Five
Some time later Thom was sat back behind the counter, flicking through a very dog-eared magazine picked at random from a stock of the same he kept underneath for just such prolonged periods of quiet. There were many such periods. Behind him he heard a floorboard creak.
“Is she gone?” Adagio whispered, loudly enough to kind of defeat the point of whispering. Thom turned a page.
“She’s gone,” he said.
A pause, during which he imagined Adagio was peering about to see whether the girl was actually hiding. She wasn’t, so Adagio didn’t see anything like this.
“Is she coming back?” Adagio asked.
“No idea. Maybe. Not today though I wouldn’t think,” Thom said.
Further pause. Then, more quietly:
“Are you still mad at me?”
He sighed and lost his place in the article he’d been reading.
“I wasn’t mad at you, Dagi, I just didn’t know what was going on. I still don’t. I’m kind of glad that she - her name’s Twilight, by the way, mean anything to you? - kind of glad she left in such a good mood. I didn’t want to have to put a complaint box together. Bumrushing customers isn’t good for the image.”
“Sorry…”
Thom stopped midway through turning to another page.
“Did you just apologise?” He asked.
“No. Why would I?” Adagio asked in return, arms folded.
“Right. Course,” Thom said, turning on his stool to look at Adagio and finding her stood on the threshold between the back and the shop proper, as though afraid to approach any closer without explicit permission. “Have fun with your box?” He asked.
Adagio blinked.
“My what? How dare- oh, that box.”
She’d quite forgotten about that box.
Rising from the stool Thom went to go stand with Adagio in the doorway, seeing as how she didn’t seem to want to move from there. He rested one arm against the frame and frowned down at her a little while Adagio had sudden, vivid flashbacks to that time not long ago when he’d carried her around like a sack of flour. She really would have to tell him off for that at some point.
“Don’t take this the wrong way Adag- Dagi, but since we’re friends now apparently I feel compelled to say that you’ve been acting a little differently lately. Is something up?” He asked.
“You’re projecting,” Adagio said without hesitation.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
He waited for to elaborate on this - perhaps explain what it was he was meant to be projecting - but instead she completely veered aside from that, unfolded her arms, beamed, and came out with:
“So I was thinking it would be nice if we might spend some more time together, but perhaps this time in a more private setting. You don’t live far from here, do you?”
It had come up briefly in conversation once or twice during their time together, just in the course of things. She hadn’t looked to have been really listening at the time and Thom was genuinely surprised that she appeared to have remembered at all.
That, and her jackknifing the conversation left him struggling to catch up.
“Um, down the road but, uh, I don’t see-” he started to say.
“Down the road? So convenient! For me and for you. That’d be a five minute walk, wouldn’t you say?” She asked. Doing his best not to be affected by the full-force, ear-to-ear smile Adagio was now giving him, Thom raised an eyebrow. Defiantly. Or as close to defiantly as someone like Thom could manage.
“It sounds kind of like you’re inviting yourself to my house,” he said.
This brought forth another pout, this one weapons-grade. Thom very nearly winced.
“Well I’m sorry if me trying to keep you company is a bad thing. I just thought that with your dad away you might be a bit lonely at home is all. Excuse me for caring,” Adagio huffed, folding her arms even harder and turning up her nose and twisting away from him.
This caused her hair to hit him in the face, and Thom reeled briefly, having to step backwards. There really was a lot of it. Probably his fault for having entered the danger zone.
“I don’t...dislike...all the time we seem to be spending together now, you know. It’s just a bit sudden is all. I always kind of, well - I always kind of got the impression you thought I was an idiot,” he said.
“You are an idiot.”
Not for the first time while being insulted by Adagio, Thom found it difficult not to grin. It really was all in the delivery with her. Just something about it made it difficult to take seriously. Or he was a glutton for punishment. Or it was that ever-expanding soft spot he was very much doing his best to ignore at that moment. Or some potent combination of all of these and more. Who could say?
“Ah. That might be why,” he said.
Adagio spared him a glance and something in the way he was looking at her must have touched a nerve as she stopped keeping her nose upturned and went a little pink, to boot.
“...doesn’t mean you’re not nice to be around. Sometimes. Okay?” She asked, pointedly. Thom conceded.
“Okay. So you want to hang out some more?” He asked.
“Yes. It’s not like you’ve got anything better to be doing,” Adagio said with a dismissive flap of a hand.
