Sugar, spice, everything nice

Selwyn must have been able to feel how shaky my breathing still was as I pressed myself against him, but it was nice to just be held while my brain tormented me.

“How’re you feeling?” he eventually asked.

“I was lying earlier,” I had to reply.

Had to reply that way because it was one of the things my brain was tormenting me about. What a terrible person I was for lying and how much Selwyn was about to hate me for lying to him.

He wriggled away just a little bit, so we were face to face.

“You know, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” he said.  “I’m not leaving tonight either way.”

“I’ve had panic attacks since I was a kid,” I confessed.  “I don’t know why I said I hadn’t.”

I was now expecting him to laugh at me, because my stupid brain was still in panic mode and if it wasn’t telling me people would hate me, of course it was telling me they thought I was an idiot.

But Selwyn just looked thoughtful.

“Maybe there was something different about this one,” he suggested.

“I’m not worried about being exposed,” I told him.  “People already think they know what I’m into anyway.  And some of them think I’m into things I would touch with a ten foot pole.”

“It’s just,” I rolled my eyes.  “God, it’s so stupid.  It’s about privacy, y’ know?  There’s a difference between people thinking they know my life and… I can’t believe they did that.”

“That’s not stupid,” he contradicted me sweetly.  “And even if it was, I don’t think it would matter.  Anxiety doesn’t have to make sense.”

He rubbed my right arm reassuringly.  We’d moved beyond trying to work each other up now.

“You know what I was doing the night the Buckley burnt down?” he asked.  Obviously, this somehow related to our conversation, so I shook my head obediently.

“I was at home, throwing my guts up because the Order had gone and caught one of the Death Eaters, and they were going to let him stroll off back to his mates,” he said.  “And you know, I figured out later I’d had a flashback but at the time I didn’t even notice.  I ignored what was happening in my head and stood there telling them we had to kill the guy.”

“They didn’t let you do it though,” I stated.  The Order hadn’t done pre-emptive strikes in our lifetimes.  

“No,” he agreed.

“I’m glad,” I said, lacing my fingers with his.  “It does terrible things to a person, killing with magic.”

The way he said it was just so knowing.  I mean, there are all sorts of superstitions in the wizarding world.  Same as the muggle world, really.  The purebloods tend to think anything to do with magic is inherently better.  Ironically, so do a lot of muggleborns.  It’s the ones stuck in the middle who are more cynical.

But most people don’t sound that convinced when they say it.  Shylock didn’t sound like he was repeating something he’d learned by rote.

And I just found myself watching him, wondering if I was staring or not and silently willing him to tell me what he knew that I didn’t.  And more importantly, how.

His thumb rubbed against the back of my hand.  Nervous habit?  I’d never noticed that Shylock had any (well, apart from panic attacks, apparently), but everyone had a little something, didn't they?

I could tell what Selwyn was trying to do.  It was a trick he must have used on his students, just staying silent until it became so uncomfortable the other person began to talk.  Well, I wasn’t one of his students.

I guess it was kind of stupid to have been so unguarded with my words, but I did find myself wanting to tell him.  Hell, I wanted to tell him everything.  All my secrets.  My entire life.  He’d only been here for an afternoon and I was already so comfortable around him.  That was unheard of.  The only person I was even close to being comfortable around was Cassabian and that was because he had the attention span of a gnat when it came to anything but his music.

“Hey,” I said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but you haven’t, um, hit me with those veela powers of yours, have you?”

I don’t know how you say something like that without it being insulting, but Selwyn actually looked concerned instead of annoyed.

“No,” he said.  It should be impossible to say such a small word slowly, but he managed it. “Why, you feeling okay?”

I didn’t want to let go his hand, so I managed to unpin my other arm from beneath me in order to rub at my eyes.

“I guess I’m just tired,” I replied.

A couple of different emotions flickered across his face.  Disbelief, fear, sadness, before it finally settled back into the unreadable expression I remembered from school.

“I’m sorry,” he said, disentangling his hand from mine and beginning to inch away as he spoke.  “I shouldn’t have done it last time.”

Shit.  He was going to try to run away again.

God, I was so stupid.

It was no coincidence that I’d been high last time I’d been here.  I’d just got into a fight with Adrienne and I’d needed to ask a favour from Shylock.  I had no idea what that favour actually was, though.

On one hand, I hoped things with Addie might improve if I could just get her out from under the Poliakoff family’s thumb.  On the other, I was also really pissed off at her and wanted nothing more than to forget about her, if only for the day.  And then there was the embarrassing nature of my virginity.  I’d never cared before, but now that I’d realised how I felt about Addie, I also realised that I didn’t want to be a virgin on my wedding night.  I’d like to be able to give the girl - even if it wasn’t Adrienne - a good time.

I already knew the lowered inhibitions from drinking made it difficult for me to control my instincts.  Taking a drug like sugar or spice would doubtless be even worse which was exactly why I was willing to chance it.  Then make up my mind what I was asking for when I got to his.

Which had clearly been a bad idea, because now he didn’t trust me at all.

I sat at the side of the bed, buttoning my shirt and spoke to him over my shoulder.

“I should go.  Will you be okay?”

“No,” his reply was so soft I barely heard, but I could feel the breath on the back of my neck and his weight on the bed behind me.

Arms laced round my middle to still my hands and his chin pressed down on my shoulder.

“We’re as bad as each-other,” he sounded amused by this.

“You keep trying to run off.  I keep freaking myself out,” he went on.

He shuffled round to sit next to me and I raised my eyes to his.  

It’s funny the tiny details you notice about people when you’re so close as this.  Shylock had stunningly blue eyes.  I mean, I’ve seen blue eyes before.  There’s no shortage of them in Scotland.  But there was just something special about Shylock’s (possibly the fact that they were his). When we sat close together like this, I could notice how he was a few inches taller than me.  When he was this close I fancied I could feel the heat from his body.

And all the while I was noticing some tiny, distant part of my brain was telling me to stop cataloguing all these details because I know I only do that when I’m falling for someone.  I was diligently ignoring it.

“If you’re freaking out because of me-“ I began.

“Not because of you,” he cut me off. “Because of myself.”

Eeep.  He thought he was making me freak out.  No, no, no, Selwyn, you’ve got it all wrong.

“I think we should do this properly,” I decided.  “A proper date.  You finish getting dressed, give me half an hour to get changed, then I’ll take you out and explain as much as I can.”

He gave me that lopsided smile he has, the one he uses when he’s trying to make it seem like he’s not convinced, but he’s actually secretly pleased.  Fuçk, when did I get so good at reading his body language?  

“A proper date?” he asked.  “Does that mean we’re an item now?”

I didn’t know how to answer that.  I’d been trying to keep his problem with Adrienne out of my head (and my entanglement with Kaiden, for that matter) all afternoon, but it was bound to come up eventually.  Although, he didn’t sound opposed to the idea, and he had said it wasn’t her business who he carried on with.  

“I thought that might be something to discuss over dinner,” I replied.

Hell, I wasn’t going to get his hopes up until he heard just how screwed up my life was.

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