Legend

Dating life

By midafternoon, the events of the past couple of days had caught up with me and I was beat. I kept falling asleep over the genetic analyses I was trying to finish. I was really interested, because I thought that I was beginning to see a pattern. In my small sample, I was starting to see what I thought what might be a marker for superhuman abilities. I needed more samples, though. A lot more than the X-men could provide, and samples that tested at more places at the genome than most of the X-men samples did. I put that on the back burner, though.

And I was nervous about the whole Damian situation. What I was feeling for him was so deep and strong that it kind of frightened me, actually. I'd said I loved my previous boyfriends, but in comparison, that love felt like a meandering little creek compared to a roaring torrent. And things were going fast. While I was ok with each individual step, after a bit of acclimation, I was pushing so far past my comfort zone in so many areas of my life that it freaked me out. I'd been graduated with my last degree a little more than ten months, I was fighting through the nettles of my own ineptitude to keep my business going, finding my own place in the world, and finding my way through uncertain ground with Damian. Part of my concerns was that he had a very dangerous after-hours avocation. I didn't want him to stop, but I knew that going forward, I'd only see more of these incidents. And his enemies had become mine before. I'd never had what I would term a successful relationship before, they had both been short and even at the time I knew they wouldn't last. And I was serious about Damian. Deadly serious. One thing that I was glad for was that my apartment lease with the girls was for a year, so I wouldn't be facing the question of moving in with Damian for a good while.  I wanted to go further, but I didn't want to go too fast. Or drag my feet. Ugh.

Nevertheless, I left promptly after my last client and walked quickly to the hotel, where I let myself in.  He wasn't home yet, so I went into the living room with the bullseye windows and curled up in the windowseat that overlooked Central Park. I was just nodding off when my phone buzzed. It was Damian, telling me that he'd gotten hung up on a conference call but was headed back with dinner. I hopped up and brushed my teeth, touched up my makeup and hair, then sent into the dining room and set the table for two. I greeted him with a gentle hug (an x-ray done today revealed two cracked ribs) and an enthusiastic kiss, which he returned with interest. Then he took my face in his hands and said, "I love you." He sighed. "I've been waiting all day to tell you that." His thumb brushed the top of my cheekbone. "You look tired, love."

"It's been an exciting couple of days," I admitted. "I love you too. But I'm starving." Laughing, he gave me the bag, and I smelled Chinese food. Delicious. We went right in to eat. My fortune cookie read "Accept your past without regret, handle your present with confidence, and face your future without fear," which we agreed was a good one. Damian's read, "All your fingers can't be of the same length," which made us laugh and try to ascribe meaning to it. Failing that, I insisted on cleaning up, and hunted him up shortly thereafter in the bedroom, where he was putting on a robe. There were still some bruises, even after the accelerator treatments, and I brushed the worst ones with my fingers, opining that perhaps the Robin suit should be tough rubber like the Batman suit, at least on the torso. He was very stoic about the ribs, though, and he promised to consider it. We decided to take a bath together to relax and fool around a bit. In bed, I got to be on top the whole time out of consideration for his ribs.

"Given how romantic he is, I thought it would be a bigger deal," Aslyn said the next day when we met for a coffee break. "He finally got to tell you he loves you. That's been kicking around for a good long time now."

I smiled. "It was perfect. It was just what is between us, which is enough."

"Plus it makes you uncomfortable when he buys you things because you can't reciprocate," she said, poking her coffee stirrer at me before discarding it.