Taking on a New Life
Part Seven
Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
Commissioned by Kittenrose232
He is not so bad.
Adagio raised an eyebrow, the siren within her shifting back and forth in her hippocampus forth. Sometimes, when she spoke with the spirit that had infused her body and mind, it felt like going to a room inside her where the two of them could meet and talk. It was disconcerting, even to Adagio who considered herself to be the least disconcerted of all, though she didn’t dwell on it too much. If she did, she worried discreetly that she would lose herself in spirals of her own life changes. She doubted very much that others would have considered them all that great, even if that was something, very much, that she was not offering up for debate.
Lounging on her sofa, she kicked her legs up over the arm, a magazine that she would never have read before in her hands. The siren peered at it with a strange sort of interest but pop things and culture were not nuances that Adagio would usually have focused on. Considering where she worked, however, and the songs she sang – maybe she would even take on more singing gigs to get a hit of the high and the money that she merely wanted rather than needed – it was good to keep her hand in on things like that.
“I don’t know why or how anyone could read this stuff every day,” she muttered out loud, the siren listening in. “Do you have this kind of thing where you came from?”
No. Did you not hear what I said?
Adagio grimaced.
“Yes, I did, but you’ve been saying that about Donnie pretty much for the last two weeks. At some point, you just sound like a broken record. Half the time I’m tuning you out anyway.”
The siren reeled, her indignance palpable.
How dare you! If I’ve said it so many times, then the onus is on a foal like you for not listening!
Adagio sighed and closed the magazine. Unlike with a book, the rustling pages did not make the satisfying snap that some part of her had been hoping for.
“Then what is it that you want to say? I’m all ears.”
Only then did the siren dither, giving her the sensation that she was swimming back and forth, floating, pacing in a strange sort of way. That had Adagio’s attention, closing her eyes to block out the view of her living area, giving the siren her complete attention.
I enjoy his company also, the siren said at last. It’s…good to feel full from the emotion he shares with us. He is quite clearly affectionate towards us. It is only natural to desire to spend time around someone who behaves like that and want to spend more time with them.
Adagio shot upright, her back ramrod straight.
“Are you actually trying to tell me that you’re falling for Donnie too?”
Maybe she should have been a little more sensitive about it but the grin plastered across her face, a stray orange curl falling down her forehead, told a different tale. As the siren grumbled and half-backtracked, she laughed out loud and fell back on the sofa, mischievous glee coursing through, her heart beating as hard as it did when Donnie looked at her in that special way.
“I can’t believe that! After all your hesitation, holding back, trying to get me to see sense and all that…you’re the one who’s fallen for him too!”
I don’t see any falling in it, Adagio, but I don’t see why you’re so surprised – you’re the one that liked him first.
“And you didn’t see the point in it either, did you, oh great siren!”
She felt rather than saw the siren roll her eyes.
Name-calling? A silly human girl is reducing herself to that?
“I’m you so I wouldn’t go on about calling me silly and the like, thank you very much. But to see you mooning and lovestruck is something, siren, that I’d dearly like to see. Is your “song” going to change into a “love song” now? Maybe your special song will make everyone else fall in love with you instead!”
She may have ribbed the siren good-naturedly, but such was the nature of their relationship and how things had developed between them. It was not serious if they called each other names, though they were weakly put at best, each of them knowing just how sharp the tongue of a viper could be when put to good use. And if there was one thing that Adagio and the siren were finally in agreement on, it was when and how to turn their wrath on others.
“If that’s all settled then and you’re not going to whine about me going out with him,” Adagio said, raising her phone, “I’ll see if he’s free to…uh…yeah, shop for supplies for the next show we’re putting on together. That’s a fair excuse, nothing odd in that.”
The siren chuckled and shook her head.
Sure…if it wasn’t three weeks away yet.
“Are you complaining?”
Not in the slightest.
*
It was good, so good, to not feel like she had to hide or push down how she felt about Donnie, her heart skipping a beat the very moment she saw him at the entrance to the mall. Her clothes were put together so that she was dressed to impress, showing off her collarbones and drawing his eye down to the neat tuck of her waist, though her legs were left covered in a pair of form-fitting jeans. She still leaned towards purples and even deeper shades of blue too, though her wardrobe had expanded more and more as she learned to dress as a woman. Thankfully, being out of the office environment that she would otherwise have been stuck in if she’d stayed at the job she’d had when her change had begun, allowed her to experiment more. Office wear, however it played out, would have been seriously underrated for her.
