips weren’t pressed together as tightly as usual. He leaned against the wall next to her. She was slouched down so far that he could look her in the eye.
“I’m surprised you aren’t trying to throw me out. Last time we met, you tried to throw me out of the country; I imagine a house is significantly easier.”
“Not much point now,” she says. “He’s happier now than he was then.”
“And you?”
There was a flash of a different look then, and their lips met. Hesitantly, then boldly, violently, arms wrapping around each other. A sudden flash came then, of a different time, and Mordred pulled away from her.
“Laura-”
“’S not Laura,” she said. “Zara.”
Mordred took a step backward, putting an arm’s length between them. “I’m not hooking up with my friend’s girl.”
She shrugged. “He’s a cheating lying drunk. Ent gonna matter to him.”
“It matters to me,” said Mordred firmly, and walked away.
*******
After that, Mordred spent most of his days out exploring the city. He rented a car. Miami was a nice town, if you didn’t mind having your view of the scenery obscured by the view of the vacationers and their too-small swimsuits. It was hot, sticky, and pulsing. It was starting to remind Mordred to much of a long ago time, another place with the same heavy pulse in the hot air as men fell around each other, sticky with blood.
*******
When he got back to the house ate one night, he was surprised to see that Bedivere was standing out on the deck, leaning his arms against the rail overlooking the ocean. As soon as he slid the door open, he caught the scent of beer mingled with the salt air.
“I thought you said you didn’t drink anymore,” he said as he stood behind the other man.
Bedivere snorted but didn’t turn. “I said barely. Every so often I make an exception, and tonight would be one of those nights. There’s more in the cooler.”
Mordred opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle. He opened it, and took a quick swallow. Bedivere took another long gulp from his before speaking again.
“I told you how I met her, didn’t I?”
“Somebody did,” replied Mordred. “Double suicide turns into true love at the edge of an oceanside cliff. Charming.”
Bedivere still didn’t turn. “You know how I died? The first time? Alone in a hovel by the sea, a hermit, whose name no one knew and whose deeds no one remembered. Ever since I haven’t been able to get away from the sea. I’ve tried, but my blood starts to boil and it won’t rest ‘til I go back. Maybe it’s my penance, for not finishing my job like I was supposed to, or not doing more to stop the inevitable. Next time I die, it’ll be in the sea, and again the time after that, and again, and again, and again.”
Mordred walked up and leaned his back again the rail next to Bedivere, half facing him. “Now that sounds like you, Bedwyr. Drunk and babbling about only the gods know what.”
Bedivere gave a hearty laugh and looked at him. “Like the old days, eh? Me pretending I’m twenty years younger, you pretending you’re twenty years wiser, both of us knowing we’re damned but trying not to see it.”
Their kiss was sloppy and tasted of beer and sea salt. It was the kind Bedivere would give anyone if he was drunk enough, and yet it wasn’t, not quite. Mordred looked at him as he pulled away, but Bedivere turned back out to the sea as it it hadn’t happened.
*******
Mordred emerged from his room still in plaid pajama pants and a white tee-shirt. Running his hand through his tousled hair, he went to the kitchen to poke around in the fridge for the orange juice. When he turned to set it on the counter, he was startled by the presence of Laura-Zara-on the other side of the counter. Her eyes were back to smoldering again, they way they had the first time he’d met her.
“Juice?” he asked as he retrieved a glass from the cupboard.
“So y’ can’t get with your friend’s girl, but you can take him away from her, that’s how it is?” she asked.
“What the hell are you talking about woman?” He shoved the juice back into the fridge and came around the counter with his glass. “I’m not taking anyone in this house anywhere.”
“I saw you last night. With him.”
“With-oh for the love of-”
She flew at him. He planted himself as he did when he wrestled with his brothers, using his weight against her height. The glass was knocked from his hand and shattered on the tile floor as she threw herself into him. He grappled to shove her away while she clawed at anything she could reach. They were both shouting now, in languages neither of them knew they knew and which the other couldn’t understand.
