Chapter 7: The White Orchid

Cas looked at his phone, at Sophie's contact information, and sighed through his nose. She'd been having such a hard time ever since he'd known her. Two years ago he'd thought she was just quiet. Detail oriented. He hadn't paid much attention, what with being very focused on job training. His boss Joste was rather more aggressive than Keith, but provided more instruction. He was a little micromanagey, actually. It had taken a few weeks to get used to his sudden and urgent needs, to learn to anticipate them. Sophie had been very kind during that time, suggesting he make calibration curves and quality control samples before Joste asked for them, then checking his calculations. It was a welcome relief when he got into the habit. Keith liked to be in the lab as much as possible and often worked alongside Sophie, and as such was a constant nag. Joste would burst in unannounced and demand progress, then go off for about five minutes on what he wanted to happen next. The upside was he could take more unnoticed breaks than Sophie, the downside was he had to develop an exceptional auditory memory. Again Sophie had impressed him, reminding him of Joste's instructions for the first few months as he got his feet under him.

      Honestly Cas had not paid much attention to Sophie at first, but she just quietly helped him anyway. The first thing that struck him was how smart she was, meticulous and analytical. The way she held the pipette in one hand and steadied it with the other, the careful control of her thumb as she dispensed the liquid. The way she always remembered to check the caps on every vial of blood before she vortexed it. The way she caught errors in his calculations and corrected them with a smile. It was a year before he started to notice other things. Her dark curls that formed perfect ringlets down her back. He wondered what they looked like loose about her shoulders. Her eyes, hazel and bashful, the way they would dart around, meeting his then skittering away. The contrast between those hazel eyes and her skin was beautiful. Her soft, shy smile… was beautiful. That thought occurred to him and was quickly followed by the observation that there was a sadness about her. Even though she was always smiling and working, something about her was sad. He'd wanted to make her forget that. He wanted to make her smile in earnest. Two years later Cas found he wanted to be close to her.

      Which brings us back to the present, with Cas looking at his phone. Tonight was the night she was going to have her parents over. In retrospect it had been terribly bold for him to invite himself; he'd gone back to the lab just flushed with shame. It was probably for the best that she'd turned him down. Who did he think he was? Trying to meet her parents before he'd even asked her on a date. At the time he'd just thought about his own parents and how well behaved they were around other people. He'd been thinking that, if he was there, her parents would be unable to give her any business. Cas had not considered the implications of his presence beyond that. Because Cas was an idiot. He sure was thinking about it now, relieved that he wasn't there and at the same time kind of wishing he was. She'd been so nervous- was always so nervous. He hoped it was going well. He wanted to call to see if it was going well. Would it be so bad? Calling her? He knew instantly that the answer was yes, that she'd given out her phone number in a professional context and calling her for personal reasons, unsolicited, was an abuse of her trust. Still…

      "Bro, do we have any milk," asked a loud voice from behind him, followed by the sound of the refrigerator opening.

      "No," Cas called back, not bothering to look up from his phone. "Finished it this morning. We'll have to buy more."

      "Bro."

      The disappointment was palpable in Cas's roommate's voice. Ben had been Cas's college roommate over at the local four-year college. They'd studied biology together and had gotten each other through many an all-night cram session. Ben had been premed but had bailed on that after organic chemistry. Cas had wanted to go into wildlife before organic chemistry, then found an interest in small molecules. Organic chemistry is a defining moment for all who take it; no one is ambivalent about organic chemistry. Anyway they'd both stuck with biology and, upon graduating with no small amount of debt into a poor economy, had decided to stay local and continue rooming together. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement and honestly, Cas found Ben to be pretty funny. Not so good about the dishes, but funny. Ben filled a glass with water from the sink, then came up behind Cas. Slid an arm around his shoulder and looked down at his phone.

      "That her," he asked, gesturing with his glass to the contact information.

      "Who?"

      Cas played dumb, shifting under Ben's weight. Ben leaned more heavily on Cas's shoulder and extended a pointer finger towards the phone. He spoke right into Cas's ear.

      "The girl from work."

