Page 21 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)

Dax

I was in love. There was no other way to describe it. My master was simply wonderful . It was mid-morning, and I was attempting to dust the shelves in the living room. But despite my best efforts, I was spending at least half my time unable to drag my eyes off my master, as he sat at the dining table and worked on finishing the puzzle. Seeing that we were nearing finishing this one, I’d ordered another one this morning, and it would likely arrive sometime this afternoon.

I’d done my very best to please him in bed this morning. I understood his fears about sex. Not being able to gain an erection was embarrassing – though given his injuries, it was certainly not his fault. So I’d used every trick and talent I’d been taught to bring him pleasure, aware that I might not be successful – not this time, at least.

But he’d hardened, and then he’d climaxed, and then he’d…

Oh, by the stars, the things he’d done to my body. Despite his explanation about human desires, I knew perfectly well that masters did not put their mouths on dimari like that. So the fact that he’d done it to me displayed a most profound degree of approval. I had pleased my master. After the longest, most painful year of my life, I had finally figured out how to please him.

“You have a session with your psychologist at two o’clock this afternoon,” I reminded him – partly because I wanted to be helpful, and partly just to hear the sound of his voice again.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, thanks,” he said, glancing up at me. And then he took a second glance, a slow smile curling the edge of his mouth. “Are you dusting the shelves, or are you just watching me?” There was amusement in the words, rather than reprimand, but nonetheless, I turned sharply back towards the shelves, feeling my scales ripple in embarrassment.

“Dusting, sir,” I replied. “Sorry, sir.” He’d asked me this morning whether we should use his mouth or my hand, on the proviso that whichever one I chose, I would be expected to do my chores diligently. I’d chosen his mouth in order to ease my aching arousal, but I hadn’t anticipated how much the memory of it would distract me for the rest of the day. I needed to put more effort into concentrating and less into ogling my master.

He turned back to his puzzle, and I noticed the intense concentration he was giving the task. That drew my attention for an entirely different reason. I couldn’t say for sure yet, but I was developing the theory that he tended to focus on the puzzle when he was craving alcohol. His mood was often lower, his patience thinner, and I suspected he turned to the task when he found himself unable to concentrate on other things. He was still supposed to be searching for a proper hobby, but he hadn’t said much in the last few days about any options he was considering. Then I noticed that his left hand had started tapping on the table.

I left off the dusting and went to the kitchen, quickly preparing a cup of herbal tea. I took it back to him… and sure enough, he greeted the gesture with a scowl. “For fuck’s sake, Dax, I’m going to drown if you keep pouring tea down my throat.”

I was surprised at how little the reprimand affected me. After this morning, I knew my master was thoroughly pleased with me, at the same time as understanding his frustrations with his current situation. And I’d already anticipated that he’d be in a poor mood. A moment later, despite his protests, he wrapped his fingers around the handle of the cup and proceeded to slide it in small circles, over and over again, presumably just for something to do with his hand. If he found that helpful, then I decided not to be concerned about whether he actually drank it or not.

“Is there anything you would like to talk about, sir?” I asked, taking a seat opposite him. “Are you still thinking about yesterday?” My job as a domestic companion was to engage my master in conversation, and I understood enough of his medical condition to know that sometimes, he might just was to get some stress off his chest, without there necessarily being anything I could do about the situation.

“No,” he snapped, angrily sorting through a couple of puzzle pieces. I waited, prepared to give it a bit longer before I returned to my duties.

“I’ve got to talk to this fucking psychologist this afternoon,” he grumbled, when the silence stretched on. He rubbed his face then rolled his eyes. “Starting out with a new person is always awful. She’s going to be either too judgemental or syrupy sweet in trying to be empathetic about the whole thing. I wish someone would understand that this is just my fucking life now, and I don’t need someone to pat my head and tell me it’s all going to be okay. What I need is someone to give me real, practical advice about what the fuck I’m supposed to do when I’m out in public and I lose my shit. What do I do when I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning? What do I do when I’m-” He sloshed the mug a little too forcefully, liquid spilling over the side. He cursed, both from the pain of the hot water and the mess he’d just made. “Motherfucking bastard,” he grumbled, waving his hand in the air.

