Afterwards

[The Cedar Witch]

continued from Sizing Up


"I just wanna go home."  If only home felt just as safe as it always had.  Rachel accepted no comfort from Damien after Decker left, fearing it would let loose the semblance of control she had over herself. 

She was quiet during the walk to the car, tension holding her together more than her willpower.  Though her grip was numb she accepted his hand on the drive home, messily threading her fingers with his.  Thoughts raced, warring with the calm Damien pressed into her.  Beneath that imposed calm she felt panicked claustrophobia like the pressure was smothering her. 

It was like taking a pill for pain but still feeling the ghost of it beneath the effects of the medication.

[Saiketsu]

He didn't know what say to her, but just held her hand and rubbed her fingers tenderly as he drove with his left, his elbow resting on the moulding by the window. Damien sat half in his own thoughts, half worried about hers, easing off the calming weight slowly as he drove. The silence in the car, only mitigated by the sound of the engine, was extraordinarily uncomfortable, heavy.

At last he spoke. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought you." Guilt and frustration peppered his voice and he kept his eyes on the road. Decker's insinuation that he couldn't keep Rachel safe by himself ate at him in the worst way. Doubt filled him with dread and a building sense of despair that he did his best to keep contained within himself and out of his responses to her.

[The Cedar Witch]

A sigh made its way from her constricted throat.  "No, it's not your fault."  Her gaze stayed firmly on the passenger window as they made the first of a handful of turns leading toward home.

"I had to see him, you know?"  A nervous laugh broke through the tension she'd been holding onto.  She didn't want to feel like this, it would have been so much easier to forget everything Decker said.  Rachel gave Damien's hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze. 

[Saiketsu]

He took the hand that he held and brought her fingers up to his lips as he drove, clutching them there against his chest. Damien nodded in acknowledgement. "Last time I made the mistake of not letting you know who you were going to be with. I figured this time it would be better to have you there in case you had some concerns I hadn't covered. Had I known we wouldn't have been dealing with a jackass, I would have left you in Quinn's care or something."

There was a strange cocktail of emotion brewing within him and he was surprised to hear some of it slip out in his response to Rachel, his accent tinting his words more noticeably than if he were calm. "I don't like him," Damien decided coolly. "He is condescending, blunt, and rude and lacks all tact to be able to do this job." He didn't like bringing his anger to Rachel. His frustration and defensiveness over his pet - and perhaps even his own pride, he admitted quietly to himself - added emotion to his logic that he knew otherwise shouldn't have been there. Damien sighed through his nose, a scowl in his brow and his mouth turned downwards. He remained in that space, finding an odd comfort in it.

[The Cedar Witch]

Rachel turned toward him as he kissed her fingers, watching the subtle shift in his expression as he spoke.  Truthfully, she'd been too caught off guard by her emotional response to Decker's...warning (or whatever it was supposed to be) to even think of questions she might've wanted to ask.  But there was no way they could've anticipated that reaction.

Gnawing thoughtfully on the inside of her lower lip, she turned away from him to look out the window again.  It was easier to worry about how he was feeling than deal with whatever mess that'd curled itself into a ball in the bit of her stomach. 

"I don't understand why Sonya likes him," she muttered quietly.  They were only a few minutes from home now and she was suddenly very thirsty.  "They must not talk very much."  She laughed quietly at first, and it unleashed a fit of unsettling giggles.  Pulling her hand from his grasp, she covered her face to try to contain the laughter.  It felt more precarious than funny, like leaning over the edge of a cliff. 

[Saiketsu]

Damien found the remark only vaguely humorous, wrapped up in his own reactions to Decker - did he even have a first name? Somehow, he had forgotten to ask the human - and he looked at her briefly as she fell into her frantic fit of laughter. Besides offering a weary smirk, Damien didn't react to her inference.

"Well, he's at least not hiding anything. At least not anything that I can discern." He paused, thinking.

"I don't think we should consider him, Rache. He's human, first of all. I really don't want you out there with a human. He's never even fought a supernatural before. It would be suicide for him."

[The Cedar Witch]

By the time Damien started to speak, she'd recovered from her little bout of laughter.  She leaned heavily against the back of the car seat, closing her eyes and angling her head toward the ceiling. 

"Not like we have many options."  Her words were bitter.

[Saiketsu]

He sighed through his nose and let the moment pass undisturbed and frustrated. It was something that he was well aware of and her bitter response made a pang of guilt echo somewhere deep in his chest.

"I'm not willing to chose just anyone based on a limited availability, Rachel." He remained quiet, listening to whatever Rachel said, but not responding to it as he lost himself in a darker thought.

"...in a controlled environment where they're more likely to be alone, vulnerable and with no risk of witnesses. It's where I'd do it."

