@prcttyfangs
Dante exhaled sharply, almost like he was surprised. Maybe a part of him was. He had been hovering. Lingering. There, but not quite the same way as before, since the last time he’d tried talking to Nicole and gotten a justifiably angry earful. The routine was the same as it had ever been: Get up, work out, make breakfast and pack lunches for Artimus and Nicole, go to work, come home 48 hours later, make dinner, crash, on repeat. He was there, but she had been given space to figure out for herself what that meant. Words were .. minimal. Efficient. Then today, here she comes, and he must have tensed up because it released with that deep seated sigh and suddenly his immortal body felt achey.
“It is my fault, Nicole. I’m an adult, I should know how to .. handle.. things.. better. You can say its my fault too.”
She frowned, shifting herself onto a stool and kicking her legs thoughtfully. It had occurred to her, as he’d distanced himself like a guilty mountain, that this was arrangement was less than ideal. Less than ideal for him, because he was sort of... tangential to the life and happenings going on in his own home. Less than ideal for her, because trying to avoid each other felt exhausting and Dante wasn’t as fun when he wasn’t around and anyway, it was making her feel guilty.
It was stilted and awkward and one of them was going to have to bridge the gap. But that was awkward too. How did you make up?
It had taken her a while to decide if she even wanted to.
“Yeah,” she admitted, reevaluating her approach. It was, mostly, his fault. But she still felt guilty, and this awkward third wheel shit was still driving her up the wall. “It’s a bit your fault.”
So where did that leave her? On her knees rummaging around for olive branches? Let’s see, what else was there?
“Dunno about ‘should’, though,” she mused, reaching to scratch the back of her head. “I mean, I know adults who can’t handle anything. You at least got the cooking part okay.”
