AN: Yay, people like *^_^*…okay, for the four wonderful people who have so
far shown support for this fic, the show goes on!!!!!!!!
Muchos gracias to mOOnPrINCess, BRITTANIA, Electric Pegasus, and Diana for their reviews. ^_^
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
--Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Six: A Strange Man's Apartment
Serena held her wishstone high above her head, casting a circle of silver light around herself. A voice sung in her head, and she crept cautiously forward in the darkness, wary of the way it swirled to form a shape. Suddenly, it whirled, and unbearable pain coursed through her. She screamed and screamed, falling to her knees. Luna was crying, and a man with black hair and deep blue eyes was shaking her and screaming, "You should have known! You should have known!" She cried and cried for him to stop, and suddenly he enfolded her in his arms. Remembering what had happened the last time he had held her and disappeared, she screamed again in anticipation of the fall into black nothingness…
Serena woke with a start, to find herself wrapped tightly in a pair of strong arms, her cheek resting on warm, bare skin between a man's neck and shoulder.
"Shhh, it's okay. It was just a nightmare. Just a bad dream. You're all right now," a gentle voice soothed her. She felt his hand stroking over her hair, and allowed herself to relax into the embrace and be comforted. She felt warm and safe.
He felt her heartbeat slow back to normal, but didn't let go. He cradled her against him, rocking her gently and continuing a steady stream of soothing words. Not until every muscle in her body was relaxed, and her breathing smooth and even, did he gently lay her back on the bed. It was then that she realized that she didn't know where she was, or who he was.
"Where…" she began, feeling a tiny spurt of fear, but was stopped with his finger against her lips.
"Shhh, not now. In the morning. Just go back to sleep," the soft voice said soothingly, and his fingers stroked softly over her cheek. She watched as his shadowy form rose from her bed and crossed the room. He paused in the doorway to look back at her, and a ray of muted light fell across his face. Serena nearly gasped in surprise.
He was startlingly handsome, with raven black hair that fell in sleep- mussed strands across his eyes. Midnight blue eyes. Eyes from a dream…
He was gone before she could call him back, and exhaustion proved stronger than curiosity. She was soon back inside a dreamless sleep.
~----------~
She woke to a familiar sense of wondering where she was. Serena had lived in a lot of different homes, and had eventually gotten used to the initial sense of disorientation. However, after a few moments of lying there, still not knowing where she was, she started to feel a little panicked.
Sitting up, she took in her surroundings. She was in a twin-sized bed with white cotton sheets. The room was painted in pale blue, the sparse furnishings plain, unembellished wood. Looking down, she discovered herself to be wearing a pair of plaid men's boxer shorts and a too-big white cotton t-shirt. She lifted a handful of the fabric to her nose and inhaled a manly scent, very unlike anything that had ever touched her skin before. Luna rose from the foot of the bed and walked daintily over the blue bedspread to bump her head against Serena's hand. She petted the cat absently, going over all the recent events she could recall, trying to figure out where the heck she was.
She couldn't remember much after the hospital room. She knew that she had been back to the Tsukinos' house, and that she had decided to run away, taking Luna with her, but besides that, everything was rather muddled, something about rain and stairs. The only thing she recalled quite clearly was the face of a man who had shushed her when she awoke from a nightmare. A nightmare that had contained that face. But he had not been the source of fear in the dream, and she could remember very well the tender way he had comforted her. She blushed as the thought occurred to her that these must be his boxers she was wearing, and his shirt. The blush deepened as she wondered how she had got them on. Surely, he hadn't…
A soft clanging came from elsewhere in the house, or wherever she was, and Luna sat up straight with her ears perked, then jumped off the bed and to the closed door. She looked back at Serena and plaintively asked for the door to be opened. Serena slowly slid her body through the unfamiliar feel of the sheets and let her bare feet touch the cold of the hardwood floor. She winced and thought in annoyance, Geez, hasn't the guy ever heard of rugs? There was a pair of brown slippers lined up neatly with the edge of the bed, and she paused a moment before slipping them on. They were too big for her small feet, and she felt faintly guilty for using someone else's slippers without asking, but they provided relief from the cold floor. She shuffled over to the door and opened it, letting the cat trot happily down the hallway. She herself paused hesitantly in the doorway.