I dashed to the kitchen to fetch a towel to soak up the water. “Did you burn yourself?” I asked when I got back. It was a deliberate choice to deal with the mess before any potential injury. Hopefully that way, my master would see the question as an offhand query, rather than an attempt to smother him with excessive care.

“No, I’m fine,” he muttered, but nonetheless, he got up and headed for the kitchen, and I heard water running as I mopped up the spilled tea. I took the wet towel to the washing machine, and by the time I got back to the kitchen, he’d turned the water off and was staring out into the courtyard.

“My last psychologist kept telling me I wasn’t to blame for any of this,” he said, not looking at me. “But I don’t fucking blame myself. I blame the military. And not Henderson, either. The decision to go back through the wormhole came from higher up than him. They should have stopped after the first mission. At the very most, maybe they were justified in sending the second one. But after that?” He trailed off, muttering curses to himself. He reached for the towel hanging from one of the cabinet handles and dried his hands.

“Would you like me to sit in the session with you?” I offered. At least for the first session, I might be able to provide a bit of a buffer between him and any overzealous intrusions by the therapist.

My master considered that seriously for a moment. But eventually, he shook his head. “No. I can deal with it. I’ll have to make a point to book a morning session next time. I hate having all day to think about it.”

I made a mental note of that, to send a message to Doctor Green at the military base later on. Standing close to my master, I felt an unconscious pull towards him, and I found myself leaning in his direction, wanting to hug him, or to rest my head against his shoulder. Or to allow him to lean on me. But given his current complaints about being coddled, I didn’t think he’d respond well to such an attempt just at the moment.

I stood there a moment longer, then decided that just staring at him while I loitered wasn’t actually helping him. “I’ll get back to the dusting,” I said, hoping that my own impetus might get him moving as well.

“The house is looking a lot better,” he said, before I could get as far as the doorway. “I know there’s still a bit to do, but it’s a lot cleaner. So… thank you.”

I felt a warm flush through my chest. I’d been working hard over the last few days – during the time when I hadn’t been attending to my master, that was. And now, all of the surface dirt was gone, the floor vacuumed, the laundry done, and stray bits and pieces put away. Some areas still needed a deep clean – inside the kitchen cabinets, for example – but I was pleased with the progress. And even more pleased that my master had noticed.

“It’s a pleasure to be of service, sir,” I replied. And that sent me spiralling back into my earlier distraction, my mind replaying just how pleasurable it had been to be of service in his bedroom. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to return to the living room, determinedly focusing on the dusting while I willed my erection to go away. Stars above, in all my time longing for my master’s approval, I had never considered all the ways in which gaining it might actually be a problem.

???

Kade came over that afternoon to give me another cooking lesson while my master shut himself in his bedroom for his therapy session. I gave Kade a brief explanation of what was happening – and, of course he understood my concern for my master, being the well-trained dimari that he was – but even so, I knew I was distracted all through the lesson, always keeping one ear on the bedroom, to be alert for any sign of distress. After an hour and a half, we’d succeeded in making a chicken pie for dinner, as well as a lemon tart for dessert. The first therapy session, I’d been told, would take about two hours, while the therapist went through a bit of my master’s background and reviewed the work of his previous psychologist, and then laid out a plan for his ongoing therapy.

I was saying goodbye to Kade at the front door when the other dimari stopped, casting a wary glance towards the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “How are things going?” he asked in a soft voice. “You seem happier. More confident.”

I felt my scales ripple… and then I gave in to the urge to share my news with someone. Kade and Aiden could both be trusted to keep personal details private. “We had sex this morning,” I blurted out, my feet tapping on the cool tiles as I fidgeted. “But he had a panic attack yesterday, while we were out at the physiotherapy session. So it’s very much an up and down thing. He’s very pleased with me,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound like I was boasting. I knew for a fact that Kade’s own master was entirely satisfied with him. “But it’s a lot. Keeping up with his mood swings and figuring out what’s going to cause an issue. I think I still have a lot to learn,” I added, trying to keep a balanced perspective on the whole thing. “But it’s so much better than it was. So thank you,” I finished, beaming up at him. “Thank you so much for helping.”

