Chapter 6 .:Employment:.

.:Employment:.
Identity: Kestrel Falconer
Date: March 20th, 2022

My eyes closed, lying on my side. In my mind are the last swimming wisps of a dream, clinging to unconsciousness, fading away like lingering smoke. They disappear completely when the weight shifts on the bed and my conscious mind takes over my dream state. I don't open my eyes yet. I feel Rook softly kissing my cheek, leaning above me. I can feel his breath against my skin. He strokes a strand of my hair with his fingers and pulls himself in closer to me, whispering into my ear. "You're beautiful, you know."
I roll over onto my back, breathing out and opening my eyes. I look up at him. His hair is dark, straight, his eyes silver, a soft and almost translucent color, not like the dark stormcloud-gray of Arrow's eyes.
"Good morning," He whispers, kissing my forehead. "I didn't mean to wake you."
It is barely light outside, the sun lingering at the very bottom of the horizon, a thick saturation of clouds around it. I blink at Rook. "It's fine." I tell him. "Evi would have woken me up soon anyway. Do you need me to drive you to work?"
Rook sits up in bed, yawning and shaking his head. "No, Hunter's taking me today." He pushes the blankets off of his legs and wraps the bedding around me, kissing my cheek again as he does. I roll over and watch him as he dresses, collecting his clothes off the floor, shaking them out. He pulls on clean jeans and a t-shirt before pulling a pale-blue dress shirt around his shoulders. He does up the buttons with one hand as he smooths his hair with the other. He flares out the collar and picks up a tie off the dresser, gazing over it for stains. After a moment he arranges the tie around his neck, straightening it out, and then turns to me.
I sit up in bed, pulling the blankets around my shoulders, sitting on the side of the bed. Rook steps closer and I lean over to him. He flips the collar of the shirt back down as I cross the tie over itself, beginning the Windsor knot. He's never known how to tie one properly. I wonder who tied his for him before I was around. As I straighten the knot up around his neck, the sound of a car horn announces itself from outside.
"That's Hunter," Rook says, jumping back. He tightens his belt and darts out of the room, eager with the punctual efficiency he's always had. "Bye,"
"You need me to pick you up this evening?" I call after him, crossing my legs.
"No. See you, Kes," His voice calls. I hear the door flung open. And then in a moment his hurried footsteps suddenly stop, frozen. I hear a slower pace coming back down the hall. Rook peeks his head in through the doorway. He has his jacket around his shoulders, his shoes pulled on and untied. It's a way I love to see him, the small subtle casualties, like a preteen on his way to school, too distracted by life to worry about shoelaces or the fact that the hood of his coat is splayed awkwardly over one shoulder. "Hey, Kes?" He says slowly, blinking his pale silvery eyes.
I am already smiling at him. After all the years of knowing him, of being with him, I still love how I can stop his tirade of urgency, how he does it so deliberately, almost as if to let me know he cares this much.
"I love you," Rook says, his voice as sincere as ever, his soft eyes obscured behind his still-ruffled dark hair. In front of the house, Hunter honks the car horn again. Rook remains unshaken, as if he hasn't heard it, and blinks those familiar eyes again at me.
I am smiling more, now wishing he didn't have to leave. "I love you too. See you this evening."
And then with a shared blink, he is gone, disappeared from the doorway of our bedroom. I hear the front door close and after a moment, the rumble of Hunter's car driving away. I lie back against the headboard, the solely awake resident of the household, thinking about the evening when Rook will return.
Rook currently works for a company that buys and distributes various chemicals, in some cases rarer pure elements; these products are used mostly for lab work. The company receives most of its sales via the Internet these days. Rook is mostly in charge of stocking, as well as customer relations--i.e, figuring out if the sale is relevant, who's buying it, for what purpose, et cetera. He spends a lot of time at work on the phone. He had no trouble booking the job, when he first discovered it three years ago--because of his prior employment, his resume would be difficult to refuse. It's the longest employment Rook has kept since we both left the A.T.P six years ago and it went under. We would have quit much earlier, with everything that was going on--but we had the kids to worry about. When we finally did leave, everything was fine for a few months--financially, that is. In the next three years that followed, Rook had several unsteady jobs, one after another, sometimes overlapping; I couldn't work at the time because Evanthe was still very little. The situation was complicated; however, we got by. Eventually Rook was able to grasp a steady job at a well-managed facility, and here we are. The pay is fair, not spectacular, but good considering the economy these days. We get by. The hours are somewhat irregular, varied across the week and sometimes time off over the weekends is not guaranteed. Rook doesn't mind too much. He's adaptable.
As for me, I sometimes work part-time as an assistant at a bio-research facility. Ever since Evi, though, spending a lot of time away from home has been difficult. She can be extremely dependant sometimes. Even at her age now, she hates to be left alone, especially if she has to be separated from me for hours at a time.
It still feels strange, though, working away from Rook. It was how we met, after all--I was his research assistant.
I still think of myself that way sometimes. I am here just for him.

How long has it been? Nearly twenty years since we first met at the facility. At the time, it was a well-respected and trusted place. I was seventeen; it was my father who got me the job there. He had connections. And at the time I didn't know how or why.
After my tedious, week-long orientation, I was finally assigned to work as an assistant. I didn't even know the name of the man I was to be working for until I first met him. I was expecting him to be someone older, fastidious and ignorant.
Instead it was Rook. He was only three years my senior.

Author's Note

I'm not sure this chapter is even necessary. Most of the chapters need to be reviewed/edited/redone.