A quick glance back inside the room showed no signs of her bag anywhere, and therefore no hope of anything else to wear. He was sure to be outside that door somewhere, and God only knew who else lived here. Could she really go out and face the unknown wearing a pair of boxers and a man's cotton shirt? Just then, a waft of coffee smell came across her nose, immediately tipping the scales in favor of going out and not caring what she looked like.
All the same, it was with a tentative step that she rounded the corner to the main room of what she had discerned to be an apartment, judging from its small size. Here, a large off-white rug with a zigzag pattern of green stripes covered the middle of the floor. A few easy chairs and a big green couch surrounded a wooden coffee table, centered on the rug. There was an opening off to one side onto a table, the dining area, she supposed. A doorway, minus a door, led to a small kitchen. But Serena's eye had little time to take in the layout before it was drawn to the figure sprawled lazily across the couch, half-hidden behind sections of newspaper and a certain, familiar black cat, who was purring on his stomach.
Deep blue eyes met her own aquamarine, and the man took in her hesitant form, noting with interest the transformation of his undershirt and boxers on her feminine shape.
"G'morning," he said casually, going back to reading the newspaper, as though he had greeted her thus every morning of their lives. Serena stared. He looked up again, took in her confusion, and then grinned and raised his steaming mug.
"Coffee's in the kitchen," he informed her, as though of course that was the reason she was staring. He resumed his perusal of the paper, leaving Serena with no other course of action than to go in the kitchen.
She returned after a hunt through cabinets for a mug, milk, and sugar, no easy task, and uneasily settled herself with her coffee in an armchair across from him. She didn't know what to make of his casual attitude. He did not act at all as she would expect someone would act toward a strange girl who had spent the night in his bed. For there was a lumpy pillow on one side of the couch and a crumpled blanket on the other, and it was obvious that this was where he had spent the night, giving up his bed for her.
After a prolonged silence, filled only with the rustle of paper and Luna's traitorous purring, he asked, with a teasing smile, "Do you want to see the comics?"
Serena decided immediately that she could not play along any longer.
"No, I don't want to see the comics. I would like for you to stop reading the paper and answer some questions for me," she said, trying to make her voice sound firm and authoritative.
He gave her a look that quite clearly communicated his amusement, but set his paper down, nonetheless. She cleared her throat, feeling more than a little foolish with his expectant gaze on her.
"Well, uh," she began, trying to think of the best thing to ask first. "Well, who…what is your name?"
The man folded his hands in his lap and sat up straight, mocking her serious tone. "Darien Chiba, ma'am."
She refused to let herself be flustered by his teasing. "All right, Darien, and how, exactly, did I get to…uh…wherever we are?"
He gave her a funny look, and abruptly dropped his mocking posture, letting his voice become easy again. "Well, actually, I don't really know. I found you outside, under the stairs with Luna in a bag. You were soaking wet and unconscious, so I brought you in and dried you off as best I could. You were half-starved and half-drowned to death, and Luna wasn't that much better off. I would have called 911 if you hadn't started to come around, but when you did, you seemed pretty adamant about no people. This is my apartment, by the way."
"How did you know her name?" Serena asked, puzzled at his accurate reference to her cat, who was still purring on Darien's lap. Serena sent her a murderous look for the betrayal.
"You told me," he said simply. "Actually, you told me a lot of things, but most of them didn't make a lot of sense. I managed to gather that your cat is Luna, that you were very hungry, that you could dry and dress yourself, thank you very much, and that you didn't want any people to come see you." He cracked a grin at her red face, and added, "Didn't manage to get your name, though."
She recovered herself enough to say, "Serena…Hino. Serena Hino," pulling a last name out of thin air. You couldn't be too careful, and if they really were looking for her…
"Nice to meet you, Miss Hino," he said, cracking another grin. She found herself admiring the beauty of his easy smile, but he continued before she could wonder at the attraction. "Now, if that's all your questions, I'd like to finish the paper…" he started to reach toward the coffee table, where he had set the newspaper down. Serena's eye fell briefly on it, and she barely managed to stifle a horrified gasp. Peeking out below the section he had just been reading was her own face, grinning in her senior year school photo in black and white, her real name printed below in neat typing.