His face lit up when he saw her but, unlike her, he masked it lightly, sliding his gaze away and back to hers. Stray strands of hair fell over his eyes, a looser, longer, more casual hairstyle than he had had before, and she smiled more widely, even wearing a little make-up that Adagio did not truly need. Make-up too was something that the siren did not understand, not being present where she lived in another world – or had lived, to be more accurate about that.
“Hey!”
He couldn’t stop his smile either, or maybe that was what Adagio would have liked to think.
“Hey… Hey, I’m glad you could make it,” she said, fumbling for words. “I know it’s short notice but the next couple of weeks are going to be sooo busy that I need to get ahead on this!”
He nodded.
“Sure, what are we getting? There are displays or something to go up? What’s the event?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Something about a prelude to Valentine’s Day that the bar is running. Of course, that wasn’t my idea but I’m not in charge of what the new manager gets to do and say. Maybe that’s for the best.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to always be caught up in that sort of stuff. Besides, it would mean that you couldn’t plan for yourself, running and doing it for someone else all the time still, even if it looked like you were technically in charge. It wouldn’t have been you that reaped the spoils of that.”
She pursed her lips, tapping the tip of her thumb very lightly to her forehead as she thought.
“I supposed you’re right…”
Donnie grinned, bumping her shoulder with his. Her heart fluttered and, deep inside, the siren pushed for control, her eagerness pulsing through with a strange sort of need.
“And you can’t run your own place if you’re doing that! Get some money and do your own thing. You’re more than capable, Adagio, I know you can do anything you set your mind to.”
She swallowed and scuffed her toe across the ground but there were not words due to come with the heat of a rising flush across her cheeks and down her neck, feeling as if the warmth itself was tightening and closing in around her throat.
Is this how it really feels?
She couldn’t answer the siren out loud, not with where they were, but a tiny nod from Adagio answered the question without delving into her mind. She had a conversation on the outside, after all, to focus on, the presence of how close Donnie was to her impossible in any way to ignore.
Adagio didn’t know how she managed at all to focus on the shopping that she needed to do, everything a blur but for the sharpness in her life that was Donnie. Where everything else faded out, he was stark and bright, leaving the rest of the world in the dark as she moved towards her light.
His fingers brushed hers as he passed her a sign and she leaned into it a tiny bit, not knowing if he noticed. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.
He’d be a fool not to fall for us, the siren said, her tail flicking back and forth with a little bit of a smirk. He is ours. No one else can have him.
Adagio sighed.
That’s not entirely how it works here…but I can’t say I disagree either.
Donnie did not at all appear as if he didn’t want their, or her, company, however, staying close as they moved through the mall, working through her list, which, at the very least, was well-organised. Soon enough, they had time to rest their aching feet, Adagio regretting wearing even low heels as her soles throbbed from the unnatural position that her feet were forced into.
Getting something to eat was the next step, the two of them moving and working together so well that they were halfway there before they realised just how in sync they were. Adagio sat back, allowing the siren to pilot her body for the time being, never quite getting used to how it felt to have two minds inside her, both equally in control of all that she could do as a person, as Adagio. But it was good to sink away too where she did not have to think too much about how much her feet ached and throbbed, even as the siren struggled to walk evenly, still not having quite as much control over legs when new surfaces and different levels were introduced. The small heel to the shoe probably didn’t help either.
“I’m getting a burger, do you know what you want?”
An Asian-fusion stand caught her attention, the siren’s curiosity perked.
“I don’t think I’ve tried that before… I’ll get that. Meet you back here?”
He nodded, though Adagio, inwardly, groaned.
You don’t even know if you’ll like it, she said, mentally, to the siren. Get a burger. We could have stayed with him longer!
Oh, I didn’t think of that. Things are different here…
But Donnie had already disappeared into the crowd and the siren, truly, was interested in some way in experiencing new flavours and foods whenever possible. Some sort of noodle dish, chosen randomly, was placed at the end of the counter for her, thankfully in a taller container with chopsticks stuck to the side. It would be something that they could eat standing if needed, for the line seemed to be moving so very slowly as the siren, too eagerly, tried to get back to Donnie.
Grimacing inwardly, Adagio stopped her before leaving.
Take the fork and spoon, trust me. I’ll help you work with chopsticks another time.
Adagio’s face frowned, the siren still in control, but she obligingly took her advice. Sometimes Adagio wondered at the fact that they had even managed to come to some sort of agreement and even to a point where the siren listened to her on minute things like that. Though it was not as if she wanted hot ramen splashed down the front of her new top…
The siren froze, stopping Adagio’s body in the process.
What’s going on there?
