how important this is.

Erich

There's a quiet honesty in that. And perhaps a vulnerability too, which calls his hand to hers, covering hers where it lays on her thigh. "Okay," he says, and then they're quiet a while, the evening turning to night around them, their second and last day in the wilderness drawing to a close.

A little later, they get the stew off the fire. Melantha tosses the last of their firewood on as Erich divvies up their food. He gets most of the bones. She gets all of the vegetables. They split the lean meat between them, and the broth, and sit side by side eating their simple fare. Once in a while Erich mmms, and when he's done with his stew he sits there a long time crunching at the bones, cracking them open for the marrow, tossing the remnants into the fire.

Eventually that fire begins to burn down. And both of them know what that means, though neither of them say a thing. Not even when Erich sighs and unwraps his arm from around Melantha; sits up and stretches and gets up and, without ceremony or annunciation, begins to clean up the campsite.

And there's quite a bit of cleanup to be done. Nothing makes one appreciate one's footprint on the earth more than camping, which is perhaps part of the point. There are bags of trash to lower down from the tree branches; there are pots and pans to wash with biodegradable soap, and rinse with water from their jug. There's dirty laundry to be packed away -- though really, both their sleeping bags sort of count as dirty laundry at this point. And there are those sleeping bags and Melantha's sleeping pad to roll up, tie down.

There's a tent to take down. And they cooperate in this as they cooperated in setting it up: zipping up the vents, taking the rain fly, stripping out the poles. Rolling up the tent as it collapses, compressing it down until it can be fit back into its bag. With that done, there's only the fire left.

There's a sense of solemn ritual about this, too. They carefully scatter the heart of the fire and pour water over the embers. Steam hisses up into the air. And then it's dark, and the lantern comes out again, turns on again, and Melantha holds it for Erich as he buries the wet ashes, rolls the firestones aside.

And then that's it. Their temporary den is all stowed away; their temporary home is nothing more than a clearing again. They pick up their things, the bags and the packs and the jug and the trash, and they start back for their car. They have no free hands with which to hold hands, but they stay companionably close, Erich following behind Melantha.

Celia

Vulnerability. It's true it's there, but not because she's afraid he might not want her back, or might to stay with her. That would be ludicrous. It's because he might not want to leave. Because he might not be able to handle letting her get up from a bed they just shared to go fuck someone else. Because she might come back smelling the way she did the other night and his instinct will overpower his mind, even his heart. They are both of them vulnerable in this. There are so many ways for them each to get hurt. So many ways to get pulled apart from the inside.

They eat ravenously, replacing calorie after calorie in handfuls. They eat meat that falls off the bone, and then crack the bones open and suck out the marrow. They drink broth til their bellies all but ache. Melantha dozes on his shoulder while he cleans the remaining bones down to white. The dimming of the fire is what wakes her up. She stirs and goes to find the lantern again. They clean quickly, and efficiently, and with practice. They take nothing but the beasts they hunted, thanked, devoured or sacrificed, and burnt. They leave nothing but a stick that has a charred end, a patch of earth that has been turned.

Without the wine and water, their load is easier. They aren't carrying as many potatoes or onions or apples, either. They still can't hold hands, but at least Erich doesn't have to shift into hispo this time. She carries the lantern, and he walks at her back, but she isn't afraid. She remembers the direction of the Mustang, and they pick their way through the woods until they get in sight of it. Somehow it seems right that they arrived here in the dark and leave the same way. Loading up the car is easy enough: open back, shove in, climb in.

This time they hold hands. She can't remember if they held hands on the way up here. It feels like they must have. She can't imagine why they wouldn't.

Erich

On the way back, Erich takes the first leg again. And so it's Erich that drives the bumpy dirt road out of the campground -- pots and pans clanging in the back and all -- and Erich that navigates their way back to the registration booth. In all their time here they haven't seen a single other human being. Just them. Just the animals they hunted, sacrificed, shared their space with. He dumps their trash into the dumpsters and slips their registration tag into the checkout box as evidence of their stay and their departure. When they're past the little booth they make a left onto a road, a paved one, that leads them gradually out of the wilderness, out of the low rolling hills of the Appalachians.

It's not quite as late as it was, the night they came. It'll still be well past midnight by the time they get back to DC. On the way back they talk in the car, and both of them remember that they've promised not to talk about DC until they're back in DC; they've promised not to talk about the past until -- well, until they're more ready for it. Or something.

