Author's Note: Sorry for the delay - the good news is that the next chapter is done and written and I will have it up as soon as it is edited! It's longer... and well worth the wait.
I woke the next morning feeling sluggish from the lingering effects of the night before. Dimitri had ever so kindly agreed to push back our practice time by two hours, but I knew no amount of extra sleep would've made up for it.
Before I went to bed, he'd insisted on me drinking three glasses of water straight, swearing that it would make the difference in the morning. I had taken each down with increased complaining, much to the amusement of Alexei, who was awake on guard, watching us from his post at the table. The water had weighed heavy on me at the time, but it settled by the time I was in bed, and I'd quickly fallen into a heavy sleep.
Both Dimitri and Alexei were already awake, mirrors of how I'd left them only a few hours earlier. The pair looked at me curiously.
"I'm up, I'm up," I said, hands held defensively in front of my face as I made my way over to Ivan's laptop at the kitchen table. "I just need to shoot Lissa an email."
"No worries," Alexei assured me, sitting down with a plate of toast for both of us. "I'm training you today. We can be a little more flexible than your usual jailer."
I jerked my head in Dimitri's direction, he sat on the couch, engrossed in a novel. "Why?"
"Try not to sound so offended," Alexei mocked. "It's good to get cross-training and Dimitri's got some family stuff to do."
I took a piece of toast, leftovers of Olena's black bread that Alexei had slathered in butter. A perfect pre-workout food if I'd ever seen one. "What kind of family stuff?"
Dimitri sighed, putting his book down and turning to face me. "My family is throwing a little party tonight."
"I thought this was a religious holiday, you guys party a little hard for the saints."
"It isn't and not quite," Alexei replied. "It's Dimitri's birthday in a few weeks."
"What!?" I stared at Dimitri, incredulous. "When were you going to tell me?"
"It's not a big deal," Dimitri sighed. "My family just uses the holiday as an excuse to give me an early celebration."
"No big deal? Of course it's a big deal! I should get you a present or something."
"I wanted to get him cowboy boots for his birthday this year," Alexei smirked. "But he says they're impractical for work."
"I don't know," I postured. "You could get those spurs on the side, make them real silver and get them charmed. That could be a formidable weapon against Strigoi."
"See Dimitri? She's always looking out for your best interest." An eye roll from Dimitri. "I could probably get them made, but they'd be here a little late."
"I don't need anything," Dimitri insisted, turning away and back to his book, effectively ending the conversation.
I drafted a quick email to send to Lissa. She and Natalie were going off campus tonight, during human time, to get their dresses for the upcoming dance. I so desperately wished that I could be there with her, doing dumb girly things like picking out dresses and gassing each other up for the evening. It would've been a perfect night. Instead, I had to settle for asking her for a million mental images of all the dress options.
"I'm ready," I told Alexei, sending the email and closing the computer. I didn't expect much of a response from her, but I hoped the sentiment counted.
"Let's do it," Alexei agreed, standing up and clapping Dimitri on the shoulder from over the couch. "See ya later, dude."
"Make sure she gets some laps in," Dimitri insisted, causing a rush of wooziness to fill my head in anticipation. He looked at me knowingly as I let out a soft groan, "You won't always be able to run in optimal conditions, this is something my Babushka taught me… practice in all states will make you stronger."
"We already do enough when I'm sleep deprived," I retorted. "Do we really have to add vomiting while running to my skillset?"
Alexei grimaced, "Are you really that nauseous?"
"No," I conceded. "The water helped, but I'm still not sure you guys don't just dilute gasoline and call it Vodka here."
As it turned out, cross training with Alexei brought a whole new perspective into fighting. It had been a while since I worked with him – mostly due to his and Dimitri's swapped schedules.
We spent most of the day in the gym, a longer block of time than I usually spent with Dimitri, but it was helpful to switch up the fighting tactics for a change.
