Page 14 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)

Zeke

G iven how much disruption Aiden had introduced into my life, it was a little absurd how relieved I felt to see him walking up to my front door that afternoon. I got as far as putting my hand on the door handle before suddenly remembering that I wasn’t supposed to do that. Thankfully, Dax was in the bathroom at the moment, so, with a wince, I hastily backtracked into the kitchen. A moment later, Aiden knocked on the door.

“Dax? Can you get that please?” I called, not certain whether he’d come automatically, given how I’d fucked up yesterday with the delivery man.

I heard his light, rapid footfalls, and then the handle rattled on the door. I figured it was safe enough to come out now, so I stepped around the corner in time to see Aiden coming inside, Kade on his heels, as usual.

Aiden looked us both over and seemed pleasantly surprised to find us both clean, dressed, and in my case, sober. I didn’t bother being offended by his apparent expectation that things would be going worse than they actually were.

“You said you both needed to talk to me,” Aiden said, wasting no time in getting down to business. “So who wants to go first?”

“I will,” I said, not because I thought my own issues were more urgent, but because Aiden had made a firm point to me the other day that a dimari expected his master’s desires to take precedence over his own, and letting Dax go first would likely only confuse him.

“Dax, go out the back while I talk to Aiden,” I told my dimari. Predictably, he said, “Yes, sir,” and hurried from the room.

Aiden gestured questioningly to the sofa, and we all sat down. “What happened?”

“A delivery man came yesterday and I answered the door. I forgot that I was supposed to let Dax do it.” That had been one of the cardinal rules that Aiden had impressed upon me; let the dimari do the menial tasks. If I didn’t let him do them, he would take it as a sign that I didn’t think he was capable of doing his job well enough. Every single task I did for myself was a silent reprimand to him.

“He got all upset, and my first thought was to help him unpack, because that’s what I’d do for an upset human. I didn’t actually do it,” I added, at Aiden’s frown. “Because yeah, I realise that would have just made things worse. I told him to go and unpack the delivery, and gave him a few other things to do. But my question is basically, what am I supposed to do if I fuck up like that? How do I fix it?”

Aiden nodded thoughtfully, resting his chin on his hands. “The short answer is that there’s no simple solution. In the short term, the answer is to move on and let him resume his normal duties. Getting him to unpack the delivery was the right call. You let him answer the door today, so he’s not going to develop the impression that he’s never allowed to do it. But the longer term solution is about building trust with him. If he knows that you believe in him, that you value his service, then he won’t react so drastically when you make a mistake. Because you will make mistakes. Even with the best of intentions, there’s no way for you to never make any of them.

“So, on that note, how have things been going, on a larger scale? How’s his mood? How’s his confidence? How are you feeling?”

I sighed. “I got mad at him today. He insisted that we go for a walk – and yes, you said that we should be doing that, so I’m not complaining about that specifically. But he’s been playing games. He’s been manipulative. And I don’t know what bullshit you’ve been telling him, but I’m smart enough to see through that. So I told him off and told him not to do it again.”

Aiden nodded, his calm composure annoying me. He didn’t seem surprised by my harsh assessment of the situation, nor did he deny trying to get Dax to nudge me to do things. After a long moment of thought, he took a deep breath. “If you’re going to forbid him from using subtlety to guide your behaviour, then you’re going to have to realise that you need to respond sensibly to more direct attempts from him. Because this is going to be an uphill battle for both of you. What I’ve told him, in the interests of full disclosure, is that it’s going to be his responsibility to get you to attend your appointments, to exercise, to eat sensibly, and to take reasonable care of your own mental health. If you put up too much resistance to that, then you’re going to drive him crazy, and drive yourself into an early grave. So if you want to do everything with all the cards on the table, then you have to actually do it. You can order him to stop prompting you to do things. And he will be forced to obey you. But, no kidding around, Zeke, you will be signing your own death warrant in the process. You need to work with him, not against him.”

I took the time to think about that. To really stop and consider all the implications of my own behaviour, and of the limited options Dax had to influence the world around him. Because Aiden was right; I held absolute control over Dax, whether or not I chose to exert that power, and my choices would save or condemn us both. “I get it,” I said in the end. “So yeah, I’ll make a deal with you. And with him. If he can be honest with me about what he’s trying to get me to do, then I’ll put in a genuine effort to actually do it.”

Aiden nodded, looking satisfied, if not entirely happy with the conclusion. “Fair enough. So my next question is how are you going with building trust with him? We talked about rewards the other day. Affection and praise. How’s that going?”