Harsh, but true. He rarely did and she knew it. Because he’d told her.
“Well you’re not wrong there. And you want to do this where I live?” Thom asked.
“Yeah. So? Don’t read anything into it. It’s just nearby!”
Adagio had this all squared away, it seemed. Almost made it sound like a reasonable request to make, like he would have been the rude, inconsiderate one to say no. Not that he wanted to say no, of course. For reasons he couldn’t quite pin down.
“True, true. Well, alright. Fine, I suppose. I’m not going to be waking up later in a bathtub full of ice short a kidney or two, am I?”
That actually almost made her laugh, but she played it off well.
“Depends on how good of a host you are,” she said, walking her fingers up his chest and flicking the tip of his nose. Thom went obligingly cross-eyed.
“I’ll make sure to use the clean glasses and scrape the mould off anything I serve you. That’s special treatment, that is. Even I don’t get that and I live there,” he said.
And that was that. For the rest of the workday - which, agreeably, wasn’t very long - the two of them had this plan hanging over them, filling them both with expectation and dread in equal measure, mostly as neither of them had any real idea of what was going to happen.
They had ideas, sure. Hopes maybe. But both were also fully of the opinion that the other was an unpredictable wild card who could and would cause trouble at the slightest provocation. Hence the dread.
Both of them, though, shared a dim, distant hope of something that they both refused to fully acknowledge. Something that was growing more obvious with every passing day but which was also so patently ludicrous it didn’t warrant further attention. It was there, they would just never admit it.
Because it was, as said silly, obviously. And ridiculous. And completely unrealistic. No point really in giving it any serious thought.
Idle thought? Well, no harm in that. A daydream of two, here and there? In the quieter moments? Well, no harm in that, either. And it’s not like anyone would know, is it?
Because, really, even if they were to confront these growing notions, grapple with them and come to understand them - which they never would, on account of how utterly ludicrous they were - what were the odds that the other person even felt anywhere remotely similar?
There just wasn’t any point. No matter how much it might look like there was a point.
And this is what both of them spent the remaining time in the day fretting over, while telling themselves it wasn’t worth fretting over. Not a word was spoken, though there were a few times where one would look at the other only to find the other swiftly turning away. It got rather awkward.
Still, the day ended regardless, and before either of them really knew it Adagio was standing waiting on the pavement outside while Thom was busily locking up, wondering to himself what on Earth the girl might do next once he was done.
In the event, what she did was grab his hand once they started walking off.
Thom looked down at this and considered asking what the deal was but, really, by now he should have expected it. At least she wasn’t putting her hand into his pocket or something. Things could have been much worse. Not much weirder, but worse. He could tolerate this, even if he couldn’t fully understand it.
If nothing else, it finally got them talking again.
“So...did you have anything in particular you wanted to do, having invited yourself over? Or what?” He asked, studiously ignoring the hand holding his, soft and small and warm as it might have been.
“I’m sure we’ll find something to do. I just wanted it to be us, that’s all,” Adagio said. She’d taken to swinging the hand holding his, just because, and when she caught sight of this drawing stares she just did it more. Thom put up with this.
“Why?” He asked.
Adagio kept on glaring at the people who’d been glancing over at them until they rounded a corner and went out of sight. She then finally answered his question:
“People are tiring to be around.”
True for many and Adagio in particular, at least of late. People proved especially tiring when she couldn’t easily get them to do what it was she wanted them to do. They insisted on doing their own thing, often harmoniously, often without her at the centre of their world. Ingrates.
“And I’m not?” Thom asked.
“You’re less tiring,” Adagio said without missing a beat.
“Nicest thing anyone’s said to me.”
Adagio bit her lip to suppress a giggle and for the next few minutes they walked in silence. These few minutes were all that were required to reach where Thom lived. Like he’d said, it really wasn’t that far.
“Well. Here it is,” he said, unnecessarily.
They then entered. All without incident.
Once inside the world all at once seemed very small indeed, seeming only to include the two of them and a hallway and a lot of quiet.
Having been so used to the rather run-down surroundings of where she’d been living lately Adagio stood and took in the interior - appreciating in particular the unbroken windows - while Thom just hovered nearby wondering what he had to look forward to next.
And also looking at Adagio. He did not notice that he was doing this. At least not until she pointed it out to him.