Her breath caught, tight in her chest, panting shortly and sharply, heat flushing through. But it was not the good kind of heat that made her feel as if good things were happening, no – it was a different, sickening, curdling kind of heat like milk gone bad. The siren hissed, Adagio’s lips pressing together, the woman taking back control, though she was not so sure she would be any better at controlling herself than the siren was.
For Donnie was surrounded by a cluster of women, five in total, one leaning on his arm, tipping forward towards him as if she knew him too personally!
“Hey, you’re cute,” she giggled, the shrillness of her voice cutting through the cloud, Adagio’s hearing sharpened, though she could not have said quite why that was so, even with the siren’s somewhat heightened senses at play. “Why don’t you come hang with us? You can’t want to be here all on your own.”
Donnie eyed her, though it was hard for him to say anything back considering that his mouth was full of a bite of burger that he had not been able to wait to start eating. Swallowing hard, he tried to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth but the girl hung onto him too hard, holding him to her.
“Uh, ‘scuse me…”
“Aw, come on…”
They giggled as if they had nothing better to say, Adagio frozen in place. The crowd streamed around her as if she were a rock in the middle of a stream, the world not stopping for the searing-hot anger coursing through her with each and every beat of her heart. Blood roared dully between her ears as she clenched a fist, forgetting her ramen, setting it aside on a random table with calculating precision.
The siren hissed, head rearing back like a snake poised to strike.
Ours.
Mine.
OURS.
Thus, he was, the two of them in agreement even as the girls tittered and hung all over Donnie as if he was a piece of meat, a trophy to be claimed. Of course, the siren may have thought the same, but he was her trophy, her prize, the one that she wanted to be with her.
“Where are you going? Maybe we can come with you?”
Adagio could not see any of them as women with how they behaved, girls chasing after a man who was so far out of their league it wasn’t even funny, not to her. Donnie caught her gaze over their heads and shrugged helplessly but another was pressing a piece of paper into his hand, boldly dragging his gaze back to hers as she folded his fingers over it.
“Here… Take my number. It’ll smell like me too,” she giggled, batting her eyelashes at him, wearing too much mascara. “I spray my perfume on all of my notepaper…”
“Um… I’m really not interested…thank you… You should take it back…”
But the girl shook her head, already stepping back so that he could not even give the number back to her.
“No, no, no – keep it! You never know when you might like a little reminder of me.”
She blew him a cheeky kiss, the gaggle of them clustering again, moving on, though there were many glances back over their shoulders, looking at the man that, surely, one of them would be able to snare. No one would ever be sure of their true intentions on that day as Adagio, hands shaking lightly, joined Donnie, biting back anger that threatened to lash out from her throat, a serpent poised and ready to take back what was hers.
“Sorry, did they bother you?”
She couldn’t help how clipped her tone was. Donnie shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably, head tipped to the side as he pushed a shoulder up.
“Uhhh… Yeah.” He turned, dropping the crumpled-up scrap of paper in a bin. “Didn’t you get food?”
She started.
“Oh… Yeah, I forgot. I thought you might need some help.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll eat my burger and you should go get something.” His smile dazzled her. “Make sure you eat! I don’t want you going hungry.”
He’s so caring.
But Adagio had no intention of going back to collect her ramen or even getting something new to eat, her sights fixed on the girls disappearing around the corner, Donnie getting out his phone with the hand that was not holding his burger. That would keep him busy for a while.
Adagio was in motion before she even realised what she was doing, what she was going to do, pursuing the girls with single-minded intent. Donnie hadn’t been interested and the siren snarled inside, egging her on.
Show them how wrong they are! They’ll never come after what’s ours ever again!
It was not like Adagio, not like how she had been before she’d been fused with the spirit, but there was little, seemingly, that she could do about that. The ringleader, the one who had been hanging off Donnie, laughed and tossed her hair, the black fall of sheer, straight hair glistening in the light.
“Hey, you!”
Adagio pointed, not needing to pursue further as they turned to face her. Five against one (they didn’t have to know it was two) was hardly fair odds to play up against but Adagio was far, far from worried about that.
Scoffing, a brunette with bangs crossed her arms, hip cocked out.
“Uh… Yeah, what do you want?”
Fools.
Adagio glowered.
“Stay the hell away from my man. Who the hell do you think you are coming all up in here after my guy? He’s not for you!”
Adagio took a breath, the siren rushing forward to take the lead, back at the forefront of her mind.
“He didn’t want your attention! Couldn’t you see that? Or are you blinded by all that gunk on your face?”
The siren even hissed, rocking back on Adagio’s heels as she smirked and studied her nails. Adagio was surprised she had even been able to come up with such a quip but, in hindsight, she must have thought that everything on a woman’s face was “gunk”. She’d be enlightened to the difference in that later.
