Okay, fixed the times discrepancies in Ch. 6. Eddie and Celina are apart for a full day after the kebab/kissing date, and then go to lunch again the next day. Eddie initiated this date, and is keeping where a secret. How romantic!
What is your idea of a romantic date? Ideas, people! I pay you in Wacky Bucks for something! (Actually, I don't pay you at all, except in internet cookies and virtual huggles.)
Oh, and I'm inviting everyone to eat the mochachino cake carved in my likeness by kathleensmiles. Yummmm! No, I'm not vain at all... but all this love goes straight to my hips! I mean, head! The cake goes to my hips. *sigh*
Eddie woke up with a fiery curiosity.
That small tabby cat he had dreamed about last night had felt...natural, laying against him in peaceful slumber, and now the blutbad was sad to be without it. Eddie wondered, pretentiously so if the dawn sun streaming into the kitchen was any indication, how much Celina's bottechat transformation changed her appearance when she gave it full rein. He'd only seen her partway through her transformation, but he'd heard stories of other bottechats that had multiple forms of their animal. After all, the cat from his nightlong dream had shared her coloration. But, warned his cautious side. It could simply be your subconscious linking Celina with a real cat. Wishful thinking, perhaps?
Eddie shook off the thought in an effort to give his mind room to consider. Celina still had some growing to do, supernaturally speaking. Could she transform to that degree, or was it only an adult bottechat thing? But then, she had had academic schooling in the ways of her beast, as well as all those creatures in legend. Unconsciously, Eddie laid a hand on his stomach, and thought he could still feel the weight of the small cat, warm and alive. He'd have to ask her when he saw her tomorrow. "Countin' down," he cheered, sipping his espresso.
But the dream made him feel like smiling wryly, for it pained him to have the fantasy as much as it hurt to have it stolen by wakefulness. He wanted her next to him, peaceful and drowsy. And the closest thing he had to that was being eaten away by consciousness, blurring as dreams were wont to do.
He went through his Pilates routine, and felt his mind focus, intent on the movement and repetition and eeking the last bit of stretch out of his tendons and muscles. Glorious, wonderful, manageable pain.
When he surfaced from the mat and machines, he felt renewed. Strange, the wolf was calm this morning. Eddie pictured it curled in the corner of his mind, tail guarding its nose, asleep, twitching occasionally as it dreamed.
Odd. Very odd, indeed. Did it have to do with the cat dream? Did the wolf feel at ease, unlike its norm, because the dream cat in Eddie's subconscious had nestled with its mental canine counterpart? Somehow, that made sense to Eddie. And he certainly wasn't going to argue with the mental quiet.
He had gotten a call a week ago about a grandfather clock that stuck on 12:46 and whose pendulum was refusing to swing to the left. Good news, Eddie could fix it. That particular make and model was prone to needing more grease than the factory gave it. Bad news, it was too big to move. The doctor would have to make a house call.
When his VW rolled up the grass-eaten concrete drive of the stately two-story colonial, Eddie grabbed his tool bag out of the passenger seat. He was overtaken for a moment with excitement: tomorrow, around this time, Celina would be sitting in the seat beside him.
He needed to detail the car.
Eddie rang the doorbell, hearing it chime within the house, and it was opened by an elderly man. "You the clock guy? Come on in, son."
Eddie set to work on the tall, gleaming oak grandfather clock, taking the internal parts out, cleaning, re-oiling, putting them back in. Although he wasn't used to polite conversation, the elderly man and his wife were quite congenial, if hovering, and they asked lots of questions about Eddie: Eddie's schooling, Eddie's family, Eddie's personal life. Although he had to deflect the former two, the latter he was happy to dwell on. He told them all about Celina, and only realized he was gushing when he looked up and saw them grinning at him.
"Sorry," he apologized sheepishly.
"Don't be," said the wife. "She sounds like a lovely girl."
"Much like you, sweetums," said the husband, pecking his wife on the cheek, who giggled.
Eddie's gaze softened as he viewed the older couple's affection. "How long have you two been married?"
"Sixty-four years, three months," declared the man proudly.
Eddie's eyes must have widened comically, because the couple started to laugh.
"It's not that long," cajoled the wife, taking her husband's hand. "Feels like an instant. A lifetime of love."
Eddie smiled, but his brow furrowed even as he turned to put the cover back on the gearbox. Will I ever find someone like that? he wondered. Someone to share my life with? "That oughta do it," he said, standing. He reached into the clock, tapped the pendulum, and watched it start to swing. After a moment, it was back to its normal frequency.
"Great job," said the husband. "That clock is as old as us."
"No problem," said Eddie, winding the clock up using its chains.
The couple invited Eddie to stay for tea, which he did under only mild duress, wrote him a check, and waved him out of the driveway.
Eddie drove back to town, his favorite concerto wrapping him in its caress, and deposited the check. Still no wolf, he marveled. But I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. Whistling, he went to the grocery store, dropped off some mail, and cooked himself a nice dinner.
Nick dropped by. Eddie, in a good mood, invited him to stay for dinner. As the Grimm prattled on about some case he was working on, it struck Eddie that their relationship was mostly related to Wesen gone wild.
"What's my favorite color?" he asked primly, opening his napkin.
Nick floundered. "What?" he asked incredulously.
"You know, you never ask me anything else," said Eddie, tactfully pointing out the gaps in their relationship. "Like sports or music or who the hottest Bond babe was, you know, like normal conversation." Because I'm not just a blutbad-slash-Wesen-dictionary, you know. "Just sayin'," said the wolfman, not unkindly. "It'd be nice to switch it up once in a while, you know?"
Nick was game: it'd been bothering him, too, now that he'd put his finger on it. "Okay, so what's you favorite color?" he asked conversationally.
"You don't mean that."
"No, really, I wanna know."
Eddie hesitated. He thought about Celina's red hair, the color of blood covering rubies held to the bright moon's gaze. For the first time all day, the wolf stirred and stretched back its lips to gruesomely smile. "Red," said Eddie, with the slightest edge of darkness.
Nick lightened the moment with a companionably sarcastic, "I feel so much closer to you now."
I know, I know, almost a direct quote from the Episode: "Organ Grinder". But I am not ashamed! This is what I thought of when I watched that episode. The dynamic of those two is squee-worthy. :)