I mentally ran through the events of the last day and a half. Had I praised Dax for anything? I’d yelled at him to get out of my bedroom after I’d had a nightmare. I’d pissed him off over breakfast. We’d had that charming little incident with the bottle of vodka – I absolutely did not want to tell Aiden about that one. But if Dax happened to tell him about it – and there was every possibility that he would – then at least I could fall back on the solid fact that I had – eventually – asked Dax to get rid of the stuff, rather than drinking it. “I haven’t really praised him for anything,” I admitted. “We’ve still been caught up in learning how to work with each other, and… Oh, there’s a point,” I interrupted myself. I peered at Aiden with an expression of combined trepidation and hopefulness. “He’s a terrible cook,” I said, lowering my voice so there was no possibility of Dax overhearing us. “Seriously, he struggles to make toast. He doesn’t know how to use salt, he cooked the pasta last night until it was basically mush, he burned the meat, and before you say I should be teaching him how to do it better, I honestly don’t think I have either the patience or the skills to get him cooking decent meals. I was very much a meat and two veg kind of guy, before… this,” I finished, knowing that we both understood the exact point in my life that I’d given up on even rudimentary cooking. “But I can’t spend the rest of my life eating what he’s making.”

But to my dismay, Aiden didn’t seem to have an answer to that. “Um… pretty much every dimari owner I’ve talked to so far has been able to teach them how to do at least basic cooking. He would have been taught the principles of food preparation during his training, even if-”

“I could teach him,” Kade interrupted. “It wouldn’t take long. He’s been given extensive training in how to prepare food for other species. It’s simply a case of informing him which techniques are appropriate for human cuisine and letting him practice a couple of times with ingredients that might be unfamiliar to him. I could have him reliably preparing reasonable quality meals in about two weeks.”

All at once, I felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Was it really that simple? Ask someone for a specific piece of help, and they would just do it? Literally nothing in my life had been that simple since I’d got back from Ixralia.

“Is that okay?” I asked Aiden. “I mean… you must have military shit to do, right? And other dimari to help. You can’t just be babysitting me for weeks at a time.”

Aiden smirked. “Right now, my job is to save the lives of as many dimari as possible, and in doing so, help navigate an intensely complex agreement with the Culrads to expand the Alliance. That’s not a small assignment. And it most certainly doesn’t just mean going for the low hanging fruit. There are plenty of dimari – and their owners – who need little more than some basic instructions and some troubleshooting support, and they’re pretty much able to figure out the rest on their own. And yeah, it might be tempting to focus on helping as many of those as possible, given that they take up relatively little of my time. But conversely, that’s the whole point. They take up very little time. So I can devote more of my time to the people who have more complex issues to deal with. And you’re certainly not the only one who’s struggling to make head or tails of your situation. So yes, if you need Kade to teach Dax how to cook, then I will make sure he’s available.”

“Thank you,” I said, taken aback at how easy that had been.

“But that didn’t answer the rest of my question,” Aiden went on. “Praise and affection. What’s been happening?”

“Like I said, I haven’t really found anything to praise him for. We’ve had a few arguments. I’ve thanked him for making meals, but that’s really as much as I can say about it.”

“And the affection side of things?”

I felt myself blush. I glanced at Kade, wishing he was somewhere else, but at the same time, knowing that his insights into this conversation were probably going to be invaluable. I fumbled for an answer, making a few helpless noises as I searched for words, before finally giving up. “I don’t think I can do that,” I admitted. “It’s just… Jesus Christ, it’s so fucking awkward. We’ve been like disinterested flatmates for a whole fucking year now, and then you’re suddenly asking me to start, like, hugging him on a regular basis? Stroking his hair, or… Shit, I can’t do that.”

Aiden was silent for a long moment, his mouth tightening, his jaw muscle twitching. “I explained this the other day,” he began, and I braced myself for a right scolding. Aiden’s disappointment was obvious, no matter how gentle his tone was. “Rewarding a dimari is not optional. Start by finding something to praise him for. He must have done something in the last day that you’re grateful for.”

He had. He’d dealt with all the frivolous questions from the shop assistants and taken control of organising the deliveries. But to admit that I appreciated his work on that count was the same as admitting that I was now thoroughly incompetent at dealing with my own day to day life. The notion rankled.

“You said there was a third thing I could do to reward him,” I reminded Aiden, remembering our conversation from the other day. “So how about we just skip to that?”

“No,” he said flatly. “If you can’t get your head around this bit, there’s no way in hell you’re going to deal with the next part. He needs praise. He needs affection. He needs physical touch. He needs genuine warmth from you. You’ve seen a small improvement in his moods in the last day or two, correct?”

I hadn’t actually said as much, but presumably Aiden had enough experience in working with other dimari to know what to expect.

“Yeah,” I said, feeling inexplicably petulant about it. “He’s been more confident, more decisive, he’s been taking the initiative in certain things.” I supposed I wasn’t terribly upbeat about that part, given the number of speedbumps we were still having to deal with.

