Beans On Toast And Hot Showers.

by Cackling Moron

Four

Author's Note:

I don't Goddamn know anymore.

I slept better. Maybe I was getting used to. I hoped I wouldn’t have to get too used to it.

Adagio was nowhere to be seen. She must have still been asleep. This worked for me. Yawning and stumbling my way to the bathroom I got all washed up and presentable (but not too presentable - wouldn’t want people looking at me twice) before yawning and stumbling my way back towards the kitchen.

Swaying by the fridge, blinking in the sunlight, a thought occurred to me. Adagio would probably want - and could probably do with - a proper breakfast. The only thing she’d had to eat yesterday was my embarrassingly sub-par dinner. A proper breakfast would be a good thing, I reckoned. Most important meal of the day and all that.

Not that I have any idea what a good, actual breakfast consists of. Or if I even had what it would take to make one. I only ever had breakfast sometimes, and even then it was usually cereal. Or just oats. I’m not an exciting man. I didn’t even think I had eggs. People like eggs, right?

I sighed. Checked the time.

There was enough before work started for me to do something. I knew that the shop down the road would be open. A quick trip out, grab some stuff that would theoretically serve as a breakfast for a hungry, heavy-sleeping girl. I could do that.

I did that.

As I mentioned before I have no idea what anyone would consider a good, full breakfast so I just got, uh, lots of things. Sausages, bacon, some potato waffles, a bagel or two? Is that a breakfast food? Lots of things. Too many, in fact. I didn’t know where to start.

“Great. Go me,” I said, hands on hips. Checked the time again. Still good, but less than before. Certainly not enough time to vacilliate.

Adagio needed waking up anyway.

Yet again this week I found myself knocking gently on my own bedroom door. Pressing my ear up to it I heard something move, the shifting of covers. I knocked some more, a little louder. There came a grumbling and a groaning and a padding of bare feet towards me. I took my ear from the door.

When it opened I was greeted with a wonderful, adorable sight. Adagio’s hair was pressed almost flat on one side and a tangled mess on the other. She squinted at me and rubbed the sleep from one eye with the back of her hand, stretching the other arm above her head. This made the shirt of mine she’d picked ride up, which really added to the picture of someone who had woken up seconds ago. I let her finish.

“S’what? Already?” She mumbled, trying to focus on me but not really being able to open her eyes yet. Adorable, like I said.

“I thought you’d appreciate some breakfast,” I said. Even with her eyes half-closed I could see them immediately light up.

“Breakfast?” She asked.

“Anything you want. Go have a look. I’ll fix it up while you do whatever it is you do in the mornings. Shower? Ugh, I need to wash some towels…”

She blinked a few more times and screwed her face up, working some feeling back into it.

“Why are you so nice?” She asked. This made my skin crawl.

“I’m really not. Chop chop, go pick something,” I said, standing aside and motioning her towards the kitchen. She moved off, bumping into a wall as she went.

After a rummage through the contents of my fridge and freezer she settled on a few things all at once. Some beans, sausage, waffle combo. Not a problem, I told her. She also asked if I had coffee. I did not. Tea would be fine, apparently. I made one for me, too - while everything else was getting along and she was showering. Fastidious girl, her. Then again, it’s probably the healthy thing to do.

I’m not nice. I want this to be made clear. Making breakfast is not hard. Going out and buying the food you needed to make that breakfast is not hard. Letting some random, strange girl sleep in your bed for a couple of days because she apparently has nowhere else she can go and everyone in town hates her guts is not hard. It’s a bit weird, I’ll admit, but it’s not hard.

Nothing I’d done and nothing I would do was like bending over backwards. Anyone could do it. Not a big deal. I didn’t care what anyone said. Not Adagio, not Sunset, not anyone else who felt like making their opinion known to me. I was just doing what anyone could do. What anyone would do. I just got their first. Simple. Nothing to it. Not nice.

I got everything done at more-or-less the same time as every other part and served it all up together, tea included. This I moved to the main room and set down. It was, after all, the de-facto eating room. Sprawling on the sofa and looked around the room. It was much like it always was, and gave me nothing new. Not long after this Adagio appeared, wearing only a towel. I caught the briefest flashes of bare skin because I clocked that this was the case and averted my gaze. Being reserved and repressed is a part of my identity.

“And you’re wearing a towel,” I said, eyes on a wall. There was enough movement in my peripheral vision for me to work out she was looking down at herself in what could only have been a theatrical fashion.