Kade smiled, and it struck me once again how much confidence his master must have in him, to send him off to assist another household unaccompanied. On many planets, dimari were never allowed off their master’s property without an escort, for fear they would make a poor decision or run into a problem they couldn’t solve. “I’m glad it’s getting better,” he said. “And remember, you can always call me if you run into any problems.”

I grinned and nodded. It was starting to feel like I had a real friend. Back on Eumad, we’d always been cautious about making friends with other dimari, aware that as soon as we were ready to be sold, we’d be sent off to far flung regions of the galaxy, with little chance of ever seeing our childhood companions again. “Thank you,” I said again. “I’ll see you in a couple of days.” We’d already scheduled our next cooking lesson, and Kade thought I was making good progress.

After he left, I spent twenty minutes scrubbing two of the kitchen cabinets, taking everything out and making sure I got all the dust and grease out of the very back corners. I was just finishing putting the last of the pots away again when I heard the bedroom door open.

My master came into the kitchen, walking slowly, and stopped in the doorway when he saw me there. He blinked a few times, as if he’d forgotten I was here. “Hey,” he said. “Um…”

Moving stiffly, he walked around me and took a cup out of the cupboard. He set the kettle on to boil and rummaged around for a tea bag. Normally, I would have offered to make the tea for him. Normally, I would also have been disappointed if he’d said no. But today, I simply let him do it for himself. He seemed lost in thought, and I wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. If he was pissed off with the therapist, he’d have been ranting about it. But this quietness was disconcerting. Was he simply processing what she’d said, or was this a symptom of a rehashing of trauma, a reopening of barely closed wounds?

“Are you all right?” I asked, uncertain as to whether the query was going to set him off or not.

My master finished pouring the hot water into the cup, then shrugged. “It was… better than I expected,” he said slowly. “She’s…” He sighed and spun the cup in a slow circle. “She’s good at her job.” Given the expectations he’d had a couple of hours ago, that was high praise. “I’m gonna go sit outside for a bit,” he said next, gesturing vaguely towards the back door. He picked up his tea and retreated to the back patio, and all I could do was let him go.

I spent the next hour continuing my thorough clean of the kitchen, though it was really just an excuse to keep an eye on my master. I could see him through the window, though his back was towards me, so I couldn’t gauge his expression. But his posture was not displaying any particular distress. His shoulders were not hunched. He was not slumped over the table. He seemed pensive, but not unhappy.

I wanted to go outside and ask what he and his therapist had talked about, but I knew it wasn’t my place. Instead, I tried to focus on my cleaning, on improving the small details of my master’s life that I did have control over.

A little over an hour later, I saw my master stand up, and I braced myself for some sort of announcement. Had he made some momentous decision? Or put some small sliver of the past to rest? Was he going to ask me to do something? Ask Doctor Green for a new therapist, for example?

We hadn’t gone for a walk today, and I briefly considered suggesting it… then just as rapidly dismissed the idea. Our excursion yesterday had been very stressful for my master, and today’s session likely more so, so I didn’t think it unreasonable to take one day off. I knew we couldn’t make a habit of coming up with excuses not to go, but at the same time, pushing my master too hard carried the risk of doing more harm than good.

I turned to face my master as he came in the back door, ready and willing to spring into action for whatever task he had for me.

But instead of addressing me, he simply set his cup by the sink, then put a hand on my shoulder. He squeezed gently, then went into the living room.

I waited, expecting him to turn the wall screen on. That was his old habit whenever he was feeling morose; come in from the pub and stare at the screen until he passed out drunk.

A minute passed… and then another… but there was no sound from the screen. I peered around the corner, wondering if he was working on his puzzle, but he wasn’t sitting at the dining table either. Instead, he was sitting on the sofa, a page of information projected in a holographic image above his comm. I wouldn’t have been able to read the script, but I was too far away to even make out the images, and I forcefully shoved my curiosity aside. If he was back onto researching a new hobby, or looking up some other useful information, then that was probably a good thing. He wasn’t drinking, he wasn’t ranting about how awful some aspect of life was, and he wasn’t trying to distract himself from reality. All in all, I considered, this seemed to be an improvement.