So they talk about the present. And their friends, now. And Erich discovers that Melantha knows Charlotte, and Erich tells Melantha that Charlotte has the coolest house, all big and Victorian and it's like a haunted house, seriously. He's a little more reserved about Charlotte's brother, saying just that he's sort of exactly what you would expect from an Ivy League junior Kennedy, and maybe he's not the best influence on Charlotte because he kinda makes Charlotte think and act and believe like she's some sort of frail little princess when really,

she's a wolf.

And maybe he discovers that the little vial Melantha prayed with came from Charlotte. Maybe she tells him a little about praying in the woods, alone. Or maybe she doesn't. Maybe that counts as DC-related shit, which neither of them want to talk about. At the halfway point they switch drivers, stretch their legs, use the toilet. Erich comes back to the car with vending-machine ice cream bars, those strawberry-shortcake things that he only ever sees sold in seven-elevens and gas stations and vending machines. He gives Melantha one, then moves the passenger's seat back a little to stretch his legs out.

The freeway gets busier, and brighter, and the lights of the American capitol begin to fill the sky. They're getting close. Erich is happy he has another night with Melantha. He's sad that he has just the one, and she kind of has to pretend to be Celia again, and in the morning she'll get up and dress herself not in the casual, sturdy gear she camps in but in those teetering heels and those tight leggings and those tall boots and those tiny jackets. All the things that make her look even younger than she already is, because somehow it's not enough for Jack to be betraying his wife and family, it's not enough for him to have a bit of fluff on the side, it's not enough that she's young and beautiful and feels like early spring or heaven or whatever it is he thinks she feels like, all of that is not enough, she also has to be barely fucking legal, a teenager still, squealing and giggling like Jack is her first real man, like Jack is fit to be anyone's anything at all.

Morning might be hard. But morning isn't here yet, and so Erich closes his eyes; lets that anger wash through him and away. He leans across the center divide as Melantha is crossing the Beltway. He bumps his forehead against her shoulder; kisses her through her flannel shirt or her jacket or whatever she might be wearing.

"I'm glad we did this," he says quietly. He means camping. He means making love. He means sharing prey, and sharing prayer; all of it.

At the hotel, he brings his backpack and a change of clothes. He brings her tent, too, and the mostly-empty water jug. She brings her backpack, her sleeping bag, what remains of their food, her dirty laundry. They get a few glances as they cross the lobby, and the guy at front desk is definitely taking notice, definitely noticing that Celia de Luca is back, and she's with her stepbrother again, and they

are not fighting.

Celia

They did meet one small group of people, albeit briefly: that family as they went for water. But that was just a few hours ago. And it was a minute, less than a minute in passing, as they walked by each other on the road. For the most part, though, their nights and days here were spent as though they were not just the first man and woman, not just the last, but maybe the only.

Melantha doesn't talk much. She is thinking, a great deal, about the return to D.C. There are preparations to make, and for a war like hers, they are almost all mental. He starts talking about things, though. His friend Charlotte -- I know her, Melantha says, gleefully, because she met her and they talked about Erich. She made me th--

Around that time they both realize that they talked about this two days ago. Melantha blinks and laughs, because it doesn't matter, but she's never heard about Charlotte's brother before. She withholds judgement. She's never met him. And she doesn't know if Erich is right, if Charlotte's brother 'makes her' think or act or believe anything, or if he does. She just listens, and shrugs at the end, and

no. She doesn't talk to him about praying in the woods. Or what that was. Or why he couldn't come.

At the halfway point, Erich gets ice cream. He gets her one. She shakes her head, laughing, but she eats it. Maybe half of it, but she does eat it. And drinks the coffee he brought her, which she asked for. And the apple from the back. He puts on music and leans back; she drives and he is happy and sad and angry all at once as the city comes back toward them. Maybe Charlotte's gift to Melantha makes more sense now: wash the city off. No wonder Melantha needed it the way she did.

So he nuzzles her. And she glances at him, briefly, smiling with a sort of gentle sadness of her own, or at least understanding. He tells her he's glad. She kisses his brow, and turns her eyes back to the road, and holds his hand on the center console. She knows what it means. And strangely, of the two of them, she is the one who cannot put it into words. But: yes.

