Rose Red

Chapter Ten

"We're going to sleep in the hanger? Where?" Hitomi asked as they crossed the green lawn towards the metal building.

"You'll see," Van said without the humour that usually dusted his voice.

The hanger was actually much larger than it needed to be to house the helicopter. Hitomi thought that he could have fit a small airplane inside, or another chopper. The building had two huge doors on either side of it, so that an air vehicle could be pulled out of either side at the same time if someone wanted to do that. Van also used the hanger to park his truck, but it seemed small in the huge airy building. On one side there were stairs that led to an overhang. Hitomi had gone up there a time or two to look at the chopper from overhead. Van led her up there now.

Hitomi always felt a swell of pity as she passed the chopper. It didn't have a name. It had a sleek black paint job, but the only thing written on the side was its number.

"Are you ever going to name it?" Hitomi asked quietly as she set her overnight bag by the railing.

"No," Van answered. He was pulling boxes down from the shelves.

Hitomi turned around and looked at him. "Would you like some help?" she asked as he freed a blowup mattress from its packing.

He sighed. "How could I ask you to help? You already prepared the guest rooms, even though none of them were properly renovated, made lunch for everyone, cleaned up, made dinner for everyone, cleaned up, made dessert for everyone, cleaned up, and then tomorrow you have to do it all over again."

"You helped," Hitomi scoffed.

"Well, how about if I get our beds ready as a thank you for doing what I told you to do about Allen?"

"Okay," Hitomi said, turning around to look at the helicopter. She had been trying to shut possible thoughts of Allen out of her brain. She didn't want to think about him. She couldn't understand it. She remembered liking him so much. She remembered her heart almost rupturing when he walked past the cottage when he was visiting his father. She remembered how glad she had felt when he made her the offer to buy her.

But her first thought when she saw him was, "Has he really gotten so old?" She thought about it more as she watched him through the day. It wasn't really that he looked old. It was more that he looked purple and green like a bruise. His skin looked thin, like it was barely holding his insides in. Had he been doing drugs, or was it just the hardness of life had taken away his bloom? Hitomi didn't know. Besides, how could Allen's life be hard?

Since she woke up in Sleeping Beauty Inc. she had been operating on the idea that he was still the same as when she had known him when she was twenty-two, but when he told his version of the story of Rose Red, something inside her twitched. It wasn't like a memory, it was like the muscles and cells in her body knew the way he made her feel during the time she couldn't remember – that nauseated stomach flip, that feeling of sudden thirst, those words that were knotted up in her throat that she couldn't say because of his position.

The long and short of it was that her body didn't want Allen anywhere near her, even if her brain still said that she did.

She also knew the point of his little story. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. It was practically like he had drawn her ear close to his mouth and whispered the words, "Find out where Van keeps his money. If you can steal enough of it, I'll take you back. You want to be back, don't you?"

Except that Hitomi didn't want to be back. She didn't know what life was like when she belonged to Allen, but she would rather stay with Van no matter what. Besides, she reassured herself like a fool, Van didn't have any money. What a joke! Van is a troll with a cellar full of treasure. Ridiculous!

It was at that moment that Hitomi, looking down on the floor of the hanger, saw a square of metal that was out of place. She might be daft, but it looked like a small trap door within a larger door.

"Van, what's that?" she asked, pointing.

Van came up behind her and saw what she was pointing to. A huge grin broke out on his face when he saw what she was pointing to. "Oh, that? Yeah, I have been meaning to show you that, but the right time didn't come. Just wait until I get these mattresses blown up and I'll take you down."

Hitomi took herself away from the railing and stood apart, waiting for Van to finish. She clenched and unclenched her fists and snapped her fingers. There was no way Van had anything valuable in his cellar. There was probably nothing valuable there at all.

Van finished up and stood up. Then he led her down the stairs.

On the floor of the hanger, he moved a tiny piece of flat metal off the floor to reveal a key pad, when he covered his hand and entered a ten digit number. Then there was a clicking sound from under the floor and Van closed the key pad. Then he reached down, and pulled up on a handle and the door opened.

"Hang on a second," he said as pulled the door way way over so that the whole panel laid flat on the ground.