“Yes,” she said. “I was wet,” she added. There was an edge to her voice told me she was enjoying herself at my expense. I would be too, so I could hardly blame her. I waved a hand at the plate on the table.

“That is typically how showers work, yes. Your breakfast is done.”

“Thank you,” she said. The sofa shifted as she sat.

Not looking was probably ruder than looking, as uncomfortable as it might have been. I took it slowly, by degrees, but it really wasn’t so bad. I’d overreacted. My towels had been picked with someone of my dimensions in mind, after all, and on her it looked more like a dress than anything else. Silly me. She caught my eye and smiled, cheeks bulging with a combination of everything I’d cooked up. I smiled back. Couldn’t much help it.

How she kept her hair dry in the shower was clearly the biggest mystery here. If there was anything I’d seen in recent days that might convince me of the existence of supernatural forces beyond the ken of mortal man it was that. You could hide things in that hair.

She said something to me to the effect of asking if I was having anything, though it came out a little on the muffled side. I simply waved her concern aside and informed her I wasn’t hungry. She didn’t seem to believe me, judging from her expression, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about it.

Once she’d finished I washed up and she put actual clothes on. As she left the room she gave me the oddest smile and put the oddest sway into her hips that just seemed entirely unnecessary. Not entirely unappreciated, however. But I probably shouldn’t notice things like that. Probably just a coincidence. I concentrated on the washing up. That was about my speed.

Finishing up I walked out into the hall to grab my keys and wallet and so on. Adagio wandered down from my bedroom to meet me halfway.

“All ready?” I asked.

This whole endeavour still seemed like a sketchy idea that I would probably get in trouble for if anyone above me found out about it, but it was too late now. Besides, I was rather looking forward to it. In an odd way. If nothing else it would be interesting.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Adagio said, still smiling from breakfast. She was smiling a lot more now, I noticed. I liked this. This was good. More smiles always a plus in my book. Especially pretty ones.

I let her leave past me, locking the door and following to where she was standing waiting on the pavement.

“We are walking. Thataway,” I pointed.

“Walking?” The idea seemed daunting to her. I’d seen that reaction a lot from those around here. What did they have against walking places? Madness, I tell you.

“It’s good for you. How do you think I got so tall? Come on,” I said. The blatant lack of logic in this sentence forestalled any argument on her part and she could little else but catch up to me.

Not like it was a long walk anyway. Benefits of small-town living.

The bar was only a couple of streets over. Unlocking the door I let her in first and then locked it again behind us. Stuff to do before everything got going, you see? I had a whole routine set up, a whole rhythm in the way I did things. So I got started on that.

She was basically my shadow as I went around and attended all the little tasks that needed seeing to. I told her to stay put on the proper side of the bar but everytime I looked behind me there she was, immune to my frowns and my pointed looks. Eventually I stopped bothering. It wasn’t like she was getting in the way.

While I was fiddling with the taps and getting those all sorted again she drifted off to the jukebox, which I’d turned on but which wasn’t really doing anything yet other than playing automatically. She tried to pick something out but was stymied because, you know, that costs money.

Her inability to pick the music was something at obviously made her rather miserable, and quite quickly. She was even pouting as she forlornly flicked through songs she couldn’t choose. I took the keys off the bar and slouched over.

“Mind your back,” I said, gently nudging her to the side as I opened the thing up and manually bumped up the credits by a dozen or so. Such power in my hands!

Technically speaking it wasn’t something I supposed to do. But who was being hurt, really? It wasn’t like anyone was queuing up to pay to put tracks on anyway. Or like it was the first thing I shouldn’t have done that day. At the very least it seemed to make her happy again. Seeing this buoyed me more than I thought it would.

Her music tastes were not mine. They tended more towards the poppy and the modern in ways that baffled me. One of the things you pick up working in bars is an impressive tolerance to the musical choices of others though, so it was fine. Not like it was awful.

There weren’t a lot of things that needed finishing up at that point. I got them done and out of the way and then unlocked the door, settling back behind the bar afterwards as Adagio bopped happily to something I didn’t recognise and used up the rest of her choices rounding out her selection.

“So what do you do now?” She asked, coming up and popping herself down on one of the barstools. She even spun it around, which is something I normally frown on but I figured I could let it slide just this once. Maybe I was getting soft.