Suddenly she flew backwards away from him, something wrapped around her waist. It took Mordred a moment to realize it was Bedivere’s left arm, bare and ending at the wrist in that strange way that no one could ever get used to. He was still in a wifebeater and boxers, his eyes red with hangover. He was taller and stronger than both of them, so he restrained her with ease even as she fought him. His other arm wrapped around her shoulders, pinioning her against hid body as he whispered in her ear. Mordred took off down the hall, grabbing his clothes off the foot of his bed before disappearing out the front door.
He drove around Miami for several hours in the rental car, not really looking at anything or going anywhere in particular. He stopped for breakfast at some little place that wasn’t too crowded, then got back in the car and kept driving.
It was about four in the afternoon when he pulled back into the driveway of the house. Bedivere was sitting on the porch steps, watching him as he got out of the car and came up the steps.
“You appease your harpy yet?” asked Mordred.
“She doesn’t understand,” replied Bedivere.
“What is there to understand?”
“We found each other. You have your brothers and Clar. Percy has Helen and Lance’s idiot-boy. I have Kay and I’ll find Lucan too, eventually. She never found any of hers. They’re probably out there, somewhere, but she hasn’t found them yet. Maybe they’re not even looking for her. I’m all she’s got.”
“She got a bum deal.”
Bedivere looked up at him, something that only ever happened when he sat and Mordred stood. “So you’ll be leaving then?”
“Soon as I pack my bag.”
Bedivere pointed to a black duffle sitting on the end of the porch. Mordred picked it up and left without another word.
*******
It was mid-October. One of the biochemistry professors at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine had taken a sabbatical for the semester, so the school asked Mike Wilkinson to takes his class. He was always one of the favorite guest lecturers of the students, and sure enough when his name was announced the class filled up in a matter of days. They had given him his own office with his name on the door. Well, thought Mordred, with Mike’s name on the door. He never really could think of himself and Mike as the same person.
He was headed across the campus to his office, admiring the changing leaves and cursing the cold October air, when one of the other professors stopped him to say there was a woman waiting for him in his office. Mordred furrowed his brow as he walked. Clar normally just called his cell phone if something was urgent enough for her to interrupt him, so…
Standing in his office was Laura. She looked even skinnier than usual, if that was possible, and she watched him with a mixture of accusation and pain.
“Where is he?” she asked, angry but quiet.
“Where’s who?”
“He left.” Her voice was cold, blunt. “Didn’t take his clothes or his damn car, didn’t say anything. Woke up one morning he was gone. Didn’t even look like he finally jumped. He just…disappeared.”
It took a long, awkward pause before he gently put his arms around her and pulled her head against his shoulder. “He does that sometimes,” he said. “Don’t worry though. We’ll give him hell when he comes back.”
Fandom: Arthurian Legend (Catechism-'verse)
Characters: Mordred, Bedivere, Zara
Word Count: 2,649 wds.
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: An untitled (and incredibly late) birthday fic for Miss Soujin! ^___^ I borrowed her fantastic Catechism canon, because the idea ate my brain, but I promise I'll put all the characters back in their rightful boxes when I'm done.
When Mordred got home he went through the mail on the table. Mostly bills, a couple of Gareth’s catalogues, and a postcard addressed to him. It was one of those cheesy, touristy postcards with a scenic shot of the ocean and a green cliff full of sheep. Emblazoned across the bottom of the picture was “Croeso i Cymru!” which even Mordred’s rudimentary memory of the language could parse out as “Welcome to Wales!” He flipped it over to read the back. It was covered in a rough but familiar handwriting:
Letting our friends know we’ve moved.
And by friends, I mean you and Kay, since you two are the only ones’ve found us.
Come out and visit sometime, bring the family.
Florida’s not that far from Pennsylvania; least, not as far as Wales is.
It was followed by an address. The card was signed in red ink, a horizontal line with three parallel lines coming down from it, like a sideways E. A red gonfanon. Mordred rolled his eyes and stashed the postcard in the drawer with his passport.
