Payne
“Here you are, Sir. Is there anything else that I can get for you?” I asked as I delivered the room service tray to the guest who’d ordered it, before wheeling my cart to the next door.
It squeaked, like one of the wheels needed to be oiled, only I couldn’t focus enough to figure out which one so I could leave a post-it note on the cart when I returned it to the kitchen. I couldn’t focus, despite having been given a task that required nothing more from me than to read the numbers on each dome and drop the meals off.
For almost a week, I’d been delivering room service trays, refilling implement cabinets, and haunting the Dungeon hoping to catch a glimpse of the two men I was desperately waiting to see get their heads out of their asses. I needed them to sort out what seemed to be a longstanding issue between them and lay it to rest because I hadn’t drawn since the cabin. I’d barely managed to photograph the cartoons I’d drawn of them as movie critics, leaving behind a few splotchy tear marks on several of them, because it broke my heart to remember them so beautifully happy and wrapped up with one another, just being themselves for me.
And because I’d come to know them, even in that short time, I knew it hadn’t been an act for my benefit. I knew they loved one another and I’d felt in my soul that they were falling in love with me. So, I trusted them to fix this, while I tried to lose myself in my work, but I couldn’t find the same joy and contentment in the acts as I’d experienced while serving them.
Maybe because passing some random stranger a tray just resulted in a brief and hurriedthank youwhile they rushed to attend to the person on the other side of that door. The one who actually mattered to them the way I had to Master Thorin and Master Wylde. I had to believe that I still did. I had to believe that they were working on it. I had to believe that I could trust them because I’d glimpsed what we could be to one another and refused to settle for anything less.
And maybe because deep down I strongly believed in fairy tales, and I wanted my happy ending. I wanted the men who scrolled through steampunk clothing on a website simply because I’d dropped the idea of a steampunk cowboy supper and having Master Wylde play songs while we sprawled on the lawn, listening to the coyotes’ howl in the distance, because their songs were as beautiful as the ones we’d been singing. I wanted Master Thorin’s off-key voice slightly wobbling when he tried to hit the high notes, and I wanted Master Wylde to nudge him again and give him shit about the coyotes trying to drown him out, because the way they’d smiled at one another in that moment was a memory burned in the back of my mind along with every other one we’d shared. I wanted the fun and the flirting and the unexpected twists and turns of a roleplaying session, even the ones that didn’t involve dressing up.
I wanted the sound of the dice rolling across the table and the sometimes impressive stream of curses that followed a botched saving throw. I craved the looks on their faces when they were plotting new surprises for me, and I longed for the nightsstretched out between them, their fingers tracing lazy patterns on my skin while we talked.
I wanted a life with the men I’d fallen in love with.
That’s all.
Was that too much?
I tried to think about what my old man would say if I asked him. Would he tell me to give someone else a shot when they approached me in the Dungeon, or would he tell me to trust my heart and wait?
Breathing, I took a moment to center myself and listen for the echo of his voice in my mind.
He’d tell me to wait.
And find the damned WD-40 and spray the hell out of all the wheels before the cart drove me out of my mind. I wanted to holler, stomp, and kick the fucking thing, only all that would do was hurt my foot, and my Doms weren’t around to make it better. They weren’t around to coax me away from my task with a trip to the petting zoo, and since I actually had a solid schedule with hours I had to complete, I couldn’t even try to find my way down there myself because there would be more trays in the kitchen for me to deliver when I got back there. So, I needed to stop thinking about WD-40 and kicking things and get these last three trays delivered so I could go back for the rest and keep the guests happy since I couldn’t make myself happy right now.
By the time I finished my shift, I was a prickly mix of mind-numbingly bored and restless, so I decided to make that trip to the petting zoo, without the sketchbook and pencils that I knew I wouldn’t use. I wanted to sit with the animals, feed them, and maybe pour my heart out to critters who would just oink and baa and nuzzle my hand with moist, velvety noses.
The chickens greeted me with clucks and squawking when I didn’t scatter the feed for them fast enough. The really bossy one, whose name I couldn’t remember, flapped her wings at mewhile she complained and hopped about until I sprinkled more on the ground and let them have it. She really was a demanding little thing, but I liked that about her. When it came to eating, she had a one-track mind. Cooing at her and telling her how pretty she was did nothing to deter her from her squawking when she knew I held what she prized in my hands.
Watching her happily strut around afterward made me smile. I pictured it as her victory dance and strutted with her, giggling because I knew it was silly, but I needed a dose of that. The next thing I knew, two of the other hens had joined in, or maybe they were just busy scouring the ground to see if any of the other hens had left a kernel behind.
I smacked a hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t laugh too loud at the memory that popped into my head. I’d been ten, and Dad had taken me with him to the wedding reception of two of the animators at the company he worked for. Sitting at the table had been kind of boring, with a bunch of adults talking about work and the price of things, but when the dancing started, I quickly learned that the only dance my old man could do was the chicken dance, even when he was supposed to be doing the macarena.
Laughing like he was having the time of his life, he’d flapped his arms, turned, wiggled, dipped, and tapped his thumb to the rest of his fingers like a chicken beak until I’d dashed out there and joined him.
Dancing chickens still occupied my thoughts when I returned to my room at the suites, filled with boxes and all the things I hadn’t unpacked so I wouldn’t have to pack them again when Master Thorin and Master Wylde came for me.
They’d come. They would.
Not having a bunch of things to shove back in boxes and suitcases would just make moving out easier, so there they stayed, a reminder that I’d put my foot down because it wasimportant and that I was holding out, like bossy Matilda—the hen whose name I’d not only remembered but was the subject I was determined to draw today.
Lamp on, sketchbook open, a trip of pencils at the ready, all I had to do was park my ass in the chair and start.
So then why was I standing in the room, staring at the end table I constantly had to move so it worked as a desk, eyes darting from it to the uniforms hanging neatly on the closet door, each identical and sad compared to my cosplay clothes?
Focus, Payne.
Only I couldn’t focus, and the page remained blank, so I closed the sketchbook and flopped face first onto the bed, kicking my feet like a petulant child. I needed something to help take my mind off the men I didn’t have.
Or maybe what I needed was just a different place to draw.
The room, the boxes, the uniforms, of course I was struggling in here. It was a reminder of the left turn things took that last day at the cabin.
Yup, a change of scenery was in order.