Claire
rolls over with a gasp. She is in
shock. She is drenched in sweat and
exhausted. She molested her kept. Something came over her when the sunlight
shined through the window on his disheveled hair. He had made a sound and she had kissed him.
Claire rolls out of Darien's bed and goes into his
bathroom. God. What is she going to tell Bobby? How is she going to face Darien? She turns on the water and splashes it on
his face.
She has fucked up. She made love to Darien but she doesn't know how he feels about it. He is on so many painkillers and she simply
could not control herself. She doesn't
know what to do. The simple situation
has suddenly become a huge situation. She splashes colder water on her face. She starts to hyperventilate and has to close her eyes and sit down on
his closed toilet. What is she going to
do? She is considering silently
gathering her things and disappearing into the morning. She hasn't done a 'fuck and run', as her
friends used to call it, in a while. In
college, her and her sisters would get oblivious and bring some poor
defenseless frat boy back to their rooms and disappear after he fell
asleep. The girls kept a scoreboard of
how many boys tiptoed out of the all-girls dorm, how many left their number on
the pillow, and how many would wait it out in the room. She could do it, just walk away, Darien
might not remember, but god. She'd
never forget. Every time she would look
at him she would taste his lips and feel the gentle mouth on hers. Every time she would look at Bobby she would
feel Darien's hands on her body.
Darien rolls over and feels the warm sheets. His lengthy passion with Claire surfaces in
his sleepy fog. Shit. He molested his Keeper. He rubs his eyes with his hands. He always seems to step in it. Kevin would love this story. Darien gets a glimpse of when he was in
college for a lone semester and he would call Kevin almost every Monday. He would tell Kevin how he woke up in some
sorority girl's bed and her brother was on the football team and Kevin would
'tsk tsk', give him a lecture about safe sex and hang up without solving
anything. He wonders what Kevin would
say to him this time. Darien pulls his
pillow from under his aching head. He
wasn't meant to think this much. He
puts the pillow over his head and curls into the rumpled covers, hoping the
muffling pillow will muffle the guilty voices in his head.
Claire quietly closes the bathroom door and sees the way
Darien is hiding in his bed. The pillow
covers his head and the sheet is twisted through his arms and between his
legs. His entire body is exposed except
his head. She stifles a laugh at his
failed attempt at privacy.
"Do not laugh at the animals," Darien says, from under
his pillow.
She loses her composure and starts to laugh. He moves the pillow and looks over at
her. She laughs harder, seeing his
morning hair.
"What's so frelling funny?" He asks, chuckling as he nails her with the pillow. She giggles as she retrieves the pillow and
pounces on him, playfully trying to smother him.
The tension is gone for a few precious seconds as Claire
teases Darien and is careful not to jostle his swollen leg. Finally, Claire is breathless and she flops
off him onto the bed beside him.
She has made a decision. It's not exactly the best choice, but it is a choice. "Darien, what just happened between us…"
"I hope you're talking about the pillow fight," Darien
says, quietly, wincing from the growing pain in his leg.
"If that's what you want to call it, Darien. When two consenting adults have a pillow
fight…" Claire starts. Darien puts the
pillow over his head in embarrassment.
"Can we just forget about it?" Darien asks, peeking his brown eyes from under the pillowcase.
"What if I don't want to forget about it? I care about you, Darien, and I don't regret
what just happened. Everyone needs a
little contact every once and a while and it's probably better to have it come
from a friend rather than a stranger," Claire says, nervous. She tries to tap into her mandatory spy
training to force the lies out of her mouth. "Two lonely people help take the pain away for a little while. There's nothing wrong with it."
"So casual sex is good for me, Doctor?" Darien asks, genuinely surprised. "In your medical opinion and all."
"In my female opinion, it's very good for me," She replies,
kissing him deeply on the mouth.
~!@#$%^&*()
Darien rolls over in his bed and blinks through the
painkillers.
"Hey, partner," Bobby says from across the room.
"Hobbes?" Darien
asks, sleepy from the fresh painkillers. "What are you doing in my house?"
"Well, first, this isn't a house and…"
Darien suddenly remembers Claire. He cautiously looks around as he sits
up. He doesn't see her and he
exhales. He feels used. It's not a bad feeling.
"Fawkes?" Bobby
asks, walking over to the bed. "How you
doing?"
"I'm a little drugged up, actually, thanks for
asking. What are you doing here,
again?" Darien asks, rubbing his
eyes.
Hobbes pulls a chair up beside his bed. "I wanted to talk to you. About yesterday."
"You mean how I'm always unconscious or nuts? I'm not mad. It's true," Darien sighs.
"Darien…" Bobby starts.
"I overreacted," Darien admits, tiredly. "I feel like shit."
"No, I shouldn't have said it. I was angry, and it had nothing to do with you, I shouldn't have
brought you into it. I was grasping at
straws and I was trying to hurt…" Bobby starts.