“I wait for customers, mostly. See if anything else needs doing,” I said. I looked around. Nothing needed doing, at least that I could see. I glanced over at the door but no-one came through it. “Mostly it’s waiting.”

Adagio had followed my eyeline to the door and turned back to me with a frown.

“You’re right, that does sound boring,” she said. I grinned.

“You were warned.”

Adagio huffed, sitting on her hand and swinging her feet. They thumped against the bar, at least until I gave her a warning look. I had limits.

“Sorry,” she said.

“That’s alright. Not regretting agreeing to come along?”

“Well it was either this or you kicked me out, right?” She asked. I couldn’t deny that and gave a very awkward half-grin and shrug. “Yeah. I don’t regret it anyway. It’s sort of just hanging out with you, isn’t it? And I like that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. It’s been fun so far. Not that we’ve really done it much or anything. But it’s been nice. I think. You’re nice to be around.”

This I doubted, but there’s no accounting for taste.

Something she liked must have come on the jukebox because her ears pricked up and a smile started spreading across her face as she slipped from the stool and onto the floor. She had the most hypnotic swing to her hips as she moved out into an open section of the bar, away from obstructions.

“I can dance, right? That’s allowed?” She asked, flicking aside her hair as she grinned back at me over her shoulder. I shrugged, hands on the bar. Weird thing to ask but whatever.

“Go nuts.”

Slipping from the stool she sashayed to a more open part of the floor, throwing me a grin the meaning of which I could begin to fathom. Then she starts dancing.

I’m not a dancer. It’s a miracle I can even walk in a straight line most days. That said, Adagio was obviously very good at what she was doing. There was a grace and fluidity to the way she moved that just seemed to come naturally. Everything just seemed to flow. Effortlessly.

I had sort of noticed that before, actually. It was sort of there no matter what she was doing. Even walking. Now it was just more obvious. But I wasn’t going to tell anyone I’d noticed any of this. That would mean I’d been looking too much.

Other things I noticed about Adagio: lots of spikes. What was up with that? Was that a style thing? She pulled it off, sure, but I wondered if she’d ever accidentally stabbed herself. Or someone else. They were even on her shoes!

Oh but she could move though. Really, really move. And it wasn’t just that she was good at it - and she was, did I mention that? - it was that she had a total lack of self-consciousness as she did so. The whole ‘dance like nobody’s watching’ thing. Radiating self-confidence. Coming off her like a heat haze. Figuratively, of course. Very impressive.

Maybe I’d got a little less sleep than I thought I had? Why else was I just gawping like an idiot as she danced without a care in the Goddamn world?

It was someone coughing that snapped me back to the present. Turned out I had a man staring at me from the other side of the bar. A customer, no less. I jumped.

“Sorry. Miles away,” I said. He just grunted and proceeded to order a coffee. Who orders coffee in a bar? I don’t care if it’s only noon. I curse the day we got that coffee machine put in. Truly we live in dark times.

Once the man had his coffee he slunk off to some far corner of the bar to sulk and slurp at it, leaving me lost for a moment until Adagio settled herself back on the same stool as before. She had the biggest smirk on her face I think I’d seen so far, and even I could guess why. I think I might even have blushed a little bit. Certainly, my cheeks weren’t usually quite so hot

“You’ve, uh - you’ve got some moves there,” I said, scratching the back of my neck.

“Oh, you noticed those?” She asked, leaning her elbows on the bartop and resting her chin in her hands. The smirk did not let up.

“...mighta done,” I said.

I stuck my hands in my pockets to keep from fidgeting anymore than I already was.

“Can you dance?” She asked.

“Don’t make me laugh. Bitterly,” I said. She did not get the reference. “No, no I cannot dance. I mostly just flail, and that’s only when I’m drunk. Rest of the time I just, you know, avoid it.”

Even when they were fuzzy the vague memories of anytime I’d ever danced still haunted me. Horrible, horrible mistakes I had made in the past, never to be repeated!

“You should do it, it’s fun. Even if you’re bad at it. I bet you’re not that bad anyway.”

“Oh, you say that now. Pray you never find out.”

She giggled. An honest-to-goodness giggle. I hadn’t ever really heard anyone make a noise like it. Except Sunset, I guess - once or twice. Have I ever giggled and just not noticed? I doubt it.

It’s quite nice, really. At least Sunset does it. Adagio too. Couldn’t tell you why. Just is.

