What Do You Want?

I’m thinking ‘I don’t know’ isn’t an acceptable answer for this question.

It was a hard question to answer. "Right now I just want a nice safe comfortable relationship that isn't stressful. I just want to want to be trusted and I want to be able to trust you. And I assumed we had a relationship, dysfunctional as it may be. If we don't have one, you get to sleep in your own bed tonight by your lonesome." I thought about it a bit more, "To be honest, I can't really tell you more than that, things have been pretty hectic recently and that makes it hard question to answer." I hoped I hadn't hurt his feelings, but that's what I wanted and what I thought.

"What about you, what do you want out of all of this and out of me?"

"I thought about this a lot after the first time you asked me," he said. "And like you, trust is important to me. I sometimes feel like I'm walking on eggshells with you and you're waiting for me to do something wrong. I feel like I can't make a mistake. I feel like I have to be perfect around you, and I'm not a perfect man. I may not even be the right man for you. When I'm stressed out thinking like that, that's when something is going to go wrong." Wow, am I that demanding, I wondered, I didn’t think so, but I am a biased perspective.

He gave me a serious look. "I know where the trust issues stem from for you. But I want to be forgiven for breaking our engagement, Jardena. It's done. I can't fix the past. Even proposing to you again wouldn't negate having broken things off before. If we can't get past that, we're going nowhere."

I had a response ready, “I don't expect you to be perfect, just honest. And I think the trust issue stems from breakup, but in a different way than you think. I've gotten over the break up, and to be perfectly honest, I don't think I was anywhere near ready to get married. But despite that acceptance, the end of our engagement left me with the feeling that I wasn't your first choice. That's what I'm mostly over, it just lingers a bit when dealing with certain women." I smiled a bit, I am trying to bring up Siri.

"As for fun and exciting, that's fine, as long as you don't qualify a few days ago as fun and exciting. When I say comfortable and safe, what I want is a person who I know I can go to and not have to worry about what he thinks of me; just to be able to know that he loves and cares for me."

"You said you want comfortable and safe? Well, I can compromise and settle for comfortable and safe, but I'd prefer fun and exciting," he said. "Maybe it can only be like that when you're first getting to know someone, but I'd like to believe we could have that again." I can do fun and exciting, but getting shot at definitely makes a person appreciate calm.

"Oh, and one more thing," he said, getting up and crossing the room tosit on her bed next to me. "I like holding you close, I love kissing you, and I want to make love to you every chance I get, 'cause you are so damn sexy. So, no, I'm not sleeping on my side of the room tonight." The back of my neck got warm as a I blushed.

He flashed what I think was meant to be an innocent look. "Besides, like I told you the first night, there's a draft in my corner of the room. You wouldn't want mecatching a cold, would you? Then you'd have to take care of me and nurse me back to health and that's a lot of work. I'm a very demanding patient. So when I crawl under the covers with you, I'm doing it for your benefit."

I laughed and rolled my eyes when he protested sleeping alone. "I think it's a bit odd that we ended up in a drafty space ship cabin." And just to tease him a bit more, "And I did offer to try to find and fix the issue. But," I sighed dramatically, "I guess you'll just have to sleep over here since I can't do this mission by myself."

TBC

read Cpt. Typho's POV here