Slumber Party
This was not the first time Delores had helped Terry get out of his armor. It wasn’t even the tenth time. But when he reached to remove a piece of plate, she gently moved his hands away and did it herself. Terry wasn’t sure if it was his being keyed up, or the fact that they were alone in a room together, or the fact that she was wearing what she was wearing, but this felt more intimate than normal, and it made him nervous.
She would carefully remove a piece, place it in the pattern she’d devised with care, and then return for the next. She treated it like a ritual. It took twice as long as it would have if he’d helped or done it himself. He knew that wasn’t the point. He wasn’t entirely sure what the point was, but it seemed important to her so he let her continue. As usual, she finished with his chest plate and placed it in the center of the pattern.
He was so caught up in just watching her that he completely forgot to take his under-armor off until she turned around and walked up to him. She smiled, and gave him a brief kiss. He was so distracted by it, that he didn’t notice she’d grabbed his zipper and pulled it all the way down to his waist until she staggered backwards laughing at his expression.
“I’m wearing clothes under this!” He said, holding the suit closed. “I don’t know why you make such a big deal out of it!”
She managed to get herself down to just a fit of the giggles, as she fell down to sit on the bed. She finally got to where she could speak.
“Because you’re adorable when you’re embarrassed! Big strapping knight turning beet red over his under-armor. C’mon. You’re cute when you’re flustered!”
Terry grumbled as he tried to get out of the clothing in question. He WAS wearing a shirt and boxers. He sat on a corner of the bed to get the legs off of his ankles where they had bunched up. She kept kissing him lately. Two days of this. Her teasing was driving him up the wall.
“Not making it easy to live up to my vows, ya know.” He grumbled. He turned to look at her and the grumpy expression died right there. She was leaning into him. Her face was nearly touching his.
“You have never,” she said quietly, “in the time I’ve known you, given me the slightest reason to make it easy for you.” Terry swallowed.
“Fair.” Was all he said.
“Need help?”
“NO. I’ve got this.” He said as he resumed his struggle and finally got the thing off. “There.” He said as he folded it messily and threw it next to the armor. He didn’t want to mess up her layout.
And there they were. Terry was suddenly very aware of both of them, sitting together in a relative state of undress, alone, in a hotel room. He remembered Delores had something to show him before he’d ruined her day. He was thankful for a distraction.
“You were going to tell me about your book.” He said, sheepishly.
Her head lifted and she smiled.
“That’s right! Oh, Terry, I have got some amazing news!” She hopped up and ran to the closet to grab the book. Terry tried not to watch the way she moved one way and her loose tank top moved another, so he looked at the floor. She plopped back down on the bed worryingly close to him, leg touching his, and laid the book in her lap. She looked up at his face and she was so excited that he smiled, forgetting to be awkward for a bit.
“So, long story short, I. . .” She seemed at a loss for how to explain it. “Do you know anything about magic?”
“Nope.” He said with a crooked grin. That much was true. She nodded.
“Well, I noticed I’d been getting better and stronger at it. So today I went by my friend’s shop. We’re graded on a strength scale of 1 to 10. Do you know where I was when we met?”
Terry thought for a minute. He remembered all the things she’d done that first week. He gave up. He had no frame of reference.
“I have no idea. I don’t want to flatter you and I don’t want to offend you.”
“That’s fair.” She said. “I was a two point four.”
Terry arched an eyebrow.
“You’re sure? I’ve seen you do some amazing stuff.”
“Trust me,” She said, “I’m positive. But I’ve grown. Terry, I’m a five. A FIVE.”
“That’s great!” he said. It sounded great. She seemed to think it was great.
“Oh, don’t act like you know what that means.” She said, rolling her eyes at him. He worried one day her eyes would roll back and get stuck there.
“I don’t.” He said. “But I know that five is closer to ten so that has to mean something good.”
She gave him a massive smile and he just sat there and drank it in like a flower facing the sun.
“I can specialize now!” she said.
“Specialize?”
“If I want to, that is. I can pick a spell school and focus on that. It’s part of the Circle’s rules. No specialization till you can learn enough of a category, and counter-spells don’t count.” She said, flipping through the book. “My adviser, Razmataz the Elder, gave this to me. It talks about the advantages and disadvantages of both specialization and generalization and what I can do in each field.” Her head shot up after she saw a chapter heading. “I can enchant now! Terry! Would you want me to enchant things for you?”