“You’re probably the total triple threat kind of deal, right?” I asked. She certainly seemed the sort, at least to me. Just gave off that sort of her. From the look she gave me on hearing this though I had the feeling she had not heard this expression before.

“Triple what?” She asked. How had she not heard this?

“You know. Dancing, acting, singing all in one. Or is it singing, dancing and acting? It’s the combination that’s important. Of the three. In one person. Triple threat, see?”

Her face fell.

“Oh. Not really. Not now,” she said, shrinking in on herself. Was it something I said? What can I say to fix it?

“I think you do yourself a disservice. Can certainly dance! Bet you could acct if you wanted. And weren’t you in some kind of musical competition not long ago? That’s what I heard. And sure you didn’t win - again, what I heard - but-”

“What do you do for fun?” She asked, bringing my sentence to a crashing halt and leaving me standing there with my mouth half open.

I had not been making it better. I had been digging myself deeper. I could see it now. Whoops.

“Oh, uh, like here or, ah, in general?” I asked, doing my best to act as though the conversation hadn’t gone somewhere obviously uncomfortable for her. Apparently my incredibly awkward wording of that question helped a little, as a flicker of her former smile returned. Only a flicker, but that was a start.

“What would you have done last night if I hadn’t been there?”

“Pretty much what I did when you were there. Only alone.”

This wasn’t an exaggeration. I’m not an interesting person. Honestly.

“Well we’ll have to fix that, won’t we?” She asked, with overwhelming sweetness. Not ominous at all.

Further sinister statements were cut short by the appearance of further customers (these one here to meet the coffee man from before, it seemed), and following them business seemed to pick up. This kept me more-or-less occupied until my shift came to an end, by which point Adagio looked about set to drop dead from sheer boredom. I had warned her.

“I did warn you,” I said after clocking out. I found her on a stool again, head resting on her arms atop the bar. I would personally recommend against doing that if you had as much as Adagio did, but it was still quite early so no-one had really spilt anything on the bar. Yet. If she’d done the same thing later she probably would have sat up with considerable more beer in her hair than she’d started with.

As it stands she just sat up and looked at me with anguish.

“So...boring…”

“You’ll live. It’s over now anyway. Come on.”

With her in tow I left, waving to my compatriots in the bar - who had responded to Adagio’s presence and the reason for it with bemused acceptance - and heading out into the early evening. A nice day it was, too. Mild!

Adagio’s sense of direction was evidently not the greatest as she immediately started heading off the wrong way until she saw that I was just standing still giving her an odd look at which point she came back looking only slightly embarrassed. Then we got going properly.

As we walked a thought occurred to me. It occurred so hard I actually slowed down and then stopped walking entirely. Something Adagio noticed, turning back.

“What?” She asked, cocking an eyebrow at me. I gestured vaguely at all of her. Specifically it was at her outfit, but she couldn’t have guessed that.

“You must have had other stuff, right? More clothes? Things like that? Where’d all that go?” I asked. I doubted this was going to be a comfortable subject of conversation but it was - in my mind - important. I could already see Adagio’s face falling and she started to rub her arm nervously.

“Everything we had is back at the house…” she said. This was a start.

“Well...can we not go...get it?” This seemed so obvious to me I wasn’t sure why I had to ask it. Adagio winced at the very suggestion.

“That’s probably not a good idea.”

“Why not? You got the keys don’t you?” I asked. Not sure where she could have been holding them right that minute but girls usually surprised me with the ways they got around how pocket-less their clothing tended to be. Adagio could probably hide the keys in her hair, as I had previously speculated. Not that she probably would. That’d be silly. But she could.

“We got kicked out. He’s probably changed the locks. And he might be there. I just…” She said, trailing to a halt and leaving me hanging.

“He?” I asked.

“The guy who owned it. We just rented. He wasn’t happy when he found out what we did…”

“What you did?” I asked. She gave me a significant look. It clicked.

“Oh. Yeah. Magic. Singing. Mind control. I got you.”

I was not even going to get into that. If it was true then great, I was palling around with some kind of evil creature who just happened to have fallen on hard times. If this was all some extended practical joke at my expense then I could play along until the punchline hit then act dumb so everyone could laugh and have a good time. Neither was going to change how I was going to act. I’m stubborn like that. It’s mostly laziness. To act differently would take effort.

“He got angry…” Adagio elaborated. Her nervousness was obvious, coming off her in waves.

