I really want to pet him, but I keep my hands to myself and crutch-hop toward my bedroom. “I promise he’ll never know.”
Well, I can’t really promise that, but Chet’s evil, so I doubt a little lie like that is going to phase him.
Chet follows me to my bedroom and sets my foot on the bed before retreating to go finish his work. He tells me he wants to get done before Darcy returns, and I don’t blame him. I need to bathe, so I gather up all my clothes into a cloth basket I made for myself in a sewing class I took back in high school. It holds everything I need like a shower caddy plus all my clothes and my foot. I made it so that the trip to the dorm bathroom wouldn’t be awful all the time, and it’s going to work for me again since I’ll be getting dressed in the bathroom today.
Yuck, btw. I hate getting dressed in the bathroom. You can’t get dry because it’s humid after a shower, so you’re just putting steam-dampened clothes onto your shower-dampened body. It’s fine but still not my preference.
I hang my basket on a hook I installed in the bathroom for my towel, and then I start the shower. As the water warms up, I check my skin in the mirror. I’ve got freckles like I haven’t put on sunscreen every day of my life since I was a baby, and they coverup a lot of the random acne that happens when you’re a human person living in the world we live in, but I still gotta check. My greenish gray eyes are popping today! Nice. Probably because of the extra red blood vessels that got irritated in Hell, but hey, a win is a win. My ginger hair’s a mess, and I look like I’ve had a bird nesting in it, but a shower and comb will help with that. All in all, not bad for a guy getting laid later, but definitely not something I would have shown the guy I’m planning to fuck if I’d had the choice.
The grab bar helps me stay steady on one leg, though I have pretty good balance for an amputee. Practice, ya know? I took baths until I was ten, but I finally got fed up with stewing in my own dirt and forced my mom to let me shower. My first grab bar was one of those that suckers to the tiles. I was sixty pounds so it worked for me. I had this one professionally installed because there’s no way I would trust my adult weight to a sucker grab bar. The suckers might not fail, but the tile might, and that would be disastrous for a one legged guy.
I have a fold out shower chair that I use if my balance is really fucked, but most days I can shower on one leg with the grab bar to help.
I shower yesterday’s adventure off, and about the time I’m rinsing the shampoo out of my hair, the bathroom door opens with a loud squeak. “Hey, I’m done, so I’m heading out,” Chet announces.
I steady myself on the grab bar and peek out at him from the curtain. “Thanks, Chet. Leave your card on the table for the next time I need a handyman, will you?”
Chet smiles proudly, puffing up his chest. “Sure! I’d be happy to come work for you again—” He cuts himself off with a wary look on his face. “Just maybe don’t call me if Darcy’s going to be here, that way he doesn’t ever blame me for your missing foot.”
It’s adorable he thinks Darcy would do that, but I nod to affirm his caution. “I will only call you for help if Darcy isn’t here, but I promise I’m not planning on keeping him around. He’s made it clear he wants to dine and dash.”
He looks confused for a moment, but nods. “Ok, well good luck. Nice to meet you.”
“You too, Chet.”
He closes my bathroom door, and I resume my shower, finishing up fairly quickly. I take another half hour to get dressed—I take care of myself, lathering up with lotion and making sure the skin around my implant isn’t infected. I use preventative maintenance on the implant site to avoid infections, but you never know. Bacteria can sneak in and cause complications no one needs.
After I finish dressing, I leave the bathroom, taking my crutches back to the couch where I usually end up taking off my foot at the end of the day. Darcy is back, sitting on the table and sipping from a real mug, and there’s a travel mug next to him that I don’t think I bought.
“Romily has nice travel cups,” I say, walking over to get my coffee and sitting in the chair next to the one Darcy’s feet are resting on.
He turns to face me, crossing his legs and looking down at me. “Chet finished quickly. What did he mean by ‘Remember your promise?’” he asks, handing me a handwritten note with Chet’s number and the inscription.
“I told him that I wouldn’t call him for the next job unless you weren’t here,” I explain, folding the note.
I take a sip of the coffee. It’s maple flavored. I’m fairly certain someone put actual maple syrup in this coffee, the good kind. The kind you get when you go to a fancy restaurant at Niagara Falls and they assure you that the maple syrup mafia isn’t realand they certainly wouldn’t pay organized crime for syrup even if it was.
(It’s totally real, btw.)
“Romily can make me coffee every day,” I declare, happily sipping the sweet potion of clarity.
Darcy clicks his teeth. “I made the coffee. The Foxilys weren't home.”
“You broke into their house?” I ask, confused.
He smiles that mean smile again. “I’m a welcome member of their family, but they couldn’t stop me entering even if I wasn’t. Their wards can’t keep me out, and it’s probably worth mentioning that they don’t lock their front door, so anyone who doesn’t violate the parameters of their magical protections can waltz in unimpeded by anything except the tables that Fox collects.”
“I don’t know what wards are, but that’s cool, I guess. You break into a lot of homes that aren’t yours?” I mean, he’s gotten into mine and theirs in the last twenty four hours, so I’m guessing this isn’t uncommon for him.
“I go where I want, and I do what I want. I don’t follow anyone’s rules but my own—”
He cuts himself off, sitting up straight for a second. I wonder what he’s doing when a flash of something bright—honestly, I don’t think it’s light or lightning, it’s just really bright—hits him in the head and then soaks him like it’s water, except it’s not water, and it’s not light, but it’s bright. I don’t know what to tell you, I’m not great at descriptions and this is so weird, I don’t even have words for it.
Darcy is soaked in brightness that’s not light and not water.
He tenses with a look of horror on his face before he drops his cup. (It spills all over my clean pants, but the mug doesn’t break, so at least I don’t have to clean up broken ceramic.) Then he sortof absorbs the light, like it goes into his skin—I don’t know how to describe it; it’s strange.
The not light brightness disappears into Darcy and he collapses onto the table, unconscious like he just got hit in the head. At least I’m not the only one of us covered in coffee.