“Were you staring at me?” She asked, with a tone that suggested the wrong answer could have dire consequences but which also gave no hints as to what the right answer might have been. Thom took a step back and bumped into the front door of his own home, blushing furiously.
“No. Well, yes. I was waiting for you to do something,” he said.
“Sure…”
The look on Adagio’s face then was caught somewhere between a glare and a smirk and she was plainly having trouble deciding on which to settle on. Rather than letting his trip her up she instead moved onto something else instead:
“Which room is yours?” She asked. Thom found himself against at a loss, entirely at the mercy of Adagio’s conversational initiative.
“My room? Upstairs on the right. Why?”
Adagio, grinning, immediately turned and bounded up the stairs, leaving Thom standing like a sinking pudding and then scrambling to follow.
“Hey. Hey!”
By the time he’d caught up she was already through the door and, as he saw on arrival, laid out on his bed. Hadn’t even taken her shoes off. That’s just rude.
“Make yourself at home why don’t you,” Thom said with a frown that he really didn’t mean. Adagio, having moved on from grinning to simply smiling again, propped herself up on one elbow and crooked a finger at him.
“Come here,” she said.
“Pardon?”
Adagio wasn’t sure how anyone could have misinterpreted what she’d said. Not like she could have broken it down any simpler. The crooked finger turned over and jabbed down at the bed in time with each repeated word:
“Come. Here.”
That got the point across.
Moving over Thom stood beside his own bed. Adagio gave the bed a pat and him a condescending look. This also got the point across and Thom perched himself just on the edge.
“Oh for the love of-”
Rolling her eyes at his continued idiotic stubborness Adagio sat up, reached over and - demonstrating an alarming burst of strength - hauled him bodily onto the bed and in a wild tangle that Thom was thoroughly unable to keep track of somehow got him on his back on the bed and her on top of him. Straddled cross his waist.
Thom swallowed.
“Thom, we need to talk,” she said.
Experimentally Thom gave a wiggle, just to get an impression of how easy it would be to extricate himself from the position she’d put him in. Quickly it became apparent that she’d placed herself well, as nothing short of bodily launching her across the room would work, and Thom couldn’t in good conscience do that.
So he stopped wiggling. Adagio just grinned.
“Clearly,” he said.
Adagio then her best to put on a serious face, for this was a serious talk. She rested both her hands upon Thom’s chest and drew herself up, somber, undercut somewhat by the squeeze she gave him without really thinking about it.
“I know you like me,” she said.
That gave him a little jolt, as though the situation hadn’t been full enough of those already.
All at once that soft spot he’d been nurturing and mostly ignoring was thrown into sharp relief, all at once ignoring it wasn’t really an option anymore. Because she was sitting on him.
“Uh, I’ll admit to a certain fondness,” Thom said.
Adagio giggled, the pitch and tone calculated to perfection.
“You don’t have to be coy. Not with me,” she said.
“I don’t?”
She flicked his nose again and again he went a little cross-eyed for a second.
“No. You can be completely honest with me. I kind of want you to be. I want us to be totally honest with each other. It’s important.”
“Uh. Okay.”
Thom had the distinct feeling that this wasn’t going to be as much of a two-way street as she was making it sound. He also had the feeling that a lot of the honest he’d be supplying was going to have been parcelled out to him by Adagio in the first place. Just a feeling.
Adagio, eyes closed, took in a deep and steadying breath. Clearly she was building up to some sort of earth-shaking revelation. Thom waited, deathly curious while also still acutely aware of the fact she was, well, straddling his waist. Kind of hard to ignore that. It did just keep popping up in his awareness.
She was very warm.
“Okay,” Adagio said, exhaling, opening her eyes and then looking down at him with the softest of smiles. “You have feelings for me,” she said.
Thom experienced some sort of full-body blink. He hadn’t thought such a thing possible.
“I do?” He asked. Adagio nodded as though this were obvious. She had, after all, just said it.
“You do. You’ve fallen madly, helplessly in love with me.”
This seemed a step up. Also seemed like the kind of thing he would have noticed on his own by now, surely. Thom looked to the side in case there was something there that might have cleared the situation up for him. There wasn’t, and when he looked back Adagio was still there.
“I have?” He asked.
Another nod from Adagio. Weirdly, for once, she didn’t seem to be having her patience frayed by his idiocy. If anything her smile was just getting more indulgent, as though his being slow on the uptake here was understandable and excusable.
