Till death do us part
chapter 27
(c) 2024 by ihatemilk
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The woman greeted them in very rough-sounding English, but her welcoming expression soon turned into the one of concern when her eyes fell on Xena, and it sobered him up in a split second. Gods, she was pale.
"I'm fine, I just need to pee," she closed her eyes, raising a hand to halt him, but he scooped her in his arms before she could say another word; and one look at their new host told him that he had full support there. He didn't even have time to open his mouth – the woman rushed down the hall, calling him to follow her.
They stepped into a blue room – what was it with this color? – and he put Xena on the big, double bed covered with – what a surprise – a blue bedspread. The lady was gone, leaving the two of them alone.
"Get this off me," she frowned, pulling at the sleeve of her overcoat.
"I'll get you water and something to eat," he freed her other arm from the coat and removed her scarf, revealing the skin glistening with sweat.
"You'll need to get me a change of pants if I don't find a bathroom now," she uttered hastily, climbing out of bed. He embraced her for support. "Ares, I'm fine—"
"Bathroom is there," the woman's voice interrupted out of the blue. She was standing in the doorway, holding a brass platter with some food and drink on it. "Please, I will show you."
They followed her down the obscure little corridor, not far, luckily.
"I'm fine, Ares, I can manage on my own," she pushed him away impatiently, closing the white, wooden door in his face. He rolled his eyes with a sigh. And glanced to the left – and their host must have turned on the light at some point, because the corridor was suddenly very bright, and he could clearly see how the set of disturbingly familiar blue eyes pierced him with a stare so intense and full of so much of what he didn't want to get into, so intense that he looked away.
"I don't know how long till she feels better, so we'll take one night for now."
"Oh, it's alright, don't worry about it," the woman waved her hand, but nevertheless followed him to the reception desk. He was about to ask if they took cards, but one look over the desk made the question pointless. Taking a quick glance at the tariff table hanging in a white, ornamented wooden frame on the white wall in front of him, he took out several bills from the wallet and placed them on the counter.
"You said one night…" the woman went through the bills. "This is too much," she reached to hand him back the big part of what was on the counter.
"Thank you for your hospitality," he halted the move with his open palm, and felt a tingle of embarrassment when the woman's face blushed red. For a moment, he was afraid she was going to cry.
"Thank you," she said quietly, her voice slightly shaken.
"Do you have a fireplace?"
"A fireplace… ah, yes, we have fireplace in the main hall behind that door."
"How many guests do you have for today?"
"Not many, there is a one couple and a man – but they took an excursion and will come back late, so if you want fireplace now, it's all yours…" she said, rushing to open the door leading to the main hall.
Surprisingly, the walls here weren't blue, for a change; he wouldn't even notice their whiteness if it hadn't been for his overexposure to the damn blue these days.
The room was rather bright with the sun pouring in through the several not too tall windows. A few random pieces of colorful furniture were scattered all over the place – sofas, armchairs, coffee tables, a chess-table, a piano – creating one hell of an eclectic mess – with the word eclectic unfairly making the shabby chaos sound fancy – so he just scanned over it briefly and focused on the fireplace. Godsdammit, even the damn fireplace looked run-down. And the wood was nowhere to be seen.
"Do you have more wood?"
"I'm sorry… there is in the shed, but you need to cut it, I'm sorry…"
He suppressed a grin. "Trust me, chopping wood is nothing compared to other things I did for her…"
He got such a beaming smile in response that his grin only grew bigger. Oh, Xena was going to love it, that was for certain. She'd had her fair share of amusement at his expense watching his first attempts at wood chopping back on the first day when they came to her grandparent's farm. But right now he didn't mind; oddly enough, he was looking forward to it; seeing her expression, the smile on her face when he would grab the axe, the sarcastic comments she wouldn't spare him. Gods, what did his life come to…
He looked around the room, frowning. To say it was a far cry from both the standard he was used to and the styles he could find esthetically pleasing would be an understatement. But he knew she would like it. She did have a weird liking for this kind of interiors.
"Do you have blankets?" he walked deeper into the room, looking over the sofas and armchairs, which all seemed devoid of any extra textiles. It would get warm once he started the fireplace, but it would be good to have some extra warmth for now; she did get cold easily.
The woman opened the drawer under the bigger sofa and produced a heap of what seemed quite decent, woolen blankets – if not to count their coloring. That would do.
