Page 40 of Stutter

I love Elena.

“Christ. Alright, I’m making breakfast.” Damon rolls his eyes and laughs then kisses my cheek. “Coffee?” He offers but the smile on his lips doesn’t reach his eyes again. He’s worried for me. It’s the same look he used to wear all the time when I first got to Lorne Wood, or when I had my outbursts, wondering what he could do to break through the poor broken little dolly's fucked up brain.

I nod at his question. Maybe I’ll feel better after coffee…

Because I wouldn’t be making this up, right?

I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t create two other characters and a whole house and have explosive orgasms in my head…

Would I?

Chapter Eleven

Damon.

I’m so lost in thought, peering outside of the window, watching the snow fall, I don’t smell the bacon burning until Maverick shoves and then pushes me out of the way, grabbing the handle and throwing it into the sink. I finally think to look at my surroundings. The air is smokey and tinged with the smell of the burnt strips of turkey bacon.

I blink at him as he grabs a dish towel and fans the air, turning on the ventilator above the stove.

“Christ, Damon, we’ve already been through one house fire. Let’s try not to burn this one down.”

I blink again, watching the disaster.

“You want to talk this out?” He asks.

“You want to tell me why you left Paris without letting us know?” I retort.

“You first.”

I sigh. “She thinks we’re figments of her imagination.” Like an asshole, I left her upstairs with Jonas, seeing as how he tends to lighten the mood. “Christ, I feel like I’m running in circles. She gets better, then she self-harms. These episodes are worrying me. I have to find a way to help her before she regresses.”

“Wouldn’t you?” He asks sincerely, going to the coffee bar, (Amourette’s idea) grabbing a mug from the top shelf,placing it under the Keurig’s drip, and pressing the start button. He moves about the place as though he’s lived here the entire time and I definitely don’t mind that he’s here. This is good for him. For her.

However, when the kitchen begins to smell like burnt bacon and coffee I almost gag. “Think this is all a dream, I mean. I saw the medication she takes last night on the bathroom counter when I went in to brush my teeth. If she woke up in your ward while she was doped up and now she wakes up and sees you, I’m sure it’s a hell of a mindfuck. Not to mention you said there was a small contusion in her brain.”

I open the window I was just staring out of to rid the smell, letting in the bitter cold and I shiver. “I’m slowly weaning her off her medication.”

He turns to face me, crossing his tattooed arms over his chest, and leans against the counter. “All of them?”

“She’ll always have to take some form of anti-anxiety medication. She’s gone from taking them daily to only when she feels an attack coming on.”

“How are her episodes?”

I sigh again, closing the window because it’s too damn cold. “Infrequent. But when they do come, they’re…”

“Violent?”

I shake my head. “Maverick… she’s only violent to herself.”

He nods solemnly. “The time she wasn’t with Jonas. When they broke up for a month… she didn’t eat, did she? That’s what you meant when you said she self-harms.”

I let out another sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. “We just have to find a way to make sure she doesn’t… have an episode while she’s… fulfilling her…agenda.”

He doesn’t say anything, just reaches to grab his steaming mug of coffee and blows on it, takes a sip, looking at me over the rim. “I think I read a sleep study while I was doing part of my psychology courses that when we dream, we think we recognize faces, but they’re usually distorted. Words, letters, numbers… they’re squiggly, right? They don’t exactly spell or say anything, but your mind thinks it does. It’s why strangers in your dreams are often faceless."

“Shadow saw… Shadow was there… Raven bled for Shadow.”

I keep that portion to myself as I break out in goosebumps at the memory of the tired rasp of her voice. But I nod at the former FBI agent standing in my kitchen. The article he talks about was released almost fifteen years ago. “Faceless people and words without meaning.”

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