Delicate

Chapter 46

Wrote this chapter to a track by Olafur Arnalds I can't spell, it is on the Delicate playlist to my Spotify

PLEASE LISTEN TO SONG WHEN I SAY SO AND THEN THROUGHOUT THE CHAPTER, LIKE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

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Will's P.O.V

With Adele's 21 playing from my record player and a pan full of chicken sizzling to perfection on the stove, I find myself cooking dinner with my mind in an entirely, different place.

I'd already fed Blaze, making sure to send him back the same hateful glare he gave me the entire time I filled his bowl, ungrateful that's what that bunny was. With the fatass fed and nothing to distract me, I was already about halfway through making the chicken alfredo for Damon and me.

Moving freely, I sprinkle some more basil and thyme onto the chicken thighs before I flip them and give the boiling Fettucine a stir. It had taken me some time to grow familiar with this kitchen, the layout a polar opposite to my apartment and much bigger as well. At first, I moved very carefully around the space while doing pretty much anything, afraid of sending things tumbling to the floor or burning myself back accident.

But that fear was gone now, even though my vision was still as fucked as always, being here had grown easier as all things tried to do with time.

"Oh no," I warn as I look down at a certain fat fuck seated on my leg. "I am not Damon, you will break my foot."

Blaze looks up at me blankly, large, black eyes blinking frequently as he shifted on my foot. I crouch down to give the big guy a little rub behind the ears, indulging in this behaviour just this one time.

"This cute act isn't getting you any more food from me," I say to him as he stares at me. "He'll be back soon to spoil you to your heart's content, okay?"

Apparently, that was all Blaze needed because he hopped away, disappearing into some hidden crook in the large apartment. I stand and wash my hands before taking the cooked chicken off the stove, all the while trying to believe in my own words.

Damon hadn't been gone for too long, but still, with every passing minute, I felt a little bit more unsettled by his absence.

It wasn't the usual annoying feeling telling me to find him when we were apart or my own oppressive nerves that came around when I was left alone in the suite, this was something else. It was a bleak, creeping feeling that settled inside of me. Only growing as the seconds ticked on, sinking its sharp, foreboding claws into me as if to prompt a warning scream from me.

Some twisted hunch that said that things weren't going to go well between Levi and Damon.

But there wasn't any apparent explanation that gave this line of thinking any room for purchase, yet it was still there, lingering in the background. Perhaps it was because I'd seen the way fear drifted behind those incredibly, fragile, blue eyes before Damon left or because I felt in my soul, spirit and on the edges of our bond, the twisted sadness that returned when Damon laid eyes on his brother.

Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that I knew, deep down, that Damon wasn't ready to have that conversation. That he wasn't ready to face his family the way he'd been doing when his worst wounds were nowhere close to being mended.

I push the thought away, not wanting to align my own experiences with Damon's present troubles. They were different in every way, not a single similar factor that gave me the platform to teach him the lessons I'd learned.

Damon's family loved him and they were trying, as he was... it wasn't the same.

The door opens just as I begin to drain the large, pot of pasta into a colander. Looking over my shoulder, my eyes provide me with dark hair and blue eyes to confirm it was Damon, I offer him an honest smile, happy to have him back.