Sliced Trees and Dead Words

39 - This is just like him; always finding a way to make things depressing.

- LUNA -

I'd just about given up on Wolfe coming home when I heard his gargantuan car pulling up in the driveway and Medusa's uneven steps shifting their way up onto my front decking.

It wasn't particularly late, but being at home alone with not even Medusa to shift the focus of my own thoughts away from worst case scenario had encouraged a rather pessimistic attitude to most things this evening. And though I was still annoyed with him for being so vague, my stupid heart wouldn't even give me the advantage of beating properly without stupid skips of excitement and nerves that he came back to me.

Wolfe had stopped on the steps. I could see him through the curtain, pacing back and forth, reaching for the door handle and pulling away, then balling his hand into a fist to knock, then withdrawing it altogether. My heart skipped another stupid beat that he appeared so anxious about seeing me, and I was fairly sure it was out of joy that he cared enough to be affected, not because of whatever was wrong to cause him to be weird like this in the first place.

First mistake, heart.

Medusa was clawing at the bottom of the door, obviously wanting to get inside, and still he stood there, quiet as a bloody mouse and just as uncertain as when he first arrived, which was now making me just as nervous as he looked. It seems it's up to me to be the courageous one today. Cue irony.

I walked the remaining steps to the door and opened it dramatically, allowing Medusa to bound inside, tail wagging and skipping between my legs like she always does whenever she gets home from work with Wolfe. "I'm not scary enough that you can't even fucking knock, Wolfe. Jesus."

He chuckled beautifully but timidly, unlike the unrestrained laughter I've come to love just as much as the man himself. "Absolutely untrue, Lune. You're the scariest of people."

Second mistake, heart. Jumping when you hear the man you love call you by your nickname again.

"Come inside or don't, Wolfe. It's cold and I've got the heater on." It's the first night this winter that I've put it on, though it may have just been for comfort considering I didn't have my own personal heaters to warm me, the small furry version, or the larger, more sporadically furry version who finally let me style his stupid beard just the other night. More rugged, less sasquatch, and thinking about how I expressed how much I preferred it this way that night was the third consecutive mistake my cursed heart has made in all of two minutes.

Instead of waiting for it to betray me again, I turned my back on him and walked back inside, heading to the fridge to collect Medusa's food to feed her as I assumed she hadn't had dinner yet. The way she raced across the floorboards when she heard her food bowl and the sound of the revolting dog food she loved so much confirmed it, and I prepared and gave her her food before Wolfe had even shut the door behind him.

"Lune, sit down with me," he said after finally ceasing to waste the warmth my ducted heating had generated so far this evening, closing the door gently and walking over to me in the kitchen. I felt his hands on my waist before I knew he had walked close enough to have touched me at all, and my damn heart is copping yet another beating. I hate her more than ever for this endless betrayal. "Please, Lune," he persisted, not that I was giving up much of a fight, but I was about to purposely make one.

I spun around to face him so quickly his hands remained exactly where they were already. "Did I kick you in the balls?" It was one of the many farfetched theories I'd come up with today, and one that could have actually been likely considering how much I usually move around in my sleep.

He laughed at me. "What are you talking about?"

"In my sleep. Did I kick you in your balls or something?"