Lorien Loves Stohn

His Human Girlfriend

I shouldn't be doing this. I should not be doing this. I really should not be doing what I'm about to do. Sadly, these thoughts don't stop me from moving my legs forward and plopping down in the couch across from where John is sitting deep in thought.

"Uh, hey." I've been working up to this conversation for a week now. That's how long it's been since the day I kissed John and discovered my newest Legacy. We've avoided talking much, but haven't really been avoiding each other per se. Regardless, I can't mess up again. But I probably will. Manipulating someone's emotions (especially when you haven't even figured out how to do it) so they start automatically loving you isn't necessarily the brightest idea. "Hey." I repeat again, louder. Maybe he didn't hear me?

John very slowly looks up at me. He raises his eyebrows as he says, "Hello."

"I- uh, just wanted to say hi." I mumble, rubbing the back of my neck.

"Nine, we live in the same apartment. We trained together this morning. What did you come here to do?" John clasps his hands around his neck and lowers his elbows to his knees. Then, he drops his head. Almost like he's collapsed in on himself. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. It's then that I realize that I've chosen a horrible time to put my plan in action.

"What's wrong?"

"N-nothing." John says, trying to gather his emotions. "Why would you ask that?" Despite his attempts, his voice breaks and he squeezes himself, almost like he's trying to keep himself together.

I cross the gap between us and sit next to him, but I don't touch him. I don't need to mess this up any further. "John, I- I know that I kind of wrecked our relationship last week and-"

"Sarah's missing."

SHIT. That's what this is about. His human girlfriend. Dammit. "Oh." Is all I can manage.

John releases the tension he's been harboring and starts crying. "She's gone and it's all my fault! It's all on me. If I hadn't been so stupid...!" He keeps his voice level and quiet. The pain is written across his face as his eyes bore into the nothingness ahead of him. He's in agony because something happened to the love of his life. Little does he know, I'm silently dying because the one I love is hurting. In a perfect world, I'd lean over and kiss him and all of his worries would melt away. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. And I have to watch the guy I'm crushing on sit here in torment.

"How do you know she's missing?" I whisper to him, not wanting to hurt him, but desperately trying to piece together what happened.

"I- I've been keeping tabs on her. It just takes a single Google search. Today's newspaper from Paradise, where she lives, had an article about how- about how Sarah hadn't been home in a while... her parents are getting frantic. Her big brothers too... one even had a quote about how if I had anything to do with this, he'd murder me." He closes his eyes and curls back into his ball, holding himself together so he won't fall apart.

"Well..." I put in, "At least we know who'd win that fight." NOPE. Wrong thing to say. VERY MUCH SO the wrong thing to say.

John's body tenses as he turns toward me at a snail's pace. His eyes stare into mine. The usual swirling, rich blue in his eyes are replaced by a slate-pale-gray-blue that seems foreign and unfriendly. His eyes are red-rimmed as he manages to say, "I... deserve... to lose."

As he recoils once more, I run my hands through my hair. "Listen I- John, I- HOLY SHIT!"

John jumps up from his seat and takes a fighting stance immediately. He surveys the apartment, looking for any sign of a threat.

"No, chill, I'm sorry. It's just... You're blue! Like dark blue! I can see what you're feeling!" Finally! BK and John have been helping me try to exercise this new Legacy (which Bernie Kosar calls Sensium) for the past week. But, we haven't been able to figure out which of the Loric crystals helps me with it. So, we've resorted to waiting.

"Oh." John mumbles before sitting down again. I want to help him. I want him to be okay.

I imagine John laughing. Like the first time that we were kidnapped by Special Agent Walker and her crew. I was doing push-ups of all things while the law enforcement people tried to hold me down. I was laughing, and suddenly, so was John. I focus on that moment. I hear John's laughter. Except, it's really clear. Like super clear. It clicks.

I'm actually making John laugh. I look at him next to me. He's having a giggle fit. A frickin giggle fit. And he's green. Green's gotta mean something, right? Maybe it's the color for happy?!

"John?" I say, the corners of my mouth twitching upward.

"Sorry. I don't know what I'm laughing at-" He's cut off by another string of chuckles. "All the sudden I felt like laughing."

My concentration is waning at this point as I sit mesmerized by John's eyes. There's a surge of bright, happy blue, flooding into them, almost like a little heartbeat starting up. I gaze at him and he gazes at me. But John is still laughing. I need to make sure he doesn't stop.

So I focus on another memory. The way he looked when we first set foot in the apartment. The sense of wonder. The sense of awe. But most importantly, of safety and bliss. As soon as I focus in on the way his mouth stayed slightly open, and how his eyes darted around the room, John stops laughing.

At first, I fear I've done something wrong, but no, he's still smiling away.

"Hey, Nine?" John asks me, his voice no longer ever-so-shaky.

"Yes, Johnny?" I grin at him. The way his lips twist into the perfectly shaped smile is enough to send me over the moon and back.

"I say we go to a bar and live it up tonight."

"Hmm... you know what I say? I say hell yeah!"

Little did I know that everything would change that night.