"What are you doing?" He leaned over my shoulder and squinted at the small screen.
"Reading," I answered briefly. "And hello to you too."
He ignored my greeting as he studied the screen, his breath ghosting slightly across the side of my face as he pressed himself against my back, chin resting on my shoulder. A loose strand of his dark gold hair was tickling my cheek, and bemused I turned a little to blow it away.
"Well?" I asked as his eyes trailed to the end of the page.
"I thought you'd forgotten about me," he said quietly. "About us."
I pushed the netbook back and turned to look up at him as he straightened. Damn, but he was tall. I gestured to a nearby chair. "Sit down, you make the place look untidy," I teased. He glanced behind himself then dragged the chair over, spinning it round to sit astride it, leaning on the back with his arms folded and his chin resting on his forearms. He regarded me with soft brown eyes that still held a trace of hurt and disappointment, and I felt a pang of guilt. It had been too long.
"So what happened?" he asked quietly. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair.
"Hard to say," I answered. "I guess the accident had more of an effect on me than I'd realised. The arm kept me away from writing for a week; it completely interrupted the flow of things – and then my leg... well."
He glanced over at the walking stick. "You've been hermitting yourself, haven't you?" he chided gently.
"No!" I exclaimed, then, as he merely stared at me with one eyebrow raised, I relented. "Well – yes. Maybe. A bit."
He nodded. "We drifted apart," he said quietly, his gaze dropping to the floor. "I could feel it happening. I didn't know what I could do to fix it; you just... didn't feel the same."
I tilted my head to one side and regarded him gently. "I didn't mean for this to happen. It bothered me too," I confessed.
Abruptly he stood and pushed the chair away. He began to pace restlessly as I watched.
"I thought we were doing well together," he said tersely. "We seemed to be getting on great; on the same wavelength, in tune with each other." He slapped the palm of his hand with the backs of his fingers for emphasis. "We seemed to mesh, you know? You seemed to understand me; you seemed to know my very thoughts. And then... nothing." He stopped suddenly, spinning on his heel to stare at me. "Have you any idea what that feels like? To practically live and breathe with someone else and then have that stop dead?"
I stared at him wordlessly, then slowly nodded. "Yes. I do," I answered quietly. "It's not the first time this has happened to me."
"But will it be the last?" he asked as his shoulders slumped. I wanted to go to him; it hurt to see him looking so uncertain and vulnerable – and to know it was I who had pushed him to this.
"I don't know," I admitted quietly. "All I can promise is to try my hardest not to let it happen again. But I'm only human. Can you work with that?"
His head drooped, then he nodded slowly. "I guess I have to," he agreed. He stumbled back to his chair and slumped into it. He glanced up at me sadly. "It wasn't just you who was hermitting," he admitted. "I guess I was, a bit, too."
"I guess we were both a bit to blame," I replied quietly. He nodded, then looked up at me with a wry smile.
"Truce?" he suggested.
"Truce," I agreed with a smile. His smile widened and he shuffled his chair closer to sit beside me again, then reached over to pull the netbook closer.
"Now, where were we?" he asked, then pulled a face. "Oh, we're back to Chantry Boy are we? Damn, you do like making your muses work hard, don't you?"
"Welcome back Anders," I smiled.
His answer was a cheeky grin.
~ Fin. ~
