I Wish

Chapter 35

When I woke up again I was shaky, and off feeling but nothing hurt the way it had before. Ivy sat on the other side of the bed, wearing a completely different outfit than she’d been wearing the last time I’d woken up. I didn’t feel like death, but this feeling was horrible. 

“Are you going to stay awake this time?” she asked me passively, and I swallowed.

“How long?” I responded tonelessly. She looked down guiltily, and I let my eyes slide closed for a moment, and then shift to face her.

“Three days, are you feeling better?” Ivy responded, fiddling with the ends of a long strand of particularly silky looking hair. No, stop it. Bad brain, I scolded, we are currently having some serious issues. Eventually I had to stop being so blindsided by how attractive she was, right? Even in my head, I didn’t dignify that with an answer. 

“I still feel wrong. You took me somewhere where you consent to being drugged by just being there,” I told her, and she looked at me consideringly.

“And? What’s your point?” she said eventually. I groaned, it sounded painful, and rolled my eyes aggressively. There were so many things wrong with that, I didn’t even know where to start.

“Don’t you think that maybe you should have asked me for consent?” I asked her in a tone just dripping in disdain at having to state something that should have been so obvious.

“Oh, that’s okay. I consented,” she said with a nod, and looked rather pleased with herself. As if she’d just dodged some kind of bullet, and oh boy. That was angry, still not as angry as I’d gotten just looking at the smug look of king Kaede.

“What doe that have to do with anything?” I retorted in a near yelp, “Consent doesn’t work like that. You have to have it from the indivdual. You can’t give it for me.” That opened up a whole new series of terrifying and complicated problems if it was the slightest bit true. I really wanted it not to be true.

“I try not to freak you out too much, but you remember I’m your mate right? So consent from one of us works for either one of us,” she said with a shrug, “Don’t they have that in the human world?” The good new’s I got from all of this was that even if she believed this just plain damaged idea, it worked both ways. I could do it to, and that was what I held onto. As to not totally and completely lose my s**t.

“If you marry, or are the next of kin, and the person in unable to answer for themselves,” I informed her bitingly, “You still have to go through the individual, if at all possible. You know what works? Talking works, we would have to argue all the time if you could just learn how to have boundaries.”

“I don’t get it. I gave you what you wished for. I do my best to show up, and I rescue you from enemies. Taking the time to make sure the mistake they made is not one they are capable of making again. I’ve offered you a literal whole new world, and when you couldn’t trust it I took you to a place where you could stop panicking over everything and just enjoy yourself,” she said with a sigh, “If you don’t want to be taken care of, then what do you want? I’ve been listening to you, and I’ve been trying really hard, but I don’t know what you want. I really don’t, so if you could please explain it so I can understand that would be wonderful.” That little speech probably would have been much more telling if I wasn’t so busy cherry-picking out a single part of it to get offended over. Looking back, there really were tiny signs, and not so tiny ones, scattered through out all our interactions. I simply didn’t pay attention to them.

“What made you think that I need taking care of?” I demanded leavering myself up into a sitting position. Upright made me want to whimper and curl back into bed, wondering what the point to separating from the bed anymore than I absolutely had to.

“Because it’s what I would have wanted if I were you,” Ivy spat out tiredly, “I gave you everything I would have wanted in your stead.” That was heartbreaking, and made me want to reconsider how accurate this whole mates thing was if we could be so fundamentally not on the same page and still be somehow magically meant for each other.

“We’re a team. If you want me to go in on this, against any and all comers, then you need to start treating me like I’m a partner because the things you think are your right to decide for me is reserved for parent/child relationships,” I say before going right in with my closing argument, “Keep acting like my mum, and you’re never going to get any.”

“Any what?” she asked tilting her head to the side adorably. Focus. I merely stared at her until the penny dropped. “That’s on the table?” she almost sqeaked, and that really wasn’t helping her cuteness factor. This was worse than trying to keep a teacup Yorkshire Terrior in the dog house, because I was really going to crack at the rate this was going, and I was supposed to be panicking here. Not that I wasn’t.

“Nope. That’s completely off the table until you’ve let me go home,” I said, the idea sparking as it came out of my mouth, “Consider yourself regulated to above the waist, over the clothes kissing from here to the rest of forever. I’d been thinking twice about denying me my family.” I needed them, I had no idea beyond the basic’s what having s*x with her involved. In the worst case senario I’d have a couple of really awkward conversations with some people I would make swear to never bring this up again. 

“That’s cheating,” she pouted, “But I still get privillges? That means you want to stay for at least a while, otherwise I’d be cut off altogether.” I gave her a dirty look.

“One, if I told you that you weren’t touching me again because I was going to hold out against all that,” I said waving my hand in her general direction, “You would laugh at me, because I wouldn’t be able to say it with a straight face. Why? That’d be number 2, pick your bottom lip up before I bite it.” She looked at me in disbelief, laughing and seeming to untense just a bit.

“I always knew you only liked me because I’m pretty,” she said and the bitter undertone was telling.

“I like you because you’re fun, and you frustrate me because you make my decisions for me,” I said as honestly as I could, because this would never work if we could be honest. We’d gone over her apparent physical ability to lie often enough that I was surprised to find that I believed her. For the most part. “Also,” I continued, “You stole my name from me, and I can’t even be mad about it anymore because you weren’t wrong.” I didn’t like to admit that, but given how badly I’d been attacked in search of my name, not doing so would only be stupidity at this point. 

“Does that mean you aren’t going to throw a fit if I call you Rose?” she enquired, and I couldn’t tell what she was feeling as she said it. Not because there were to many emotions on her face for me to tell, but because there wasn’t any at all. At least she wasn’t gloating.

“See there’s another thing. You knew my favourite flower, and I didn’t tell you. Even if you’d been stalking me, there was no way you should have known. There are a lot of things that don’t add up like that,” I said choosing my words very carefully before making an executive decision, “I don’t want to know. Not now, it’s to hard. We have bigger problems.” That got an emotion, a startled sort of surprise, and she bit her lip before proceeding to give me every ounce of her attention.

“Okay, so the equinox is on the 21st,” she said anxiously, “I’ll take you home the day after, at five minutes after you left, and until the equinox passes you’d be on your own. Time with me, non-negotiable, and time without me non-negotable. You could make a choice, based on what you decide, and follow through with it because it’s what you think is right.” It cost her to say that, you could see it in the way she flinched. That sounded suspiciously like she was giving me an out… given how inconsistent with her personality that seemed, I didn’t understand.

“Big words,” I said taking a breath to give her words the weight they deserved, “So less than a month with you, less than a month without you, and then what?”

“I… guess I just hope that you make the decision that I want, but you’re trying here. It’s hard for you, and I have to try too,” Ivy said and it was sweet enough that the way she’d made no promises slip right on past me.

“So how about you tell me about his equinox then,” I said, because this all sounded to good to be true. Fact checking was definitely needed, because at the rate Ivy was going there were probably going to be some pretty lasting consequences to even going to this thing. Shame I was to stupid to be willing to give that the proper attention that it deserved.