*******
Mordred had the shade his eyes with his hand as he emerged from the Miami-Dade Airport. Damn sunshine, he thought. Hoisting his black duffle in his other hand he scanned the circle of cars waiting to pick-up passengers.
His eyes finally came to rest on a blindingly red Ferrari, top down. The curly-haired man leaning against it had his arms crossed, hiding his hands. Sunglasses hid his eyes and a Bluetooth was clipped to his ear, just like almost every other man in the airport. However, the smirk slowly creeping onto the man’s face was unmistakeable. Mordred made his way over.
“Subtle,” he said, indicating the car.
“Always,” said Bedivere. He took the duffle and tossed it into the back seat. “Just you?”
“Gaheris might fly down in a week or so to join us. I came as soon as school let out for the summer, before they could rope me into a summer lecture series.” Mordred slid into the passenger’s seat as Bedivere started the car. They sped off with a roar.
“So tell me, how does a suicidal drunkard from Wales afford an oceanside house and a Ferrari in Miami?” asked Mordred.
“Ancient Welsh secret known as the stock market,” replied Bedivere. “After a few crashes and cashes, I decided I should do something with my profits. I never really saw myself as a sheep farmer, even back in the day.”
“And your girlfriend?”
“Said she’d move to Miami when I sobered up.”
Mordred snorted. “You’re kidding me.”
Bedivere zipped in and out of the surrounding traffic. “You want to see my damn AA badge? After thirty days we moved, and I’ve barely touched the stuff since.”
“Barely?”
Bedivere ignored him. “I bought a club downtown, and she’s got a boutique full of overpriced handkerchiefs that the tourists like to wear as dresses. Seems to be working well enough. And the house is perfect.”
*******
Almost as soon as they pulled up in front of the house, Bedivere’s cell phone rang. He pulled halfway up the drive, honked, and clicked the button of his headset. “Buddy Dryden speaking,” he said. As he listened to the caller, Mordred watched the house. Shortly, Bedivere’s girlfriend appeared. She was still as skinny and scowly as Mordred remembered from the day they’d met in Wales. Now her hair was twisted into a knot on the back of her head though, and her oversized black sweater and blue jeans looked new. She came down the driveway and leaned in Bedivere’s door, eyes darting back any forth between them.
“Right, sure. Just wait there.” Bedivere clicked the headset again. “I have to run over to the club. Love, you can get Mordred settled in, right?”
“Fine, but don’t be late for dinner.” she said. Bedivere gave her a quick kiss, and Mordred climbed out and grabbed his bag from the backseat just barely before Bedivere sped backward down the driveway and zipped off.
“Nice to see he hasn’t changed,” commented Mordred. “It’s Laura, isn’t it?”
She glared at him. “C’mon inside. There’s iced tea if y’re thirsty.” Without another word, she returned to the house. Mordred followed.
Inside she grabbed his duffle without a word and chucked it unceremoniously into a doorway which he presumed was the guest room. Past that was a bathroom, then a large room full of dress forms and shelves of fabric, before reaching the large kitchen and den. Huge glass doors led to a deck which looked over the ocean, a strange facsimile of the Welsh cliffs.
Laura poured him a tall glass of tea, full of ice. “Sit.” He took a barstool at the counter. She stood on the other side, resting her chin in her hands as she leaned on the counter.
“So,” he said after a long drink. “Bedwyr seems to have adapted pretty well. How do you like Miami?”
“Damn hot,” she said. “An’ the people are stupider than he is after too many drinks.”
“You could always have stayed in Wales,” Mordred offered.
The look she gave him could have lit a fire. “I said they ‘re stupid. I ‘ent.”
*******
The club, called Firedrake, had just opened in time for the summer run. Bedivere took Mordred on a tour in the morning, before the place opened. Mordred noted the logo, Bedivere’s red gonfanon modified into a fiery dragon, and rolled his eyes. At least someone had maintained a sense of humor across the ages. Bedivere spent most of the days dealing with business in the mysterious upstairs offices the public didn’t know about. Mordred visited during business hours the first couple of nights, sitting in the VIP loft with Bedivere above the dance floor, laughing and swapping insults.