“You didn’t need to hassle him like that! Just what made you think that he would ever give the likes of you the time of day anyway?”
Adagio swapped in, the two of the tag-teaming the gaggle of girls who, frankly, were not even able to get a word in edgeways. They stuttered and mumbled but it was not as if such earlier bravado, while flirting with a guy rather than the infuriated girlfriend, was going to play out well with Adagio.
Scoffing, she flipped her hair, scorning even their attempts to seem more in control of the situation than they were.
“Um, ah, well, I didn’t,” she repeated after them, mocking their very attempts. “Do you usually get guys talking like that? Get it into your thick skulls – he’s not interested in you!”
Yes! Only ours!
The siren snarled and it was difficult to tell as they swapped positions so frequently just who was in control at any given time, the two of them working together perfectly in defence of their man, the one that they wanted.
“We didn’t mean to do anything!”
Oh, they fell so easily, the weaklings they were, weak-spirited and weak-minded. Adagio didn’t know who thought that but she agreed with it, agreed with herself and the siren.
She advanced, a single step sending the girls scuttling back like crabs, not willing to turn their backs on her. Her eyes blazed and she lashed out, her viper-like tongue doing a better job of cutting them all down to size without even leaning on her dojo training. If she’d been more in control of herself at that moment, however, she would have realised that her legs had sunk ever so slightly into a fighting stance.
Some things were not so easy to let go.
They tried to get away but she pursued their stumbling steps with her own confident ones.
“You’d never get a guy like him, useless bimbos,” she taunted, stripping away their self-confidence even more. “There’s nothing that you could give him that I haven’t already, that I will. You think you’re all that because you have skimpy clothes and like showing off in your little hordes but you’re not even brave enough to approach a man on your own!”
Small, useless, weak, insignificant, pathetic. The girls, to her, were all of those things, others at the mall taking notice, though Adagio still could not find it in herself to care. What did it matter if they thought she was going too far, finally letting out that darker side of her? It didn’t matter, not at all, sinking her claws into them and ripping them to shreds, her and the siren one and the same in a moment like that when they were well and truly on the same side.
“It’s your fault that I’ve had to do this to you,” she laughed, mockingly sliding her gaze away as if to check her nails, as cool as a cucumber as she poised herself before them. “Really, I’m doing you bitches a favour. Stay away from my man and, lord – have some goddamn respect!”
Maybe they would or maybe they wouldn’t but Adagio had no intent at all of ever seeing them again, whirling about on her heel, her point made. In that moment, both her and the siren were in control, moving in perfect fluidity, neither one needing to specifically take the lead. A smile was on her face, even though the anger had only simmered down to a bubbling curdle in the pit of her stomach, heat leaving her face as she tried, just a little to cool down, slipping out of her jacket.
But Donnie was there waiting for her and she’d already forgotten the faces of those that had sought to move in on her man, the guy that she could not help but want to be near. Though she had not thought that the siren had meant that she was that into Donnie to tag-team the girls with her, darkly dominating and blistering through their ranks with a fire unlike anything she could ever have thought existed inside.
“Come on, Donnie,” she said, linking her arm through his in a bold move that may not have come if not for what had happened just before. “Let’s go.”
Oblivious as to what had happened, he smiled.
“Sure thing!”
A quiet walk home was just what she needed to de-stress, taking a moment with the light patter of rain around to add a rhythm to the backdrop of the day. His hand may not have been in hers but Adagio was sure that he walked a little closer to her, the warmth of him something that she could not so simply ignore.
They talked but neither Adagio nor the siren could say what had been talked about when he dropped her off at the doorstep to her apartment building, leaning in. Over too quickly for her to react, he kissed her cheek, a soft gasp escaping her lips, but was gone as soon as he had delivered it.
Lifting his hand in a shy wave, Donnie all but fled from the scene of the crime, leaving Adagio standing there in the enlivening rain, her fingers touching her cheek lightly in memory of that kiss. The sensation of his lips there remained after she closed the door behind her, the siren fidgeting and twisting back and forth, trying to come to grips with it, what it meant, how it felt.
It’s new, it’s different.
“Relax,” she said, speaking out loud to address the siren. “It’s okay, it’s…normal. I think.”
After all, she had not had all that much romantic involvement, only a little, as Knight, which was tricky enough for her to navigate. The siren knew that, of course, but between the two of them it was still Adagio who knew the grand sum more, which was not very much at all.
Her skin tingled. She smiled.
“So, you can’t deny now that you really like him.”
She had to fix some real food for herself, stomach grumbling, distracting her from the matter at hand. The siren was quiet for a moment but, after such a display in the mall, it was not as if it could be denied.