I made a rash decision. Reaching out I took one of her hands - now hanging limp - in both of mine. That got her attention.

“I’m sure he did. And that sucks. But this is still something I think would be a good idea. Can’t keep wearing the same thing every day forever, hmm? You don’t even need to worry about it. Wait around a corner while I do it if you like. I’ll be with you either way, okay? I won’t leave you on your own. For what it’s worth,” I said. Speeches aren’t my strong suit.

She stared at me like I was mad for a couple of seconds before what I’d said seemed to register.

“O-okay. I guess you’re right.”

Why was I holding her hand, exactly? What an odd thing to do. Not like me at all. Touching people - ew. I let it go. It had served its purpose anyway. Got the job done. And that was all that mattered. Progress. Her getting some of her stuff back was a step towards her getting off and out of the flat. Right? Right.

She told me the location of her house - former house - and using my mental map of the town I determined it was a little out of the way, but well walkable. We set off. Along the way I do have to admit that I found a certain amount of antipathy coming Adagio’s way from a good number of the people we passed. Especially the younger people - they looked daggers at her and I could practically feel her shrinking in on herself. It wounded me to see it.

I did my best to be a big, lumbering object that could interpose itself between the world and her. Whether she noticed this or appreciated it or if I was even any good was unclear, but it felt good to be doing something.

After we’d walked about halfway (by my estimation) she actually reached out for and grabbed my hand. This was a super-weird thing to do but, you know, whatever makes you feel safe I guess? I looked at her when she did it and she just sort of shrugged and mumbled so make of that what you will.

Kind of cute though. It lasted for a block or so before she took it back. I don’t get girls, man.

Anyway.

We were getting out of the heart of town by the time we reached where the house was, and things were quiet and far more relaxed. Rounding a corner we arrived at our destination. I saw a house number and quickly did some work in my head to figure out which one was the one we were meant to be going to. I then started going towards it. Riveting.

There was a man outside the house doing something with the lock. On catching sight of him Adagio squeaked and hid behind me. Properly this time, and intentionally. As in using me to block herself from view completely. This wasn’t effective, as her hair was wider than I was. Still, points for effort.

“Something wrong?” I asked, trying to glance over my shoulder and not getting very far. Adagio continued to duck down, clinging to my shirt to keep me from moving too much and giving away her position.

“That’s the guy who owns the house,” she hissed. I looked at him again. He did have a certain ‘homeowner’ air about him. In that he looked like the kind of miserable bastard who would decide to become a landlord. It was a mindset I really couldn’t grasp. Someone had to do it, I supposed, I just knew it’d never be me.

“That’s a stroke of luck,” I said.

“It really isn’t,” I heard from behind me. I rolled my eyes.

“He can let us in.”

“I really don’t think he will.”

“I’ll ask nicely.”

“I really don’t think that’ll work.”

I pouted and twisted, delicately removing her hand from where it had been gripping my shirt.

“Ye of little faith,” I said. She did look genuinely scared though, which gave me pause. I tried to appear reassuring. I didn’t have much practise with this. “Look. You can just stay here if you like. I’ll go do it and, uh, try to get stuff that looks useful for you. I guess. You can just stay out of sight and away from him if you’d prefer.”

For a second it looked like she might have taken me up on this but then I saw her resolve stiffen.

“No. I’ll come with you,” she said. Then she added: “Thanks for doing this…”

I waved this off.”

“Pah. Don’t thank me yet. Or ever, actually. It’s fine. Come on.”

We approached, Adagio continuing to mostly hide behind me as we went. This was fine. I hardly expected her to run up and dropkick the guy or something.

Whatever he was doing with the lock - changing it, presumably, as the owner - he was taking his sweet time and was still fiddling and swearing to himself as we walked up the path. I think it was the sound of Adagio’s ridiculous shoes on the paving that made him turn around.

He saw me and didn’t care. Then he saw the enormous poof of hair cowering in my shadow and his face turned to thunder.

“You!”

I moved so that I was back in his eyeline, which took him by surprise.

“Yes, me, hi. Just here to pick up a few things. You know. Belongings. Stuff.”

His confusion over who or what I was and why I was there was momentary. His eyes flashed to Adagio - who I could legitimately feel trembling behind me - and then back to me.

“No. Everything in that house is going to their back rent,” he said.

I was fairly certain this was illegal. Fairly certain. Pretty sure.

This must have been written across my face because a particularly nasty expression appeared on his.

