Page 9 of Enticing the Elf
Or he could have already seen through my façade. Fuck. What do I say now that can stop this from turning into a disaster? “I’ve lived long enough to know that I’m not always going to get everything I want. Besides, wanting more doesn’t mean I’m not already happy with what I have.”
He’s not convinced. “It’s cruel of me?—”
“If the rest of that sentence is about me, don’t bother finishing it,” I cut in. “Nobody’s forcing me to be here, Dáithí. If I don’t have a problem with our current arrangement, then why should anyone else? You and I are the only ones who get a say.”
“Yeah.”
Relief surges through me?—
“You and I are the only ones who get a say,” he continues, “and I can’t keep… I don’t know, leading you on like this. You want us to be boyfriends, and I can’t believe that you’re boyfriend material. It’s wrong of me to keep you trapped in this weird pre-relationship limbo just because I like your company and you fuck like it’s your life’s purpose.”
My cock twitches with pride, but the rest of me is frantically trying to regroup. He’s really ending it, dammit. What am Isupposed to do? I willnotaccept defeat; I’ve been on too many battlefields to just give up because it looks like I’m losing.
I go on the attack. “Why can’t you see me as boyfriend material?”
He’s not expecting that. “Huh?”
“You’re right, I do want to be your boyfriend. Partner. Significant other. Whatever label we prefer is good with me. I want to be in a committed relationship with you, and I want everyone to know it. But like you just said, you don’t see me as boyfriend material. Why not?”
“I…” He grimaces and looks away. “Come on, Eoin, don’t make me say it. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I asked the question, Dáithí. I’m prepared for whatever answer you might give, and I’ll decide if it hurts me or not.”
With a big, unhappy sigh, he concedes, “Fine. I don’t trust that you really want a commitment. You’ve got thousands of years of dating history that points to you being a short-term fun guy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t need to try to be different now.”
“Are you saying I’m not capable of change? Yeah, I’ve had a… varied love life.” Really varied, if I’m being honest. “But most of that happened when I was a soldier and had almost no stability in my life. Fuck, for the last few thousand years, we didn’t even think we’d survive. I’ve got a steady job now, and a home that isn’t going to cease to exist. Who’s to say it’s not time for me to settle down?”
“Who’s to say it is?” he counters. “You might want to give it a shot, but the Earth species have an expression for situations like this: A leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
What the fuck? Is he comparing me to a felid shifter? That makes no sense. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dáithí’s smile is sad. “You can’t change who you really are.”
Fury rises in me, destroying the clarity of mind I was so proud of. “And who is it you think I am? Someone who’s incapable of making a promise and keeping it? What do you think this past year has been, Dáithí? We said we’d be monogamous, and I have been, happily. Why do you think making things official between us would change that?”
“I’m not saying you’d break a promise.” He grabs my hand, suddenly intense. “Believe me, Eoin, I’d never say that. You’re one of the most honorable people I’ve ever met. That’s why I’d never expect more from you. Don’t you get it? Eventually, you’d realize a relationship isn’t what you want, but if you’d made a promise like this, you’d try to ride it out anyway. It would be up to me to end things for both our sakes, and I’d rather do that now and still be friends than have my heart broken later.” He stops suddenly, dropping my hand and looking away. “So… you understand, don’t you? Why it’s best that we…” Trailing off, he bites his lip.
My anger receded at some point during his passionate little speech, and now my brain is spinning through a thousand different ideas, trying to find the one that will change his mind. One thing is very clear to me: This isn’t just about my feckless past. It’s not that he thinks I don’t have it in me to make a commitment, that I’ll deliberately break his heart. Somehow, he’s gotten the idea that I’m physically incapable of wanting him for the long-term, as though my feelings for him will wear off eventually. I can’t quite make sense of it, but it doesn’t seem like he actually wants to end things, only that he thinks he needs to in order to protect us both.
That’s some fucked-up bullshit, as my Earth friends like to say.
“I can’t predict the future,” I begin, glad that my voice is calm again. He jumps a little, like he wasn’t expecting me to speak.
“That’s not what I mean,” he protests. “Every relationship has a chance of ending, I know that. People change. But it would be stupid of me to go into something knowing that you’d need to change for it to have a chance.”
Ouch. “I don’t need to change for our relationship to have a chance. You’re wrong about who I am, Dáithí, and I want the chance to prove that to you.”
He shakes his head. “We’re right back where we started. I can’t?—”
“Not by agreeing to make things official—not yet, anyway. Hear me out. You tell me what I can do to prove I’m not actually the serial dater my past points toward me being. You can ask me any question you like, talk to my friends, my family—I’ll even give you the contact details of my past lovers, if you want. Plus, if there’s a task or something that I can do to show you… Maybe I could plant a garden? That’s a long-term commitment.” I’m getting off track. “What I mean is, think about what you need from me that would make you feel secure in a relationship with me. There’s no time limit on this, so if you do want me to plant a garden and look after it for as long as it survives, I will.”
That gets me a chuckle, and I consider it a win.
“I don’t know,” he says, but I can see the indecision in his eyes. “Testing you like that doesn’t seem fair.”
“Maybe it’s not, but we both need to be comfortable with this, Dáithí. You’ve been honest about your concerns, and I’m telling you I’m willing to do whatever it takes to relieve them.”
He looks me in the face, searching for something—sincerity, perhaps?—and then nods. “Okay.”