“You already enchant me.” He said smiling. Aaaaaand he’d said that out loud this time. Oh lord, he thought, I said that out loud like a moron. It was the open flirting that had made him do it. He was growing too comfortable.
She looked at him so long and so hard that he thought he’d said the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. She closed the book and sat it on the desk across from her. She leaned into him, again. She was so, so soft. She looked into his eyes and gave him a slow smile.
“You,” she said, “have had a terrible day.”
That was true. He had. He was very concerned about where she was going with this, though. He was concerned about what he felt about where she was going with this.
“I know exactly what you need to cheer you up.” She was so close to his face he could feel her breath on his mouth. Their lips were almost touching. If he. . .
“I’m ordering a pizza and we’re having a slumber party.” She said with a giggle.
Terry fell backwards onto the bed.
“YOU ARE DOING THIS ON PURPOSE NOW AND IT IS NOT FAIR!” he shouted.
She laughed and crawled up to the headboard to make a call to the front desk. Terry just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Pizza and a slumber party. Actually, he’d never been to a slumber party. Not a real one. Mostly just spending a weekend with George and Sean, and they’d all actually slept after running around all day. Sean had wanted to stay up sometimes, but Terry was always too tired. Delores hung up the phone.
“Shouldn’t be long till we have pizza. They said Elton’s covering everything. I assumed you don’t like pineapple or anchovy.” She said.
“Is that the fish?” he asked.
“That is the fish.”
“The only time I nearly hit Sean was when he fed me a pizza with those things on it.” He said. She laughed.
“Delores?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“What do you do at a slumber party?”
Her head appeared upside down in front of him, eyes wide and mouth open. He resisted glancing up at her tank top with every fiber of his being.
“Oh my God, Terry. You’ve never-“ There it was. That look of sympathy and sadness. Every time she found out something about his life she felt awful and that made him feel worse.
“No,” he said, “I haven’t. And I would love to rectify that. What do we do?”
Before she answered, she sat back up out of sight and he felt her raise his head. When she set it down, he was looking up at her and he realized his head was in her lap, and he tried not to look like someone had given him a crown.
“Well,” she started, “There’s food, which I’ve just covered, then we can watch movies, or play games. . .”
“What kind of games?” he asked.
“Well, there’s spin the booooooooooooo-never mind. Not playing that.”
Terry had no idea what that game was so he let it pass.
“Truth or Dare is another one.”
“I know that one!” Terry said. She looked thoughtful.
“I think Truth or Dare is entirely too dangerous for the two of us to play.” She said.
Terry was going to protest, but then he realized she’d do anything he dared her to, and he’d answer anything she asked him, truthfully. He nodded.
“I have a spirit board!” She said excitedly.
“I don’t want anything to do with the dead after I took care of that necromancer in Yazoo City.”
“Well, dang, Terry! Just shoot me down!”
“You shot down the only two games you mentioned, yourself! I just don’t want to end up sword fighting spirits in a hotel room! How is this my fault?”
She shrugged and he wished she hadn’t.
“Well, what are we going to do then?” Terry asked. The number of answers that suddenly sprang to his own mind made his face turn a bright red. Delores noticed and the grin on her face did not help him at all. Suddenly, her eyes lit up.
“Oh! I have a great idea! Hop up!”
Terry did so reluctantly and she bolted for the bathroom. She came out a moment later with two tiny glass bottles. Terry gave her a questioning look.
“We’re doing your nails. Pick a color. I have two right now. Black or Mystic.”
One bottle, Terry saw, did have a gloss black polish in it. The other, though, was the strange purple shifting to pink shifting to blue from her lipstick.
“Mystic.” He said. She looked at the color.
“You’re sure? Not black? It would go with your hair.”
“I’m sure.” He said. “Maybe we can show it to Elton and tell him we’re branding.”
Delores laughed at that.
“Ok. I want you to scoot up by the headboard and, uh, spread your legs.”
Terry stared at her.
“You want me to what?” he asked.
“Terry, I want to get this done before the pizza shows up. Now get ta scootchin’.”