"It's for your wife? She get cold, huh?" the woman said, smiling, startling him. "It happens when pregnant. I was the same," she added warmly, and he didn't know what to say.
"You have kids?"
"Two sons and daughter… now I have only son and daughter," she said quietly. Of course, the fact that it sounded quite like Xena's old family situation had to be a coincidence. But either way, maybe she shouldn't know about this. She was too shaken as it was.
But the curiosity got the better of him.
"What happened to your son?"
There was a deep, loud sigh before she spoke. "He… had accident."
"I'm sorry."
He could bet she was lying.
"What about your other kids – your daughter?"
"She's okay, she lives in Athens, to… study… uhm… medicine."
Now he had no doubt she was lying. And for some reason, it really annoyed him.
Then, the sound of the bathroom door opening made him forget all about it. He rushed down the hall and ran into Xena as she was entering the room.
"Wanna lay down for a bit?"
"I'm not against it," she grunted, stretching her back as she approached the bed.
"You okay?" he asked, removing the bedspread and placing two pillows against the wooden headboard.
"Ares… I'm not hallucinating, am I…"
"If so, then we both are. But we'll come back to it later, for now take a rest."
"We need to pay for the room…" she uttered, wrapping the duvet over herself.
"I took care of it," he searched for her hand, and frowned, finding it cold. "I'll get you a blanket."
"Thanks."
He was at the door when her weak voice reached him. "Ares…"
"Yeah?"
She parted her mouth, taking a breath in; she held it in, and let out with a soft grunt. "Thank you…" she said, gazing at him with that soft, emotional look in her eyes, full of what she chose not to say, what she never said.
"I'll be right back," he said and left, fighting off the urge to pull her close.
He came back with a blanket which he then wrapped all around her; and then she grabbed his hand, but said nothing, just squeezed it lightly. Her hand was cold; he rubbed it between his palms, and she sighed softly, closing her eyes; he brought it up to his mouth, warming it with his breath, rubbing his nose, his lips over it, over the nape, and then the inside of the palm, kissing it, till she let out another sigh.
"I love it when you do it," she whispered sleepily, and he went on, closing his eyes, losing himself in it, drifting away for a while.
"There's a fireplace here," he sniffed the inside of her palm, and pressed his mouth to it.
"Let's go there…"
"I need to chop wood first," he grinned into her palm. His smile widened when he saw hers.
"I do wanna see it."
"Of course you do. You love seeing me with an axe, I do recall."
"Chopping wood is done shirtless, I hope you remember."
He laughed. "You know, maybe you were right… not all memories from that damn farm are bad."
"Like when we had to share a bed because there was only one? Why do I think that's your favorite?" she asked, making him chuckle.
"Are you kidding? Do you have any idea what a fucking torture it was to have you next to me half-naked and keep my hands to myself?"
"If that's any consolation to you, I didn't get much sleep that night, either…"
"It served you well… dammit, I knew it!"
"I thought you liked delayed gratification…"
"Not two-thousand-years delayed!"
"I think it did you good – you come to appreciate it more."
"I would've always appreciated it, more than you know."
"I hope you do – for your own good," she said in a tone that cut like a knife.
"Have I ever told you how much I fucking adore you?" he grinned against her knuckles.
"Well, if you're going to, make it quick 'cause I need the bathroom again," she grimaced, climbing from under all the bedsheets and blankets.
Helping her to her feet, he slipped an arm around her waist and drew her close, till their noses brushed.
"I fucking adore you," he whispered against her mouth and, ostensibly ignoring her protests, picked her up and carried her to the bathroom.
Later, he tucked her in and, once she drifted off to sleep, he headed out for a smoke.
The wooden floorboards creaked under his boots, filling the corridor with sounds that he was now afraid would wake her, so he tried to step lighter.
"You can use this door," the familiar voice reached him from the room with the fireplace when he was about to open the front door. He turned right, following the voice, stepping inside the room. It was hard to pinpoint, but something was different. Some furniture was moved around.
Busy with cleaning out the fireplace, the woman – Cyrene – he couldn't help thinking of her as Xena's mother – threw him a brief glance, smiling with all her face. Gods, she was a spitting image; same blue eyes, same curly, red hair, the smile, and that piercing look in her eyes, as if she knew him. Apart from Xena, he hadn't really thought about any other incarnations before – but this – this was too weird to be a coincidence. Unless they were all having a group hallucination.
