Something precious

Julia shot up from the bed and fumbled for the  off-switch of her blaring alarm clock. Click. The woman caught her  breath in the sudden silence A moment later she turned to check on the  blanketed body of Melodie Ashen, curled under the covers with hardly  anything but her wavy shock of dark hair left visible. For a moment  she'd hoped that the other one had not awoken, but Melodie stirred  sluggishly, bringing her forehead and one bleary eye to view.

„...w't time s'it...?“

„Too  early,“ Julia gave her lover a fond look, leaned down and kissed the  top of her head briefly: „You can sleep a bit more, I'll wake you up at  seven.“ Melodie replied with a vague murmur.

Julia  earnestly considered re-setting the alarm clock and submerging under  the blankets with her. To lay next to that warm body some more, only if  for another half an hour, another five minutes even. Reluctantly,  however, she left behind the heat of their bed and dressed with  difficulty.

She tiptoed to the refrigerator and  was hit with the scent of soured dairy. It had been weeks since anyone had last been to this apartment and neither had spent much  time in the kitchen last night. At this rate there was no point grocery  shopping anymore, as everything would mold before it could be used up.  The woman  grunted in displeasure and looked through the rest of the  kitchen for needed materials. Julias' left arm could still barely be  lifted at the elbow, but at least the prosthetic one was capable of  pretty sophisticated movement. Still, the search was clumsy and resulted  in multiple boxes of dried goods falling out of their respective  cupboards.

She quickly checked across the doorstep  whether the noise had awoken Melodie before beelining for the  livingroom phone. As much as the woman wanted to do this on her own she  needed materials. Julia unsteadily dialed her husbands' number by heart,  then waited patiently while the operator connected the call.

„Wright residence, mister Terry Wright speaking.“ uttered a man on the other end of the line.

„Good  morning, Terry, it's me,“ Julia chirped. The mans' sleepy, familiar  voice gave her an immediate sense of homesickness. She conjured an image  of Terry in her mind - tall, messy-haired and rubbing sleep from his  eyes, before continuing with her request: „Could you come over real  quick? I need some things.“

„Is something the matter?“ he asked, suddenly a lot less sluggish.

„Everything  is fine!“ she elicited a brief laugh to calm the man down, realizing  with a bang of guilt that he must've thought she was in trouble to be  calling at such an hour: „I need a cup of sugar, and maybe if you have  some milk left over...?“

There was a pause, followed by a sigh. „Is miss Ashen  r e a l l y  demanding baking supplies at six thirty in the morning?“

„No,  of course not. Look, I'm just making pancakes, of my own initiative.  Half the things are either missing or growing an ecosystem. Please,  please do me this favor, you can go back to bed afterwards. I only have  around seven before I have to wake her up for breakfast and  work.“

Another sigh „Fine, I'll be there in...10 minutes, that fine?“

„Sure,I  suppose.“ She thanked him, hung up, and got to work on gathering the  ingredients that were actually present. Despite her earnestness the mess  in the kitchen was only getting worse from the efforts. Turns out that a  bag of flour is very hard to manipulate with semi-workable arms, as are  open packages of coffee. By the time her husband let himself in twelve  minutes later the place looked like a battlefield in the aftermath of an  un-nutritious food war, with her in the middle of it trying to sweep  the worst up into a single pile.

He exchanged the  usual pleasantries while letting his gaze wander around the kitchen, stopping at the spilled coffee and flour, then rising to the small  victory standing on the stovetop „Oh, I see you've put the kettle on,“  Terry chimed, knowing from experience that remarking on the mess would just be rubbing his wife's injuries in. He put a paper bag on the counter, producing from it a jar, half a bottle of milk, some sugar and a  single pale-pink dahlia: „Got your missing groceries, and some jam.  Took a cutting from one of my plants while I was at it, since I thought  you might want to liven the table up.“

„Terry, how thoughtful of you...“

„Just  helping out on you doing the whole „romantic breakfast“ thing  properly,“ he smiled a bit and rushed to put the flower in an empty  vase: „How's your arm?“

The woman smiled back,  then flexed her fingers demonstrably, immediately dropping the broom  whilst doing so, „Feels pretty good today“ She attempted to pick the  broom off the floor, but couldn't force her digits to close around the handle with enough force no matter how hard she tried, reluctantly accepting Terry's aid in the matter. The prosthetic replacing her right arm was now limp and lifeless. Alas, part of the whole supernatural  cover-up meant that she was not allowed to show its' capabilities with „normies“ around, instead having to rely on the limited mobility of her  crippled left arm. Julia had come to feel, that she must seem mile-deep in denial to non-occultists and had thus started to avoid their company altogether in recent weeks. It had even become hard to talk to Terry, as the woman couldn't tell him the truth of what had happened to her. Even now, although glad to see the man, a part of her wanted him to leave.

„Thanks for the help, I think I can manage the rest on my own, the arm's just a bit stiff.“

„You  aren't going to kick me out yet, are you?“ Terry joked „I thought I  could help you make that coffee and pancakes, seeing as it's my day  off.“

„This is my attempt at a romantic gesture Terry, I should do it on my own.“

„It's the thought that counts, not who executes it. You'll get things done quicker with me around.“

„Why do you care whether your wife gets her lovers' breakfast done in time...?“

„Because  I care about your happiness,“ Terry replied without hesitations. He removed the kettle, which had started to boil, from the stove and kept  speaking: „Because miss Ashen seems nice, though a bit possessive at  times-“

„Oy!“

„-and I like  seeing things go well between the two of you,“ the man poured some coffee into two cups, not including one for himself „I think it's sweet  how you're putting effort into her.“

„Well, she's precious to me.“

„I know. I've never seen you light up near another person the way you do with her,“ Terry turned to his wife with a mirthless little smile: „I'm  just...just glad that, after what happened, you've got someone you can confide to. Even if that someone is not me anymore.“

The two shared a melancholic look at that, with Julia becoming painfully aware how rapidly they were growing apart despite knowing one-another  for twelve years. Her involvement with The Occultists, the contrast  between what had really happened and the falsehoods presented to Terry,  her own reluctance to play up traumas for the sake of the official  cover-story, even their extended absence from each-others lives during the second World War all contributed to the divide. They'd married, because neither had dared to face the world or their respective orientations without an ally by their side, and until recently a part of  that arrangement had been mutual honestly, which Julia just could not upkeep anymore.

After all, Terry was precious as well, just in a different way from Melodie. Julia cared for her husband as one would a best friend or a relative, and thus couldn't bear him to  get involved with the things that went bump in the night.

Similar  thoughts probably went through Terry's head as well, although he was  unaware of the nature of his wife's reluctance to spend time with him.  After a moment the man coughed and pulled up his sleeves „Tick-tock. 13  minutes to seven, we can still make it if we're quick. Let's do it like  this - you make the pancakes by ordering me about, I'm the manual labor.  What do I do?“

Julia glanced at the clock as well  and gave in, even smiling a bit as she did: „Alright. First, I need you  to take two eggs and crack them into that white bowl in the leftmost  cupboard...“

She couldn't blame him for putting in  effort to make her happy and the least she could do in return was cheer Terry up by allowing him to help. Even despite their perceived divide  she was still precious to him, and that would forever mean a lot.