"Wait!" she cried. If he saw that… It was probably a story on the 'miracle' at the hospital and her abrupt disappearance. If Darien saw her picture in the paper, he would call the police! Desperation was apparent in her cry, and Darien looked up at her in puzzlement.
She quickly tried to cover, dropping back into what she hoped was a normal voice. "Uh… I still have some questions. Er… where is my bag? I had a bag with me, with all my things in it."
Darien sat back once more, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief. If she could just keep him talking…
"Oh, well, it… kinda had some holes in it, and most of the stuff was soaked, so I hung it up to dry in the TV room. That's how come I lent you that stuff to sleep in, because all yours was wet. By the way…" As if he was reminded by something amusing, a slow smile spread across his face. "What you were wearing when I found you… Were those your pajamas? They sure looked an awful lot like they might be."
Serena was suddenly mortified to remember that she had never had a chance to change out of her PJs yesterday, between Sammy, the hospital, and her irrational dash from the Tsukino house. She felt her face burning as she thought of how she must have looked upon his first sight of her. Soaking wet with pajama shorts and an old gray sweatshirt on. She must have been hideous. "Yeah, those were my pajamas," she said defensively, sternly reprimanding herself for caring whether she had looked good when he saw her.
His smile faded when he remembered something else. "And do you want to tell me why you were lying unconscious on the cement, half-dead of exposure, wearing pajamas and a sweatshirt splattered with blood?" he asked, very low.
She shivered at the intensity in his eyes and searched desperately for a way to worm out of answering. If she tried to explain, he'd probably just turn her in… Her darting gaze fell on the clock on his wall across from her.
"Don't you have a job?" she asked quickly. "It's 9:00."
The intensity evaporated immediately, replaced with panic. "9:00?!! Shit, I'm late!" He dumped Luna unceremoniously off his lap and raced down the hall to his bedroom, muttering more curses. He was out again in less than five seconds, hopping up and down as he tried to pull on one shoe and his jacket at the same time. Serena jumped up and settled his jacket on his broad shoulders for him while he put on the shoe, then opened the door for him. He hurriedly grabbed the briefcase that was sitting beside it, then abruptly turned back to her in the open doorway with a stern expression.
"Stay here," he commanded, with an upraised finger. She suppressed an insane giggle at his totalitarian demeanor and saluted him, military style.
"Yes, sir!" she asserted smartly, before closing the door on his harried expression.
She slowly turned around, rested her back against the door, and heaved a big sigh of relief. That was close.
When she had recovered herself, she went back over to the couch and picked up the paper on Darien's coffee table. Sitting down in the warm spot where he had just been, she smoothed a ruffled Luna and flipped to the page that she had seen earlier. There was a large color photo of the hospital room that Sammy had occupied, looking as it had when Serena left it: covered with broken machinery parts and spilled chemicals. A very bewildered- looking Sammy was standing next to the bed, and lots of doctors in green scrubs stood around the boy. There was a small picture of Serena herself, the school photo taken of her last year, next to the big one of the hospital. Her heart sank at the headline: "Boy claims Miracle Girl saved him, then disappeared."
A quick scan of the article confirmed her worst fears. She hesitated only briefly before going resolutely into the kitchen. There, she turned on the faucet and soaked the entire paper, watching as ink ran and blended across the sheets until her face was obscured by watery hues. She then switched on the garbage disposal and proceeded to stuff little bits of wet paper down it, praying all the while that it wasn't too late, that Darien had not yet read this section of the newspaper.
When she was sure that every last scrap of evidence was utterly destroyed, she washed the ink off her hands and went back out to the living room. She stood in the middle of the room, suddenly at a loss.
"What am I supposed to do now, Luna?" she asked out loud, more to herself than the cat. "I should probably just leave, that would be the best thing. I can't hide who I am from him forever, and as soon as he finds out, he'll turn me in." That seemed sensible, but she made no move for the door. Instead, she sat back down on the couch and gently stroked her cat. Luna purred and closed her eyes in contentment.
