Page 46 of A Lab Rat's Guide to Fated Love
It seemed to take Nori a moment to decode his thick, nosebleed accent, where he considered writing it down instead. But before he could move, realization finally seeped into her features.
“Oh.” Without further enquiry, she quietly cleaned the mess on the bathroom counter, tossed the dirty tissues in the bin, and stepped outside.
“Are you okay?” Vir asked again as he followed her into the room.
“Stop asking me that,” she said, turning to him. “Are you dizzy?”
“Just a bid oud of balace,” he replied, seating himself on the edge of the bed.
She walked away with a grimace to bring him a clean t-shirt from the closet.
Vir looked down at the one he was wearing and noticed big ugly splotches of red marking the front. He started taking it off, when Nori’s hands appeared over his to help peel it off him without letting the fabric touch his nose.
“Wait here,” she said before disappearing into the bathroom. Then reappeared holding a small damp towel and took a seat beside him to wipe off the crusty bits of semi-dried blood from his chest.
He braced himself for the cold, but the towel was surprisingly warm. And yet, goosebumps erupted all over his skin at the contact, sending shivers through him that had nothing to do with thermodynamics.
“Sorry.” She drew the towel away.
When she looked at him again, her pensive gaze paused at the long scar in the middle of his sternum. Her fingers lifted to trace down the bumpy line, sending another jolt of skin puckering shivers through his body.
“How many…?” she whispered, mouthing the wordsurgerieswithout sound. But she already knew the answer.
“Three,” he replied anyway. “Excluding the chip insertion.”
“No more,” Nori declared with such finality, Vir couldn’t stop himself from smiling. Her fingers moved slightly to his left, brushing over the tattoo just above his heart. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What does it mean?”
“Algiz,” he replied, his heart racing beneath her fingertips. “It’s a rune, symbolizing protection. Igot it on a whim a few months ago.”
Nori glanced up, nodding at his explanation, and as their eyes met, Vir’s skin pebbled again into a million little specks. He held his breath, feeling for a hint of the emotion he’d picked from her earlier—the ever-elusivelonging. Unless he’d been mistaken. And it had been nothing but wishful thinking.
He searched as hard as he could, yet all he got was a blank numbness. No longing. Nothing even close. But he did find something else, something new—a fierce protectiveness that started off subtle but swelled rapidly till it was radiating out of her in waves.
Waves that engulfed him whole and made a painful lump grow in his throat.
As if just noticing the placement of her hand against his bare chest, Nori snatched it back with a quietly mumbled, “Sorry.”
She helped him pull on the clean t-shirt before walking away with the soiled clothes.
While he sat there alone, Vir’s thoughts drifted back to the day he’d gotten the tattoo, and the real reason behind his whim.
During one of her appearances in his dreams, the woman with Nori’s face had placed something in the middle of his palm.
“You’re protected,” she’d whispered, closing his fingers around it. “Always.”
Opening his fist, Vir found a smooth, white pebble there with a gold etching on it that looked like a badly drawn trident. The symbol stuck with him, even though he had no idea what it meant.
Soon after, he went back home to break the news of his diagnosis to Adi and his partner, Anita. And a few days into his stay there, Anita swung a small velvet pouch in front of him.
“Pick one,” she offered. “I’m learning runes these days. Help me practice, will you?”
A tattoo artist by day, Anita dabbled in the occult in her free time—tarot, tea-leaves, astrology, and the like. The pouch—runes—seemed to be one of her newer interests.
Vir dipped his hand inside the pouch, not knowing what to expect, and pulled out the first piece his fingers touched. He turned the smooth, pink rock over, admiring the artfully done gold etchings, when—
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The stone was different, but the symbol etched on it was the same badly drawn trident from his dream.