Hitomi stared.

There were no stairs leading down into the basement. No way to get down at all. It was just a hole in the ground that opened to a space so large it looked like it was almost half of the floor area above. Van flicked on a light and Hitomi saw something amazing – another helicopter. This one wasn't black, but silver and shiny missing its blades.

"What's this?"

"Escaflowne. My other chopper," Van said gloatingly.

"Why? How?" she stuttered. "How could you afford this?"

Van sighed angrily. "I keep telling you that I make good money doing what I do. Why don't you believe me already? That chopper," Van said indicating the black one "has been in my family for years. My grandfather bought her for thirteen million dollars in 2053. Crazy, eh? This one down here is one that I've been working on myself."

"How much does this one cost?"

Van crossed his arms and looked at it thoughtfully like he was doing a rack of calculations. "I'm not sure. I started buying parts for the beast when I was a teenager. I've been working on her for eight years. There's not a lot to do out here, so I've had a lot of time to myself."

Hitomi was on the verge of having a panic attack. "How much?" she nearly shrieked.

Van laughed at her. "In the end, probably twice what my granddaddy paid for that one, but that was ages ago and costs have gone up. Escaflowne is worth a whole lot more than the money I put into her. That was what I wanted to tell you," he said, suddenly taking her shoulder. "You shouldn't worry about that twenty thousand dollars. I can just sell off one of her less important parts and we're in business!"

Hitomi thought she would faint.

"What?" Van asked, observing her not-so-happy expression. "No broken knees. I thought this would make you happy." He jokingly kicked the back of her leg.

Hitomi's knees did not buckle. She just stood there and stared off into the gaping hole in front of her. Now she realized that Allen didn't need to see anything other than the black chopper to understand that Van had money. I was just tied up in choppers right now. "Cover this up," she said quietly. She didn't want anyone coming in and seeing it.

She knew Van was watching her as she crossed the floor and climbed the steps, but she had to get away from him. She didn't want him to see her shamed face.

Van had set out two double mattresses for them, but by the time he'd finished closing the hatch over Escaflowne Hitomi had already put sheets, pillows, and blankets on them. She was actually already lying on one mattress with her back to him and her eyes shut by the time he caught up.

Van didn't know what he did wrong. Didn't she like his handiwork? This was why he never showed anyone his work. He'd never even mentioned it to Celena or Merle. Besides, it wasn't like he was his dad. He'd only got the thing running like it should two weeks ago. It would have taken his dad under a month. It took Van eight years.

Pulling his blanket over his head, he proceeded to change. There was no point being nervous about putting on his pajamas. It wasn't like Hitomi was going to turn around.

As he whipped off his shirt, he felt a chill across his shoulders. Maybe it was too early in the year to be sleeping in here. He only had a space heater on the main level and a stove in the basement. Neither of which were anywhere near where they were planning to sleep.

There was one blanket left on the shelf. Van got it and spread it out on Hitomi's bed.

She clasped it with her fingers and tugged it up to her chin without looking at him. "Thank you," she said stiffly.

"No trouble," Van said easily, as he reached for his pajama bottoms. "Let me know if you're cold during the night." Even though he said that, he had no idea what more he could do for her other than give her the blanket he'd already given her.

So with that thought, he buttoned up his red and black plaid shirt and hopped into bed himself.

Hitomi shivered. Not only was she suffering from the sleeplessness most people sleeping in unfamiliar beds faced, but it was only the beginning of June and it felt like the frost had just come off the ground. She was missed her bed desperately. There was a wheezing little worm making itself comfortable in the pit of her stomach when she thought about Allen sleeping in her bed. It really disturbed her and she couldn't say why. She was just beastly uncomfortable all round. For starters, it was cold. She hated the cold since she was from a warmer climate, but tonight it went straight through her bones. Then, she had no idea what time it was, except that it was still dark out. How many more hours was she going to have to endure this? She couldn't figure. She wanted to go into the house to warm up, but there wasn't even one room that wasn't occupied.

Then she heard Van sort of snort and roll onto his side away from her, and her brain clicked. She should go over and crawl into bed with him, but her brain revolted against the idea. What was this? A blanket scenario in a cheesy romance? She scoffed at herself.

