Chasing Fate (Sentinel & Guide)

Chapter 30

Fate hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary, but guilt was radiating off of Jack in waves.

How strange.

He was a young man, who would be surprised that he had a sports illustrated model on his screen. Was she a particularly special person to him? With blonde hair and blue eyes perched atop a rail thin body, she could have been any number of celebrities. Her arms were a bit too thin to be one of his fighting cohorts so she chalked it up to being one of his aspiring girlfriends, his type, to be exact.

Fate filed this information away for the future. They weren't going to have a full-spectrum bond like his parents. It would be important to know who to pay attention to when he finally settled down with a wife. The top cause of divorce in the world was the inability for the spouse to deal with how clingy sentinels were to their guides.

Everything went much smoother when the guides were at least on cordial terms with the new spouse. Best friends made for much happier families. Besides, the faster he settled down, the faster she could have her life to herself again.

Of course moving back to her earthship across the country was probably no longer in the cards. At most, she could hope to be moved to an adjoining room. Nearby but not chained. She'd never have full freedom again.

Her heart twinged in pain at the thought so she shoved it away and tried to focus on something else.

What's done is done, I just need to buck up and make the best of it.

She took a deep breath and turned around the room, suddenly noticing a very out of place neon-green trunk and two moving boxes sitting in the center of the room. Jack exited the dressing room with a third in his arms.

He'd started trying to take his mother's advice about not crowding her, even when he felt sadness in the bond. It was very tough on him , but as with many things he translated his energy into physical exertion. Luckily, her essential items had been packed and sent by Karen while they were processed through the NOGS over the last week.

He'd smelled them as soon as he'd come into his room,since they were obviously packed in haste there was definitely a generous selection of dog fur and the ambient scents of her home, vanilla candles and soil from the greenhouse, spices from the kitchen and the strong scent of her really weird assortment of bathroom items. It was a whole box on its own!

He hefted it awkwardly towards the bathroom. Strangely enough none of it tickled his nose with chemical scents the way that common products did. At the height of his sensitivity he had to use prescribed sentinel products, basically hand-made by a sentinel to reduce potential for chemical contaminates over-irritating his skin.

There was a lot of glitz and glamour laid over the stark reality of being an alpha sentinel. Without a guide he was susceptible to having a full-blown allergy attack to nearly anything!

One particularly embarassing incident in his youth came when he tried washing his wrestling kit on his own. He used the wrong soap and had a unitard shaped rash for a week.

He took the box into the shower and placed it at the double-sink vanity, smiling indulgently. He didn't have much, just a toothbrush and his grooming kit, it all fit nicely into a little drawer. he'd let her pick where her stuff went. Besides, he wasn't sure what the difference between coconut oil and coconut butter was, other than one smelled nice and one smelled really nice.

He catalogued the scents as he stepped out of the bathroom. It was a fun game to try to determine what item was used for what purpose. A gym room favorite when he was in high-school, he was a pro at telling the brand of shampoo by scent alone, but these herbal and earthy scents reminded him more of a kitchen or garden instead of the aseptic cleaner of a factory.

Fate herself was kind of like that, even when she was being prickly and smelled of fear, it was always comforting to be near her than any others. It wasn't like being around his mom, whose comforting scent reminded him of childhood.

This was something very different, and very welcome. Fate shifted nervously. Jack was giving her another one of his dopey looks. They weren't as intense as the first day, where he'd concentrated so hard it seemed like he'd been counting the pores on her skin. Still, sometimes he'd space out while facing in her direction and start radiating happiness. If he were a dog she'd definitely bank on seeing his tail wagging.

She stood still until he seemed to snap out of it a few moments later. A faint red covered his cheeks as he realized what he'd done.

"I...just set your things down in there. You can put them where you like," Jack tried for non-chalant,"You can put them anywhere, there's lots of storage uh-...Oh! And your clothes, you have a side in the closet wait...uh I shouldn't have brought them out.I'll take them back in so its easier.."Jack scurried to grab the trunk and drag them back into the closet like a nervous chicken. His non-chalance was a failure on all accounts .

In further attempts to not be clingy, Jack sat himself down at his coffee table with his computer while Fate was left alone to put away her things. He found she was calmer when left to her own devices, though that slight nauseous feeling of melancholy never seemed to dissapate. He very much wanted to go in and help, but they'd have a whole event that evening stuck to each other being grilled by the clan. If anything he understood how much a little space helped before dealing with the "paps".

Anyhow, he'd had a week off and though he was no longer active in the MMA scene, there was still a lot of image upkeep. His personal assistant was still busy coordinating charity events, appearances and interviews with him, though now half of her workload also included Hammond Estate related events instead of the UFC. In fact, he hadn't checked his work email in a week.

First order of business was to change his screensaver.

=============

Like any diligent worker, Jack was absorbed in a buzzfeed test on what romance novel storybook hero he most resembled when Fate stepped quietly out of the dressing room with a set of clothing in her arms.

"Sentinel," she said in the barely-above-whisper voice she'd started using when addressing him, "I...just need a few minutes to freshen up."

Jack popped out of his concentration and took in the time, realizing it was already two-thirty. He could distantly hear the training group coming in from outside to wash the sweat off. He hadn't even noticed because he'd restricted his hearing to just the room.

Soon the whole clan and then some would be there. He needed to clean up too. a henley and gray sweats wasn't really optimal for a dinner party, though he would much prefer to kick back and see what Netflix shows his guide enjoyed.

Perhaps tomorrow.

{Just edited for easier reading. More soon! Don't forget to comment and vote~}