Yes. I do not know “why” I want him, but this goes beyond what I said before about liking him. That’s correct, isn’t it?
Adagio smiled.
“Yes, that’s “correct”. There’s no need to be so formal about it though.”
The differences in their language choices sometimes came out more starkly and strongly than others but they still made themselves understood, particularly with the nuances and touches between them that were mental, working away unconsciously.
With such a thing out in the open, there was little more to say, not even then, calming and resting in quiet companionship for the remainder of the late afternoon and evening. But what they did know was that they were on the same side, in agreement over the fact that Donnie was theirs and theirs alone, even if they would have to make that more openly known sooner or later.
Does he feel the same way?
Neither had an answer to that question but it was something too that would be seen and revealed all in good time.
*
“Heyyyooo!”
A glass shattered and Adagio winced. What was wrong with them? Why was it so hard for new patrons to come into the bar and have a nice time? She was about to go up on stage to do her set at the bar!
“Curses…”
She tried not to swear, not when there were other staff members near to hear her, dusting off the apron she’d had tied around her waist to clean glasses. It was a busy night and everything seemed to be in high demand there as she hustled and bustled, feet aching from running around the bar all night. With live music playing, she could barely hear herself think, let alone hear patrons order, though it was still what she lived for, something in the chaos making her feel more alive than she had ever before thought possible.
“Hey, girlie – get us another!”
At least, that was what she thought he said, slurring and leaning over her bar, waving a glass at her. She scowled.
“I think you’ve had enough, don’t you, lightweight?”
Maybe not something that she should have said but it got her point over well enough, even if the guy, who she’d never seen before, frowned, brow furrowing.
“Just who do you think you are?”
Funny, she’d said that to others only a short while ago. Only the day before had she had to scare off those girls from hassling Donnie. Seemed that nasty men were just the same with women or, if she wanted to be even more biting, nasty little boys.
Send them packing.
The siren barely lifted her head as she checked in, knowing already that Adagio was in control. It was not a situation that she could not handle as the rowdy new patrons shoved her regulars about, not letting them get up to the bar. Of course, the new manager was not doing anything at all about it, with all her position and her power, Adagio screwing up a drying rag in her hand, tighter and tighter.
Now!
“Get the hell out of my bar!”
Her voice bellowed forth like a siren’s song, containing the power of her singing, for one did not have to sing to hold true power. The bar fell silent, everyone staring at her, a regular fist-pumping the air, though she was too busy glaring daggers at the intruders who sought to sully her bar with their aggression to notice or care.
“What did you say, girlie?”
Four against one, big, burly men, rough around the edges. Still, she stood her ground, not caring if they towered. What did they think they could do against her?
“I said,” she forced out through gritted teeth, anger shooting from her eyes as her skin heated up in hot flushes of angry patches. “Get the hell out of my bar. I’m sick and tired of you bothering my staff and my patrons. We don’t need the business of the likes of you here!”
Her words were barbed and sunk deep even as they sized up to her, fists balled-up and shoulders hunched.
“I suggest you shut your mouth, girlie, before you get what’s coming to you,” the biggest of them snarled, missing a tooth as his moustache bristled. “Get the fuck on with your job, bartender.”
But Adagio was not about to do that, sinking into a fighting stance, remembering the dojo. That was why she had gone there, wasn’t it? Not only to be near Donnie.
“I think you’ll regret that. You’ve done enough.” Her voice was silken sweet like ribbons of honey, giving pause even to them, infused with power. “Leave now and no one will get hurt.”
It should not have happened that they backed off and muttered, grumbling among themselves, yet Adagio had changed. She was no longer the man who would have sought some more diplomatic answer but she was strong and powerful and ready for a fight. Someone clapped her on the shoulder but all she cared about was the approval of the siren who had watched it all go down.
Well done. They won’t be bothering you anytime soon.
Adagio swallowed hard.
They should never have tried to push in on my bar. It was always mine, from the first time I set foot in here.
That’s why you have to protect what’s yours, what’s ours. Including Donnie. They might be back but if anyone tries to cause trouble again, but we’ll be ready for them. You’ll learn… It’s not about being ready immediately, after all.
The men swore, grumbling about getting their own back, that they’d never been treated like that “by a girl” before, as they left but she cared not for the friends that they threatened her with. Being “Adagio” was power in itself, crushing the men down into the dirt beneath her heel as the bar cheered and regulars tried to buy her drinks that she could not take while she was on the clock.
She smiled, exulting in their praise.
She was Adagio and she had so much more to show the city, even if she was sure there would be more to challenge her out there.
Always with Donnie by her side.