      "I work with a lot of girls."

      "The one with the hair, you priss. That her or not?"

      "Yes, this is Sophie," Cas confessed after a long moment, looking to his left as if someone there could offer him council. "She's having her parents over for dinner."

      "Oh how very responsible."

Ben was mocking her and Cas didn't appreciate it.

      "Don't be such a jerk," he snapped back, shrugging out from under Ben and standing. "You only wish our place was clean enough to have parents over."

      "The day I ship my parents out here for dinner is the day I die."

      Cas turned to face Ben, folding his arms and leaning on the table. Ben, in turn, smiled knowingly, gestured around to his filthy kingdom, and raised his water glass. Toasting himself and his lack of cleanliness. There were stark lines that crisscrossed that kingdom, areas that were Cas's domain. They were tidy, here and there. Half the couch had the cushions pushed out and the throw pillows on the floor, the other didn't. Half the dishes were on the drying wrack, the other half were soaking in the sink. Down the hall a shirt lay on the ground at the threshold to one room, while the door to the other room was closed. The bathroom got cleaned biweekly, a compromise for both of them, but other than that they'd divvied up the space quite evenly. Chaos and order coexisting under the same roof. Ben would bring home girls sometimes, but even that didn't inspire him to clean. One day there would be a reckoning, but for now Cas was content with Ben keeping his mess on his side of the room. Mostly.

      "What if my parents came over? Would that inspire you to use a vacuum?"

      "Maybe," Ben said playfully, taking a large gulp of water. "If you asked nicely. Anyway, you're changing the subject. What about the girl?"

      "Sophie?"

      "Yeah, her. You gonna ask her out or what?"

      "You know we work together," Cas chided, giving Ben a judgmental look as if he hadn't been thinking about the same thing for weeks now. "It wouldn't be professional."

      "To hell with professional!" Ben finished his water and went back into the kitchen, setting his glass by the sink. He put one hand on the counter and the other on his hip and tucked his chin so he could look up at Cas suggestively. "You like her. I've been hearing about it forever."

      "And yet you still don't know her name."

      "Bro, I wasn't listening. Anyway, you should just do it. Worst thing that happens is she says no, right?"

      "Worst thing that happens is it ends badly and we have an HR situation. Which is not cool, in case you were wondering."

      "I've dated girls from work and it was fine."

      "You've slept with girls from work and it was fine. Some of us are looking for more than a one-night stand."

      "You sound like a chick. See, she'll dig that and it'll be fine."

      "Ben…"

      "Okay, $20 says you wuss out and don't ask her out at all."

      "Then it'll be like you paid me to ask her out!"

      "Bro if a little action will offend your delicate sensibilities you can just pay up now," Ben said with a taunting smile, holding up his hands defensively.

      Cas made a face and looked back down at his phone, which he'd left on the table. The screen had gone dark but he knew Sophie's contact information was still pulled up. Her number just waiting for a call or a text message. Ben had slept around at work and if anything was likely to cause an HR problem it was that. Nevertheless, it had been fine thus far. And Sophie was so sweet; as long as he was a gentleman what could possibly go wrong? It could just be drinks between coworkers if she wasn't into it, which was a perfectly normal thing, right? People went out for drinks all the time… The idea of spending some alone time with her, of getting to know her without Holly or Keith around, or Joste bursting in, it was very enticing. Very tempting…

      "You know what," he said decisively, picking up his phone and returning it to his pocket. "You're on. I'll take her out this week, you just watch. We are not coming here though. The last thing I need her to see is you walking buck naked down the hall or whatever other stunt you're bound to pull."

      Ben's smile widened and he took a bow. Cas shook his head, but did grin a little. Waving, he started off towards his bedroom. He needed to plan how he was going to do this without his other coworkers knowing and inviting themselves. Holly had some tact but Keith? Keith was a pretty good scientist with absolutely no personal sense. No this had to be a surgical strike; he had to get Sophie alone. God that sounded creepy…

      "Pics or it never happened," called Ben after him, wiggling his eyebrows even though Cas couldn't see.

      "Yeah yeah," Cas shot back.

