He watched as Kechaiya turned her head away and insisted she was the one who'd wronged him. That she'd only run because she thought he didn't want her, and that she was sorry for ruining their meal.
But then, after he'd kept going, sudden anger flared in her tone and the doctor near shocked him right out of his chair. She blurted out something completely unintelligible, something from a different language altogether. It didn't sound flattering, that much was for sure, but Nov was given no time to dwell as Kechaiya ranted on.
Desperately trying to express herself, the healer waved her hands about to encompass what he could only assume was the orphanage itself and everything in it. Including Noven himself--a concept he was still struggling to grasp. Kechaiya emphasized that she didn't want to lose any of it, that she no longer wanted to run. What exactly she was running from, other than him, Nov was at a total loss. He knew nothing of her past. Was it something traumatic? An old enemy? Ghosts?
His words regarding himself, though...that seemed to infuriate the doctor more than anything else had. Which, in turn, left the cook more baffled than ever. He was only speaking the truth. Why would she--
And then it came. The torrent of bittersweet truth that Kechaiya had been holding back all this time. Nov may have heard similar versions in the past, but this was the first time anyone had ever laid it out so bluntly to him. She seemed to care fuck all for his troubled nature. The whole city was trouble in her eyes, Chai claimed, and Noven had been kind to the children and to her, despite her being a 'black eyed demon,' whatever that nonsense was about. Personally, the cook couldn't see how it was possible for someone who spent every one of her waking bells saving people's lives to be a demon of any kind. Unless it was the sort better known as a workaholic.
But that was only half the truth. Kechaiya spoke of her real reasoning next, inky gaze so fierce Nov found himself unable to look elsewhere. Apparently, she had been a slave in a place called Ahnatep. Nov had no idea where this was, though he guessed it was somewhere in the Eyktol, which meant Kechaiya had been running a good petching while before she made it all the way to Sunberth. Small wonder it became something of a habit, then.
The healer was practically drowning in misery and anger by the time she was finished. She had lashed out against him, and once that had run its course she was left with no choice but to push. Push him away so that she would no longer feel the pain. And, for a moment, Noven seriously considered letting her succeed. After all, it would have been for the best. Or at least that was what he'd been telling himself everyday since Mae's disappearance. To keep those he cared for at a distance. Or, better yet, stop caring about them altogether so any and all possible threats were completely eliminated.
But something about the way she insisted he didn't want to be kissed...the man found that it grated against a deeply buried sense of honor and pride. It almost felt cowardly, to let this woman go on thinking something that was entirely untrue, just so he could go on living his life of crabby, wretched solitude.
Kechaiya was mistaken, and that needed to change.
Nov reached forward to place his hands between her knees. He pushed them apart just enough so he could grip the front edge of her seat and pull the chair closer, until cook and doctor were almost nose to nose.
"I was wrong," he murmured, finding it harder to speak now that she was so close again. Seeing her flushed, tear-stained face so near made Noven feel like he staring into the aftermath of a storm. Some girls were pretty when they cried. Chai was not one of them. Instead, she looked wild and beautiful and raw in all of her agony and fury, like a force of nature unto herself. Nov found he liked that about her. That he liked a lot of things about her.
"You're not daft for wanting the likes of me. You're daft for thinking I'd do any of this--" he motioned at the table and flowers and pile of dirty plates in the sink, "--for someone I didn't want to be kissed by."
And then his lips found hers again, this time with the fearless abandon he had come so close to achieving before. Calloused hands brushed back her tangled hair and tears, stopping only to cup her face and draw it nearer. Noven was still mindful of the doctor's swollen side, though just barely, and tried to be as gentle as he could. But something in him had begun to cave and it made keeping his more animalistic side leashed wretchedly difficult.
It hadn't completely crumbled yet, though. The wall he had spend an entire year erecting. But there was a chink now in the stoic grey of its exterior.
And its name was Kechaiya.
(Keep in mind I can be slow with replies sometimes due to my offspring still being such a young one.)
