When Sarah Met Clyve, Part 2

You can read part 1 of this story here.

Sarah rolled over, curling into Clyve’s ever-present warmth.  She suspected that he’d found some dizzy, unnatural means of fending off the cold to better survive the winter nights of Washington, DC’s lonelier park benches.  He gave off heat the way a cat or a space heater did.  Lots better though.

His face was, strangely, less peaceful when sleeping.  His brow furrowed, his mouth turned, and his jaw clenched as he fought off whatever demons nighttime brought.  He woke easily half the night—probably a handy skill if you slept outside—yet couldn’t break free when his dark visitors got their claws in him.  When he slept, Sarah found it hard to remember his easy smile and the warmth of his eyes. 

Sarah studied him now in the morning sun.  Only a slight frown clouded his face then eased as he awoke to her migration on the bed.  He breathed deeply and curved his arms around her, starting to smile.  Her doubts over offering him space in her bed so soon after meeting seemed to melt in the heat of his body.  How could she have left him out there on his own, anyway?

And, of course, the elements weren’t her sole concern for his safety.  There were all of the dizzy things too.  Hechts, and who knew what else.  He’d shown her how to get some safeguards up around her apartment, but as long as he had no place to call home, Clyve couldn’t set those same protections around himself.  Sarah felt much better with him staying within the safe walls of her own home with its newly-acquired mystical wards.

If only she could afford him the same kind of security out in the world!  She’d racked her brain repeatedly over the last few days trying to figure out how she might be able to help him out in the dizziness department just as he’d helped her.  Her mind just kept coming back to the livre.  Surely there must be some answers in there!

Of course, Clyve wouldn’t let her anywhere near enough the thing to search it for some solution he may have overlooked.  Maybe she could find something to turn his life around, even if the livre couldn’t show her a way to completely un-dizzy them both.  He was just so damn determined not to expose her to the dangers of the book’s secrets.

She tried to forget about using the livre—she really did.  She tried to really listen when Clyve told her that life’s problems were best solved mundanely if at all possible.  She even tried to remind herself that the man just might know what he was talking about, but it was no good.

She had to see it.

She started to form a plan to get to the book.  She’d have to make sure he was asleep and stayed asleep so that she could get to the library when the light was just right and use the crystal he’d given her to retrieve the volume.  If she could just look at it for one night, she would have to find something to make his life better than it was now.

Sarah thought about where to start.  Clyve had warned her that in the hands of someone who was dizzy the ordinary became extraordinary.  She’d just have to find the right thing to do the trick.  Any time she got a spare moment at work, Sarah combed her little tienda’s shelves for something that might keep Clyve out cold for 24 hours if used with the proper abilities and imagination.

In the end, the unthinkable occurred and Sarah surprised herself with the boringness of her own idea.  As she left the store with a pink box of ultra-sleepy allergy medication and a tube of volumizing mascara, she sincerely doubted her ingenuity as well as the effectiveness of her plan.  Really, though, what more could she do than knock him out the good old-fashioned way?  She hoped the mascara would amplify the effects of the drug—especially since she was sure its taste would make it a million times harder to get him to take the medicine in the first place!

Now she’d only have to come up with a way to brew her concoction without arousing his suspicions.  The one good point about her plan was that the ingredients looked innocent enough.  She was practically notorious for being allergic to the world as a whole, and what man would question a simple tube of mascara in her purse or a drawer?  How to mix them though….  He had no job for her to send him off to, but maybe she could send him on an errand?

Yes!  Perfect!  An errand!  She’d send him to the store to get a jicama!  Or something….

“Well, hi, there!” Clyve chirped as soon as Sarah let herself into the little apartment.  He was beaming from behind the kitchen counter, where he appeared to be making his own fruit leather.  A pang of guilt went through her.  He was doing this for her since she’d gotten on a fruit leather kick lately, making “breadless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches” with it in order to avoid loading up on junk at a vending machine or buying galetas cookies while at work.  She couldn’t believe she was about to do an end run around this thoughtful man.

“Hi!” she greeted him as she kissed his cheek and dropped her bag on the table.

“Been shopping?” he asked with a fond expression playing on his features, as the shopping bag peeked out of her purse.

Damn.

“Actually, I was wondering if you could run to the pizza place and grab us something to eat tonight?”

She saw him raise his eyebrows for the briefest moment before his amiable and trusting nature got the better of him.

“Sure,” he said.  “Extra-super-mega veggie?”

“Yes, but see if they’ll add prunes, pleases?”  Again, the eyebrows.  “There’s a new study out that they burn belly fat,” she explained sheepishly.

“Say no more,” he grinned and planted a kiss on her forehead before throwing on his moleskin and heading out the door.

Oh, there’s going to be a lot of guilt to work through over this.

He’d hardly shut the door and she was banging around in her cabinets looking for something to camouflage her questionable tincture with.  She settled on pomegranate juice and rum.  It’d have enough color and flavor of its own to hide the mascara at least a little.  She ground up the allergy pills under a frying pan, punctuating the action with impatient little hops here and there.  The real challenge was getting the mascara out of the tube.  She’d bought a particularly viscous formula, and she had to bang it forcefully on the edge of the coffee mug she was pouring it in.

As she completed one last satisfying bang, she heard Clyve’s step in the hall.  Sarah scrambled noisily to get everything but the drink and the fruit leather out of sight.  As his key turned in the door she panicked and poured a drink for herself, realizing how odd it’d look if she’d only made alco-mug between the two of them.

Clyve came in balancing a bag of prunes on top of the pizza box.  Apparently the pizzeria hadn’t gotten the prune-belly-fat memo.  That was just as well if she wanted to spend her knocked-out boyfriend time raiding the library rather than its bathroom.

“Thanks, Clyvet,” she purred as she let him wrap his arms around her.  She closed her eyes as she felt his face in her hair and the warmth of his chest, then she took a deep breath.  “I made you a drink.”