A Spare in the Trunk: Part XX
Short, but not exactly sweet, just a brief interlude this time.
Jack awoke from black and white dreams of wandering down dimly lit corridors with the uneasy sense that something was chasing him the whole time. Served him right, he’d stayed up well past his bedtime watching corny old horror movies with Lys and her friend, but it’d been a lot of fun. With a groaning stretch and a loud yawn he pushed himself out of bed and went into the living room. The sound of clicking and clattering with the occasional grunt of frustration greeted his ears. Lys sat at the computer with a scowl on her muzzle, she shifted back and forth on a stack of pillows to boost her height. Jack watched her getting angrier and glaring at the keyboard.
“This is never going to work.” She tapped at the keys with the points of her claws.
“What’s wrong?”
“I keep pressing the wrong ones and then—“ As if on cue her claw hooked under one of them and sent it flying up, it bounced hard off the table and landed somewhere on the floor. “See? This is hopeless.”
Picking up the key, he popped it back onto the keyboard and tried to pat her on the shoulder, but she shifted away from him. Bad mood alright, but he didn’t know why. “You can use a controller for most games.”
“And what about the ones where I can’t? I don’t think I can use this with…these.” She held out her claws like her hands were leprous. “What are people going to think?”
Her manner made him worried, she’d complained about her height before, but never her hands. “Where’s all this self-consciousness coming from? So what if you can’t use a keyboard well, lots of people can’t.”
“I’m not lots of people,” she said with a huff and went back to tapping at the keys at random. Ok, something was wrong alright and he knew the keyboard was only playing a very small role in whatever was eating at her. Her tail had the trademark sudden swish to one side then whip to the other and once in a while he could hear her make that trilling growl. In one way it was nice to have someone with such easy to read tells, but on the other he always felt a bit unsafe when she got angry.
Jack tapped her on the shoulder. “Do you want to go out and get some breakfast?”
“Why? Some asshole human will just throw a fit again.” Her voice came on so sharp and angry that he doubled back. Her look of concentrated frustration narrowed and the stone blocks on the screen paid for it as she dug down further. “I can’t go anywhere, I can’t do anything, I can’t even spend time with my friend.” Her tail whipped, but he mistimed it and it struck him on the leg leaving a red mark.
“Damn it!” He rubbed at the stinging skin.
“Sorry.” Was all she said, not sound sorry in the least.
“What the hell do you mean ‘didn’t spend time’? Rodil was here all night and into the early morning.”
She nodded to herself and the computer. “Oh yes, you two had a great time watching your stupid movies and talking about stupid stuff. All I did was sit there.”
Well, actually you made a lot of rude comments too.
He knew better than to say that, but the peanut gallery in his head still had to pass comment. Her snide remarks should have been the first clue, but he hadn’t expected her to be angry about yesterday either. True, she didn’t seem to be enjoying herself as much as they were, but part of being a good host was about entertaining guests. Not that Lys had ever been in a position to entertain guests before. After a few deep breaths and a short count to ten he tapped her on the shoulder one more.
“You two passed out the candy. He loved that,” he said, trying to salvage the morning.
“Okay, fine, I did one thing with Roddy. The rest of the night was you two practically sucking each other's tails!”
He assumed (based on what very little he knew about the intimate nature of tail sucking) that this was a major insult. She looked ready to burst, though with tears or with shouts he couldn’t tell. For the life of him he didn’t know why she was acting so upset over this. Meanwhile, her claws tapped at random keys, trying to look busy.
“You’ve struck bedrock, you can’t dig any further.” He least remembered that much about the game. “Lys, are you jealous?”
She ignored him and continued to dig at the impenetrable rock. “What? What kind of crap is that?!”
“You’re acting like a hatchling. Why are you so mad at me? Don’t you want me to get along with Rodil?”
She flinched and the mouse jumped out of her claw, flailing off to the side. “Of course I do, I just,” she said while holding her hands, “wish I were the one helping you two get along instead of some dumb movies.”
“Sweet, are you jealous?”
“No, yes, I don’t know.” She tugged at her horns with both hands. “Something about you two getting along made me angry.”
“Do you want me to call him and-well he doesn’t have a phone. Do you want me to tell him that movie night is canceled when he comes back?”
Lys shook her head and sighed. “No, of course I don’t. Look, Rodil is more than my best friend, he's like a hatchmate, but more. Sometimes we find someone and we just know that they’re the one.”
Jack looked worried, something she anticipated because she slid off the chair and turned about to look him in the eye. “Not like that! Our kind don’t have a lot of friends to depend on and sometimes you find someone who you know will always be there…or always try. Rodil came looking for me and he actually found me,” she said with a seriousness that gave it an almost mystical tone and he assumed she might be implying just that. The green kobold rolled her big, yellow eyes afterwards. “Then he tried to rescue me.”
Jack smirked at the memory and his body tingled with a ghost pain from the stairs.
“I’m not good at explaining this.” She gestured and shrugged. “But we meet someone and we just know that they’re the friend who’s going to save your tail if anything goes wrong and you do the same for them. I was looking for Roddy when I kind of climbed into your trunk. Well, that and something to eat.”
He nodded. “I think I understand.”
“Seeing you go from angry to hatchmates…you with your advice to him and him staying at that place and you two kept going on and on. It made me scared…betrayed.” Her voice went higher and her eyes went wide as she relived the feeling. Jack brushed the side of her cheek, bringing her back to the present, she frowned and her eyes glistened. “Sorry, I’m a greedy hatchling about it.”
“Nah.” He leaned down and kissed her on the snout. “Protective is the word I’d use. You have a special bond with him. The last thing I’d want to do is mess with that, so, what would you like me to do from here on out?”
The two of them sat there while she pondered it over, her eyes searched all around while she nodded her head back and forth. “I don’t know. I don’t want to chafe your hides, you two are getting along and I’d really like to see Roddy come around more often.” Her look grew distant as a smile curled along the corner of her maw. “And I’d like to keep an eye on him. Sometimes he gets into real trouble.”
“Like—“
“Yeah, but worse. Some of the stories I could tell you.”
“I tell you what, let’s go get breakfast and you can tell me some of them so I can embarrass him in front of you next time.”
Her smile turned into a grin, but faded. “Jack, I don’t want to try that again so soon.”
“We can hit a drive-thru, then the only asshole human you have to deal with is me.”
She snorted, hard enough to brush his hair. “You’re just trying to bribe me with food.”
“No, I’m hungry, but if you feel bribed then that’s a bonus. Come on, the world of breakfast junk food awaits.”
Lys shook her head. “I should stay here and try to get better with this damn keyboard. Bring me back something, alright?”
For some reason that stung worse than it should have, personal and bitter. It wasn’t like her to refuse any chance to go out, but rather than show it he smiled and went over to grab his jacket. “Anything in particular you want?” He heard the sound of the chair scraping against the wood behind him as Lys sat back down.
“Something with sausage in it, and bacon, and…”
“So a lumberjack’s breakfast? Kind of hard to fit in a bag.”
The green kobold resumed tapping at the keys though a bit less frustrated than before. “I’m sure you can handle it. When you get back I’ll tell you about the time Roddy got his head stuck in a jar.” She laughed to herself which put him at ease. His scaly mate looked so determined to master this streamer business, perhaps too determined. Not that he was going to tell her to slow down, she’d been upset since last night and only now started to relax. The whole thing made him realize just how little he still knew about this creature he loved, but before he could despair over never figuring her out his stomach rumbled again.
“Be back shortly, sweet.”
“Drive safe, love.”