“You have. The sooner you come to terms with this the better,” she said.
“Uh. Okay. Whatever you say, Dagi.”
He got a pat on the head for that.
“Good boy. Now, while I could never reciprocate these feelings - I’m simply too far out of your league, it’d be entirely unfair to let you think otherwise - I will admit that our time working together in the shop has been less awful than I suspected it might have been, and you are...adequate company.”
“Let me down gently, why don’t you,” Thom said, receiving a finger pressed to the lips for his trouble.
“I haven’t finished,” Adagio said. “And in light of you being adequate company I’ve given it some serious thought and I have decided that us being friends would not be completely unacceptable.”
“I thought we were friends?”
Maybe he’d imagined that bit from before.
“That was provisional. Now it’s official. Just don’t let it go to your head,” Adagio said, again flicking his nose but this time leaning down over him to do it. This brought them very close. Closer than they had been before, and they’d been pretty close before.
“I’ll do my best,” Thom said. Adagio did not sit back up again. They remained close. Thom swallowed. “What kind of friends?” He asked.
She did not immediately answer this because she found herself too busy staring into his eyes. Thom, in turn, was staring into hers. It made it kind of hard to think. Adagio shook it off first though and leaned back to put a little more distance back between them. Not a whole lot though.
“That depends,” she said with a smirk. Thom sighed and - in a moment of acute boldness - let his hands come up to rest on her legs. It seemed allowable given the circumstances. Adagio did not comment on this, which was good?
“You’re a very complicated girl Dagi, you know that, right?” He asked.
“I’m glad you think so,” she said, smiling warmly.
“Some might say...unique?”
Her smile widened, delight written across Adagio’s face.
“Now you’re just trying to butter me up. Which is good. Do more of that,” she said with a giggle. Thom made a big show of giving this serious thought.
“Well, I had been thinking about mentioning that seeing you arrive at work - on time or not - is usually one of the high points of my day, but I kind of figured you’d call me an idiot if I said that,” he said, shrugging as best he could given he was lying down and pinned.
Adagio’s look of delight became a furious blush.
“Y-you are an idiot,” she said, removing his hands from where he’d placed them only to immediately change her mind and put them back again. “...doesn’t mean you can’t...say nice things sometimes…”
There were other things that Thom might have said - things that had been sitting quite happily beneath the lid of his not-really-thinking-about-this soft spot for a while now but which were now exposed - but he didn’t have the guts, and Adagio was still too busy being red in the face to say anything herself. So nothing was said.
Adagio sat up straight again and shifted about so she was more comfortable, apparently seeing no reason to dismount from Thom. Then, chewing her lip a little, she asked:
“...is it really the high point of your day? When you see me?”
Thom noticed that she had snipped off the ‘one of the’ bits of what he’d said, but somehow he wasn’t especially surprised by this. She sounded so desperately worried that the answer might turn out to be no that he wasn’t that concerned anyway.
“‘Course. What else could compare?” He asked her and Adagio looked set to agree when a sudden doubt seized her and her expression soured.
“Now you’re just making fun of me…” She said.
Thom looked at where he was and where his hands were and where Adagio was relative to all this.
“I’m not really in a position to make fun of you,” he pointed out.
Adagio looked at where his hands were, too - where she’d put them, no less - and went redder. Her getting into his personal space was one thing. Him into hers? Quite another.
He did kind of have a point, though, which did kind of make what he’d said ring true...
“I’m the high point of your day,” she said, happily, wiggling.
That warm, deep feeling that came from knowing you form a vital, central component in someone’s life. Adored. Important. The axis of their affections. Defeated though she was the need for this feeling hadn’t really truly gone away and having it come back was like coming up for air. To be adored! Just as she deserved.
Only by one person - and an idiot, to boot - and not by everybody within reach as it should have been, but still. It was a start.
And there were worse places to start, she supposed, looking down at Thom.
He’d do.
That did leave one thing though, the other thing she’d been meaning to talk to him about.
“There was one other thing I did want to talk to you about, though. It’s important,” she said in firm and serious tones, trying to wipe the smile off her face so he’d know she wasn’t joking.
“Sounds like I’m being told off,” Thom said.
“No, just corrected. You remember that girl? The laughing one?”
This did not immediately narrow it down for Thom, who squinted at Adagio in confusion.