My master said nothing else to me until it was dinnertime. “You’re doing well with the cooking,” he said, after tasting the first bite of the pie. “Kade helped you make this?” He’d been aware that Kade was coming over, though he hadn’t actually seen the man while he was here.

“Yes, sir,” I admitted. “He says that humans like their vegetables to be firmer than many of the species I was taught to cook for. I was overcooking them before.” I said it not as an admission of failure, but simply as something to make conversation. I wanted to get him talking, though I didn’t really know where to start. I wanted to ask him what he’d been reading that afternoon, but didn’t think I had the right to pry into his private activities. I wanted to ask how he was feeling, but didn’t want to upset him, if he was on edge from the therapy session. He nodded, but didn’t reply.

“Do you have any particular plans for tomorrow?” I asked him, another attempt at benign conversation.

“No. Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know,” he said, poking at the food on his plate. “I thought I might go over to the military base. Have a chat to Henderson or some of the guys I used to work with. Not for anything specific, just to see what’s going on.”

“I thought you wanted to avoid the military,” I said cautiously. He hadn’t said a great deal about his former job over the past year, but none of the little he had said had been positive.

“Yeah. No. Sometimes. I just… I don’t know.” He didn’t seem to have anything else to say, so I let the topic drop.

The rest of the evening passed just as awkwardly. I cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, then went to sit on the sofa near my master. He didn’t ask me to curl up next to him, like he had before, so I kept to my own end, perusing a few recipes I’d found while my master continued reading whatever he’d been looking at earlier in the day. But I was acutely aware of the fact that he was spending as much time staring into space as he was reading, and I once again had to wonder what this new psychologist had said to him.

Finally, nine o’clock rolled around, and my master yawned, stretched, and stood up. “Time for bed,” he muttered. It wasn’t an order, but I stood up anyway. I’d been trained to follow my master’s schedule, and even if I hadn’t been, tonight, I wanted to keep an eye on him.

We both brushed our teeth, and having received no other instructions from my master, I headed for my bedroom. An inquisitive noise from him stopped me in my doorway.

He was standing in his own doorway, looking uncertain, while one hand squeezed the door frame a little harder than necessary. “Dax?”

“Yes, sir?” I said, heart thrumming in my chest. Was he actually going to ask me to…?

“Do you want to…” He stopped, as he so often did in the middle of a sentence, seeming to rethink what he was going to say. “Come and sleep in my bed tonight,” he said finally, and I felt my shoulders relax in relief. I’d suspected that was what he’d been going to ask, but also afraid he was going to change his mind before he got the words out.

“Yes, sir,” I said, a smile tugging at my lips. I followed him into his bedroom and stripped out of my clothes. I usually slept in only my boxer shorts, and after this morning, I didn’t think he’d mind sleeping next to me if I wasn’t wearing anything else.

Sure enough, he stripped off himself and lay down in just his underwear. I turned off the light and climbed in beside him, eagerly snuggling up against him when he put his arm around my shoulder. I draped my arm across his waist and closed my eyes, paying close attention to his breathing as I waited for him to fall asleep.

Half an hour later, my master was still lying there, as stiff as a board, his breathing shallow and uneven.

“Sir?” I dared to ask, lifting my head a little. “Are you well?”

For a long moment, he didn’t reply. Then his arm tightened around my shoulder, his fingers threading through my hair. “She asked me…” He stopped, and I waited. When he didn’t continue, I gently stroked a line up and down his chest. “She asked me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” he said eventually. “I’m thirty-two. By all reasonable measures, I’ve got another seventy years to live. It’s a long time to just be filling in the empty afternoons.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Aiden had been right – my master needed a hobby – but given his former career in the military, perhaps that wouldn’t be enough to keep him occupied. He couldn’t fly ships anymore – neither his mind nor his body would put up with the strain – but carving wooden figurines or taking dance lessons was not likely to provide enough purpose to keep him satisfied. Just like he’d described it; it was filling in time, rather than creating something useful.