He gave her a dubious look, but did what she’d asked. Delores climbed across the bed up to him. Watching her was the most distracting thing he’d ever experienced. She reached him and sat with her back to him, and then scooted with her back flush against him. Before he could say anything, she gently took his right hand, pulled it in front of her, and started carefully painting his nails.
Terry found the process bizarrely soothing. She leaned back against him as she worked and he smiled. He put his head over her shoulder to watch, and she kept leaning hers against it. She spoke softly about make-up and her thoughts on her prospects as a mage going forward. She finished his right hand and started on his left. As his mind wandered, though, he thought of earlier that day again. The dark thoughts. He had decided to tell no one about them. His problems were his to carry. But then he thought of his father. He pictured the man alone in his home with a child he didn’t think he could care for and where that loneliness had led him. He desperately wanted to not be alone with these thoughts any more. He didn’t think anyone else would really understand, but Delores was special.
“Delores?” he said.
“Yes?”
“Can I talk to you about something?”
She turned her head enough to see his face.
“Am I going to get mad about your timing?” she asked.
“Maybe. But it’s important.”
She sighed and went back to painting his nails.
“Go on.” She said. He wasn’t sure how to begin.
“When you found me today, on the bench?”
She paused a moment, then continued.
“Yes?”
“I had these. . .thoughts. It’s nothing I’d had before, but you saw how I was. Everything just looked like a march to the grave and I didn’t see a point. I thought. . .” He felt very stupid suddenly for bringing this up and for what he was about to say. “I thought maybe you and everyone would have a better life without me. Maybe the disappointment I feel would end. Maybe it wasn’t worth it to try any more. Maybe I’M the problem. With everything.” It sounded so dumb now that he said it to her. He wished he’d kept this to himself suddenly.
She sat very quietly for a moment and looked at him. She didn’t laugh, she didn’t sigh. She just held his hand for a while.
“How did you feel about those thoughts at the time, Terry?”
“I thought it seemed like the only solution.” His shoulders slumped and he looked away.
“And how do you feel about them now?” she asked, quietly.
“I feel ashamed of myself. Like I was being stupid.”
Delores turned sideways in his lap and looking at him. She had just finished his nails, so she put the top back on the bottle tightly and set it on the nightstand. When she turned back, she didn’t say anything, but instead put a hand on her copper wrist bands. She twisted the one closest to her elbow until there was an audible click. She slid it off of her arm, past her hand. She did the same for the other two bands, before setting them on the table as well.
Next, she untied and untucked the gauze around her left arm and wound it back up and set it next to the copper bands. Terry watched the entire display. He was fascinated. He’d never seen her without her components. When she was done, she laid her arms on her own legs and turned her palms up.
Terry looked at her wrists. Up and down both of them were numerous small but deep scars, all a dark pink. There looked to be a dozen closer to her hand and they thinned out the further away they were. He looked up to see her watching him.
“I don’t want you to feel ashamed of what you’ve been thinking. I don’t show people this, Terry. I’m not ashamed, but it brings up questions people don’t deserve to ask. But you deserve to know. The day I cursed myself? My entire life fell apart. I’d lost my parents, the boy I thought I loved, most of my friends, and I was immediately rejected by everyone in my life via the Church and school.”
His heart broke for her.
“I decided that I wanted out. So I tried to get out the only way I knew. The one I’d read about and seen in movies. It was a cry for help. Someone heard and answered. I’d told a witchy friend that I was thinking about doing it and they wouldn’t leave our front porch until my mother checked on me. I ended up in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry.” Terry said.
“Thank you.” Delores replied. “The attempt wasn’t an answer. It’s never an answer. It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t make my parents appreciate me more. Nothing got better in school or at home. It just gave my parents something else to worry about. But it gave me perspective. It was the only good to come from it. I had what I call the “What Have I Done” moment. Not everyone gets it, I’m sure. But I did. That moment where you’ve taken that one step too far and you wish you could go back. But you can’t. You’re off the cliff. Someone caught me and pulled me back.”
He looked at her wrist again. He reached out and laid a hand on it. He found himself lightly rubbing her arm with his thumb. He looked back up at her.
