Chapter Title: Close Your Eyes, Don’t Wake

Chapter Summary: ‘I love you’ because ‘I’m in love with you’ was just too perfect, too wonderful, too…

Other Notes: Dove’s introduction! Dove is a sadistic, manipulative bitch in my story, but she hasn’t always been so bitter.

Also, I’ve been giving all my characters different nationalities, so I might as well list them, in order to keep myself in order, too.

Siobhan and Marjorie – Canadians

Dove – French

Jason – American

Niko – Icelandic (Like ME!)

Alfred – Polish

Maielii – Finnish

If you think the names sound wrong for the nationality, just think that lots of people like foreign names. Not every Russian girl is named Natasha, after all.

VVVVV

Je suis amoureux de toi.
-I'm in love with you.

VVVVV

Dove knows better than to visit the man who is like a father to her at night. If he had his way, night would begin mid-evening and stretch until noon, the time in between for resting up to prepare for evening once more.

So she waits for his lovers to leave (they always go late-morning; he doesn't go for the types that stick around), steps into his house and quietly prepares brunch.

Routinely he will step into the kitchen, half nude, and lean against the doorframe. He watches her always and yawns. Bonjour, mon chéri. She turns and smiles and tells him to put on a shirt. He laughs and walks to her, drapes his arms over her shoulders and embraces her as she finishes the meal.

Chicken again, ma douce?

Chicken again.

His breath is always so hot on her neck.

Of course it will be delicious. I cannot complain.

Dove likes to think that he enjoys her cooking. But a father would never tell his precious child that they had done something wrong when it had been done in love, so she can never tell.

A handful of times she had stepped into his house to find that he was not alone. His lovers don't think her a threat, and that's just fine. She has never been in his bed (well, she has, but that was long, long ago, when she was just learning to walk and he had tucked her in and sang sweet lullabies in her ear and touched her hair and told her how proud he was to be her father, her only) and she never plans to be. His lovers come and go when the moon is high. And they can keep their night. She likes being the one to stand with him in the sun.

Sometimes the pretty women touch her hair, give her sweets, paint her lips a shade of red that tells her that they think her just a doll for dressing. Isn't she lovely? they ask in honey-sweet voices to their French lover, draped across the sofa. His cheek rests on his palm, half of his face caged behind long fingers. He smiles languidly.

Yes, she is.

Dove doesn’t like it when he patronizes her with such an honest tone.

She does not know which she likes less: the lovers who stay and coo and make her feel inferior, or the ones that are not so kind. The ones that are there when she comes and tell her to go. The first time was years and years ago. She was so young, so eager to please. She walked into his once-big house, a basket of vegetables from the market on her arm, and was halted not four feet from the door.

The woman was tall, she remembered, with fair skin and beautiful eyes, and Dove was left to wonder who had enchanted whom into bed.

The lady was lovely, but her voice was cold and her tone harsh. The basket was slapped from her hands and shaken, eyes leaking confusion and hurt, she remembers how fast she’d run. She could not find the courage to return, not to retrieve her basket, not to see her father's face. In a good friend’s small house she made herself stay, would not leave.

He could make his own meals. He was a master with his hands in more ways than one, and her roast chicken could never match his own rich cuisine.

Not even three days had passed and he was at her door, his knocks calm, his easy smile greeting her from far, far up. Bonjour, mon chéri. And she was in his arms, holding him tightly around the waist, pulling him into her friend’s house. He held her, spoke softly the language of love in her ear. He told her that she should return, that she would never meet that woman again, that he simply could not make a proper brunch, that only her cooking would do.

He was such a sweet liar. Not that Dove believed a word.

But she humors him as she always has.

Est-ce que tu m'aimes?

Dove stirs the dish; stew today. It's cold outside.

Of course I love you.

Est-ce que tu m'aimes vraiment?

She thinks that he has enough love to power the world already, but he is dogged, and she knows that he is the only one for her, even if she will never be in his bed. Even if that is the only love he wants.

Yes. Really.

Say it.

His arms are warm and snug around her shoulders and she wants so badly to lean back, to turn her head and kiss his face, but she will not be another lover. Her special place would be lost if she stepped into his nights.

Je t'adore.

'I really love you.' Because 'I'm in love with you' was just too perfect. Too out of place. It was something he never had to repeat. He was her love.

My sweet Dovasary, he breathed, kissing her hair. Chéri, I beg of you, no more roast chicken.

Her stupid, stupid love.