Building the Tension | ✔ | 18+

Chapter 10 - Color Me Surprised (At my Feelings)

After running, Dimitri asked me to go to the edge of the track bleachers for today's Technique and Strategy topic, learning how to take a fall. For better or for worse, he was very professional - and stuck to very few words. After he demonstrated the technique a few times, he had me try landing on the ground from the edge of the third row. My first fall went well, but my second was somewhat less than successful and I turned my ankle painfully on the landing. I didn't feel it working right away, but, even if I didn't feel it right away, I was grateful to Adrian for the healing charm because I knew that would help with the swelling. Dimitri asked if he could take a look at it to assess the injury.

I wasn't sure I wanted his hands on me at first and I tried to protest, but he was rather insistent that I might need to go to the med clinic. I sat on the bottom bleacher and pulled off my sock and shoe, letting him run his fingers over my ankle. I was somewhat startled to find that his touch on my skin still felt like fire. I may have been wrong about my feelings for him, but I couldn't deny the physical way my body responded. My mind wandered back to the feel of his touch on other parts of my body, then the feel of his lips. I struggled to keep my breathing even and to keep my heart from pounding.

Through all of this, my mind was also struggling to rationalize the argument between my body and my heart. Did I still want Dimitri, even if I didn't love him? Could I be okay with having just a purely physical relationship with him? And how did this play into the feelings for Adrian that I was starting to feel?

Through all of this, I realized, Dimitri was trying his best to keep things professional, but his fingers seemed to linger a little longer than was necessary on my calf, especially near the sensitive spot at the back of my knee and where his thumb grazed the bottom of my thigh. He asked me to flex my ankle one more time, then looked up at me. "It looks like you might have a sprain. I think you need to go to the med clinic," he said.

"Adrian gave me a healing charm this morning," I said, "Maybe I just need to wait for it to kick in?"

Dimitri said, "Your charm may not be strong enough for this. I don't want you to make it worse by falling on it again before the doctor has had a chance to look at it."

Dimitri grabbed an ice pack for me out of the chest freezer by the track equipment shed, helped me to wrap it around my ankle, and started to walk me to the med clinic, offering me his arm to assist so that I wasn't putting weight on that leg. Being this close to his body, my breathing wanted to become shallow again. I needed a distraction. "Dimitri, do you mind if I check in on Lissa while we walk?" I said, "I can still walk fine and it will help take my mind off of the pain."

"Okay," Dimitri said, as I tuned in to her mind.

Lissa was with Adrian again, sitting at a picnic table in the middle of campus, working on auras. "I think I can almost see it," she said, as she squinted her eyes to try to focus on the golden color she had known was supposed to be around him.

Adrian offered, "Squinting into it only makes it harder. It'll get easier to see them without trying as you do it more. You have to sort of un-focus your eyes to see it clearly. Like you're looking at one of those 'Magic Eye' pictures, almost. Maybe try crossing your eyes a little bit."

Lissa crossed her eyes, trying to look as he had suggested. Suddenly, Adrian's aura came into perfect focus. It was a sparkly metallic golden shade, with grey and black sparks like solar flares popping out of him into it from every direction.

"I see it!" she said, "Does mine look like that?"

"Not exactly. You can see your own aura if you look in a mirror, though. Ours - spirit users - are always that sort of golden color. The darkness from using the spirit is kind of grey or black. You don't have a lot of darkness right now, but your aura is tinged with a little bit of yellow right now, too, just right around the edges there." Adrian pointed vaguely to the space around Lissa. "It actually shifted to the yellow when you saw my aura, showing your emotions. I haven't figured out what all of the colors mean yet, but if I had to guess, yellow is happiness. Strong emotions usually seem to turn the colors brighter - except for the emotions that come from the spirit darkness, of course. You should see what it looks like when you and Rose are together."