“Unless she feels like making an issue of that?”

Behind me I felt Adagio shaking her head furiously. The nasty expression widened, becoming something very much like a sneer.

“Didn’t think so.”

I did not like this man. As much as I might be able to sympathise with, you know, a landlord who is somehow bamboozled into allowing a trio of girls stay rent-free in one of his properties for an indeterminate amount of time, the level of glee he was taking in this was unseemly. I wasn’t a fan.

I was not going away empty-handed, I knew that much.

“She can at least get clothes, right? Or did you have something specific planned for those?” I asked.

His sneer shifted into something like low-key fury. I could almost see it rolling beneath the surface. He was very obviously weighing up options in his head. I imagined they varied from pleasing thoughts of violence inflicted on myself, through repeated demands that I should leave at once all set against the very real possibility that if he gave in on this we would walk away quietly on our own.

This last possibility clearly won out, as he made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a grunt.

“Fine. Just clothes. You have five minutes,” he said, turning around and opening up the door while grumbling to himself. With it open he spun and wagged a finger in my face.

“Five minutes,” he repeated.

“You and I both know that’s impossible,” I said, pushing past him into the house with Adagio in tow. As if you could accomplish anything worthwhile in five minutes.

I got about five steps into the house before I found a lightswitch and was promptly blinded with how gaudy everything was.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, covering my eyes. The house was rammed with some of the most expensive stuff I had likely ever seen in my life. I didn’t even recognise most of it, it just radiated luxury. I was afraid of touching anything in case my plebeian hands somehow ended up breaking everything at once.

And my God, the colours. This was another day I was glad that I was colourblind or else I’d have probably just lost my mind. So bright, so clashing. Or did it all go together? I did not know.

Still, there was a lot of shit in this house that looked like it had cost a lot of money.

“Are you don’t want to contest him on any of this? This is yours, right?” I asked, turning back to Adagio who was dolefully keeping her eyes on her boots. She shook her head.

“None of it’s ours,” she said. I looked around again. Everything was still there, in what had been their house, where they had lived with their stuff. I felt I was missing something.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we didn’t buy any of it. We just...convinced people that they should give it to us.”

That took me a second to work out.

“Huh. Oh, right. Magic again, yeah?”

She nodded. Yeah sure, magic - let’s go with that.

“You must have been pretty convincing,” I said. She shrugged.

That wasn’t going anywhere.

“So,uh, clothes? Upstairs in a bedroom or something?” I asked, pointing to some stairs. She nodded and up we went.

The decor and surroundings did not get any more subtle. From the looks of things each of them had had a room of their own and had stuffed it accordingly with whatever they’d felt like. Adagio steered me down a hall towards the furthest bedroom, which was hers.

It was a lot more cohesive than the rest of the house, which was nice, but still just as stuffed with eye-wateringly pricey looking objects. The bed at least was bigger than mine, as was the television. Maybe this magic business has some perks to it?

There were also wardrobes, which snapped me back to the reason why we’d come in the first place. I put my hands on my hips and faced Adagio, who was clearly still very uncomfortable all of this. Best to press forward.

“Now, I’m going to level with you. I don’t understand clothes. So you’ll probably have to just...direct me. Or you just pile up whatever it is you want on the bed and I pack. Or whatever. How you want to play this?” I asked.

“That sounds good. The ‘you packing’ plan,” she said.

“Then let’s get cracking. Five minutes!”

We got cracking. I stood around like an idiot while she emptied drawers onto the bed and yanked things off of rails. As the pile grew and grew I felt like I really wasn’t fulfilling my part of the plan, mostly because I didn’t actually have anything to pack clothes into.

“You got a bag or something?” I asked.

She pointed up to the top of one of the wardrobes and I see a handle poking up. I do have the height advantage, so I was the one to reach up for it. A cascade of miscellaneous nonsense rained down on me the instant I tried to tug the bag out.

Weird little clutch bag things, scarves, a few shoes and more besides all bounced off the top of my head as I just stood there and weathered it. Adagio was standing off to one side, giving me a sympathetic look but little else in the way of actual support or assistance.

“Ow,” I said once the barrage had slackened off. A purse fell on my foot.

“Sorry…” Adagio said.

I pulled the bag down somewhat more carefully. On the plus side it was a quality bag. Some enormous, super-duper ultra-travel model or whatever. I imagined they’d paid extra to make the thing bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside.

Then I started packing.