Decker's comment about Rachel's concern during the day still dug at him. Not only had he inferred that Rachel wasn't safe with him, but also that Decker was of a similar mindset as Laurent. Did he really want to have someone like that near him and his? It had been a very long time since a human had gotten so under his skin and it was more than uncomfortable. He began to second guess himself, his reasons for keeping Rachel safe. Maybe Laurent wasn't even out there, maybe he was killed, or moved on. It was neurotic of him to keep obsessing over Rachel, right? Almost as obsessive as Damien thinking that Laurent was the neurotic one.

"He certainly does have some nerve though."

[The Cedar Witch]

"I know," her voice was small, "I just..."  She sighed again, leaning her head against the window.  Despair began to creep in again, increasing her desire to get home.

"He did seem to really know what he was talking about though," she began softly, "More than Greg, anyway."  Her lips pressed firmly together.  While she was glad to not have to deal with the shifter, she was essentially back under house arrest.

Which now seemed pointless after Decker had just told them both that she wasn't any safer at home. 

[Saiketsu]

"Yes, but that seemed more due to the fact Decker was a criminal for half of his life," he agreed reluctantly, a bite of his injured pride coming through as a tone of lofty judgement. He regretted it as soon as it passed his lips, admonishing himself privately, though admitting his defeat with another sigh.

The rest of the car ride remained relatively quiet, both of them buried in the heaviness of their thoughts about the interview. Damien parked the car in the garage and threw the alarms on. Delilah padded her way over to them and circled excitedly, her fluffy tail arched and relentless in its oscillation. Distractedly, Damien threw some more dry kibble into her bowl and gave her some brief affection before turning to Rachel. She was leaning with her back against the edge of the island, looking down into her phone. Damien stood before her and wrapped her into his arms, her head resting on the crook of his arm and shoulder. He kissed her hair and held her tightly to him, the contact soothing some of his frustration with Decker.

"You feel so good," he murmured against her, feeling the tension of the night start to ebb away. "We could just stay like this forever, you know. I could just carry you like this against me forever. Nobody would dare mess with you then." He smirked against her hair and rubbed her back with one of his hands, pulling away if she indicated that she wanted distance.

[The Cedar Witch]

Rachel sighed heavily, melting against him without putting up any resistance.  She slipped her phone into her pocket to snake her arms around him, pulling him tighter against her.  What she wanted was to dissolve into Damien's embrace and seep into his skin--go someplace where no one could touch her but she could always be with him. 

"What if he's right?"  Her whisper would've been missed by human ears but she knew he'd pick up on it.  Unconsciously she braced herself for the stern reaction she knew was coming, but she couldn't keep the thoughts inside her head anymore.  Besides, she knew they were probably both wondering it. 

[Saiketsu]

"He's not," Damien said firmly and immediately. "This is the safest place for you, here, in this house. With me.

"He only thinks those things because he doesn't know." He pulled away from her now in order to put his hands on the outsides of her arms. "He thinks that I have to sleep during the day like young ones do. He doesn't know about the Room upstairs. He doesn't know about all the things that we already do."

[The Cedar Witch]

What if she couldn't reach the room in the closet in time?  What if she was taken from the backyard in the daytime while she was out with Delilah?  What if He smashed the bedroom window in while they were lying in bed in the early afternoon and snatched her?

Fighting the fear creeping into her face she pulled away from his touch and, avoiding his eyes, went to the refrigerator for a bottle of water.  She came back to him with an outstretched hand, linking their fingers together so she could lead him to the couch. 

Once they were sitting, Rachel folded herself into him.  "I just..." her voice came out like a little squeak and she curled tighter against his chest.  "I feel like we've been living in this little fantasy world where everything's okay and everything he said just shattered that."  Her hands clutched gently at Damien's shirt.  "I just want to go back to pretending." 

[Saiketsu]

There was a stubborn part of him that wanted to disagree still, to disregard anything that Decker had said tonight. He was just a human after all...

He draped his arm around her back as she tucked herself, leaning onto his chest and shoulder, the hairs on the top of her head tickling his throat. Her stress was radiating off of her, tinting her blood beneath her skin. "It's going to be difficult, Rache, these next few months. I need you to be as safe as you can possibly be, but I need you to live as well."

And then as if as an afterthought to himself, "If he's out there, we will know soon enough." He put his cheek down on the top of her head and looked off at nothing in particular, thoughts swimming with second-guesses, worry, and scenarios he wasn't prepared to handle with Rachel so close to him.

[The Cedar Witch]

Defeat moved over her, visions of venturing out in the sunlight slipping slowly through her fingers.  "So, what, should I just stay here then until it's over?"  Back under house arrest.  Rachel wriggled slightly in his arms, seeking a comfortable nook to melt into. 

"This was such a stupid idea, I don't know what I was thinking," she murmured, half to herself, into his chest.