“What did you tell her?” I asked. About a thousand suggestions instantly appeared in my mind, but I shut them all down. For all that I’d frequently got into trouble for voicing my opinions, I also understood when they were not helpful. No doubt my master had done a great deal of thinking on the topic himself, factoring in a thousand nuances to his situation that I was currently unaware of.

“I said I’d have to think about it,” he mumbled. “Then she said…” He trailed off again. He muttered a couple of curses, then pulled away from me. I experienced a moment’s panic, convinced he was about to kick me out of his bed for being a nuisance. But instead, he switched on the bedside lamp and sat up, running his fingers through his hair. “Aiden said I should find a hobby. And I’ve been twisting myself in knots trying to figure out what I wanted to do. None of the ideas I came up with sounded terribly appealing. But Cas – that’s the psychologist,” he explained. “She said that by my age, I already know what I like or don’t like. Which is not to say I can’t try something new, but it’s not like being a teenager and trying to figure out what career you want. I’m not starting from a blank slate, trying to brainstorm ideas. I’ve been enough places and seen enough different jobs to know what I enjoy doing. She said it’s more about recognising the barriers I’m putting in my own way.”

I listened intently, but I had little advice to offer. Dimari didn’t get any kind of choice about what career we wanted to have. I’d been told that I was going to be a domestic servant, and that was that.

“I grew up wanting to be a pilot,” my master went on. “I wanted to fly ships. And I did, for many years, and then I got promoted to Captain, and started running missions with a team under me, and it was… Up until a year ago, it was great. But I can’t do that anymore. I can’t fly and I can’t deal with the stress of going off-world. But…”

I tilted my head, hoping he would continue. No doubt he’d been tossing this idea around in his head all afternoon, though by the sounds of it, he hadn’t yet arrived at any firm conclusions.

“I can’t fly ships anymore, but that’s all I ever wanted to do. So what do you do when the one thing you were born to do doesn’t exist anymore?”

I sagged a little, having no more of an answer to that question than he did. I’d been trained my whole life to serve my master, and had suffered through a year of believing I was a failure at it. I was getting a second chance now, but given what my master had been through, a second chance for him wasn’t likely to come anything like so easily.

“That’s why I want to go back to the base,” he said, lying down again and switching off the lamp. “I don’t know if I could deal with working for the military again. But I think I want to find out. I want to be in that space and see how it feels. I want to do something useful with my life, not just hang around at community centres watching fathers teach their kids how to hammer in a nail. But at the same time, I’ve spent the past year doing everything I can to hide from life. Suddenly wanting to dive back into it just feels… weird.”

That, at least, I could say something useful about. “You don’t have to decide overnight,” I cautioned him. “But you have a direction you want to explore now. That’s progress.”

“But what if I go there and have a panic attack? Or what if I hate all the options available?”

“I’ll go with you,” I told him firmly. “And if you have a panic attack, I’ll help you through it. And if you hate all the options, then you’re in no worse a position than you’re in now.”

He sighed. In response, I snuggled in against his side again. He seemed more relaxed when he could feel me beside him. “It’s only about a week since Aiden first came to see you,” I pointed out gently. “Fixing all the problems is going to take time.”

“I know, I just…” He made a grumbling sound. “I’ve always been something of an overachiever.”

I smiled. I could imagine that, my master as a younger man, wanting to outdo everyone else in his pilot training class, pushing himself harder, and thriving on the successes that came with that effort. Even in the past week, he’d made remarkable progress in his own recovery. But I knew that rushing in headlong could often lead to exhaustion further down the track.

“Perhaps it would be wise to take this one decision at a time,” I said, making sure I offered the words as a suggestion, rather than an order. “And then, if anything isn’t working well, we can reassess.”

My master slid his arm around my shoulder again and kissed the top of my head. “Thank you,” he muttered into my hair. “You’re the best.”

I fell asleep listening to his breathing, as it finally evened out, unable to keep the smile off my face.