He's asleep in the window seat, breathing softly, long hair splayed across the pillow, limbs curled. He would look almost peaceful but for the swelling around his eye, the bandages, the bloody wounds.
The dawn light is creeping across the kitchen, beginning to warm my toes on the tile floor where I have been standing studying him, for how long, I'm not sure. Feels like hours, probably minutes.
It's been seven years since I've seen him. So much has changed and yet there he is, back in the window seat and I feel transported to a slightly more innocent time.
When we met, I was 16, he was 17. I had just spent the year mostly alone and deeply immersed in work. Research, clinical observation, flight training. Not your typical teenager by any stretch of the imagination. Neither was he I suppose, he'd been fending for himself for nearly a decade, but we found some youthful innocence that summer. All kinds of adolescent rites of passage. Road trips, camping, sailing, cookouts, sex on the beach. Hell, we even went to dances.
20 years later, another dark shroud has descended over the seemingly idyllic venue for our coming of age adventures. He has retreated to my home, my window seat, to lick his wounds. It's flattering, in a dark kind of way.
I crawl up beside him where he lays, bathed in the morning sun, and wrap a tentative arm gently around his waist. He groans quietly and turns onto his back and his anxiety, sadness, despair wash over me in a wave before I am able to realize what is happening and raise my defences. I shrink back, tears springing to my eyes. I quickly employ a mental technique that comes surprisingly naturally to me, considering it hasn't been used in nearly 30 years, but it's too late. I've revealed myself.
"Steph?" he rasps "are you ok?"
"I'm fine," I assure him while padding over to the freezer to fetch him an ice pack. "Here. For your eye"
"That was totally something but I so don't have the energy to pry it out of the Steph vault right now" He grumbles, snatching the ice pack and rolling into the window, turning his back to me.
I sigh and perching myself on the other end of the bench, tilt my head toward him so I can look him in the eye. "It was empathy" I say
"Like, 'poor wounded Duke empathy'?" he attempts. I purse my lips. He rolls his eyes "Of course not, like trouble empathy"
"Yahtzee" I deadpan "don't worry, I have impeccable defences, it just caught me off guard."
"great" he moans "I activated your trouble, like I didn't have enough guilt rattling around in here"
"Don't feel too bad, I converted it into a kind of superpower when I was a kid, doesn't do me much harm. Pretty useful, actually"
"Yeah, if only you could inflict empathy, that'd be handy" I quirk my eyebrows "You CAN?"
"Oh yeah, very handy, especially with psychopaths" I smirk.
He chuckles "You're my favourite kind of diabolical, Steph"
"Isn't that why you're here?"