Page 23 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded

I was expecting the jab. We’d all been warned, during our training, that there were people in all corners of the galaxy who looked down on the dimari, who judged us for being slaves, and I’d had extensive practice at ignoring the insults. So it was easy to brush it off now. “I’m not protecting him,” I told the man. “I’m protecting you. Because he’s fought creatures barehanded that would give you nightmares for a month. He’s won battles while wounded that would kill you if you were in full body armour and armed with an assault rifle. He’s a Captain in the Alliance Military. You don’t want to mess with him.” I said it with all the confidence I could muster, aided by the very real knowledge that at least half of what I’d said was actually true. My master had fought nightmares – though perhaps not barehanded. He’d won some kind of fiendish battle to get his comrades out of Ixralia, though I didn’t know the full details of the fight. And I was very certain that if this man succeeded in triggering my master’s panic reflexes, then my master could and would break and/or remove some of this man’s body parts.

None of us needed that kind of mess.

The train pulled into the next stop and I said loudly, “This is our stop. Would you let us past, please?”

I didn’t expect the man to move. But by now, we had the attention of some of the other passengers. A Denzogal stood up from his seat and meandered over, looking down at the human. The Denzogal probably weighed twice as much as the man – and three times as much as me. “How about you let them past,” he said to the man, entirely calmly, like he was telling a young child to put his toys away.

Thankfully, some semblance of either good sense or self-preservation made it past the man’s addled brain, and he stepped aside with a sneer. I tugged lightly on my master’s wrist,careful not to hold him roughly or tightly, and we stepped off the train. The doors closed and the train left the station.

Now, it was equally possible that my master was going to thank me for helping, or curse at me for thinking he couldn’t handle the situation himself. If he had been drunk, the latter would have been almost certain. As it was, he stood there for a long moment, staring after the departing train.

“I should probably start going to a gym,” he said eventually. “A year ago, I could have taken him. Not so much at the moment.”

“I could come with you,” I said, as if casually inviting myself along to my master’s events was perfectly normal for a dimari. “Some exercise would be good for both of us.”

He nodded, and while I understood that that wasn’t necessarily agreement, it wasn’t a refusal either. I could use that, when it came time to actually go. I could remind him that he’d agreed we could go together. Because, after a year of being confined to his apartment, I would have been completely useless if I’d actually needed to defend him from the man. And I didn’t like that idea at all.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dax

When we got home, I took off my shoes, then headed straight for the dining table. I pulled the puzzle box out of my bag and opened the lid. “Do you want to start this now?” I asked, already taking the package of pieces out of the box. “We could make some good progress before I need to cook dinner.” There were a multitude of problems with that statement. I was supposed to clean a room in the house this afternoon. There would be at least one, maybe two deliveries from the shops, and as my packages of clothes arrived, I would need to sort the garments and wash them, hang them up to dry, and account for the amount of money we’d spent. I had no idea what to cook for dinner, since I was still floundering with finding appropriate human recipes, and I had the vague idea that I might need to defrost some meat, or maybe some of the frozen vegetables, in order to make something suitable.

And competing with all those tasks was the idea that my master really needed some attention and some soothing, right at the moment. He hadn’t spoken during the walk home, not since he’d said he should start going to a gym, but he’d been agitated,scowling, fists clenched, breathing more quickly than the short walk up the hill had really warranted.

“Yeah, I don’t really want to do that now,” he said, heading for the kitchen. I heard him open the cupboard, and braced myself…

“Fucking son of a bitch,” he cursed, and the pronouncement was followed by the thud of the cupboard being slammed. He wanted a drink. And there was none left in the house.

I opened my mouth to ask him if I should put some music on… and then promptly closed it again. Instead, I went to the wall comm, pulled up a random playlist called ‘Relaxing Songs of Summer’, and hit play. The gentle sounds of flowing water and some sort of wind instrument began to filter through the apartment.

Then I went into the kitchen, found a package of cookies that I knew was in the cupboard, having unpacked it yesterday, and took it back to the dining table with me. Sugar, while not being particularly healthy, did tend to have a positive effect on people’s moods, and I wasn’t above using that to my advantage.

I also made a mental note to ask Aiden what would be a good drink to substitute for alcohol. Part – though certainly not all – of my master’s problem was the habit of having a glass in his hand. I’d seen him reaching for one multiple times the day before. So if I could find something more appropriate to put in that glass, perhaps it would soothe his efforts to overcome the habit.

I said nothing else as I cleared the table to make space for the puzzle, since I didn’t really know what I could say. I didn’t want to sound patronising. I didn’t want to repeat anything I’d already said. I didn’t want to talk about the man on the train. I hadn’t had a chance to read any news articles, to make interesting small talk. And I was rapidly coming to realise that taking care of my master was going to be far more effort than I had originally anticipated.

I was frankly astonished that he hadn’t already yelled at me to fuck off and leave him alone. I wouldn’t be able to say no to that, if it came out as a direct order. But for as long as he stuck to vague grumbling and statements of his own likes and dislikes, I figured I could work around it.

“Fucking hell, what time is it?” my master said, as he wandered back into the living room.

“Two o’clock,” I said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “How’s your leg feeling?” It was a gamble to ask. Reminding him of the old injury might make his mood worse, or it might distract him from his current desire for alcohol.

“Fuck.” He winced, then came and sat down at the table. “Aches like a fucking bitch,” he muttered, rubbing his thigh, and I thought I’d made a mistake for a moment. But then he reached for the puzzle box, taking a long, slow look, before helping me start sorting the pieces, turning them all up the right way, shoving the edge pieces to one side of the table. I had the idea that I should go and get him some painkillers… but I didn’t want to leave him alone until he was a little more engaged with the puzzle.

He reached for the box of cookies and slipped his thumb under the flap, pulling it upwards and…

“Fuck!” He dropped the box as he flinched, then shoved his thumb into his mouth.

“Are you all right?” I asked, pausing in my task. “What happened?”

“Fucking papercut,” he muttered, around a mouthful of his own thumb. Then he held it up, examining it with a scowl. “Papercuts always sting like a bitch. Stupid little cut, but they always hurt.” He got up and stomped off towards the bathroom. I considered following him… but then decided he could probably take care of it himself. I was trying to find a balance between keeping an eye on him and giving him enough space to move.Treating him like a child would only antagonise him. I heard him banging about in the bathroom cabinet… and then the noise went suddenly quiet. And then…

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

It was interesting how the same word could mean so many different things. The first ‘fuck’ had been quiet and cautious, like someone discovering a dangerous insect hiding in a corner. The second had been a declaration of annoyance, like someone had just dropped their plate of dinner on the floor. And the third had sounded more desperate, with a ragged edge to the word.

Concerned, I padded over to the bathroom, wondering if the cut was worse than it had initially seemed, or if my master had dropped the first aid kit on the floor, perhaps.