“What? Who? Oh, her. What about her?” He asked, getting it. He wasn’t entirely sure why she was being brought up at all, especially now of all times and places. It kind of derailed the whole rest of the conversation up until this point, as far as he could make out. Possibly he was missing something, he felt.
“I don’t want you talking to her again,” Adagio said.
This seemed extreme to Thom.
“She’s a customer, I can’t really-”
Adagio gave a forceful sigh, the kind that someone gave when they were being perfectly reasonable but everyone else in the world wasn’t and yet they were - somehow - the one being expected to compromise.
“Alright. Then I want your interactions with her from now on to be completely professional. No more jokes or laughing. It’s unbecoming. Keep that unnecessary communication to a minimum.”
“Uh…” Thom started, picking carefully what words he’d need to explain how this probably wasn’t feasible. Adagio did not give him the time to find these words.
“It’s very important,” she said.
“Why?” Thom asked. She glared and poked him hard in the chest.
“Don’t ask questions! It just is, okay? I don’t like that she - she just came in pretending to be looking for a book when all she really wanted was t-to distract you! I don’t trust her. She’s up to no good. And she’s a dead-ringer for that girl who - who - nevermind! It probably is her! She’s probably just playing some trick! I bet her friends were all outside waiting for some signal! They’re probably trying to get to me through you! Weren’t happy with just defeating and humiliating me once, they wanted to come and finish the job! No! Not with you! You’re mine!”
In the process of yelling all this at him Adagio had bent over him again, and in bending over had brought herself so close that the two of them were now nose-to-nose. This it took her some seconds to notice. Thom, on the receiving end, had noticed already.
“Uh…” Went Adagio, breath catching in her throat.
“I don’t think she was pretending to be looking for a book,” Thom said.
“Shut up,” Adagio said. Not angrily. It kind of just slipped out.
“Okay.”
Still nose-to-nose.
Out of nowhere - and certainly not an outgrowth of lines of thought she might have entertained on any number of lonely nights in that hovel she called home, not at all - came the enormous temptation to just, well, give him a quick peck. Just a little one.
They were already this close. And they were friends, after all. And it was something friends did, apparently. Maybe. Could do. Possibly. Someone had probably done it at some point. Just a friend thing. Nothing worth getting worked up over or thinking too much into.
And besides, what did it matter? No-one would know. No-one except Thom and who’d believe him? And he’d keep his mouth shut if he knew what was good for him anyway. What did it matter? Just one? A quick one. Just to see what it was like. Probably awful. But then at least she’d know.
She licked her lips. Just a little.
“You know, I’ve never kissed a human before…”
Thom didn’t really think much of this statement. But then he did.
“Wait, wha-”
He would have finished, but talking was difficult when your mouth was otherwise occupied.
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I must say, jealous tsundere Adagio is pretty great.
9809289
This whole thing was basically an extended exercise in me trying to get that characterisation working properly.
Long walk round the houses...
Yeah, it would have taken Thom a while to catch up with and process that statement, but luckily he was interrupted before he managed to.
9809300
It certainly seems to be working well to me. The story's pretty great so far.
9809699
Oh yeah...
Should probably finish that sometime.
9809618
An abundance of self-assurance
Yess, Love me some strange definitively-not-romance, yup none at all.
9810074
They're just friends! She said so!
9810101
This is a the best non-romance involving Adagio ever.
You know, I'm struggling to like you, Cackling - I've found myself putting off reading your new releases because I know now that after reading them, whatever I was interested in prior becomes kind of boring. You're contributing to my habit of churning through hobbies now.
Naturally, I'm not serious, and think you're brilliant. Have a good one mate.
9829833
That'd be me sucking the joy from your life via the medium of the written word. Everything I've done on here is some kind of evil spell.
Those people I apparently made cry with Last One Out? Evil spell. Being forced to mash all the early chapters of that vampire pony story together because I got overeager? Backfiring evil spell. All of your hobbies suddenly seeming dull? Successful evil spell.
I can live another three years now.
Well done.
Nice story, Adagio stuff is always appreciated
10058950
She has such big hair.
Thank you for this wonderful story. It's so wholesome and cute.
waited for her to*
More of this, please.
Oww
10111785
9829893
I feel you. Me evil spells have gotten to the point where I unconsciously passively cast them on people or objects around me. Occasionally they backfire unfortunately