"Yeah," she whispers, trusting that he'll understand, even if they are returning to civilization and all its ills and misunderstandings.

Back at the Hay-Adams, it does not escape notice that Miss de Luca is driving her stepbrother's car, or that they both look camp-ragged and fresh-cheeked. It does not escape notice that the hour is as late as it is, or that the two youngsters keep looking at each other with random smiles and half-voiced laughter under their breaths. It does not escape notice how friendly they are now, how

he is going up to her room with her,

or how

he does not come back down.

Up the elevator and then down the hall, Melantha digs around for her key card and lets them back into her hurricane-hit room. Except: it's not a hurricane wreck anymore. There are fresh towels. The bed linens have been changed and the bed made, turned down with little chocolate truffles in gold foil wrappers on the pillows. The bathroom has been cleaned and the hotel's toiletries refreshed. The trash has been taken out. All the clothing that was strewn around the room is gone, which only means in this case that it has been laundered and put away for her, including the dry cleaning. Even her hair straighteners and curlers and dryers and makeup and perfume and lotions and so forth have been tied up and organized on the bathroom counter. The minibar is re-stocked.

Melantha doesn't seem surprised by any of this, so it must be something that happens semi-regularly. Maybe she has cleanings scheduled. It must take her at least a few days to ruin a room the way she did.

They 'unpack', which is to say they dump everything in the front area where the pull-out couch is. They 'undress', which is to say that Melantha pulls off her flannel and her t-shirt and her sports bra and Erich takes off his shirt and then Melantha pushes down his jeans and Erich fumbles with hers. In the car and elevator and hallway, neither of them saw this coming. But it happens. They fight with her jeans and her boots, thumping them to the floor when he picks her up and she grinds against his abdomen, panting softly in his ear. They don't even make it into the shower for another fifteen, twenty minutes. They have each other against the wall, his pants around his calves, her ankles on his flank, his arms holding her up when she pushes herself off the wall to get leverage to ride him like that, gripping his back and his shoulder and kissing him til she can't breathe. Til she's shuddering. Til she's melting, and he's pressing her slowly to the wall again, slowly because he's trying to hold back, slowly to make it last, but

as soon as she sighs, as soon as she winds her hips on him and her orgasm starts to let her down, he can't go slowly anymore. And it doesn't last very long after that.

Then they do shower. For real this time. Melantha is businesslike in there. She washes her hair and saturates it with a deep conditioning mask that she leaves on while she washes the rest of her body. She scrubs her fingernails and toenails. She shaves under her arms; her legs are waxed. She uses a foaming cleanser on her face that leaves her pores tight and her skin smooth. She rinses her hair, making her whole body slippery for a few moments. She keeps nudging Erich when he wants to glomp himself all over her. But at the end, she lets him. When they're both clean and the hot water keeps on pouring miraculously out and the bathroom is full of steam, she snuggles with him in the shower.

They are tired. Time for bed. Time to turn down the covers and slide between the sheets and nuzzle each other and kiss soft, innocent kisses. Time to smile in the dark and slip their arms around each other's waists. Time to look out the window at the city and the dark sky together, so far away from the real expanse of the stars they could see above them in the woods. Time to

tense, slightly, when her phone on the nightstand vibrates. bzzt-bzzt. bzzt-bzzt.

Melantha, wrapped naked in Erich's arms, their skins smooth and freshly clean and soothed and dry and soft, twists slightly to look at it where it sits, the screen suddenly aglow. The name Jack in white against her background, vanishing suddenly, to be replaced with the first line of a very short text message.

She doesn't move. She remains like that, staring at it, one hand on Erich's chest, one foot tucked between his calves, the side of her breast to the inside of his arm. She is even faintly aware of the half-erection she has just from cuddling her, nuzzling her, all those soft, sweet little kisses goodnight. She doesn't look upset. She doesn't swallow suddenly. She doesn't cry. She looks

the way he looked that night they caught the rabbit together, when it ran out of its burrow. Just before it died.

