Seal My Heart

"I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat."

— Jorge Luis Borges

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The building of the Chicago Sun-Times was a huge one, something you just couldn't miss while passing by. But it went without saying that it also was a big and complicated place to find your way in, Nora knew this. After all, she had gotten herself lost several times, but this was getting ridiculous. Normally she didn't mind having to take care of interns for a day or two, then came those times where they simply couldn't seem to understand the single rule of 'stay the fuck together' and you as well as the rest of your interns would have to go find them.

It wasn't always that bad though, especially if you had something you desperately didn't want to do, and then there was the times where you had a deadline the next day and instead of doing your job, you had to play hide and go seek with a bunch of nervous interns. Nora was thankfully having one of the previously mentioned days, though that didn't mean that she enjoyed running around the building.

"Seriously, how hard is it to understand the single rule of 'stick together or so help me'?" The question was rhetorical and so she wasn't surprised when the interns stayed quiet. The group was currently heading towards the lobby with quick steps, hoping that the missing one would have enough of a brain to return there at least.

As they reached their destination though, there was no sight of any lost interns.

"Oh for the love of god," Nora groaned and tilted her head back to look at the ceiling for a second before bringing it back down and she started walking again. As they crossed the big room, she caught sight of someone else instead.

"Jon?"

Jonathan Toews rose from the chair he was seated in and met up with Nora and her followers.

"Nora, I need to talk to you."

Not having stopped in her steps once, the blonde said: "You wanna talk, you gotta walk. I'm too stressed to stop at the moment."

When she said that it seemed like Jon noticed the young adults behind her for the first time. "What exactly are you doing?"

"We're looking for an intern who's managed to get himself or herself lost during the tour of the building," Nora told him while looking inside a room through its window. A meek voice from behind her spoke up.

"There are actually two of us missing."

This caused Nora to stop and spin around to look at them. "We're missing two? For fucks sake!"

It took Nora, Jonathan and the other interns twenty more minutes before they were able to locate the missing two groupmembers, after which Nora was relieved to pass them on to someone else. She then guided Jonathan over to her office once she remembered that he wanted to talk to her about something.

Up until they were behind the closed door of her office, overlooking the Chicago River, Nora hadn't noticed how uncharacteristically on edge Jon seemed to be. Especially when he declined her invitation to have a seat in one of the chairs.

"Okay, what's really going on here, Jon? Why are you so twitchy all of a sudden?"

Jon kept looking out the big windows, heaved a big sigh and then took a few steps to stand in front of Nora, dark chocolate eyes looking down at her. "I need to ask a favour of you."

When he didn't continue, she tilted her head to the side and furrowed her brow. "Alright then, that's fine. But what's got you so worried?"

After she said that, Jon rubbed his hands over his face. "It's not a small favour, Nora. It's huge. Bigger than huge, actually. And if you don't wanna do it it's fine, you know, I shouldn't even ask you this. Uhm, I'll just go-" he rambled on and turned to the door when Nora grabbed onto his hand.

"Jon, just calm down. You don't have to be nervous to talk to me." Her voice was calm and gentle as she held his hand and rubbed smooth circles over his knuckles with her thumb. Upon seeing her concerned expression, Jonathan sat on the edge of her desk, not breaking her hold on his hand.

"The favour I need is that I need you to be my girlfriend," he told her, not meeting her eyes. Nora froze and her thumb stopped its stroking of Jon's knuckles.

"Excuse me, what?"

She definitely had a hard time believing that she'd actually heard him say that. An uncomfortable silence had settled between them and Jon still hadn't looked up. In the end, Nora sat down beside him and continued with her soothing motions on his hand.

"Okay, Jon. I really need to know what's going on now, 'cause you're starting to freak me out a little."

And so, after a few minutes and a couple of deep breaths, Jonathan told her about needing to attend multiple Blackhawks events and that he'd been told that attending alone all the time wouldn't work anymore and that he couldn't just bring random girls along. Nora wasn't about to ask why the issue had come up now, and instead wondered why he couldn't just bring her or someone else along as a friend.

"'Cause I already know that there's going to be gossip about it and it just feels like it would be easier if you already are my girlfriend instead of women making assumptions about you." He said and finally looked her in the eye. "It's you I'm gonna be worried about if you chose to do this. You don't have to and I know that I shouldn't even ask you this. I'm sorry for putting you in this position."

Nora looked down at their joined hands for a few moments, contemplating what she'd heard. She was well aware that she would be getting most of the heat for anything and everything that would reach the outside world, and that she didn't even know for real why she was asked this, but she'd made up her mind.

"When do I start?"
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It would have been an understatement to say that Jonathan was simply shocked when Nora agreed to play the part of his girlfriend. He still had a hard time believing it as he left the Sun-Time's building with the blonde by his side. It was still quite uncomfortable between them, but not as much as earlier. They'd agreed on going over to Nora's place to talk things through more thoroughly. At first Jon had planned on them going over to his place, as it was closer, but Nora was persistent in going home to her dog.

Though he'd known Nora for a good couple of months, Jonathan had only met Nox less than a handful of times, but the white german shepherd seemed to like him well enough.

"Who's car should we take?" Nora asked, motioning with the hand holding her car keys between their two cars.

"We could take mine," Jon suggested. "I'll give you a ride back here tomorrow of course." He quickly added.

"Sure, we can do that," she agreed and re-pocketed her keys. None of them spoke again as they walked over to Jonathan's Chevy, climbed in and left the parking lot.

"Okay, we really need to figure this out," Nora broke the silence again, she seemed to be doing that a lot lately. "How are we going to do this?"

"I was thinking that the only time we need to act as if we are together is among other people, other than that we'll just hang out like we do otherwise. I also wanted to leave the details for you to decide, 'cause I don't wanna overstep any boundaries between us," his gaze left the road for only a second to look over at her.

"Okay." Nora nodded and turned to look at his profile, studied the way his brows furrowed. "But you really need to stop being so nervous, it's not like I'm gonna bite your head off."

Then she watched as his brow straightened and his lips shaped into a smile.