My Roommate

I've learned over the years to question what he needs my car for.

After your family SUV gets "borrowed" by government agents in the middle of the night only to find it completely incinerated the next morning, you learn to ask more questions when one of these agents smiles sweetly at you and asks for the keys.

He told me, I gave him the keys, and he left to go do what he does best.  I wanted to go with, but his main protest for telling me what he's up to was that I would want to go with.  So I didn't ask to, I didn't bug him, and I surfed the net until he came home.  I listened to him pop something in the microwave and shuffle around for a fork, and he emerged into the living room with a warmed enchilada and plopped down on the couch where I was relaxing.

I saw the blood on his knuckles.  It was thin, a light red, almost pink.  His blood, or he punched someone of his own kind.  Once I would have grilled him for answers, but now I resisted the urge to know and let him eat in silence until the curiosity ate at me.  "I take it the other guy looks worse?" I asked.

"Huh?"  He looked up from his meal and followed my gaze to his hands.  With a faint smile that he always got when trying to hide something he wiped his knuckles across his nose and groaned.  "Crap.  Is my nose still bleeding?"

This was a new one.  Tristan Keller never let an enemy get close enough to punch his face.  "Let me see."  I sat up and tilted his head back, noting the caked blood inside his nose.  For a brief moment my mind flashed to a time when this would have been filled with tenderness, when I would have been far more concerned and eager to clean him up.  I can't let emotions control me.  I swallowed hard and shook my head.  "It looks fine, it's all dried up."

He sighed and continued eating his nuked enchilada while I sat back and fought the ever-constant war within me.  Tristan is my roommate.  He is my friend, my confidante, my only link to a past that has eluded me and my mother for over 20 years.

He is also my ex-fiance, my ex-boyfriend, and my almost-lover.

I've never been one to be involved in several relationships in her young life.  The average girl I went to school with entered college with three relationships under her belt.  I had one, and was in it at the time.  My best friend has an anthology of tales regarding approximately 10 different men she was in serious relationships with.  I have a few crushes, two near-hits and one actual serious relationship.

That one serious relationship ruined my life forever.  And he who was so kind to be the instigator of what would ultimately ruin me for any hopes of a normal life sat next to me munching on Lean Cuisine with blood on his hands.  He usually always ate in the dining room, so his being here meant he needed company.  In his stubborn, silent way, he was letting me know he needed me.

In about 3 minutes I went from comforting him to being royally pissed.

"You did what??"

Tristan shrugged.  "Nicks said he had someone who knew about CO's death.  We just wanted to find out what he knew, so we questioned him."

"And you didn't take me with?"

Now he looked at me, that annoying look of incredulity stamped on his face.  "What, now every time I have to question someone I'm supposed to bring you along?"

"When it has to do with CO's death, yes!"

He scoffed.  "Why?"

"I'm the freaking analyst here.  Duh."

"Yeah, you work in your office while we-"

I flipped my laptop back open and blocked my view of his face.  This was the one way I could think of to flip him off without actually giving him the birdie.  CO was my case...well, to me.  He had assigned me a stack of photos to analyze when I was pestering him for a position in the Unit, I gave him back my first analysis, and next thing I knew I was emailed more work and unbeknown to me, designated as one of the top three analysts in Headquarters.  Rumor has it I was number two.

So when OCO (Overseeing Commanding Officer) emailed me two autumns ago detailing CO's death, I went to work analyzing every last inch of information so we could at least have the right trail to his killer.  OCO ruled it as a tragic accident.  I knew immediately, and told her, that he was murdered by the front end of a very large vehicle.  This contradicted her version of him being accidentally backed into by a truck, and after I clearly stated in my last email that in no way shape or form was he in a "tragic accident", she never contacted me again.  Figures.

Tristan didn't understand why I was upset.  And in a moment, I really wasn't upset.  "So why did you punch him?"  I asked.

"He hit me first!"  Tristan rubbed his nose gingerly with a pout.  "We just wanted to ask him questions about what he knew and I was really nice to him, but he freaking hit me!  I even said, 'Alan, we're not here to hurt you'-"

"Whoa whoa whoa.  Wait."  My lungs forgot how to function for a moment.  "Alan what?"

"I don't know."

"What did he look like?"

Tristan leaned back and thought a moment.  "Tall, thin-"

"What color hair? Did he wear glasses?"

"I don't know, he wore a hat.  Brown, I think.  Dark brown. And I don't know, maybe, maybe he had contacts."

"Were his lips kind of full?  Like yours?"

"He had a wide mouth."

Crap.  "Would you say he was around 25?  21?"

"About my age.  Maybe a year older than you."

Double crap.  "Okay.  Now I am officially pissed at you."

Tristan blinked at me.  "What?  Why?  What the hell for?"

I took a deep breath so the following words would be spoken instead of screamed.  "Not only did you not tell me you were questioning someone about CO's death, I could have gotten you valuable information with....my skills."

"Uh huh."  He rubbed his brow and sighed.  "And what skills are these?"

Back up went the laptop.  "Just forget it."