As the week wore on, Mordred spent more of his time back at the house, with Laura. It was much quieter sitting in the sewing room with only the hum of Laura’s sewing machine and the clinking of ice in his glass. Some afternoons they would hop in Laura’s car, a much more sedate black Maxima, and drive over to the boutique with a new load of tops and dresses.
By the end of the week, Laura’s glares had softened to cold gazes around Mordred. He first noticed it on the day Gaheris called.
“I told them you’d be here by now. I thought you were coming.” he said as he walked up and down the hall.
“Look, Mordred, I just can’t.” Gaheris’ voice sounded small and far away through the phone pressed to his ear. “Amy broke her arm, so she’s stuck here all summer. I can’t leave.”
“Oh lord. You know, one of these days her parents are going to report you as a child molester or something.”
“Mordred!”
“Alright, stay then, and make sure your heart doesn’t bleed on the couch. You know how Clar gets about that. I’ll say hi to Bedwyr for you. Call if you change your mind.”
As he hung up, he noticed the redhead leaning against the doorway of the sewing room, listening to him. “You brother?” she asked.
“Yeah. Apparently he’s not coming after all. Sorry.”
“You staying?” she asked. It was then that he noticed the softening in her eyes, and that her lips weren’t pressed together as tightly as usual. He leaned against the wall next to her. She was slouched down so far that he could look her in the eye.
“I’m surprised you aren’t trying to throw me out. Last time we met, you tried to throw me out of the country; I imagine a house is significantly easier.”
“Not much point now,” she says. “He’s happier now than he was then.”
“And you?”
There was a flash of a different look then, and their lips met. Hesitantly, then boldly, violently, arms wrapping around each other. A sudden flash came then, of a different time, and Mordred pulled away from her.
“Laura-”
“’S not Laura,” she said. “Zara.”
Mordred took a step backward, putting an arm’s length between them. “I’m not hooking up with my friend’s girl.”
She shrugged. “He’s a cheating lying drunk. Ent gonna matter to him.”
“It matters to me,” said Mordred firmly, and walked away.
*******
After that, Mordred spent most of his days out exploring the city. He rented a car. Miami was a nice town, if you didn’t mind having your view of the scenery obscured by the view of the vacationers and their too-small swimsuits. It was hot, sticky, and pulsing. It was starting to remind Mordred to much of a long ago time, another place with the same heavy pulse in the hot air as men fell around each other, sticky with blood.
*******
When he got back to the house ate one night, he was surprised to see that Bedivere was standing out on the deck, leaning his arms against the rail overlooking the ocean. As soon as he slid the door open, he caught the scent of beer mingled with the salt air.
“I thought you said you didn’t drink anymore,” he said as he stood behind the other man.
Bedivere snorted but didn’t turn. “I said barely. Every so often I make an exception, and tonight would be one of those nights. There’s more in the cooler.”
Mordred opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle. He opened it, and took a quick swallow. Bedivere took another long gulp from his before speaking again.
“I told you how I met her, didn’t I?”
“Somebody did,” replied Mordred. “Double suicide turns into true love at the edge of an oceanside cliff. Charming.”
Bedivere still didn’t turn. “You know how I died? The first time? Alone in a hovel by the sea, a hermit, whose name no one knew and whose deeds no one remembered. Ever since I haven’t been able to get away from the sea. I’ve tried, but my blood starts to boil and it won’t rest ‘til I go back. Maybe it’s my penance, for not finishing my job like I was supposed to, or not doing more to stop the inevitable. Next time I die, it’ll be in the sea, and again the time after that, and again, and again, and again.”
Mordred walked up and leaned his back again the rail next to Bedivere, half facing him. “Now that sounds like you, Bedwyr. Drunk and babbling about only the gods know what.”
Bedivere gave a hearty laugh and looked at him. “Like the old days, eh? Me pretending I’m twenty years younger, you pretending you’re twenty years wiser, both of us knowing we’re damned but trying not to see it.”
