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 Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:35 pm
She’d heard the captain’s screams echoing in her dreams. All night long, the same terrified, choked sob repeated, and she’d kept waking up, looking at the clock and hoping it was morning, only to find she’d only nodded off for twenty minutes. Awful. And with a full day of classes the following morning, she’d really needed any shut-eye she could get. Tallulah doubted Kaatje would have any sympathy for her predicament - probably, the other girl would have some kind of cutting remark about weakness and tell her to get on with her life, and it wasn’t like Tallulah was going to bother her in the middle of the day over bad dreams. Juvenile, she thought. Revolting. Be stronger.
Paul met her during the lunch hour to go over the Biological Systems notes, and Tallulah, despite having mainlined a can of Ener-TEA during her first class of the day, and the cup of coffee she’d gotten to accompany her sandwich, was having trouble staying awake. Which was awful, really, it was, because she wanted to pay attention to Paul and not make him feel like he was tutoring her for nothing, and also because she was just absolutely baffled about his apparent Youma-whisperer status and trying not to think too hard about it, because she didn’t like the conclusions she was reaching, and not paying attention to his notes was making her worry about the other issue at hand.
So, like, not productive at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking herself awake again. “I didn’t sleep very well last night. I’ll get this, I swear.”
What would Paul think of her if he knew that, less than twenty hours ago, she’d stood on a man’s neck until he suffocated? He’d dump her, probably.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:37 pm
It always worried him whenever Tallulah wasn’t in the peak of health, because he’d met her when she’d almost passed out in the pool in the sports complex, and that wasn’t exactly the most confidence-inspiring meeting. She seemed a lot better, before, but with the recent spat of tiredness in her face, he wasn’t utterly convinced that whatever she’d had--he was fairly sure it wasn’t actually Lyme disease--was completely gone yet. So he was alright with her seeming tired, with her wandering attention span. It didn’t matter, because they could always study later, and he’d be happier if she would just, like, take a nap.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Your test isn’t for a week. We can handle this later.” He closed the notebook, held out an arm in case she wanted to tuck herself up close. “Honestly, even if you could pay attention, you probably wouldn’t retain any of it. So don’t worry. We can just talk.”
Once she was close enough that he could surreptitiously check her forehead for fever--nothing--he sighed. “So, what was it? Just general insomnia, or nightmares, or--you know, we can talk about this.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:38 pm
“Sorry,” said Tallulah, watching him put the notes away, and she accepted his offer of closeness without further hesitation. It was nice how quickly he could switch gears from tutor to boyfriend, she thought, settling her head against his shoulder. “Thanks,” she sighed, rubbing her eyes. She couldn’t explain to him what was wrong, just like she couldn’t tell him what had really made her so sick, and just like that, Paris’s argument in favor of dating within Order made a lot of sense. But then she got a whiff of Paul’s cologne and Paris’s advice seemed a lot less compelling.
So, she decided, she’d just muddle along as best she could. “This weird repeating nightmare,” she sighed. “About suffocation. I’d fall asleep for like twenty minutes and then it’d wake me up and it was just bad.” But she - she couldn’t hold it against Kaatje. It was going to happen sooner or later, and of all the possible outcomes, going into her first kill with an experienced friend at her back was probably the best way to do it.
She still insisted to herself that it was against her nature, but there had been that moment - that strange, strange moment when she’d felt the full enormity of her power and she’d liked it that claimed otherwise.
“My next class is in an hour,” she sighed. Reason said to take a sick day, but this just didn’t seem like a big deal. So she was sleep deprived? So what. She’d been sleep deprived in high school and all it had ever gotten her was a stern talking-to from Mr. Westerman. So, like, whatever. “I’ll be okay,” she said, reaching for one of Paul’s hands and giving it a squeeze. “You’re a good guy.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:39 pm
No, he was not a good guy, but he was pretty sure he loved Tallulah and that she was the best thing he had going for him in his life right now. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he told her, running his fingers through her hair, below the clip where it was loose. Europa had had the same style--it must be popular among Girls of a Certain Age, although no one else he’d seen actually wore it. It had to be a coincidence, though… on account of Europa didn’t look anything like his girlfriend. “It is my opinion, from the point of view of someone about four months from being a doctor--or, you know, a guy in a residency program--that you, as someone who is still technically recovering from a potentially deadly illness, ought to take a nap. At least.”
