Don't Stay Dead

Chapter Nine

I was happy she decided to take things slow, even though I was still afraid to ask what she even meant by 'things'. Did she mean an actual relationship, or did she mean just having fun? I didn't even know why I was afraid, honestly. I guess it was because I had made a snap decision to push the envelope, without really planning out how things were going to go. Some part of my brain had imagined just having some quick thing in the bathroom and then never going back again, I think, honestly.

Now, it was going to be more difficult. By the time it even came up, I had long forgotten that original concept, and had pushed the whole thing out of my mind completely. Did I invite her to my home, my cave, my hidey-hole of solitude? Did we just have a little fun in the backroom? Did I go back to her place? How was I going to get around the costume, and the fact that I was a vampire? There were so many logistics buzzing around in my head, it made me dizzy just to think about it all.

Even as much as we joked about it, and as much as she had said she would be cool with it, the mental image of how you would react and the very real reaction you actually have are two totally different things. I could just compel her to forget, or not notice, but that felt wrong to me as well. Maybe I should just call it off, but part of me didn't want to. I was slipping back into my old habits of letting fear paralyze me, something I had struggled with mightily when I was still living. Focusing on killing John had pushed that away, for a while. Now it was back.

Work at the hospital wasn't helping my scrambled thoughts. There was a massive thing going on with the higher ups and administration, and everyone was scrambling around like chickens with their heads cut off. Even though my job really wasn't directly affected by the things going on, it still was a stress and strain trying to help out and catch a bunch of little things slipping through the cracks, on top of my own tasks.

Then, there was the group of doctors that had just come back from doing a mission trip overseas in an underdeveloped country. The four of them were well-loved, and people were so happy to have them back. They seemed really close-knit as well, they were rarely apart from each other. At least two of them were always together at any one time, though the combinations did vary. The only reason I paid any attention at all was because even with my shields, I got the sense of a constant, low-grade malevolent hum of... something unpleasant, from one of them. I just couldn't isolate who, because I never got any of them alone long enough to see.

Even when I did drop my shields a bit, or a bit more, I really couldn't read much else. I was just going to have to watch, and listen, and see if anything unusual started showing up. I wasn't going to make the same mistake I had made with Mark. The months passed, and before I knew it, it was time to visit the cafe again. This time, nothing unusual at all happened. I got my drink, read for a while, soaked up the calm, then left.

On the way out, I gave my pastry to Harry as usual, then made my way to the cemetery. I hadn't been in a while, I didn't want to run into him there again. Seeing my own name on that headstone did weird things to me, as well. I stayed there for a bit, crouching down to smell the flowers. Judging by their state, it had been a week or so since he had been. Good, maybe he was moving on. Maybe my own obsession would die down as well. I hadn't thought about it at first, but part of me wondered if my empathic abilities from life were picking up whatever obsession he had with my case, and that's what was bugging me. The only way to test that was time, however.

Things at the hospital settled down, but not much. Things at Annika's had reached a weird stasis. We often snatched moments to make out, and we definitely got a little, well, a lot gropy here and there, but we never went any further than that. I didn't know if she was waiting for me to indicate I was ready for the next step, or if I was waiting for her to make the decision for me. She seemed pretty happy with things, considering her preoccupation with school, so I didn't push it any further.