~

      Sophie sat on her couch with her legs tucked under her and her coffee held in both hands. It had almost gone well, almost been a success, but then she'd lost her temper and ruined it. She took her insecurities out on her mother; that was something she knew intellectually. But she could never get past the voice in her head that was doing, that insisted she wasn't projecting. The one that thought everyone was angry with her all the time. It had taken years, but she'd come to compromise with that voice most of the time. Not when it came to her mother. No, with her mother she had to poof up like a puffer fish at the slightest provocation. She had to put her dad in an awkward situation knowing how much he hated it. She couldn't be expected to keep her cool. Now she'd had her first restless night that was not due to nightmares, but strictly due to pure anxiety. What had they talked about in the car ride home? What could she expect from them moving forward? Would they revoke funds and ask her to move back home?

      But I can't leave, she thought passively, letting her coffee get cold. It's not allowed.

      It struck her what an odd thought that was. Not allowed by whom? Her nervousness around the house had all but vanished with the nightmares. Since that weird dream of blood and wooden floorboards. So recently it could be measured in hours rather than days. Maybe her focus had just shifted to her parents, but Sophie didn't think so. There was something about this house, something that made her feel like she couldn't leave. Couldn't go back to the way things were. The Eight of Swords… And the Tower before that. Being trapped. Disaster. So then why didn't she feel fear? Why had she woken up this morning and felt a greater sense of terror at the prospect of being asked to leave than at the man made of smoke who'd been haunting her dreams? What was this feeling of… attachment. Not so much that she was attached to the house, but that it was attached to her.

      She closed her eyes and listened to the silence. To the stillness, the house breathing. There was a hum of appliances in the kitchen. Outside a car drove by. But under that, beneath the things she could hear, the house was pulsating. It had a heartbeat too. It had… a hunger to it, something she could feel in her own stomach. But a hunger for what?

      Sophie opened her eyes and inhaled sharply. This was no time to be indulging such wild fancies; she had to go to work. Moving into the kitchen, she dumped her coffee down the sink and rinsed out the mug. Then it was a practiced series: grab lunch, deadbolt the door, open the gate, back up, close the gate, get on the road. She was halfway to the highway before she noticed something strange: the classical music was boring. And not just a little boring, it was annoying. It was not soothing her aggravation the way it normally did. Messing with the dial, she kept one hand on the steering wheel, her eyes on the road, and merged onto the highway while looking for a new radio station. Everything was pop music and commercials. She flipped through stations continuously for fifteen minutes before she caught herself.

      What am I doing, she thought, pulling her hand away from the radio and forcibly replacing it on the steering wheel. This isn't safe.

      Licking her lips and inhaling deeply, she allowed one final sojourn to the radio to turn off the sound system entirely. Then, gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands, she tried to recall how she'd gotten to be where she was. She couldn't. And she was right up behind the guy in front of her. Braking, she established a three second following distance and she maintained it for the remainder of the drive. It was hard, her car seemed to have more momentum than the car in front of her, but she did it. She pulled into her parking spot under the light at work, bit into her lip in an attempt to focus around the pain, and went inside. As usual Dr. Kern was in his office and the lab was dark. She picked up her safety glasses, pulled on her lab coat, and went about her morning routine. Flush the eye wash station for a minute. Initial and date. Run the safety shower to get the chunks out. Initial and date. Calibrate the balances and then the pipettes. Normally she found all this a little relaxing, the repetition of it, the precision, the quiet. Today she felt agitated and distracted. She chewed her lip as she calibrated the ten microliter pipette, taking special care to deposit the droplet of water into the weigh boat and close the sliding door on the balance.

      "Morning Sophie," came a voice from behind her.

