Impatience

[touchedinthehead]

Aldaras doesn't bring up the knife with Annie again, nor his sister, or various ways she could be hurt. Annie has homework, so she doesn't stay at his apartment too long. He goes back to having nothing to do - there's some more pacing, some quiet freaking out over Annie and her safety, and then he distracts himself with obsessive preparation for taking care of the knife.

He'll - pack with the assumption that he can save his sister. There's lots of non-perishable food, packing as much as possible with the least amount of weight. Water, too, but that one's a bit harder. It's always heavy. Whatever, that's fine, he'll just - obsessively pack some more things. Pack, pack, pack.

Predictably, he runs out of things to do. Except think. Which has become something of a minefield, lately. To keep him from doing something stupid. He can't think about Zevaia, can't think about the knife, can't think about the Dean and how insanely long it's taking him to get the smallest tidbits of information out of him. He can't think too much about obsessive ways to make sure Annie's safe, for fear of becoming some kind of psychotic, controlling stalker or something.

But trying to not think about Annie is a recipe for failure or insanity, so he distracts himself with - what ifs. What would have happened if he'd met her without the necklace's and tracker's side effects combination, what he would have done if she'd asked him to kiss her...

That helps the time pass by faster.

Comments

[keep_busy]

"I'm aware you think so."

[touchedinthehead]

"I even have legitimate reasons now instead of just the creepy love necklace," says Aldaras, smugly.

[keep_busy]

"I'm sure."

[touchedinthehead]

"They're even not induced by aforementioned creepy love necklace. I think."

[keep_busy]

"How can you tell?"

[touchedinthehead]

"Because they are genuinely qualities that I like in a person and if I mentally dissociate them with you I still like the qualities." Pause. "That's actually a thing I should do systematically, that is really useful to have."

[keep_busy]

"Dissociate qualities from people or from me specifically?"

[touchedinthehead]

"From you, specifically, because due to creepy love necklace magic everything associated with you is amazing and perfect."

[keep_busy]

"Right. Do I have any qualities you don't li- sorry."

[touchedinthehead]

"It's okay. Accidentally asking questions actually doesn't upset me in the slightest, I'm - mad at the tracker thing instead of you. Hmmm." He stops to think. "It did kind of bother me when you were acting like I was acting like an idiotic child, when I decided to go with the torturous guilt trip over interrupting your class. You're allowed to disagree with me, but you're not irresponsible when I consciously decide that I want something more than I want to not be tortured. And I sort of felt like you didn't respect that."

[keep_busy]

"Okay. Did we resolve that to your satisfaction?"

[touchedinthehead]

"Yeah," he says. "But I thought it was something you would like to know."

[keep_busy]

"Yeah."

[touchedinthehead]

"I'm not likely to do something similar without a better reason, though," he assures. "A really good one, in fact. So."

[keep_busy]

"Good."

[touchedinthehead]

"And I'm also genuinely sorry for distressing you."

[keep_busy]

"Well, I'm fine now."

[touchedinthehead]

"I'm glad."

[keep_busy]

"What's the phone number you're calling from? Will you hang around it for long enough that the department can reach you there if I go tell them what's going on?"

[touchedinthehead]

Aldaras searches for the phone number, finds it, and rattles it off. "I can hang around here so the department can reach me. Should I?"

[keep_busy]

"Only if they ought to be able to call you that way. I really don't know what's going to happen next, I just vaguely imagine some of it might look like calling you to give you directions through a cleared area to an unattended boat."

[touchedinthehead]

"Fair. All right, I'll hang around."

[keep_busy]

"Okay. Bye."

Annie hangs up.

About thirty minutes later, the department calls. The highway patrol is going to block off a route for Aldaras and other necklaced knife escorts to travel to the seaboard, fortunately not that long a walk, and there will be a motorboat left there for their use. They're to wrap the cemented knife heavily in plastic to prevent the cement from wearing down anytime soon, tie it shut, and then drop it forty miles off the coast and then turn around and come back to collect their rewards.

[touchedinthehead]

"Bye," murmurs Aldaras, softly.

He agrees with all of these arrangements, and then goes off to retrieve his sister. He finds out pretty quickly why she was busy - she hasn't fallen in love, but that's not stopping her from wanting to have sex. Somehow, in the span of however long he'd been talking to Annie, she managed to sate that urge. Aldaras doesn't want to know the details. At all.

They scrounge up a large amount of plastic to wrap the cemented knife in, and then head back to Sintre.

[alicornucopia]

Sintre's there, where they left him. He wraps up the knife in supplied plastic and off they go. They don't see anybody on the way. He offers to drive the boat.