I’ll Wait For You

Why did they even matter, anymore? Why did anything matter, except to have this man with her, by her side and in her, and to never let him go?

Four episodes of Vikings later, and at least one other happily successful attempt at s*x under Elinor’s belt, her mind wandered over the possibility of a tangible future with Kostya Vasilev. She felt sure, or at least, she hoped with all her heart, that he didn’t see her as something to get his rocks off.

Someone in his position, with the things he had lost, probably didn’t go around sleeping with anything that moved. He had been burdened by life in the way that made him grave, an old mind in a young body. Just like she found herself remembering things she once believed lost, she also witnessed the emergence of something in his eyes, in his obvious and yet adorable astonishment that things were going so well – that they had engaged in intercourse twice and neither seemed repulsed by the other. He considered it entertaining that after each s*x session, she insisted on grabbing something to eat.

“I can’t help it. I get horny, then hungry.”

“Or hungry and horny,” he said, as the credits of the fifth episode of Vikings rolled to a close.

“Does it matter which order it comes in?” She had said, chewing her way through a wedge of Babybel cheese.

“No,” He replied, kissing her forehead several times. He welcomed her affectionate cuddling, which also seemed to be a nice thing to do post-coitus, and they had also put their clothes back on, through the frayed buttons left his chest exposed to Elinor’s palm, which she put to great use.

They continued making small talk, until Elinor brought up the subject of what had bothered him so much earlier, because she sensed something off about him, some kind of repressed rage and frustration, especially when it came to the mention of his family. She had assumed, unfortunately, that he had grown up in a perfect household, never in want for anything, and belatedly acknowledged how childish that viewpoint was. Everyone was fighting battles in their corners of the world.

She just couldn’t see them all. Though she also privately thought that some people liked to exaggerate what happened to them. She disliked the kind of people who plastered their woes all over social media. That kind of sh*t just invited self-pity and sympathy, and cemented them as a victim of themselves, blaming the circumstances for everything, rather than taking a good look at the common denominator in the circumstances, or living in denial of the reality of things.

“It’s not anything special, what my family does,” Kostya eventually said. “It’s just the usual chaos when I associate with them.”