"This door to the right," she motioned behind her. "Ashtray is on the table."
He stepped outside, walking under a white, wooden, ivy-covered pergola archway, which kept stretching over his head for several feet, until he reached what was a small-sized backyard equipped with a white, richly ornamented cast-iron table and several matching chairs, all sitting on a round little piece of stone-tiled flooring surrounded with small trees and never-ending, poorly kempt lawn; and the further it stretched, the less effort seemed to be put in keeping it trimmed.
Further in the distance, next to quite a sizeable greenhouse and what seemed like stables, there appeared to be what their host must have meant by the shed; not much bigger than a huge wooden chest, it hardly deserved the name – but as long as it contained wood, that was all he needed. Of course, the tree stump to split the logs on was right at his feet, so half a mile away.
He walked by the table, grabbed the ashtray and headed towards the white, wooden seat between the two huge oaks further into the lawn. The bench was hidden in the shadow cast by one of the trees, and upon closer inspection turned out to be a part of a bigger wooden structure consisting of three long lattice walls and a matching roof of sorts, the very structure only partly visible from under the stubborn layers of green ivy. Some of the joints seemed loose, some pieces broken off, so he didn't trust the structure enough to sit down on it, but for a moment, he stood and just stared, smoking.
He was thinking that it wouldn't look bad in a deeper shade of brown, acacia or mango wood, when the soft sound of the steps in the grass behind him announced the arrival of who he knew was Cyrene.
"It's old but you can sit, three people can sit here no problem," she beamed, sitting on the bench herself, catching him a bit off guard with the mind reading. Or maybe she was just good at reading people, maybe he was exaggerating. "It also looks good on balcony," she added, giving him an eerie smile.
Okay, that did it. How fucking good one would need to be at reading people to figure out he was just contemplating if the ivy would survive the heat of their terrace? "It's too hot where we live."
"Where?"
"The desert."
"Up to 35 Celsius is okay," she said with absolute confidence. Quite like Xena when she spoke.
He thought of their terrace; actually, the thermostat was set to 30 degrees; they could even lower it a notch if need be.
"Come, you must be cold," Cyrene got up and, before he knew it, grabbed him by the arm and led him back inside. Strangely, his initial cringe at the gesture soon turned into a suppressed grin. He imagined Xena seeing him now, getting all chummy with the mother-in-law.
Before he knew it, he was sat down in the kitchen and given a cup of what he was told was tea infused with a special ingredient that would warm him up; and hell yeah, it did – good old ethanol never failed at that.
He was actually starting to like the woman.
"It's very sweet," he grimaced, downing the cup contents.
"It's a fig tincture, young man – it's not possible to not be sweet," she chuckled, shaking her head, stirring something in the frying pan she kept on the stove top; he couldn't tell what it was but the smell itself made his mouth water. Strangely, he could feel a subtle alcohol rush already; he realized it when he started wondering if he'd ever been called a young man before, and found himself on the verge of laughter.
"Your wife – she's okay?"
"She's just tired; the pregnancy's hard on her."
"She is so beautiful," Cyrene said warmly.
He could help a grin. He'd been mesmerized with her beauty since the first time he laid eyes on her and strangely, it only seemed to grow stronger. Of course, it wouldn't do on its own, but her brain topped off with the way she looked – it was an overkill.
"And she looks very healthy."
"She's being well-fed," he said, grinning at the thought of how it pissed her off when he used that phrase. "I'm not a damn pet, Ares…"
"You cook for her?"
"Nah, we have a chef."
Cyrene walked up to him and glanced at the empty cup. "You want another one," she stated, not asked.
Maybe it wasn't that bad, the whole mindreading thing – definitely made communication easier, he decided – and before long, the cup in front of him was yet again full of steamy, aromatic liquid.
Cyrene let out a deep sigh. "I wish my daughter had a husband like you…"
There, the mind-fuck was starting. "You mean that good looking?" he asked, causing a wave of merry laughter to fill the air. "What's her husband like?"
Another sigh. "She doesn't have husband."
"Oh. Well, technically, Xena doesn't have a husband, either – we're not married – yet."
"Xena?" Cyrene asked slowly. "It's a Greek name…" she whispered.
"A great many modern names have Greek origin," he tried to play it down.
"Is she Greek?"