He leaned in and kissed her temple, wondered if he should be smothering the fiercely protective and possessive urge that rose up in him like a tidal wave. Someday the Negaverse might put Tallulah in the same position as they’d put Shay. A mode of punishment for a wayward officer. Or they might just kill him, and then who would look after her?
The swell of panic at the thought locked up his throat tight. “I would feel better if you took a nap,” he told her. “Much better. But it’s up to you. You’re a grown woman and I’m just a guy with medical training.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:40 pm
“Yes, Doctor Wyndham,” said Tallulah appeasingly, checking her watch, and she felt reassured in her decision to date civilian - because it meant she didn’t have to talk about last night with him. If she were dating a senshi or a knight, she’d have to tell them, or they’d hear about it eventually, anyway. Paul would comfort her without demanding the whole story, and that was nice. That was really nice. “Wake me up at twelve-fifty, okay?”
Because, exhausted or not, she was going to go to her next class, damn it.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:40 pm
“Twelve-fifty,” he repeated, and he shifted in his seat to be a more comfortable pillow for her, because that was surely the purpose of boyfriends in the first place.
While she slept, he reviewed his own notes. If he wanted to pass his own midterms, he had to be ready--he didn’t have any excuses like recently recovered from a life-threatening disease of some kind. Existential crises were not actually criteria for getting an incomplete in his courses and completing them later, which was an option completely open to Tallulah if she needed it.
He made it through two chapters by twelve fifty, and then he gently nudged her shoulder. “It’s twelve-fifty,” he said, “time to get up.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:41 pm
Tallulah had fallen into a dreamless sleep, and if she were more needlessly sentimental a person she would have attributed that to Paul’s presence. She wasn’t that kind of person, but she was dead tired. She had contemporary philosophy next, which wasn’t a major-required course. The professor expected class participation, and she’d be absolutely useless.
Besides, it had been nice to turn off for a while. She wondered if she could get back to the same dreamless place if she kept her head on Paul’s chest longer. “Would you hate me forever if I just decided not to go to class?” she asked. She’d never skipped before, but today she just really honestly didn’t feel up to it. Murder was apparently exhausting.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:41 pm
“No,” he said, “I would never hate you for making a decision about your health, but I would like it if you could walk with me to the bus stop, so no one thinks I’ve drugged you? I don’t really fancy getting security called on us.” He put away his things and, helpfully, hauled Tallulah upright. “Here. Let me give you a hand.”
It was also nice that he could completely ignore his own issues to lend his girlfriend a hand. It made his life a lot easier to have something to bury his problems in.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:42 pm
Tallulah roused herself long enough to make it to the bus, and then she tried her best to stay upright for the ride, because sleeping on public transportation was just a low she had not sunk to yet. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to keep pace with him up the walk to his house. “It’s just a bad day.” And it was nice to be able to blame it on her illness, and maybe, she thought, it was a little bit her illness, although she was almost entirely recovered.
“I’ll be better tomorrow,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:43 pm
“I know you will be,” said Paul, and he squeezed her hand. The moment they got over the threshold, he picked her up and tucked her close to his chest; it wasn’t that his room was particularly far or anything, but he liked having her close, and she was very warm against his chest like that. It was a comforting weight, is all. “So you can nap until whenever you wake up or five, whichever comes sooner, and then I’ll take you home, okay? Your parents don’t have to be any the wiser unless you want them to be.”
He toed the door to his room open and settled Tallulah down on his bed. On the one hand, he could head back to the college and attend his internship. Or he could email the director and explain there was a family emergency, or something. He liked that second idea best, because he liked Tallulah best. So he settled next to her on the bed and wrote an email on his phone, telling the director what was up. Once he got the text-based sign-off for his absence, he toed his shoes off and kicked them under his nightstand. “You asleep,” he asked.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:43 pm
Tallulah had started to drift off, her face burrowed in Paul’s comforter, but she was still awake enough to hear him ask if she was asleep. “Almost,” she murmured, although she wasn’t sure it actually emerged from her mouth as the word she intended it to be. There was something just so normal about taking a sick day to sleep in her boyfriend’s bed that comforted her. She hadn’t - she would have never predicted this relationship, honestly, when she moved back to Destiny City, but it had swept her up and turned into an anchor that she held onto more than a little zealously. And she was going to hold onto it for as long as she could - Paul was sweet, and caring, and she didn’t see herself finding anyone else who got her quite the way he did, or at least the chances seemed extremely unlikely.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:43 pm
“Well, go to sleep,” he said, and he curled around her protectively after setting an alarm on his phone. “I can promise with reasonable surety that the world will still be here when you wake up.”
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