Flea

Chapter Seventy Three

Dabi spent the next few hours in a disproportionate state of anxiety. Maeve had made her bizarre statement about movie watching, then proceeded to ignore him in favour of her petri dish collection. He slumped on the couch, as usual, pretending to take a nap with his notebook covering his face.  

Had she wanted him to leave so she could have the sitting room? And go where? She said she didn't watch movies. The idiot doesn't even own a TV.

He eventually realised that what Maeve had actually meant was 'thank you for saving me from drowning in thawed chowder.' Translated through the girl's pride and a mountain of dislike. That made him feel disgusting, because of course she'd assume his 'generosity' had a catch. Maybe it should; the league desperately needed intelligence. God, why was everything so fucking complicated?

His thoughts all boomeranged back to the dream, which made things practically unbearable. Whenever Maeve disgruntedly shuffled out to grab a coffee or junk food, looking like a malnourished penguin in her lab coat, intrusive thoughts broke any and all feeble concentration. He'd suddenly be pressing her into the wall again and the way she'd gasped his real name resounded in his twisted mind until the man abandoned his notebook for her makeshift library. Dabi had taken to stealing novels from the girl's office out of boredom. Being trapped in her apartment for hours on end gave the girl research opportunities, but for him, it was merely a mind-numbing escape from nightmares.

He'd even taken to tidying the kitchen and living room in the knowledge it would revert back to a disaster zone the next night. Dabi was that fucking desperate for stimulation. Maeve would come in, sniff in disapproval at lack of clutter, and after the first few times leave his favourite authors in plain view. She really found having her 'ordered chaos' disturbed worse than selectively picking out literature for him.

The girl wasn't subtle in her manipulations, however, as there were without fail notes in the margins regarding moral philosophy and quirk ethics. She began with 'Crime and Punishment.' The humour wasn't lost on him, but if Maeve was trying to turn Dabi into a respectable member of society Dostoevsky probably wasn't the way to do it.

That night, he picked out the textbook she'd both tried to kill him with and kill him for destroying during their first dream visit. 'The Canon Of Medicine' was overrated. He'd leave it at that.

When Maeve finally slouched into the sitting area with a blanket trailing behind and saw him studying it, she rolled her eyes and her voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Ha ha. You don't know when to give up with that book, do you?"

"Almost sounds like you find it hard to read," Dabi scoffed, turning yellowing pages which felt as if they may crumble to dust between his fingers.

"Practically Arabic," Maeve agreed, shifting coffee stained documents back from where he'd neatly organised them. The girl set two steaming cups of tea down upon said paper. Maeve never used coasters even though he knew she owned them.

The girl leaned over the book and Dabi was cocooned in the scent of strong coffee and green tea. He blinked with momentary distraction, before realising the girl was scanning the script upside down. 

"Please tell me you can't actually read Arabic."

"Nope. I studied the Latin translation so I know what it says, but that's just memorised characters," Maeve yawned. Dabi closed the book and set it next to the mugs with a thud.

"So it's gibberish."

"It's Arabic. Just because I can't read it doesn't mean I don't have it memorised," Maeve corrected, shrugging off her lab coat and stuffing it in a sealed toxic waste bag. She handled said coat with the same gloves in which she'd been preparing their drinks moments before. Catching deadly illnesses while dreaming admittedly wasn't a concern, but in principle, it still made him squeamish.