“What I’m saying,” she told him, “and this is the important thing, is that you are not alone in having those thoughts. You’re not even alone in this room with those thoughts. I think most people have thought about it once. Just remember that. And if those thoughts come back, please tell me. I can’t fix anything, but I’m here for you. I can listen, and I won’t judge.. I’m glad you’re alive.”
He put his forehead against hers and closed his eyes.
“Thank you.” Was all he could manage. He opened his eyes again and leaned back.
She smiled and reached for her wrist components, but he took her hand in his.
“You don’t have to put them back on if you don’t want to. It doesn’t bother me.” He said.
She nodded.
At some point, he’d put a hand on the small of her back. She looked back to him and they just sat there in the moment.
“Are we being serious now? We’re having honest discussions?” She asked. “Do you mind if I take a turn? Because I need to say something. Especially after that.”
“Of course. Go for it.”
She spun around and faced him. She was extremely close and he leaned back. Her face suddenly very serious.
“This is fun, this thing we do. The flirty thing. I enjoy it. I love watching you react.”
He blinked. This was the most candid she’d been about any of this. She continued.
“But I need you to understand something. This is serious to me.” She leaned forward more. He swallowed. “This isn’t me teasing you just to have fun, Terry. There are feelings involved. I don’t know if I can make you understand how much you mean to me now. How important you are to someone other than yourself.”
The look on her face was almost pleading. It made him think of him talking to her in front of the church that morning.
“And I’m telling you that, so you’ll understand how I feel when I have to watch you run out to fight monsters with no regard for your own safety. Every. Single. Time.”
He felt like he wanted to sink through the headboard. He hadn’t considered that.
“You run out there to be the hero with no concern for if there’s going to be a cavalry. So long as you save someone or go down doing the right thing. Do you know what it’s like watching you try to throw something away that other people hold so precious?! Something people think is incredibly special and you treat with no regard? And I’m not talking about “life” here, Terry. I mean YOUR life. YOU’RE precious to me! YOUR life is special!”
“I-I never thought about it.” He said. Guilt welled up inside him.
“No. You didn’t. There have been so many times in the last four months where the only reason you walked away was because I had your back. And now, knowing you DO have these thoughts, I’m going to be terrified every time you go out there. You could be one awful thought spiral away from letting it happen like your father.” She stared into his eyes. She wasn’t angry. He could see that. She was frightened. She gripped his hands suddenly.
“I really don’t mean to make you feel guilty. I don’t. But, I can not watch you die, Terry. It WILL destroy me. Do you understand? I can’t be the one to go to Dottie and Ernest and tell them the boy they raised gave up and let it happen. I can’t.”
And there it was.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked. She obviously had something in mind.
“You gave Elton and I a vow to protect us. Another reason for you to run out and die if needed. I’m not going to ask you to take that vow back. I know you really feel like you have a need to protect us.” She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before looking at him and continuing. “I want you to make a vow to me. Just to me. Here. Now.”
“What vow?” he asked. He already knew he’d do it, whatever it was. She just needed to ask it.
“I want you to promise me that no matter what mission, or quest, or adventure you’re on, you will try everything you can to survive and return. That’s all I’m asking. For you to not throw your life away. It’s the only way I know to keep you safe.” She whispered. She looked pained that she’d had to ask. He felt like a fool for it.
He didn’t hesitate. He took her right hand and placed it, palm down, on his chest. He held it there.
“Wait, don’t you need your sword or something?” she asked.
Terry shook his head.
“No.” He said quietly. “As long as I’m holding something I value more than anything, it counts.” Her breath caught, but he refused to be distracted. He began.
“I, Terrance Lingal, vow to do everything within my power to survive every challenge that faces me, and every foe that threatens me. I swear to protect my own life as well as I protect the lives of others. I swear, I will come back to you Delores Cody. I will hold this vow over and above all others for you. I will hold this vow as long as I live. I swear in the name of my father, and the only thing that has ever brought me happiness.”
He still held her hand to his chest, but now he curled his fingers around it and simply held it. Her eyes were wide and shining. She lunged forward and threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. She made a fist and pounded it ineffectively against his back.
“Damn your stupid Order.” She said, voice catching. He held her and rubbed her back. He’d told her his feelings in the only way he knew how. With small things like this. Why was being an Errant Apprentice now the most painful thing in the world? He just held her and piled a mountain of regrets in his mind.
And then the pizza arrived.