Aiden gave me a stern look. “If you don’t start backing that up with some really solid rewards, it will all be woefully temporary. In a couple of weeks, he’s going to realise that his efforts don’t actually mean anything, and then he’s going to sink back into a pit of despair even deeper than the one he was in in the first place. This part, Zeke, is all on you. You’ve got to start rewarding him. There is no other way forward.”

I broke eye contact, letting my gaze roam over the sofa, Aiden’s boots, the floor. “Isn’t he just going to see through it. Like it’s some hokey attempt at manipulating him?”

Aiden sighed. “If you’re insincere about it, then yes, he will. Are you seriously telling me you can’t think of a single thing he’s done well in the last two days?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes, he’s been helpful. With all the shopping – we went to buy him some clothes – and cleaning the house. He was working on the bathroom this morning, and yeah, he’s done a good job of it.” I’d noticed there was significantly less mould in the bathroom now, and the sink had been restored to its natural white colour, rather than the dullish cream that spoke of layers of dust and endless flecks of soap and toothpaste.

Aiden raised an eyebrow. “So you walk up to him and say ‘The bathroom’s looking a whole lot better today. Thank you.’ And then he beams at you in delight and wriggles like a puppy who’s just been told he’s a good boy, and then you put your hand on his shoulder and give it a light squeeze, and that’s it, you’re done.”

“That’s it?” It sounded so simple when he said it like that.

“That’s the starting point,” Aiden said. “That’s how you get both him and you used to it. Then you gradually expand on that. Instead of a pat on the shoulder, it’s a light, one-armed hug. Then it’s a two-armed hug. Then you get into the habit of brushing past him when you walk into a room, of holding his hand for brief moments. Just keep expanding on it until it becomes natural.”

Natural. Touching another person hadn’t been natural for me since I’d felt tentacles reaching inside my body.

But at the same time, I had to admit – if only to myself – there was something appealing about feeling a warm, safe touch against my skin. Because Dax would be a very safe option. If I told him to stop, he would. Instantly. I briefly considered the idea of asking Aiden what he thought about asking Dax to sleep in my bed… but quickly dismissed the idea. That was likely a bold leap well beyond the level of affection he was intending us to have.

“I’ll give it a go,” I said, then, at Aiden’s dubious look, added, “I mean it. I’ll deliberately make at least two instances this afternoon where I praise him and touch him.” Maybe two wasn’t much. But it was a start. And another two tomorrow. And two more the day after that. And maybe, by that point, I’d be feeling less ragged about the whole thing.

Aiden nodded, finally seeming satisfied with the plan. “Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

I shook my head.

“Fair enough. My turn, then. I spoke to Doctor Green again. You have your first appointment with your new psychologist in two days’ time.” He tapped at his comm, and mine beeped, announcing a new appointment. “Her name’s Cas. She’s a Solof. She’s very experienced, and she’s been thoroughly briefed on your case and your history, so you won’t have to go through the whole explanation again. She’s ready to pick up with strategies that will help your day to day life, rather than rehashing all of the trauma.”

“Thank fuck for that,” I muttered. That was one of the worst things about getting a new doctor, of any description. The need to re-explain all of the things I was trying so hard to avoid was an inevitable disaster. “Send the appointment to Dax and he can make sure I remember it.”

A moment after I’d said the words, I blinked, surprised at myself. When the hell had it become so natural to get Dax to organise my days?

But Aiden merely nodded. “I’ll let him know when we go and talk to him. But while we’re on the topic, have you thought about which of the support groups you’d like to attend?”

I groaned. “The physiotherapy one,” I replied. As much as I didn’t like admitting that any of my physical injuries were still slowing me down, at least that one was only focused on mobility and pain management. All of the others were likely to make me talk about my fucking feelings, and that idea only made me want to stab myself in the eye with a rusty fork.

Aiden nodded and made a note in his comm. “What about one of the alcohol recovery groups? The one that meets-”

“You said I had to pick one ,” I snapped at him. “So I’ve picked one. Have Doctor Green send me the details, and I’ll figure out how to get there.”

Aiden’s mouth tightened into a thin line… but then he apparently decided to let it go. “Fine. I’ll let him know. Is there anything else you need right now, or shall I go and talk to Dax?”

“Go talk to him,” I said, waving him away dismissively. “And don’t bother trying to get him to talk me into going to another group. I’m done playing games with him, and you’ll just make us both miserable.”

Wisely, Aiden said nothing more on the topic. But as he headed for the back door, he glanced at the table, seeing the partially-completed puzzle. It was less than a quarter done, and I’d been peevishly glad that it was going to take such a long time to finish. All the more distraction it could provide to keep my mind off my real problems.

“It’s not a real hobby,” I said to Aiden. “But it seemed like a good place to start.”

“You’ll get no argument from me there,” he said, then disappeared through the kitchen to the back door.