Chapter 94: Idle Hands

The problem with having too much time is that it doesn’t stay empty.

It fills itself.

With thoughts, with habits, with things you didn’t notice before because you were too busy to look closely.

I realize this on the third day after submission.

The first two had been manageable. I slept more than usual, let my body recover from weeks of running on too little rest and too much caffeine.

I told myself the quiet was deserved. Necessary, even.

But by the third day, the quiet stops feeling restful and starts feeling... intrusive.

There’s nothing pressing demanding my attention anymore.

No deadlines, no revisions, no constant mental loop of *what if this isn’t good enough.*

And without that noise, something else takes its place.

***

"Are you planning to eat that," Bael says, "or observe it until it changes shape?"

My pencil pauses mid-line.

I look up slowly.

He’s already seated across from me, coffee untouched, tablet resting beside his plate. His suit is, as always, immaculate. There isn’t a single element out of place.

I glance down at my own plate.

Then at the sketchbook propped against my knee.

Then back up.

"I am eating," I say.

His gaze shifts briefly to the table, then returns to me.

"You’ve been ’eating’ for twenty minutes."

I frown slightly, like that’s an exaggeration.

It probably isn’t.

"I was thinking," I say.

"Clearly."

I ignore that. I set the pencil down with deliberate care, like that proves a point, and pick up my fork instead. Take a bite.

There.

Eating.

He watches me for a second longer, then says, "Another."

My eyes narrow. "I’m not a child."

"Then this should be easy."

There’s a beat.

I hold his gaze, considering whether this is worth arguing.

It probably isn’t.

I take another bite, slower this time, more intentional, like I’m demonstrating something.

He finally reaches for his coffee.

Satisfied, apparently.

I chew, swallow, then reach for my pencil again.

I make it exactly three lines before—

"Finish eating first."

I exhale quietly through my nose.

"I just took two bites."

"Yes."

"I’m continuing in a moment."

"No, you’re not."

I lean back slightly in my chair, looking at him properly now.

"You’re being unnecessarily controlling about this."

"I’m being efficient," he replies without missing a beat. "You will either eat now or continue not eating for the next hour. This reduces wasted time."

I stare at him.

Then, because arguing further would only prove his point, I set the pencil down again.

Push the sketchbook slightly away.

And eat.

He doesn’t comment again.

But he doesn’t look away, either.

Not constantly. Not in a way that would be obvious to anyone else.

Just enough that I can feel it.

Annoying.

Effective.

By the time I reach for my pencil again, half the plate is gone.

I pause and look down at it.

Then, slowly, lift my gaze.

He meets it.

"You’re welcome," he says.

I huff, unimpressed, and pick up my pencil again like that somehow negates the entire exchange.

It doesn’t.

***

I wander in the afternoon.

Not aimlessly exactly, but without destination, drifting through parts of the estate I don’t usually have reason to be in.

The library that Grandmother uses more than anyone else, shelves organized with a precision that suggests strong opinions about categorization.

A sitting room on the east side that catches light differently than the others, warmer somehow, more lived-in.

A chair by the window in the study that I’ve seen Bael occupy on evenings when he brings work home but doesn’t want to be in his office.

I sit in it without thinking.

The view from here is the garden, the old maple near the east wall, a stretch of stone path that curves out of sight. I’ve looked at this garden from other windows. From this angle it looks different, quieter, more deliberate.

I stay there longer than I mean to.

When Bael appears in the doorway later, I don’t immediately register that I’m in his usual spot until he stops and looks at me with that expression that doesn’t give much away.

"That’s my chair," he says.

"I know."

A pause.

Not quite confrontation, not quite teasing, something in the space between them, unhurried on both sides.

He moves to the other chair, the one slightly further from the window, and sits without making a production of it. Opens his laptop. Begins working.

I don’t move either.

We sit in the same room while the afternoon light shifts outside and neither of us says anything about it.

Eventually I get up, not because he asked me to or because anything requires it, just because I’ve been still long enough. I pause on my way out.

"Your chair has a better view," I tell him.

"I know," he says, without looking up.

I leave him to it.

***

By evening I’ve filled four pages of the sketchbook with things that serve no purpose.

Architectural details that go nowhere. A staircase for a building that doesn’t exist, window proportions I keep adjusting because getting them right feels important even though no one will ever see them.

I sit on the bed looking at them and try to identify what’s restless in me.

It’s not the competition results, or not only that. The waiting is there, a low background hum I can’t entirely ignore, but it’s not what’s making me feel unsettled tonight.

It’s something else.

Something harder to name.

I keep replaying the morning, Bael sitting across from me with his coffee while I pretended to eat and drew instead, the absence of friction in it.

These aren’t unusual things.

That’s exactly the problem.

They’ve stopped being unusual. Somewhere between the wedding and the competition and all the months in between, the ordinary texture of sharing a life with someone has settled over everything so gradually I didn’t notice it happening.

I notice it now.

Bael’s presence in my daily life isn’t something I navigate around anymore. It’s just there, like the garden outside the study window, like the estate’s particular quiet in the afternoons.

Like something I’ve stopped questioning.

I close the sketchbook.

Two weeks until results.

That should be the thing occupying my thoughts tonight.

Instead I’m lying on my back staring at the ceiling, thinking about how natural it felt to sit in his chair, and how he didn’t ask me to move, and how neither of those things should matter as much as they apparently do.