Serena let her hand fall to the pillow beside her, thinking of the man who had slept on it last night, so that she could have his bed. Without knowing why, she lifted it and held it against her chest, burying her face in its soft folds and inhaling deeply. The scent clinging to the fabric was warm and musky, definitively male. So familiar somehow, and strangely comforting. It filled her with a need to stay here, to stay close to him. She didn't understand it, but the feeling was so powerful that she didn't question. When she finally lifted her head from his pillow, Luna was watching her with wide blue eyes. Serena laughed at what she knew must be strange behavior on her part and rubbed the little crescent moon on Luna's forehead to reassure the cat.
"Oh, well, I suppose we'll stay, at least for a little while. I don't really have anywhere else to go." She scooped the cat up and carried her down the hall, feeling the rumbling vibration of purring against her chest.
Brief exploration revealed the TV room to be behind one of the doors at the end of the short and narrow hallway. She flushed at the sight of her clothes and under-things draped over string that was tied across the room. Her bras and panties were there, which meant that Darien had touched them when he hung them to dry… She quickly shifted her gaze to take in the rest of the room with burning cheeks.
It was fairly small, the only furnishings consisting of a hideous beige sofa and a square wooden table that supported a television and VCR. A couple of videos were stacked messily under the table, and two remotes rested haphazardly on the corner of the television. An empty pizza box took up half the couch. Yeah, this is definitely a guy's apartment.
Her clothes were still a little damp, so Serena settled herself on the couch and turned on the TV, almost glad to have an excuse not to change out of Darien's boxers and undershirt. Luna daintily arranged herself against Serena's side and closed her eyes with a small sigh. "In the name of the moon, I will punish you!" a cartoon blared on the screen, and Serena turned back the volume while a girl in a short skirt disposed of a silly-looking monster. She kicked the pizza box off the end of the sofa and stretched out full-length. A picture hung on the wall in her line of vision. Darien, looking, as always, handsome, and holding a little girl with sky blue eyes and loose, blond hair.
Feeling an unexplainable sense of security and peace, Serena let her mind go blissfully blank.
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AN: see top ^_^
Muchos gracias to mOOnPrINCess, BRITTANIA, Electric Pegasus, and Diana for their reviews. ^_^
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
--Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Six: A Strange Man's Apartment
Serena held her wishstone high above her head, casting a circle of silver light around herself. A voice sung in her head, and she crept cautiously forward in the darkness, wary of the way it swirled to form a shape. Suddenly, it whirled, and unbearable pain coursed through her. She screamed and screamed, falling to her knees. Luna was crying, and a man with black hair and deep blue eyes was shaking her and screaming, "You should have known! You should have known!" She cried and cried for him to stop, and suddenly he enfolded her in his arms. Remembering what had happened the last time he had held her and disappeared, she screamed again in anticipation of the fall into black nothingness…
Serena woke with a start, to find herself wrapped tightly in a pair of strong arms, her cheek resting on warm, bare skin between a man's neck and shoulder.
"Shhh, it's okay. It was just a nightmare. Just a bad dream. You're all right now," a gentle voice soothed her. She felt his hand stroking over her hair, and allowed herself to relax into the embrace and be comforted. She felt warm and safe.
He felt her heartbeat slow back to normal, but didn't let go. He cradled her against him, rocking her gently and continuing a steady stream of soothing words. Not until every muscle in her body was relaxed, and her breathing smooth and even, did he gently lay her back on the bed. It was then that she realized that she didn't know where she was, or who he was.
"Where…" she began, feeling a tiny spurt of fear, but was stopped with his finger against her lips.
"Shhh, not now. In the morning. Just go back to sleep," the soft voice said soothingly, and his fingers stroked softly over her cheek. She watched as his shadowy form rose from her bed and crossed the room. He paused in the doorway to look back at her, and a ray of muted light fell across his face. Serena nearly gasped in surprise.
He was startlingly handsome, with raven black hair that fell in sleep- mussed strands across his eyes. Midnight blue eyes. Eyes from a dream…
He was gone before she could call him back, and exhaustion proved stronger than curiosity. She was soon back inside a dreamless sleep.