"What's the deal with you and Claire?" Darien suddenly gets a chill. He remembers the tension in the room when he
regained that ounce of consciousness and heard Bobby's comment. He feels a heavy weight descending on his
psyche. He recognizes the feeling. Guilt.
Hobbes hesitates. Darien realizes how distraught his partner looks. He has dark bags under his eyes and is
sweating.
"Hobbes? Man, you
look really stressed out."
Bobby nods. "I've
got a lot on my mind."
"Claire."
He nods again. "We've been kind of seeing each other."
Darien puts on his con face. He tries not to openly react. Claire and Bobby. Claire and
him. Claire, the Keeper. He is impressed.
"She doesn't want a relationship. I do. We disagree," Bobby says, in a rush. "It's not public at all…"
"Damn, Bobby," Darien interrupts. "Slow down. She break up with you?"
"I broke up with her, but how do you break up when you're
not even in a relationship? She says
that she cares about me and likes the comfort she gets when we're together but
that she can't handle anything deeper," Bobby explains, glad to get the secrets
out. "I don't know what to do and I
can't concentrate on that if you're mad at me."
"I told you that I'm not mad. I'm just a little out of it from all this medication," Darien
admits. "I guess it's been a crazy
couple of days for everybody."
Darien's head starts to spin as he stands up. The painkillers are telling his body to
sleep. The revelations of the morning
are telling his body to run. He sighs.
"Whoa. You and
Claire. I guess that's kind of weird
being around her all day and acting like you're not together."
"It's hard for me, but not for her. She's not like any woman I've ever been
with, Darien. She's like a man. She can survive with just sex, she doesn't
need emotional attachments. I do. But I care about her so much, Fawkes. I don't know what to do," Bobby is
torn.
Darien's guilt gets heavier after every word that Bobby
says. He wishes he could wish away the
day. "Damn, Bobby. That's heavy. That's something I'm really going to have to think about. I don't know what to tell you."
Bobby sighs audibly. "I just felt like I needed to explain some things to you. I've been really out of it lately with this
on my mind, it's affecting my work." Bobby sees Darien's drowsiness. "I'm sorry, I'm keeping you up."
"Hang around, I'll wake up in a little while when these
drugs wear off. We'll figure something
out," Darien says, wishing that things could be simple for him for once.
Bobby shakes his head. "I'll come back later. You get
some rest."
Darien watches Bobby leave. He sits down. He holds
his head. He sighs.
~!@#$%^&*()
Claire doesn't drink. She hates the taste of liquor but she buys a bottle of generic vodka
before she heads to her house. She
needs something to calm her nerves and help her sort out her emotions.
All these months, she has looked at Darien with a mixture
of awe and curiosity. She knew his
brother, god, she knew Kev, but she never imagined the depth that she has found
in Darien.
When she first saw him in classified file pictures, she
had shrugged off his handsomeness, but she had no idea that he would ooze
sexuality. When he had first met her,
she had shivered with the unintended flirtations that seemed to fall from his
mouth.
She pours a little vodka into her orange juice and lies
on her couch. Pavlov is pouting under
the kitchen table.
Darien seems to turn women into sputtering pools of
mush. Something in his eyes makes her
want to smother him with her lips and never let him go.
But then there's Bobby. Bobby has the sort of looks that grow on you. After their initial meeting, he seemed to get more attractive every
time she saw him. He is so caring and
gentle, an old fashioned gentleman. His
crush on her made him more accessible than Darien, but less threatening. She used him for sex. Claire's guilt finally assaults her.
She took Bobby's affection and used him to relieve her
selfish sexual tension. She would spend
all day looking at Darien, repressing her mixed feelings, and she would come
home and spend all night making mindless love to Bobby. What has she done?
Her phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Claire," Darien breathes into the phone.
"Hey, Darien. Is
everything okay?" She gets a knot in
her heart every time he calls her on the phone, thinking that he is hurt.
He pauses. "That's a matter of perspective."
"What is it?" Claire asks, dread pooling in her stomach.
"I saw Bobby today. He told me what's been bothering him. What are you doing, Claire?" His
voice is low and confused.
Claire's voice deserts her. All her thoughts of her being with Darien are crushed. Darien and Bobby are friends. Good friends. Darien would never hurt Bobby.
"Claire?" Darien's voice brings her back.
"I don't know," She admits.
"Okay," Darien says. "I don't know either. I do know
that I'm not getting in the middle of two of my best friends. I think we should forget that today ever
happened. It was an accident."
"I can't forget, Darien. I'm sorry. Its something I've
wanted to do for a long time and I don't regret it," She says. She isn't sure what she expects Darien to
say in reply, but she couldn't lie to him, not again.
"Crap. Claire…crap."
That is not what she expected to hear. She expected him to sigh and say that he
harbored feelings for her, too, or to laugh and tell her she was imagining
things. She did not expect him to sound
like the world's weight was sitting on his shoulders. He sounded like Kevin.
"Claire, I've got to go." He hangs up, abruptly.
~!@#$%^&*()