      Inside her chest her heart sprinted for a short distance and she twisted her head and closed her eyes in an attempt to calm it. It was Cas's voice; Cas was in early. Or was she late? She was so sure she'd made it out on time but had to confess to being distracted. She hadn't even done her morning Tarot draw. Pushing her safety glasses up her nose with her wrist so as not to touch her eye with her gloved hand, she looked over her shoulder and smiled. He grinned back at her and ran his ungloved fingers through his hair. His chin was tucked towards his chest and he looked… a little bashful. Holding up a finger, she looked back at the balance and recorded the mass of the water droplet in the calibration log. Within acceptable parameters, as was expected. Sophie ejected the tip into the trash and moved past Cas to return the pipette to its stand. Then, leaning her back against the countertop and putting her gloved hands in her pockets, she smiled at him again.

      "Morning Cas. You're in early."

      "Yeah," he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah, I wanted to ask how dinner went. You know, with your parents."

      "Oh it was fine."

      The lie tasted bitter in her mouth and she found she couldn't meet his eye while she told it. Couldn't look into that black gaze that saw right through her, into a place she didn't know existed. It was always so strange to be seen by Cas, to sense him perceiving something quite beyond her control. He was doing it now, tilting his head to the right, looking her full in the face, and letting his lips turn downward. Was she so transparent or was he perceptive? Was there a difference? The silence sat stagnate between them, the hum of the hoods and the low buzz of the lights. Cas was monolithic in the stillness and Sophie, well, Sophie crumpled. Her lips parted and she took in a sharp breath. Her tongue traced the edges of her teeth, pressing into them until pain yelped at the edge of her nerves. She decided how honest she wanted to be. He looked very earnest, genuinely interested in her and her feelings. His eyes were like pits into a void, but it was a warm void, a place where she felt safe. A place where she didn't have to lie.

      "It was not fine…" Sophie rounded her shoulders and pushed her hands deeper into her pockets, tucking her chin and looking up at him. "It was mostly fine. I bought a table. I made a nice dinner. Things were going well and then my mom…"

      "I get it," Cas said with a reassuring nod. "Mom's can be really hard."

      "She just… she always finds the one thing I'm not doing well." Sophie pulled a hand out of her pocket and held it up, pressing her fingers together as if to hold that one thing. "And she just… picks at it."

      "You know my mom," Cas offered, running a hand through his hair again. "Asks when I'm going back to school every time I talk to her. She wanted me to be a doctor, you know? And I, um, I'm good where I'm at. We disappoint out parents, all of us. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong."

      "No, I am," Sophie said, dropping her gaze to the ground, pursing her lips, and shaking her head. "The problem with my mom is she's always right. About everything."

      She wasn't sure when it had started, but heat had built up in her face and there was a wetness in her eyes. Her vision swam and, when she said that last part, a tear broke free of her eyelashes. Frustrated, Sophie looked away, using her wrist to wipe away the wetness. It was not super effective.

      "Well she's not right about you." He said it with a little too much force and brought up his hands, hoping he hadn't offended her but at the same time wanting to be clear. "I mean, I'm sure your mom's great. But you're great too. We live in a crazy world and you're holding it together. More than that, you show up here every morning and you calibrate everything even though you don't have to. This place would fall apart without you."

      "Really?"

      She curled her lips upward in just a tiny smile and blinked those hazel eyes at him, twisting her head. Cas fed off that smile, the vulnerability of it, the way she was looking at him like she was going to believe him. This idea that he'd done something to make her happy, said the right thing at the right time. In Cas's head he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close. Pressing her hips into his. He used his other hand to grab her chin and tilt her face upwards. Then he very tenderly pressed his lips against hers. She, of course, was super into it and would deepen the kiss. Then, when they broke apart for air, he'd ask her out. Exactly none of that happened. Instead, Keith burst into the lab, still buttoning up his lab coat.

      "Caspian," he greeted in a booming voice. "Where are your gloves? Remember, blood's a biohazard. You need to have gloves on whenever you're in here."

      "Yeah, sorry," Cas sighed, disappointed as he reached around Sophie to grab a pair of large nitrile gloves. Their bodies were close and she gave him a flushed, sideways smile, and he had to grin in return. "I forgot."

      ""Forgot" isn't going to help you if you contract a blood-borne disease! Sophie! Happy hump day!"

      "And to you," Sophie returned, turning around and giving Keith a patronizing smile.

