Wool to Brave the Seasons - [18+]

Chapter Four

The muted spray and splash coming from the bathroom kept him company as he stubbornly refused to acknowledge the direction his thoughts were going.

A beautiful woman was naked and wet just through that wall as he tidied his makeshift bed away, scratching Ghost behind the ears to distract himself.

The longer she spent here, the more arduous a task it would be to return to his world without color. Doomed never to forget the sound of her laugh or the pink in her cheeks when he caught her staring. He often wondered just how far that flush spread.

Heat snaked up his neck as he focused on mundane tasks and slipped inside his room while she was occupied.

For such a little thing, she left her mark everywhere she went, a hurricane dressed in human skin blasting through his carefully ordered life.

His bed was a mess of her clothes, her hairdryer already plugged in and waiting for her, a scatter of toiletries with names he couldn't pronounce finished the scene. He was surprised he wasn't irritated by it as he grabbed a change of clothes and closed the door on it all as he waited for his turn to shower.

He made a mug of tea for her, hearing the bedroom door snicking shut as he carried it through from the kitchen and set it on the coffee table. Ghost sat guard outside his room, and he wondered who was more enamored, him or the damn dog.

Locking himself inside the steamy bathroom, he was soon standing under the stream of warm water and pretended he wasn't inhaling the last wisps of her scent hanging in the misted air.

He put his back to the shower head, letting the water beat down on his tense shoulders as he rubbed his sore neck and rolled his head.

Two nights on the couch and his constant fretting that he'd let something slip were wearing on him, but he almost dreaded returning to normal. He didn't know what that looked like anymore.

It was often quiet, too quiet, in his house, and the perpetual crash of sound in his head drove him up the walls like his brain was overcompensating for the lack of noise in his life since moving away from home. Growing up, he had to fight to be heard, and now someone wanted to listen. He didn't know what to do with it.

For months, he'd noted everything she said to him in the hall and cataloged the things she liked or didn't like. A man could learn a lot if he could speak to the silence and listen to what it had to say.

She wasn't what he expected that first day she moved in, and his curiosity bloomed wilder with every scrap of her he hoarded from their interactions. And now, he had received a feast of time and an opportunity to learn all he desired. Dizzying didn't begin to cover how he felt.

Watching soap suds circling the drain, the familiar smell of his body wash soothed his overactive nerves, and his head cleared slightly. He steeled himself for another day of clinging to his restraint, hoping to make it through the next few days without embarrassing himself.

He slowly dried himself off and brushed his teeth, roughly towel drying his hair to buy more time as he heard the thump of something falling to the floor and waited for a cry of pain that never came.

Even when she was alone, she made noise. She hummed under her breath or whispered to Ghost while he pretended not to memorize the alluring sight of his pet falling all over her like he knew precisely how Jon felt and didn't care to hide it.

His T-shirt clung to his still-damp skin as he left the humid room and returned to the living room, only to find it empty. He strained to listen for a sign of life. He immediately chastised himself for being disappointed she wasn't waiting with a list of topics she wanted to discuss that day, deciding to make his own tea when she burst out of the bedroom and skidded to a halt at seeing him.