~----------~
She woke to a familiar sense of wondering where she was. Serena had lived in a lot of different homes, and had eventually gotten used to the initial sense of disorientation. However, after a few moments of lying there, still not knowing where she was, she started to feel a little panicked.
Sitting up, she took in her surroundings. She was in a twin-sized bed with white cotton sheets. The room was painted in pale blue, the sparse furnishings plain, unembellished wood. Looking down, she discovered herself to be wearing a pair of plaid men's boxer shorts and a too-big white cotton t-shirt. She lifted a handful of the fabric to her nose and inhaled a manly scent, very unlike anything that had ever touched her skin before. Luna rose from the foot of the bed and walked daintily over the blue bedspread to bump her head against Serena's hand. She petted the cat absently, going over all the recent events she could recall, trying to figure out where the heck she was.
She couldn't remember much after the hospital room. She knew that she had been back to the Tsukinos' house, and that she had decided to run away, taking Luna with her, but besides that, everything was rather muddled, something about rain and stairs. The only thing she recalled quite clearly was the face of a man who had shushed her when she awoke from a nightmare. A nightmare that had contained that face. But he had not been the source of fear in the dream, and she could remember very well the tender way he had comforted her. She blushed as the thought occurred to her that these must be his boxers she was wearing, and his shirt. The blush deepened as she wondered how she had got them on. Surely, he hadn't…
A soft clanging came from elsewhere in the house, or wherever she was, and Luna sat up straight with her ears perked, then jumped off the bed and to the closed door. She looked back at Serena and plaintively asked for the door to be opened. Serena slowly slid her body through the unfamiliar feel of the sheets and let her bare feet touch the cold of the hardwood floor. She winced and thought in annoyance, Geez, hasn't the guy ever heard of rugs? There was a pair of brown slippers lined up neatly with the edge of the bed, and she paused a moment before slipping them on. They were too big for her small feet, and she felt faintly guilty for using someone else's slippers without asking, but they provided relief from the cold floor. She shuffled over to the door and opened it, letting the cat trot happily down the hallway. She herself paused hesitantly in the doorway.
A quick glance back inside the room showed no signs of her bag anywhere, and therefore no hope of anything else to wear. He was sure to be outside that door somewhere, and God only knew who else lived here. Could she really go out and face the unknown wearing a pair of boxers and a man's cotton shirt? Just then, a waft of coffee smell came across her nose, immediately tipping the scales in favor of going out and not caring what she looked like.
All the same, it was with a tentative step that she rounded the corner to the main room of what she had discerned to be an apartment, judging from its small size. Here, a large off-white rug with a zigzag pattern of green stripes covered the middle of the floor. A few easy chairs and a big green couch surrounded a wooden coffee table, centered on the rug. There was an opening off to one side onto a table, the dining area, she supposed. A doorway, minus a door, led to a small kitchen. But Serena's eye had little time to take in the layout before it was drawn to the figure sprawled lazily across the couch, half-hidden behind sections of newspaper and a certain, familiar black cat, who was purring on his stomach.
Deep blue eyes met her own aquamarine, and the man took in her hesitant form, noting with interest the transformation of his undershirt and boxers on her feminine shape.
"G'morning," he said casually, going back to reading the newspaper, as though he had greeted her thus every morning of their lives. Serena stared. He looked up again, took in her confusion, and then grinned and raised his steaming mug.
"Coffee's in the kitchen," he informed her, as though of course that was the reason she was staring. He resumed his perusal of the paper, leaving Serena with no other course of action than to go in the kitchen.
She returned after a hunt through cabinets for a mug, milk, and sugar, no easy task, and uneasily settled herself with her coffee in an armchair across from him. She didn't know what to make of his casual attitude. He did not act at all as she would expect someone would act toward a strange girl who had spent the night in his bed. For there was a lumpy pillow on one side of the couch and a crumpled blanket on the other, and it was obvious that this was where he had spent the night, giving up his bed for her.
After a prolonged silence, filled only with the rustle of paper and Luna's traitorous purring, he asked, with a teasing smile, "Do you want to see the comics?"
Serena decided immediately that she could not play along any longer.