Erich

There must be a law against this sort of thing. Against having so much sex all at once, as though some dam has burst; as though they've failed at this whole hey we're not gonna have sex we're just gonna be Friends, we're Just Friends thing so now they might as well go for broke. They drop their stuff and on the way up in the elevator they were laughing about something unrelated, some silly billboard they saw on the way back or something, but then they start stripping down because it's been three days in the wilderness and they could both use a real shower with the miracle of indoor plumbing and hot water and

and the next thing they know they're all over each other, they're kissing each other with impatient little moans and growls, they're stripping themselves and each other and he lifts her up and she fists her hands behind his neck, pulling him to her, wrapping him all four limbs. He has his hands on her ass, and then one on the wall for balance as she rides him, bounces on him, gets off on him with those bone-melting shudders that melt his mind. He tries to go slowly after that but, hey,

that fails too, so they might as well go for broke. He starts bellowing over her shoulder when he comes. She grabs his face and kisses him hard, he moans into her mouth, she clings to him and pulls the last of his pleasure out of him with those slow grinds that nearly unhinge his legs.

He's a little unsteady when he follows her into the shower. She's so businesslike in there. He tries not to think of why she's doing all the things she does, taking care of her appearance the way she does; he knows it's not because she's vain. He knows she does this for the same reason he tests his teeth on bones, keeps his claws from wearing down on concrete and brick.

He tries to lean against her but she's busy, so he leans against the wall instead, washing slowly and haphazardly. He gets clean anyway: her regimen takes a long time, and he has more than enough time to finish scrubbing his body, his hair, his face, under his nails, everywhere.

She lets him glomp at the end. And he does, gratefully and sleepily, wrapping his arms around her, yawning, standing with her under the warm water.

Later on they're in bed, saying goodnight with just one more kiss, really. They are warm and dry and the sheets and the comforter and the bed all feel so unimaginably soft. Sheer decadence after two nights in the wilderness -- and, for Erich at least, after sleeping in the back of a car on a regular basis. He is very nearly asleep.

And her phone vibrates.

And his eyes flick open. And she twists to look at it. He lifts his head. They both see the name. They both see it vanish, and they both see a text message take its place. The look on Melantha's face is sharp, cunning, alert. The look on Erich's face is

complex. He takes a breath. He leans against her, his brow to her cheekbone; mutters something low under his breath. His bicep contracts and his hand comes to her waist, rests there, slides up to the lowermost curve of her breast. He kisses her cheek, and then he draws back, rolling onto his back.

"What does he want?" he asks quietly; asks, though he already knows the answer.

Celia

There are things happening in Melantha's brain that have never happened to her before. The chemistry of sex and affection and just a little bit of antagonism and good humor and the lure of the forbidden are all wreaking havoc on her intellect and her internal sense of balance. They are dousing her with hormones that tell her to stay here, stay close, fuck his brains out, kiss him like this, rub their noses together, fall asleep against his chest, stay. Stay here. Be with him.

And there is her spirit, too, drawn to his rage and his nature in a way she's aware of and yet powerless against.

All of those things are new to her, in their way. The combination of them is new, and overwhelming, and she's never really had a crush on someone and then made love to them and had to reconcile that with what she does. How she hunts. All of that is coming crashing to the fore, very suddenly, as her phone buzzes.

Erich is pulling away and she feels a surge of hurt and anger just because he rolls onto his back. Her eyes close. She turns and rests her back to his side, picking up her phone and staring at it. This isn't the first text Jack has sent her over the weekend. Melantha is wordless, reading through them. It is to his credit, and his peace of mind, if Erich does not look over her shoulder to read them, too. They aren't as bad as they could be; Jack is wary that her daddy might be watching her texts, after all. He really wants to get her a phone of her own.

Her throat moves. They both know the answer to Erich's question. What Jack wants is her. Come to this hotel or that. He wants to know what she's up to tonight, which means he wants her to drop whatever she's up to tonight and come wiggle and squeal on his lap, hug him and tell him she missed him so bad, rub her tits on his shirt as the words turn breathy in his ear, because she's so young and so horny, she makes him feel twenty again.

Melantha's jaw is tense. She exhales: "Me," is the word, sotto voce.

To be his. And his alone.

The phone makes a soft thump noise as she sets it down again, and rolls to her back to look at the ceiling. She doesn't say a word. A minute ago she was about to go to sleep, and wake up with the sun coming through the window to touch Erich's fair hair and limn the hairs on his arm with gold. But at the same time... all the way back to the city, she was preparing for this.

Melantha turns to Erich and brushes the back of her hand against his cheek. She looks at him in the dark for a very long, silent moment.