"See?  You wouldn't make a difference at all-"

Down went the laptop and my patience.  "There's a reason Jake didn't notify the government of every single thing I can do, okay?  Only him and CO knew.  And one of them is....well...."  I closed my eyes for a moment because I knew it would sound ridiculous.  "I don't know how it works or why it works, and it usually only works on males, but I can look someone in the eye and get information out of them just by staring."

"It doesn't work on me," Tristan said proudly.

"Well yeah it doesn't work on you because we're of the same species.  It does work on...how do I say this....well, second humans like Alan.  Plus with our romantic history he'd be much more vulnerable to my-"

"Hold up."  Now it was Tristan's turn to interrogate me.  "Romantic history?  You KNOW him? And you have a romantic history with him?"

"Not like-"

"I thought Jake was the only one you dated before me, or was this.....oh, this was just a one-way crush, huh?"

I narrowed my eyes at him and made a mental note of his body language between revelations.  Tristan Keller would go to his grave declaring he had zero feelings for me.  I am not one to ruin his beliefs by pointing out his rather obvious displays of territorial claiming, from telling his guy friends that he's the only one who can tease my hormones to jumping on me about possible having a "romantic history" with Alan to relaxing when he realized it was mostly just a crush from afar.  Telling Tristan how everything about his behavior contradicted his firm statements of stoicism would just ruin the fun.

"For your information, Alan happened to be the one that got away.  Everyone and their mother, including his girlfriend, was convinced he was in love with me.  He and I were actually close friends, we adopted each other as brother/sister; I had no male to protect me and he wanted someone to protect.  I was 14 and noticed one day that he was really cute, and developed feelings for him.  Then when he had the chance, he ditched me."  I grit my teeth at the memory.  "He promised he'd never forget me.  Then one day he forgot my name.  Next thing I knew he was moving to California and he cut off all ties, well, as far as anyone I knew goes.  But the last I saw him before he left, the night before he left actually, he looked at me in a way that had me puzzled to this day."  I shrugged it off, shaking my head to dust away the memory of those eyes piercing into mine with such sadness and resolve.  Alan never spoke, but he didn't have to.  I knew what he was saying.

Tristan didn't respond.  Then he smiled gently and started gathering his dishes.  "Hey, I had a couple ideas for you earlier that I think you should do."

Uh-oh.  I was wary of where this was going, since it usually had something to do with how out of shape I am or how pathetic my social life is.  "What?"

"You should start a blog.  Write about how your roommate is a secret agent.  Tell the world the truth, just not in a way that can be traced to you." His smile grew and he glanced at me over his shoulder.  "Maybe write another one about how your roommate is an alien."

I smiled and bit my tongue before reminding him I was also both those things.  Sort of.  "I think I'll do that right now, actually.  Good idea!"

"Just don't use your pen name."

Frack.  I'd overused it enough for it to be traceable to me without problems.  This was going to be a tough one, but I always love a challenge.  "Okay, okay, I'll figure something out.  I'm still pissed at you, though."

The smile dropped from his face and he rolled his eyes.  "Ugh, fine then.  Whatever.  I'm going to bed."

As he put his trash away and turned out the lights, I began brainstorming a good pen name for a blog that would inform the wonderful world wide web of virtually every secret we have been forced to keep since birth, every piece of information we have hidden from our own families.  I liked the name Mira, which was the name of the main character in a play I wrote that was produced and sold out its first (and only) night.  And Willis, that was my mother's birth-name.  It is the surname for a family living on an island in the Pacific, cut off from traditional rights as a tribe because of their blood.  Because of their origins, or lack thereof.

Because they're like me, they're my relatives, and we're all just....something not quite human.

I should go to bed soon.  Tristan is hopefully asleep.  I like to think he has progressed from constant night terrors that he would get if he slept alone to being able to sleep normally no matter what the circumstance.  We both know people think we have sex, but after the first clarification of the arrangements we just don't bother trying to correct them.  He prefers guys, and I'm a virgin.  We just happen to sleep better next to each other; he heats up the room like a space heater and my presence calms his mind.

I ignore my observations of how handsome he is.  I shove aside any thoughts of what could have been and focus on what is.  If I don't, I will go insane with the heart-ripping pain the entertainment of such thoughts brings.  It took me three years to numb my heart enough to endure everything about him with a cold, objective eye and not the warmth of love I have felt for him for just as long.  Jake had feared I would fall in love with him, and now I know why.

But when Tristan is the only man I know who not only understands what I can do, but knows why and what I am, and is of my kind, everything becomes so much harder.  I lived my childhood thinking everyone could hear conversations about people who weren't in the room, or have dreams about what would happen the next day, or know who a person was and what they were going to become with a single thought.  I went through adolescence learning I was, in fact, very much alone.  My mother and sister are the only other ones I know, but my sister Raye did not get the training our mother provided me.  She was swept up into "reality" by her abusive father, who as my adoptive father not only successfully hid me from those who wanted me eliminated but provided himself as a practice target for defensive skills.  Raye hid from her nightmares within herself.  I ran to Mom and instead of telling me there was nothing to be afraid of because nothing existed, she taught me how to fight.  By the time I entered college, I knew 100% no one else was like us.

And then I met Tristan, and he changed everything.