But pride had its place and she soon realized that a mountain region after nightfall was not the place for it. She picked up both her blankets and dragged them over to Van's mattress. She laid both of them neatly over top of his current blanket and slid her freezing toes into the bed beside him.

At first her plan was to stay as far away from him in the bed as possible, but within seconds she was repenting of her rash thinking and was snuggling into the warm that was Van. It was as though he made the sweetest warmest heavenliest pocket in the blankets and it was everything she wanted to be a part of. Even his feet were warm. And when she tucked her face into the nook under his shoulder blade, she was so comfortable she didn't even need a pillow.

For the first few minutes, she couldn't stop glancing at him to see how he would react to her presence, but he didn't seem to notice and soon she was too tired to check on his status. She fell blissfully asleep.

"How long are you planning to sleep?" A voice burst out of nowhere.

Van jumped.

To his astonishment, Allen was standing in the hanger and the only thing that Van could process about the situation was that the man was wearing orange plastic pants. "What happened?" Van mumbled. "Did you wet yourself?"

Allen tapped his top angrily. "Shut up. These are one-of-a-kind Milwitch designer trousers sewn for me by Milwitch herself, but what would you know?"

"Ah, I see," Van said, still half asleep. "Are they for fishing in? Is that how you got your coat from the other day? Fishing?"

Allen huffed in response to Van's taunting. "It's pointless even talking to you."

"Well, why are you talking to me?" Van asked. "It's six twenty-three. Hitomi and I aren't supposed to have breakfast ready until eight o'clock. This is hardly sleeping in. What's the problem?"

"I want my breakfast early." Allen explained.

When Hitomi heard that, she stirred. It wasn't until that moment that Van realized that she was in bed with him. Van wanted to reprimand her, but at the same time, he remembered sleeping and waking and sleeping the night before – never comfortable – never resting – hoping that Hitomi wasn't feeling the cold that he felt with the extra blanket. And then it was warm and he slept.

He grabbed Hitomi's ever-obedient shoulder and pulled her back into bed. "She will serve you breakfast at eight o'clock, Allen. If that's not soon enough for you, then you should have made your own previsions. And you should have called us on the intercom system. It's extremely rude that you have appeared here."

Allen smirked like he was amused. "Sorry, I just wanted to see how much of the fairy tale was real." He pointed to the other mattress. It was obviously mussed. And with a flick of his hair, Allen strode out of the room.

"Does that bother you?" Hitomi asked sheepishly.

"The model or the mattress?" Van grimaced.

"Either one," she answered, turning her back on him.

"Both."

Van got out of the bed and paced around the room for a second to get his thoughts in line. "I'll take the mattresses downstairs and put them in front of the space heater, so that you won't have to do something like this tomorrow night. I should have got you a hot blanket or something. I apologize."

Hitomi looked at Van and said, "It wasn't that bad," like she was trying to understand how he felt.

Van shrugged his shoulders like he was trying to crack his neck. "Even so, I wasn't trying to manipulate the situation so that you would get in bed with me."

"I wasn't accusing you of that."

But Van wasn't convinced, and he was sure it was written all over his face.

"Listen," Hitomi said, getting up and coming towards him. "Let's just forget about what happened last night. I don't feel like you were taking advantage of me. If anything, I was taking advantage of you and besides – nothing happened. And I think we're close enough friends that we can just take that kind of accidental contact in stride and not let it affect us. Isn't not just me that feels that way, is it?"

"No. I feel that way too." The next thing Van knew, he was hugging Hitomi. With her head tucked under his chin he was breathing a bit of her short hair up his nose. He brushed it out and stroked her head at the same time. This was probably another example of the 'accidental contact' she had referred to.

It was true he had been ticked off at Allen barging in and seeing their state, but now Van couldn't even remember why. He only knew that for some reason, the wanker's appearance somehow made him closer with Hitomi … and he liked it.

Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone who reads and reviews. I love reviews! I don't have a beta reader, so there might be mistakes - please take them in stride. Blanket scenarios make me almost as happy as alley scenarios. This is the first time I've done this, so please forgive me. Love, Sapphirefly.