Inquisitive ✓

8.4 That's why you asked me to come, right?

~ Elija ~

I gave him the most annoyed glare I could give him, but it didn't phase him in the slightest. He kept staring at me with that emotionless face of him, as if waiting for a petulant child to get tired of throwing tantrums. I wanted to shout at him to not treat me like a toddler—I was fourteen, for God's sake!—but it wouldn't help. Nothing worked. Not even glares, no matter how hard I tried, though I doubted they were even half as effective as Mikael's, but one could hope.

Eventually, my father sighed and told me, "I'm not here to have you stare me to death, Elija. I'm here to—"

"I don't care about what you're here for," I interrupted, trying to make my voice sound as uninterested as I could—two could play at that game. "I don't even want you to be here."

He sighed again. It didn't seem to affect him at all. I wished I could hurt him as much as he hurt my mother, but how could you make someone feel the same as if they'd been left alone for ten years? How could I even begin to make him understand what he had put his wife and children through? On the other hand, I wanted to know why he was here. He returned to us after such a long time... There had to be a particular reason, right? But I couldn't give him the satisfaction. I was not going to ask him the question. I wanted to show as little interest in him as possible. I wanted him to feel unwanted.

"When is your mother coming home?" he asked and I shrugged. It's not that I didn't know. I just didn't feel like telling him. He would know soon enough. He put a hand under his chin and stared out the window, supposedly waiting for my mother to come home. Why did he want to speak to her anyway? He was the one that had left.

But he came back. He was sitting right here, in front of my nose, returned after an eternity. Before he stepped through the door, I barely even remembered what he looked like.

I stayed until my mother came home and fled the house as soon as I saw her car pull up on the driveway. And I barely came home until the day my father went away again.

There's a pressure on my face. More specifically, on my lips. Then something wet and warm running over my upper lip.

I'm instantly awake, when I realize Mikael is kissing me. I lean up to reciprocate and I feel his lips curl up in a smile against mine. His hands frame my face and pull the kiss deeper, making me let out an appreciative moan. Oh, I do not mind waking up like this at all. Especially after a dream like that. I drown myself in the feeling of his lips to forget about it.

"Good morning," he murmurs.

I kiss him back in reply and then turn us over on the bed, the sheets twisting around our legs, trapping us in our embrace. Mikky chuckles, the sound vibrating in our chests, pressed tightly against each other. "Hey, Eli?"