honeydew
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: First Night
Rating: PG-13
Challenge: Honeydew #6: too good to be true
Toppings/Extras: none
Wordcount: 504
Summary: Miss Merritt does what she wants: Mr Prowse wonders what in the world that is.
Notes: Fluffity fluff.
One night, it was different. That night, Adele decided-for some reason that Isaac could not fathom-to stay in his room after the sex. To sleep there. She had never done that before.
In all honesty, Isaac Prowse was more bemused than anything as he looked at her sleeping form. First of all, he didn’t truly understand people who could simply drop from the face of the world into sleep as she had just done-and secondly, he wasn’t sure what he was meant to make of it. If anything.
He wondered if this signalled any sort of significant change in their relationship, but doubted it somehow. Adele Merritt had made it rather clear that it was mere sex that she wanted, and that if he did or said anything to suggest otherwise she would walk.
She looked different when she was sleeping. Isaac realised that he had never seen her without a frown on her face. Her brows were permanently angled downwards: in fact, he had thought that perhaps that was the natural structure of her face. Apparently not. There were faint hairline creases in her forehead where her frown was usually plastered, but aside from that it was smooth. She looked so normal.
To make sure he didn’t do anything ridiculous like stroke her hair, Isaac stood up and crossed the poky room he was bunking in during their stay on Kraken, opening the window to let the sea air wash against his face. It was dark, and lights from the various cabins of Kraken lit the black waves an instant at a time, showing him the constantly changing peaks and troughs.
He’d had her days, and now it seemed he had her nights as well.
It was progress, but he wasn’t sure what he felt about that, or if he even wanted progress. Even though Adele could not be called a model human being, he was quite certain that she had never killed anyone. He was quite certain that she had never pushed a knife through someone’s living flesh. Putting his hands on the cold metal of the windowsill, he sighed. Inside of his wardrobe hung his most precious possession: a bandoleer of throwing knives, small and deadly little weighted blades sharp enough to cut the very air in half.
She didn’t know about that.
In fact, she knew a lot less about him than she thought she did. That made him uncomfortable, but he couldn’t decide whether it would be more uncomfortable to tell her that he killed people for a living. It was a bit of a moral dilemma. At what point would it cross from not revealing information to dishonesty? He wouldn’t lie, but he would damn well avoid telling her if he could...
Although he wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much. After all, it wasn’t as though the two of them were in any form of sentimental or romantic relationship. Adele was quite annoying sometimes anyway.
He just wouldn’t want her thinking badly of him.