      "We should get the balloons in today. Think you can finish extracting the blood?"

      "I'll get it thawing."

~

      Sophie sat- well, stood, in the lab long after everyone else had left. There had been more blood than she'd anticipated. That sentence wasn't a good thing under most circumstances and it wasn't a good thing now. She was on the last hundred samples and was going to be able to pop them on the LCMS and run them over night. She'd look at the data in the morning. It was good to be working, good to be doing something she liked. The blood was viscous and pulled into the pipette slowly, dispensed slowly into the Eppendorf tube. Her motions were fluid: unscrew the cap with one hand and pull up one milliliter of blood with the other, screw the cap back on, replace the vial in the box, dispense the milliliter into the prelabeled conical tube, eject the tip into the biohazard waste, close the Eppendorf tube, get the next sample. Repeat. It consumed her focus, holding her wandering mind in place. Holly had talked most of the day about something, but Sophie didn't remember what that was. She did remember talking to Cas and it made her flush to recall. And smile. She was smiling when she hung up her lab coat and gathered her things for the day.

      When she exited the building she stopped smiling. There was someone… standing, next to her car. From the door she couldn't tell who it was but there was definitely someone there. Reaching into her bag, she curled her fingers around her pepper spray. She was not confident in her ability to use it, but just feeling it in her palm made her chest relax. Just a little. The person saw her too, apparently more clearly than she could see him. He waved and she frowned. Taking a few strides that she hoped looked confident, Sophie crossed the parking lot. When she got closer she realized the stranger was actually Cas. Equal parts relieved that it wasn't a rapist and confused as to what he was doing there, Sophie approached him with a little half grin and a dipped chin.

      "Hi," she greeted, tilting her head inquisitively. "What are you… doing here?"

      "I'm sorry- this is creepy, isn't it?"

      Cas took in a deep breath and made a motion like he was wiping sweaty palms on his pants. This was perplexing to Sophie because she'd never seen Cas nervous, exactly. He seemed very agitated now. She sort of bobbed her head in affirmation, still smiling.

      "Yeah… just a little."

      "I'm sorry," he apologized again, running a hand through his hair. "You were working and I, well, I didn't want to do this with the others around."

      "That's also a little creepy."

      "You're right. Sorry. Um… I'm usually better at this."

      "Better at what?"

      Sophie was twisting her head past what was appropriate in an effort to look inviting and curious and smiling so as to belie the anxiety that was stewing in her gut. Cas could sense it anyway, the awkwardness. He hadn't wanted this to be awkward. He'd wanted to be cool about it. Maybe catch her while she was still in her lab coat. But he would've had to have waited in the lab for her to finish and that would've been more creepy. It would've taken something extreme to be more creepy than waiting by her car for thirty minutes, but he was sure watching a girl pipette blood for thirty minutes qualified. He exhaled and looked her full in the face.

      "I would like… to ask you out- for a drink, I mean. I would like to take you for a drink."

      "Now?"

      She hadn't meant to be sharp but she was just honestly very surprised. Cas looked taken aback, but recovered after a moment and gave her an award winning smile.

      "I mean, sure, if you want. Is that a yes?"

      "Is this…" Sophie ran the tip of her tongue over her upper lip and broke eye contact, addressing his feet. "As friends or…"

      "I was asking you on a date," he clarified. "But if that's not okay-"

      "No! No, it's fine! It's… very sweet," she was blubbering and the more she did it the redder she got. "I just, usually, don't get asked on dates. This is irregular. I'm very flattered, but I don't want to go now."

      "Oh," Cas deflated a little. "Okay."

      "I would like to go tomorrow," she pressed, forcing her eyes to meet his and looking very timid. "After work."

      "That's great! That's excellent! I'll… meet you after work then!"

      "Can you… pick me up from my place? So I can get ready?"

      "Even better."

      "I'll text you the address."

      "Great!" For a moment he stood there beaming at her and she, very shyly, at him. Then he realized he was still preventing her from driving home. "I'll, uh, let you go then."

      "Okay," she sort of chuckled, bobbing her head. "Good night."

      "Night Sophie."