Their kiss was sloppy and tasted of beer and sea salt. It was the kind Bedivere would give anyone if he was drunk enough, and yet it wasn’t, not quite. Mordred looked at him as he pulled away, but Bedivere turned back out to the sea as it it hadn’t happened.
*******
Mordred emerged from his room still in plaid pajama pants and a white tee-shirt. Running his hand through his tousled hair, he went to the kitchen to poke around in the fridge for the orange juice. When he turned to set it on the counter, he was startled by the presence of Laura-Zara-on the other side of the counter. Her eyes were back to smoldering again, they way they had the first time he’d met her.
“Juice?” he asked as he retrieved a glass from the cupboard.
“So y’ can’t get with your friend’s girl, but you can take him away from her, that’s how it is?” she asked.
“What the hell are you talking about woman?” He shoved the juice back into the fridge and came around the counter with his glass. “I’m not taking anyone in this house anywhere.”
“I saw you last night. With him.”
“With-oh for the love of-”
She flew at him. He planted himself as he did when he wrestled with his brothers, using his weight against her height. The glass was knocked from his hand and shattered on the tile floor as she threw herself into him. He grappled to shove her away while she clawed at anything she could reach. They were both shouting now, in languages neither of them knew they knew and which the other couldn’t understand.
Suddenly she flew backwards away from him, something wrapped around her waist. It took Mordred a moment to realize it was Bedivere’s left arm, bare and ending at the wrist in that strange way that no one could ever get used to. He was still in a wifebeater and boxers, his eyes red with hangover. He was taller and stronger than both of them, so he restrained her with ease even as she fought him. His other arm wrapped around her shoulders, pinioning her against hid body as he whispered in her ear. Mordred took off down the hall, grabbing his clothes off the foot of his bed before disappearing out the front door.
He drove around Miami for several hours in the rental car, not really looking at anything or going anywhere in particular. He stopped for breakfast at some little place that wasn’t too crowded, then got back in the car and kept driving.
It was about four in the afternoon when he pulled back into the driveway of the house. Bedivere was sitting on the porch steps, watching him as he got out of the car and came up the steps.
“You appease your harpy yet?” asked Mordred.
“She doesn’t understand,” replied Bedivere.
“What is there to understand?”
“We found each other. You have your brothers and Clar. Percy has Helen and Lance’s idiot-boy. I have Kay and I’ll find Lucan too, eventually. She never found any of hers. They’re probably out there, somewhere, but she hasn’t found them yet. Maybe they’re not even looking for her. I’m all she’s got.”
“She got a bum deal.”
Bedivere looked up at him, something that only ever happened when he sat and Mordred stood. “So you’ll be leaving then?”
“Soon as I pack my bag.”
Bedivere pointed to a black duffle sitting on the end of the porch. Mordred picked it up and left without another word.
*******
It was mid-October. One of the biochemistry professors at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine had taken a sabbatical for the semester, so the school asked Mike Wilkinson to takes his class. He was always one of the favorite guest lecturers of the students, and sure enough when his name was announced the class filled up in a matter of days. They had given him his own office with his name on the door. Well, thought Mordred, with Mike’s name on the door. He never really could think of himself and Mike as the same person.
He was headed across the campus to his office, admiring the changing leaves and cursing the cold October air, when one of the other professors stopped him to say there was a woman waiting for him in his office. Mordred furrowed his brow as he walked. Clar normally just called his cell phone if something was urgent enough for her to interrupt him, so…
Standing in his office was Laura. She looked even skinnier than usual, if that was possible, and she watched him with a mixture of accusation and pain.
“Where is he?” she asked, angry but quiet.
“Where’s who?”
“He left.” Her voice was cold, blunt. “Didn’t take his clothes or his damn car, didn’t say anything. Woke up one morning he was gone. Didn’t even look like he finally jumped. He just…disappeared.”
It took a long, awkward pause before he gently put his arms around her and pulled her head against his shoulder. “He does that sometimes,” he said. “Don’t worry though. We’ll give him hell when he comes back.”