"No, I don't want to see the comics. I would like for you to stop reading the paper and answer some questions for me," she said, trying to make her voice sound firm and authoritative.
He gave her a look that quite clearly communicated his amusement, but set his paper down, nonetheless. She cleared her throat, feeling more than a little foolish with his expectant gaze on her.
"Well, uh," she began, trying to think of the best thing to ask first. "Well, who…what is your name?"
The man folded his hands in his lap and sat up straight, mocking her serious tone. "Darien Chiba, ma'am."
She refused to let herself be flustered by his teasing. "All right, Darien, and how, exactly, did I get to…uh…wherever we are?"
He gave her a funny look, and abruptly dropped his mocking posture, letting his voice become easy again. "Well, actually, I don't really know. I found you outside, under the stairs with Luna in a bag. You were soaking wet and unconscious, so I brought you in and dried you off as best I could. You were half-starved and half-drowned to death, and Luna wasn't that much better off. I would have called 911 if you hadn't started to come around, but when you did, you seemed pretty adamant about no people. This is my apartment, by the way."
"How did you know her name?" Serena asked, puzzled at his accurate reference to her cat, who was still purring on Darien's lap. Serena sent her a murderous look for the betrayal.
"You told me," he said simply. "Actually, you told me a lot of things, but most of them didn't make a lot of sense. I managed to gather that your cat is Luna, that you were very hungry, that you could dry and dress yourself, thank you very much, and that you didn't want any people to come see you." He cracked a grin at her red face, and added, "Didn't manage to get your name, though."
She recovered herself enough to say, "Serena…Hino. Serena Hino," pulling a last name out of thin air. You couldn't be too careful, and if they really were looking for her…
"Nice to meet you, Miss Hino," he said, cracking another grin. She found herself admiring the beauty of his easy smile, but he continued before she could wonder at the attraction. "Now, if that's all your questions, I'd like to finish the paper…" he started to reach toward the coffee table, where he had set the newspaper down. Serena's eye fell briefly on it, and she barely managed to stifle a horrified gasp. Peeking out below the section he had just been reading was her own face, grinning in her senior year school photo in black and white, her real name printed below in neat typing.
"Wait!" she cried. If he saw that… It was probably a story on the 'miracle' at the hospital and her abrupt disappearance. If Darien saw her picture in the paper, he would call the police! Desperation was apparent in her cry, and Darien looked up at her in puzzlement.
She quickly tried to cover, dropping back into what she hoped was a normal voice. "Uh… I still have some questions. Er… where is my bag? I had a bag with me, with all my things in it."
Darien sat back once more, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief. If she could just keep him talking…
"Oh, well, it… kinda had some holes in it, and most of the stuff was soaked, so I hung it up to dry in the TV room. That's how come I lent you that stuff to sleep in, because all yours was wet. By the way…" As if he was reminded by something amusing, a slow smile spread across his face. "What you were wearing when I found you… Were those your pajamas? They sure looked an awful lot like they might be."
Serena was suddenly mortified to remember that she had never had a chance to change out of her PJs yesterday, between Sammy, the hospital, and her irrational dash from the Tsukino house. She felt her face burning as she thought of how she must have looked upon his first sight of her. Soaking wet with pajama shorts and an old gray sweatshirt on. She must have been hideous. "Yeah, those were my pajamas," she said defensively, sternly reprimanding herself for caring whether she had looked good when he saw her.
His smile faded when he remembered something else. "And do you want to tell me why you were lying unconscious on the cement, half-dead of exposure, wearing pajamas and a sweatshirt splattered with blood?" he asked, very low.
She shivered at the intensity in his eyes and searched desperately for a way to worm out of answering. If she tried to explain, he'd probably just turn her in… Her darting gaze fell on the clock on his wall across from her.
"Don't you have a job?" she asked quickly. "It's 9:00."
The intensity evaporated immediately, replaced with panic. "9:00?!! Shit, I'm late!" He dumped Luna unceremoniously off his lap and raced down the hall to his bedroom, muttering more curses. He was out again in less than five seconds, hopping up and down as he tried to pull on one shoe and his jacket at the same time. Serena jumped up and settled his jacket on his broad shoulders for him while he put on the shoe, then opened the door for him. He hurriedly grabbed the briefcase that was sitting beside it, then abruptly turned back to her in the open doorway with a stern expression.