At first I tried to be neat and even tried folding one or two items but the time pressure was overwhelming. I just ended up stuffing handfuls of clothing into the bag as quickly as Adagio was tossing them onto the bed. This worked for me, as it meant that if the items were intimate - as an alarming number of them seemed to be - I could look away and stuff without watching.

This amused Adagio no end, and it was nice to see her smiling again, if it was at my expense.

We ended up filling at least three bags like that one, by the way. Three!

The more we’d crammed into the first one the more confidence she seemed to build and soon she’d branched out from clothes. Shoes, belts - whatever. Things I didn’t understand. Fair enough, in my book.

I could happily live in the same set of clothes until they fell to bits and survive off of the same sandwich every day for the rest of my life but most people preferred a little variety. That, and makeup and various related products - which I saw her gathering up by the armful - was expensive as shit. Not the sort of thing you’d want to leave behind. This I knew.

That’s about all I knew about makeup and related crap, but it was a good thing to remember.

Ooh, possible Sunset present idea - makeup? She likes that, right? I’ve never actually asked. As an idea it also suffers from the same problem as the boots, in that I’d have no idea where to start. Less than ideal. Keep trying.

“You done here?” Came a gruff voice, making me very nearly jump out of my skin. The landlord was watching proceedings with arms folded. He didn’t seem any less grumpy than he had been before. He was also tapping his foot. The very picture of unhappy impatience. I looked to Adagio.

“Are we done?” I asked. We did have three bags of stuff, after all. She hesitated, looking from the bags to her room in general and then the landlord. Then back to me. She nodded, somewhat sadly.

“We’re done,” I said.”

“Good. Get out,” he said. Charming gentleman.

The first and biggest bag I slung onto my back, arms looped through the handles. A classic trick. The others I just picked up. I felt I must have at least doubled in weight but it wasn’t so bad. Swaying backwards I spent a giddy second entertaining the possibility of toppling over but managed to stay upright, rocking forwards again and breathing a sigh of relief. That would have been embarrassing.

“After you,” I said to Adagio who - with one last fearful flick of the eyes of the landlord - left the house as quickly as possible. I followed at a more lumbering, deliberate pace. Again, the risk of falling over was both real and also quite thrilling.

“I don’t know why you’re helping that one,” the landlord said as I passed. Pointedly. Loudly. He also made a deliberate effort to move back just enough to not be actually helpfully out of my way.

“It’s mostly for me. I’m fattening her up for Sunday roast, you see? The clothes are for me to wear while I’m eating. They flatter my figure. Thanks again for your help,” I said with as straight a face as I could manage.

It must have been a pretty good straight face as the man was so blindsided by what I’d said that he couldn't think of a response by the time I’d walked off and out the house, Adagio having to jog a little to keep up with me.

“What did you say to him?” She asked, risking a look back at the house. The landlord had not yet emerged. I shrugged, which was no mean feat with the bags I was carrying.

“Just a bad joke.”

I was not walking back home carrying those bags, so we located a bus stop. After a short wait we were then on a bus and heading back. This was a novelty to me, as I hadn’t taken a bus trip in years - certainly not since coming to this place. I looked out as we rolled past bits of town I’d never seen before. Nice place. Quiet.

I turned from the window and found Adagio staring at me. It was quite intense. I may have clutched the bag on my lap a little tighter. Its firm and unyielding presence gave me strength. The others were on the seat next to me, one atop the other.

“Why are you helping me?” She asked me flatly.

“I need a reason?”

“Yes. What are you getting out of this?”

I noticed that she was keeping her voice reasonably low through this, likely because of the others on the bus. I didn’t miss a word though. Her voice carried no matter how quiet she got. Must have just had one of those, er, voices.

“Nothing?” I ventured. She didn’t look convinced. “It’s a good excuse to leave the house but that’s about it.”

My flippancy was clearly not what she was after, because this just made her unhappy.

Seemed a bit weird to me you could flip from ‘falling asleep on someone’ to ‘implicitly accusing them of having ulterior motives’ but I was not privy to Adagio’s thought processes. I’m sure it all made perfect sense to her.

“I heard him ask you,” she said, as though this was a revelation. It was not. I imagined she must have heard him as she was leaving the house. He hadn’t exactly been quiet about it.

“Figured. Don’t worry about it.”

“I do though! Why are you doing this? You don’t have to, so why?”

