XIII. Work Partner

"Hey Tatian – oh-" The man stopped when he saw Orm open the door. "You're not Tatiana."

He may have been trying to joke, like Arthur often did, but, just like with Arthur, Orm didn't find him funny. "No, I'm not." Obviously not.

"Oh um-" His seriousness must have surprised the man, throwing him off. "I-I thought she lived here, I swear I have the right address-"

"She does. She's just not here at the moment. She went out."

"Oh, oh good. I mean, not good that she's out, but good that I have the right house-"

Orm suppressed a sigh. Did all humans ramble like this? It was tiring. Just get to the point, like he had always been taught. No use rambling around the topic. Be direct and clear with your intentions. It was already exhausting enough being around Tatiana.

The surface man seemed a little uneasy standing before Orm's tall, broad figure, and Orm felt a surge of pride he hadn't felt in weeks. He allowed himself to smile at this little victory. And, being in his current mostly-unclothed state (he wore only a towel, having just bathed) gave him a good chance to show off his warrior physique in a hopefully intimidating way.

This backfired however, and was short-lived, as the man seemed to mistake the smile, for he smiled back. Orm stopped smiling. Reading humans was difficult, much more so than he would have thought.

"Um-" The man cleared his throat. "I wasn't aware that she lived with someone."

"Should you be aware? Are you and her close?" Orm surprised himself – now he was defending her? Why? He didn't care.

"Oh, no!" The man seemed surprised as well. "We work together, but she just didn't tell me about you, I guess."

"I'm a new addition," Orm explained.

"Oh, I see." But it was clear that he didn't. "Oh, what am I doing?" Orm wasn't sure if he was supposed to answer, but he wasn't given time to do so for the man held out his hand. "I'm Max, by the way, Max Preston. I'm head of the salvaging company Tatiana's working on a contract with."

What was he doing? Then Orm recalled something that Arthur had said: "They like to shake hands when they meet other people, a firm handshake, not a wimpy one."

So Orm did just that. He grasped the man's hand firmly and shook it.

"Wow, quite the grip!" the man remarked after they had let go. Orm felt that little bit of pride slip back. See, he could live amongst the humans. Take that, Arthur!

"So, are you Tatiana's boyfriend?"

The question instantly struck him out of his small victory. "Excuse me?" Perhaps this came out harsher than he had intended, for he was more surprised than anything.

"Uh, well I just thought, you know, you obviously spent the night-" The man – had Orm already forgotten his name? – nodded to his towel, implying his lack of clothing, judging by the meager attire. "So I just assumed that-"

"Don't assume." Orm put on his commanding king voice, something he hadn't used in a while and did it ever feel good. It didn't project quite as much as under water, but it did the trick.

The man flinched. "Sorry! I don't want to read too much into it-"

"Then don't, for there's nothing to read into." Orm crossed his arms over his chest. The fact that he stood a little taller than this man helped. Unlike Arthur standing taller than him. It felt good to feel some power again.

"Sorry," the man hurriedly apologized again. Following a long pause, during which the man tried to avoid eye-contact, he asked, "What did you say your name is?"

"I didn't." He was used to people knowing who he was, not having to introduce himself. "Orm."

"Just Orm?"

He was tempted to say 'King Orm', but guessed that that wouldn't make much sense to this surface dweller. "Yes."

"Okay then... Nice to meet you."

Orm said nothing,

The human rocked back and forth on his feet. "Uh, you wouldn't happen to know when Tatiana will be back, do you?"

"No, I do not. She said she had some errands to run. Why, did you have an arranged meeting with her?"

"No, no, I was just wondering. Was hoping to chat with her. No worries though, I'll just give her a call. Well, I guess I'll leave you to get back to whatever it was you were doing - getting ready, by the looks of it. Nice to meet you, Orm." With a brief wave, the man was gone.

Orm chuckled to himself. Humans sure were strange.

"Hi Max," Tatiana said, fumbling with her grocery bags as she struggled to answer her cell phone at the same time.

"Hi Tatiana. Did I catch you at a bad time?"

"No, no! Here, just let me set these bags down - okay, there, now I'm good!"

"Okay. I'm calling cause I just stopped by your house on my way to the docks..."

His words made Tatiana's heart leap - maybe Orm hadn't answered the door. She realized she probably should have told him to avoid answering the door when she wasn't home. Oops.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," Max continued, and she had a feeling she knew where this was going. "And your housemate opened the door. I didn't realize you had someone staying with you."

Tatiana winced. No such luck, it would seem. "Yeah, about that... I haven't really had the chance to tell anyone, it's a very recent development. Orm is an Atlantean expert, yeah, and he contacted me about sharing our research. Of course, I jumped at the chance, and offered for him to stay with me as he hasn't got another place to stay yet. So we're just working together, that's all." It wasn't totally a lie. In fact, it was mostly all the truth.

"And living together."

"Yeah... But as work partners."

"I see. Sorry, I know this probably seems weird, I was just a little startled when some random man answered your door."

"Yeah, thanks for checking in."

"Yeah, no problem. Talk to you soon?"

"Yes. Bye Max." She hoped Orm hadn't scared him away.

"I'm back!" she called upon entering the door, three bursting paper bags full of groceries in her arms.

"Do you need some help?" called Orm's voice.

"No, no, I'm good, but thanks - whoa!" She struggled with the bags.

"Here-" Some of the weight was taken away as he grabbed two of the bags.

"Thanks, I really-" She stopped and stared.

Orm was wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. He must have come out of the shower recently.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

She suddenly realized she was staring - at his extremely muscular upper body! Toned chest, sculpted arms, smooth skin...

She blinked. "Yes, yes of course. Thank you, for helping me."

"Yes, well it appeared that you needed it."

"Yeah, yeah I did." She hurriedly began putting the groceries away to busy herself from thinking about Orm's half-naked body right behind her, and to hide her rapidly-blushing cheeks from him. Oh, wow...

She had never felt this flustered around anyone before. She wanted to laugh at herself at the way she was acting - yes, he was very good looking, there was no question about it, but here she was, completely losing it in his presence!

But that was just it, she'd never felt this way around anyone before - maybe that meant something.

Unfortunately we didn't get a shirtless Orm scene in the movie ;) But Patrick was shirtless while training for the movie in some behind the scenes clips I saw...

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! :)