"Stay here," he commanded, with an upraised finger. She suppressed an insane giggle at his totalitarian demeanor and saluted him, military style.
"Yes, sir!" she asserted smartly, before closing the door on his harried expression.
She slowly turned around, rested her back against the door, and heaved a big sigh of relief. That was close.
When she had recovered herself, she went back over to the couch and picked up the paper on Darien's coffee table. Sitting down in the warm spot where he had just been, she smoothed a ruffled Luna and flipped to the page that she had seen earlier. There was a large color photo of the hospital room that Sammy had occupied, looking as it had when Serena left it: covered with broken machinery parts and spilled chemicals. A very bewildered- looking Sammy was standing next to the bed, and lots of doctors in green scrubs stood around the boy. There was a small picture of Serena herself, the school photo taken of her last year, next to the big one of the hospital. Her heart sank at the headline: "Boy claims Miracle Girl saved him, then disappeared."
A quick scan of the article confirmed her worst fears. She hesitated only briefly before going resolutely into the kitchen. There, she turned on the faucet and soaked the entire paper, watching as ink ran and blended across the sheets until her face was obscured by watery hues. She then switched on the garbage disposal and proceeded to stuff little bits of wet paper down it, praying all the while that it wasn't too late, that Darien had not yet read this section of the newspaper.
When she was sure that every last scrap of evidence was utterly destroyed, she washed the ink off her hands and went back out to the living room. She stood in the middle of the room, suddenly at a loss.
"What am I supposed to do now, Luna?" she asked out loud, more to herself than the cat. "I should probably just leave, that would be the best thing. I can't hide who I am from him forever, and as soon as he finds out, he'll turn me in." That seemed sensible, but she made no move for the door. Instead, she sat back down on the couch and gently stroked her cat. Luna purred and closed her eyes in contentment.
Serena let her hand fall to the pillow beside her, thinking of the man who had slept on it last night, so that she could have his bed. Without knowing why, she lifted it and held it against her chest, burying her face in its soft folds and inhaling deeply. The scent clinging to the fabric was warm and musky, definitively male. So familiar somehow, and strangely comforting. It filled her with a need to stay here, to stay close to him. She didn't understand it, but the feeling was so powerful that she didn't question. When she finally lifted her head from his pillow, Luna was watching her with wide blue eyes. Serena laughed at what she knew must be strange behavior on her part and rubbed the little crescent moon on Luna's forehead to reassure the cat.
"Oh, well, I suppose we'll stay, at least for a little while. I don't really have anywhere else to go." She scooped the cat up and carried her down the hall, feeling the rumbling vibration of purring against her chest.
Brief exploration revealed the TV room to be behind one of the doors at the end of the short and narrow hallway. She flushed at the sight of her clothes and under-things draped over string that was tied across the room. Her bras and panties were there, which meant that Darien had touched them when he hung them to dry… She quickly shifted her gaze to take in the rest of the room with burning cheeks.
It was fairly small, the only furnishings consisting of a hideous beige sofa and a square wooden table that supported a television and VCR. A couple of videos were stacked messily under the table, and two remotes rested haphazardly on the corner of the television. An empty pizza box took up half the couch. Yeah, this is definitely a guy's apartment.
Her clothes were still a little damp, so Serena settled herself on the couch and turned on the TV, almost glad to have an excuse not to change out of Darien's boxers and undershirt. Luna daintily arranged herself against Serena's side and closed her eyes with a small sigh. "In the name of the moon, I will punish you!" a cartoon blared on the screen, and Serena turned back the volume while a girl in a short skirt disposed of a silly-looking monster. She kicked the pizza box off the end of the sofa and stretched out full-length. A picture hung on the wall in her line of vision. Darien, looking, as always, handsome, and holding a little girl with sky blue eyes and loose, blond hair.
Feeling an unexplainable sense of security and peace, Serena let her mind go blissfully blank.
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AN: see top ^_^