There wasn’t anything I could really say to this. I tried and I failed and just ended up shrugging at her. I really didn’t know what she wanted to hear from me.

“Because you asked?” I ventured.

She growled. As in, straight-up growled at me. I hugged the bag tighter still as she struggled to regain some composure, sweeping back that enormous hair of hers and taking a deep breath or two. Then she started over.

“I’ve never...no-one has ever done anything for me without me...making them do it. They never even had the chance. We - I - just got people to obey us. And they did. Never because they actually wanted to, but because we made them think they wanted to. And now that’s gone, and everyone hates us. Hates me. But you...why? There has to be a reason why.”

“You’re making this a bigger deal than it is-”

“No I’m not! No I’m not. It is a big deal. For me it is. I had a plan and everything was working and then it all went wrong and I lost everything and nothing works now and my sisters are gone and - and -”

And she was starting to cry and people were starting to look - some of whom clearly recognised her and were clearly enjoying the spectacle. Bastards. I was moved to action.

“Hey, hey now,” I said, shifting from my seat, putting the bag down and moving over to side beside her. I barely had time to tentatively put an arm around her shoulder she’d wrapped herself about me and started bawling into my shirt. Again.

“I promised I’d get them home and I failed!” She wailed, face pressed into my torso.

What exactly am I meant to say to that? I have mentioned how bad I am at comforting crying girls, yes? At least I knew enough to pull her in closer, if only to hide her better from view. I also glared at anyone who happened to be looking and most quickly turned away and minded their own business.

“You didn’t fail. You did everything you could. It’s not your fault,” I said. Making it up, mostly. I assumed it was what she would want to hear. She sobbed louder and clung on tighter, which could have meant what I’d said was working or wasn’t. I had no idea.

“Hey hey, you’re okay. Things might be bad right now but it’s not all over, is it? Can pull back together, can try again. Maybe it won’t be exactly the same but it can just as good. You never know,” I said. Again, bullshitting. I’m not the person to go to for comfort. Her sobbing was quieting down though. Or so it seemed to me.

“And if nothing else you got me. Like I said before,” I said.

She sniffled.

“So oh shit, I guess things are kinda messed up, now I say that. Like you hadn’t suffered enough.”

She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a hiccup of grief.

“I’m glad I found you,” Adagio said. I’ll admit I felt a flutter at this. Just a little one, right in the chest. Nice to feel wanted, you know? I gave her a squeeze, to make sure she really knew I was there.

“Let’s go home, eh? You could even put on a whole new outfit, if you felt like it. Or not. World is your oyster, you know?”

Nodding, she didn’t disengage and instead just curled into me some more and stayed there until we hit our stop. This was a little odd for me, but I was the one who’d moved in to comfort her so it was too late to complain.

And it wasn’t so bad. If I was going to be honest - and the odds of that were slim - it was actually quite nice. Nice to hold someone. Nice to know you were making them feel better. Nice that she smelled nice. Nice the way I could feel the heat of her through my shirt. You know. Stuff like that.

It only lasted for a few more stops anyway. I gave her a little jolt so she knew we had to get up and go and then we did just that. I picked up the bags again and led the way back to mine, letting her in and dumping the bags in the lounge. They could be dealt with later.

“Can we eat?” Adagio asked. I rolled my eyes as theatrically as I could but actually I was quite pleased. Her eyes were still a little red but she had cheered up immensely. She could really bounce back, this girl. A pleasure to see it.

“One track mind, you,” I said. She pouted. Also a pleasure to see if only because it was quite cute.

“I didn’t have lunch! You didn’t have lunch, actually,” she said, jabbing an accusing finger towards me. I just shrugged it off.

“I forget about it. Maybe you have a point. Fine. I’ll whip something up. You’re going to have to make some food sooner or later, you know. It’s only fair! Even as a guest.”

She looked geared up to protest this when there came a knock at the door. My turn to pout.

“Now what? You go to the kitchen, pick something out. I’ll see who’s come to bother me now,” I said. She did so and I moved to the front door. No peephole, unfortunately. I did all my spying through the kitchen window. But it was fine. I’m sure it wasn’t anything or anyone spectacular on the other side.

Opening it up I found myself confronted with a group of girls who did not look happy to see me. Now that’s timing - we only just got in and away from other unhappy people!

If it’s not one thing it’s another. I tell you.

Comments

[Trump]

Well, I can imagine lots of different directions for this story..... I wonder what the author intended.....