Dimitri relied strongly on his height, while Alexei did so with his strength. He attacked lower than I was used to, bracing for impacts and going for low holds where he could lift and subsequently throw me.
Alexei was patient in helping me learn some of his favorite techniques. Dimitri was too, of course. I felt less guilty making Alexei go over something than I did with Dimitri. I didn't want to look bad for Dimitri, but around Alexei we could mock each other like siblings and still get the work done. I was looking forward to trying some new techniques out on Dimitri and possibly getting the upper hand.
"So…" I started, when we were taking a breather towards the end of the day. "How are you doing?"
Alexei choked on a laugh, nearly coughing on his water. "Since when do we do this?" he asked.
"I don't know," I sighed. "I feel like I spend so much time with Dimitri that you and I can talk crap but never actually talk about anything."
"You're his little protégé. Why are you really asking?"
"I don't know," I admitted, huffing as I realized I'd given him the same answer. "I guess… Dimitri told me a little bit about the accident last night. About how you guys had a hard time getting on after that, which I never really noticed because you seem fine."
Alexei nodded, thoughtful beside me. "We have different… coping mechanisms. They didn't really mesh well."
"He told me as much."
"Did he tell you how we fixed it?"
I shook my head, willing him to go on.
"Well, you probably never noticed because of all the adjustments you were going through, and you didn't have much to compare it to, but it was just around the same time you came around."
"It's been like… years since the accident. You didn't like each other for that long?"
"Yes and no. It's not like we couldn't work together, you learn to compartmentalize a lot as a guardian, and having rotating guard can help. But, Dimitri never understood how to see the light in anything, whereas that's all I could focus on.
"You may have thought you saw him at his dark and brooding best," Alexei laughed. "You didn't see anything. After the attack, the incident, whatever we call it… he retreated into his shell. Ivan did a lot to help him out of it, but he felt like he owed his whole life to Ivan saving us, for going against the rules of Moroi culture to help…
"Ivan was just being a good friend but Dimitri could only deal with that by putting all semblance of emotions away. He didn't think that I was taking it as seriously as he was – that's really what got between us. And that's why I got sent to Portland to retrieve you and Lissa. Abe wanted one of us on the mission and Dimitri refused to leave Ivan's side, he really thought it was a worthless reason to take one of us away."
I laughed wryly, "Thanks, I guess."
"Oh no, it's not like that," Alexei hastily recovered. "We just didn't understand why retrieving you needed one of us when he'd had guardians following you this whole way."
"Abe works in strange ways."
"That's for sure. But he sees three steps ahead of other people, so maybe he knew how this would work out in the long run. Anyway, when Dima read the report of how everything went down, he seemed to realize I could take my job seriously, if not in a different way. That or he just decided it was time to loosen up a little."
"What changed?"
"Well, I don't know…" Alexei said, light in his voice and obviously leading somewhere. "Maybe it's because a pretty girl came into his life and he gets to spend most of his time with her while she looks at him like he's the sun."
He looked pointedly at me.
I drew in a sharp breath, embarrassed to hear Alexei say he'd noticed any of my feelings towards Dimitri. I shook my head defensively, "That's ridiculous, all the girls at school look at him like that."
He laughed, "Yeah, they do. But, you'll notice that he never accepted any of them as his mentee."
"My dad forced that."
"Maybe, but Dimitri has always been steadfast in making his own decisions, even where your father is involved. You have to stop to think that, if he wouldn't leave Ivan's side for a week to go retrieve you, why did he agree to split his attention?"
I opened my mouth to protest further, but he cut me off with a heavy sigh. "Look, Rose. No matter which way you swing it, even Ivan hasn't been able to get as much emotion out of Dima in the past few years as you have in the past few months. You can take that information any way you want to; you can ignore it, brush it off. Or you can realize what we all did a month ago, when he officially sat me down to make amends with me… he likes you. You're both just too dumb to do anything about it.
"Now," Alexei said, grabbing his gym bag from where we'd left our things. "Time to get you gussied up for his birthday."
