Page 11 of Guiding Desire
Guardian Senlas let his head fall back. “You sure know how to reject a man, but noted. Col will have contacted your supervisor and everyone else who needs informing. I want to complain that he’s too damn chatty, but he’s selectively chatty and frightfully good at getting people to underestimate him.” He looked at Orrey. “Don’t tell him I said that. Follow my words, I don’t get people stumbling into me during the parade or elsewhere all that much. Let’s head upstairs, have a chat. I have a view and everything.”
Orrey knew he was at a loss and not in a position to object. Guardians weren’t in his very limited jurisdiction as a first-year protector to begin with, and he had stumbled into this one. “I suppose that’s fine,” he said, gaze lowering.
“Yeah. Come on. I’ll show you the way.”
Guardian Senlas was out of the vehicle faster than Orrey could currently move. The sluggishness only compounded the dizziness that hit him when he got out of the vehicle, and his sight cleared to find Guardian Senlas right in front of him, steadying Orrey by the elbow.
“Ah, that wasn’t… I apologize,” Orrey said.
“You do that a lot. Don’t have to. When you fuck up badly, you can apologize, not when you’re not feeling like a walled hall.” He hooked his arm around Orrey’s back, one hand approaching a sweaty armpit, which had Orrey move as fast as he could so the Guardian wouldn’t embarrass them both.
“It’s just polite,” Orrey said.
Guardian Senlas sighed and remained silent. Orrey could barely pay attention to his surroundings, although a cleaning bot in the garage drew his eye. The bot’s presence made him note how clean the space was, despite there being several more vehicles lined up here, private ones. That wasn’t normal for most garages under residential buildings, which saw most use from self-driving public transport vehicles.
Idiot. No Guardian would live in some common apartment complex,Orrey thought.
The elevator ride was quick, too quick for Orrey to let Guardian Senlas know there was no more need for that supporting arm. The elevator dropped them in a short, plain hallway that only had an emergency stairwell access door and one entrance door to an apartment, meaning the entire floor was one living space.
Yet again, not surprising for a Guardian, but all the same, Orrey found himself asking, “You do not live on the Grounds?”
He felt Guardian Senlas shrug. “I did for a while. People tend to not leave the Grounds much though, meaning it’s a smaller community, meaning everyone always gets very interested in what everyone else is doing. I like to have my privacy.”
“Ah,” Orrey said. He didn’t exactly think “wanting your privacy” would have been enough to drive him out of Argentea’s Grounds, which had been ranking in the top three G&C Grounds for over a decade now. Then again, living there was not ever an option for a regular like him.
Guardian Senlas put his hand on the scanner by the door, and they left the shiny floor and off-white walls of the hallway behind to enter into…Orrey wasn’t even sure.
The very first thing that drew his eyes was the wall across from the door, all black and lined with irregularly spaced shelves that held nothing more than roughly sphere-shaped objects in various sizes, all of them in varying shades ranging from gray to black.
The brighter and very high ceiling made Orrey crane his neck, which had him flinch on account of his headache and burned neck. It had ropes and hooks, also irregularly spaced, and somewhat concerningly, bags and bundles hung there, looking like they held heavy things.
“I keep books up there. Didn’t find a shelf I liked. Take your shoes off,” Guardian Senlas said, easily sliding his own off.
“You have books up there? As in, printed volumes?” Orrey struggled more but in the end stepped further into the room with only his socks on, which felt good. For the fact he finally was out of his boots for one, for another, because he’d stepped right onto a servi-floor, and it had been set to comfortingly soft. Walking had rarely felt so good.
“Yeah. I read mostly digital, but I like displaying them. Plus, it’s gotten to the point where prints have become a go-to present for people to give me, and I can’t throw out presents.”
Orrey followed the Guardian. “You’re not displaying them though,” he said before his words were stolen by the sight of the space beyond that shelved black wall which he now saw didn’t even connect to the ceiling, making it appear more like a very sturdy room divider.
Near one of the outside walls, the servi-floor turned to grass, looking a healthy, lush green. The wall was set to full transparency, and a large white sitting arrangement faced it, u-shaped and fluffy like a cloud. The couch alone was easily as big as the shared living space in Orrey’s protector housing. The outside wall was likely doubling as a screen, unless Orrey was missing something, and he well might have been.
The center part of the space was set to a harder floor type, and there were moldable chairs and seating cushions randomly strewn around on it. Also smooth cylinders of a solid-looking material that could serve as either stools or low tables. And several chunks of what looked like moldable material, the type Orrey knew from martial and self-defense drills, but these were even larger than person size.
Those chunks continued the black and gray theme while the chairs were cream or off-whites in varying shades. On the ceiling here, black tarps were weighted down with more stuff, presumably books.
“I like moving things around,” Guardian Warrak said. Orrey squawked when the smooth cylinders and moldables started moving of their own accord. “Easy, kitten.” He rubbed Orrey’s back.
“Of course. Telekinesis. I didn’t think you’d use that outside of dealing with Wild Hunts.”
The furniture—or whatever he was supposed to call it—stopped moving.
“Not the topic of the conversation.” He pointed to the couch. “Sit. Get comfortable.”
“But—”
“Please.”
Orrey looked at the floor. He’d opted for white socks, which looked unfavorable against the clean servi-floor, no matter that it was the gray of a summer sky after rain. “Of course, Guardian Senlas.”