For fuck's sake; he didn't want to do it without Xena. They should decide together on how to approach the subject before letting the conversation roam in this direction. He wasn't entirely sure whether it was or wasn't possible to trigger glimpses of memories from past lives. Right now, at the mention of Xena's name, she did seem triggered. "She would love it if you asked her that personally," he send a charming smile her way, getting up from his chair. "Speaking of which, I'll go check on her."
Maybe Xena was already awake, or maybe it was the damn creaking floorboards and the room door, but when he entered, her eyes were open.
"Feeling better?" he sat at her side, putting a hand on her forehead. She looked a bit flushed, maybe from the nap.
"How long did I sleep?" she looked towards the window, and he automatically followed. It wasn't that bright outside anymore; the sun was hiding behind a big white cloud.
"Half an hour?" he wasn't really sure.
"Missed me so much you had to start drinking already?" she frowned as he moved in closer toward her.
"Hey – it's medicine – and I was made to drink it – ask your mother." As soon as the words left his mouth, her expression changed in an instant; like she saw a ghost.
"It's her, isn't she…"
"It's just an incarnation at best…"
"What do you mean at best? She's a clone…"
He let out a loud breath. "I just don't want you to get your hopes up – she has no recollection of the past, you know how it works."
"I do – and you managed to bring my memories back—"
"Because I had the lease on your soul."
"The contract…"
"In this case, we have nothing."
"What a fucking nightmare," she whispered, closing her eyes, her breath getting shallow.
"Come here," he gathered her up in his arms till she sat on his lap, and locked her in his arms, cradling her head with one hand and her back with the other, like he did when he wanted to calm her down. "It's okay, baby," he stroked her head, "I'm gonna show you the fireplace, we're gonna chill by the fire later, how about that?" he kept saying, pushing her head into the crook of his neck when a sob shook her. "The room's interior is abhorrent, you'll love it." She shook again, but this time he was sure it was with laughter. "The backyard's not all bad. But first I need to chop some wood – and you know I can't do it without your sneering, so—" he grunted, caught off guard when she grabbed his face and shut him up with a kiss that made his head spin, that went on and on, till he struggled for air. Panting, he met her eyes when she pulled away, and he just stared, blood rushing through his veins; and she stared back, her breath rushed, her eyes hazy, wild; and he closed his eyes, breaking their gaze before his need made him lose it, dimly remembering there was Cyrene in the kitchen, and it sobered him up. "Come on, baby," he run a hand up and down her back, trying not to see how red and swollen her lips were. "She's waiting for us in the kitchen. And you need to eat."
"I can't promise this was the last time I cried today," she arched her eyebrows, getting to her feet slowly, accepting his help this time.
"If you do, we'll cuddle, I know you love a good cuddle."
"Cuddle my ass."
"You know you don't need to ask me twice…" he seized her hips, running his nose down the small of her back.
"Ares… we'll never leave…" she let out a soft moan when he ran his hand up her thighs, cupping her butt and kneading it lightly; and she hummed, pushing herself into his hands; and that did it. A wave of red-hot fever flooding him over, he grabbed her wrists and pushed her onto the wall next to the door.
"I want you so fucking bad it's making my hands shake," he breathed in her ear, her stifled moans driving him wild as they both struggled with his belt buckle and pants buttons. "So ready for me, baby…" he closed his eyes at the first touch, and then pressed his hips into her, clenching his teeth not to cry out, pushing his forehead into her shoulder under the weight of the charge that made him weak in the knees and blind, and he lost the sense of time and almost everything else. He only came round when he reached between her thighs and she pushed his hand away, disorienting him; but he couldn't dwell on it for long because his control was slipping away fast; it was too much, all the rush, the hiding, the fever that made sweat pour down his back; he couldn't hold back any longer.
He slid a hand around her belly, burying his face in her hair, still failing to catch a breath. "We'll finish this later," he kissed the side of her neck, pulling her closer to his chest. "You okay?"
"I need to lay down for a bit… Ares… the bed is steps away, you don't need to carry me there…"
"You can't stop me," he said, laying her down on the mattress and joining her. He pulled the black longsleeve down her shoulder, pressing his mouth to the bare skin, and reached down to touch her, but she stopped his hand again. "What's wrong?" he nuzzled her shoulder.
"We need to go," she said, and it was true they should leave already, but there was something about it, something about her, her touch, something that worried him.
But now they needed to go.
So, he got up, helped her up, and, ignoring the unease in her eyes, he walked towards the white door and pulled the brass handle.
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