Inbetween

Chapter Three

Arguing with Yuri somehow turned into letting Yuri stay. Willow did not even know how it happened. His insistence on answering the questions she wanted to be answered with ridiculous, supernatural explanations made her suspect that he somehow turned this around on her by magic. She knew that notion was pretty ridiculous, but she did not want to believe that she would believe something so foolish on her own. If they were going to continue to entertain the idea that he arrived here through something other than ordinary means she was going to go on believing that she let him stay because of a spell.

Her bed frame was broken beyond repair, but the mattress itself was still fine. Once the mess was cleaned up she had a reasonable place to sleep for the night. That just meant she needed to find a place to put Yuri.

Yuri tried to help, which quickly turned into following Willow around the house when she made it clear she did not need much help at all. She pitied him. No matter where he really came from, he seemed completely disoriented. A part of her could not resist the urge to do everything she could to make sure that he got back to the place where he belonged.

Spell or no spell, she hated to see anyone lose their way when it was in her power to do something for them. For that reason, she was willing to let Yuri crash on her couch.

Certain aspects of her home caught Yuri completely off guard. Willow watched him size up her monitor as it sat there running her screen saver. It was amusing enough to make her decide to try turning on the television just to see how he would react.

He nearly jumped out of his skin and she had to fight to hold back her laughter. Having her little experiment turn out to be a success was one thing, but laughing at his distress took it too far.

"It's just my TV," she explained quickly to cover up her urge to giggle. "Do you not have television where you come from?"

He shook his head.

She sighed and put down the blankets she had carried over. Sitting down on the couch, she began to explain to the best of her ability. It was not as easy as she would like it to be because her understanding of the science behind it was shaky at best and she was not sure how she could explain it without knowing much about Yuri's understanding of the scientific basis for recording and broadcasting images.

"It's a recording. Um... the people aren't in the box or anything. Most of the stuff is recorded and played back later, but some of it is live and those are sent over as they are being recorded. That's probably a terrible explanation. I'm sorry. Just don't worry. It's completely normal. It's a common type of entertainment here."

Yuri nodded. Already he seemed to have overcome his fear and was exhibiting the typical behaviors of a man transfixed by a television screen.

Willow rolled her eyes. Maybe her buying into his being from another world story was a bit premature. Either that or this sort of behavior was even more universal than she originally thought.

She dared not let go of the remote just yet. Once she did that she knew that she was giving up the last chance she had to reel in his attention. He was ignoring her in favor of leaning in closer and closer to the television. She was sure he would be bolder in his investigation of the device once he was no longer under her supervision. Right now though he was just watching the screen intently.

She turned off the television to get his attention back on her. She had something important to say and she wanted to make sure that he actually heard her and understood what he said back to her. She knew all too well about the dangers of having discussions while greatly distracted. It was a problem she used to run into fairly frequently when she lived at home with her parents. She could not even count the number of times she had been on the receiving end of television distracted answers and given distracted answers herself. This was too important for her to risk not receiving a legitimate answer.