"I love you," she whispers to him, because it's true, and because the only other time she said it, they were just chilling on a camp-couch, watching the fire. And because right now, it is just the only thing she can think of to say.

Melantha loves him.

Celia sits up, turning away, rising from the bed to go play Persephone, Daughter of Demeter again, to pretend maidenhood and innocence when in truth she is really the Queen of Hades, her lips red as blood from eating pomegranate seeds. Naked in the dark, she lifts her phone and writes something back to Jack.

Erich

[! was that a surge of hurt and anger?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Celia

[She's just sad because for a moment it feels like he's pulling away/rejecting her suddenly when he knew this was coming, and she's angry about it. But gets over it a moment later cuz... stuff.]

Erich

The truth is, Erich pulls away because --

well. He'll tell her why he pulled away. Because he pulls away and hurt and anger flashes through her and he's looking over at her just as it flickers across her face; just before she reaches for the phone and reads through all those texts. Somewhere, far away from the instinctive and unavoidable jolt of no, no, nononono that the idea of Melantha getting up from this bed and taking a cab across town to see Jack tonight stirs in Erich, there's a thread of grim satisfaction.

There's the recognition of just how deep the hook must be, how fatal the damage already is. A man like that, with his fleshy calculating face and his vengeful grip, texting his nineteen-year-old mistress fourteen times over the weekend because she wasn't there, he couldn't get ahold of her, the people at her hotel said she left with her stepbrother. The one that was her age, that had the muscles and the flat six-pack and the blue eyes, the one that clearly adored her or at least wanted to get in her pants even as they were always always always fighting. It must have driven him crazy. It must have, or there wouldn't be so many texts on her phone. He wouldn't have texted her almost the moment he knew she was back in town.

Me, Melantha says. And Erich looks over at her again. She rolls on her back. He turns toward her, onto his side, his arm slipping across the space between, under the covers, to weigh across her stomach.

"Hey," he says softly. "I pulled away because I didn't want you to think I was going to try to stop you from going. Or pout and throw a fit. Or throw wrenches into your plan, run interference 'for your own good', all that. I know how important this is."

So maybe this is when she turns to look at him. Maybe this is when her hand touches his cheek; the bristle of a seventy-two-hour beard there. The corner of his mouth turns up. There's something a little wistful about it. He kisses her fingertips, nudges and nuzzles against her hand until she turns it over. He kisses her palm, then.

"I love you," he replies. And he draws back again, laying back as she rises.

Celia

Deep inside of her, some voice is wailing. No, no, nononono. She wants to stay.

All around that, and rising up to the surface, overpowering everything else, is a hunger that won't be satisfied by sex or sleep or food or the look in Erich's eyes when he smiles. Jack is a very, very bad man. Like that sheriff who let her family be slaughtered, who leered at the seventeen year old in the short cutoffs and the strawberry lip gloss. Like the professor falsifying his data, assuring voters that climate change is a myth and that the mining they were doing in the area wouldn't have any long-term impacts that couldn't be mitigated by more mining and more money. And if anything in her heart could overcome her very sudden and very powerful desire to be with and stay with Erich, it is her starvation for justice.

Or vengeance.

Or simply: war.

When Erich lays his arm heavy over her, Melantha turns to him. Jack is right to be driven crazy, knowing she's up here with that little dipshit stepbrother of hers. He's lean. Muscular. Attractive. He's young, too, with stamina Jack barely remembers. He looks at Celia with hungry, furious eyes, like he hates how much he wants her. Even if they weren't really Melantha and Erich and not Celia and Derek, Jack would be right to be so wary.

Hey, he says, and reads her thoughts not through her eyes but through her body language, sensing it in the dark. He doesn't want her to think he's going to pout, or fight her, or act like he didn't know this is what they were coming back to. He doesn't want her to think that he was just so damned eager to have sex with her that he forgot that it wouldn't change any of this. She won't be his. Not his anything.

Just Melantha.

She touches his face. She tells him, a furrow between her brows, that she loves him. He loves her, too, and she would know that even if he didn't say it, and if he just nuzzled and kissed her hand the way he does. He lays back instead of getting up, and she texts Jack.

The phone is set down again, two minutes later or so. She sighs and sits on the edge of the bed. "He's sending a car," she tells Erich, turning her head to speak, barely able to see the dark shape of him in her bed through her peripheral vision. "I think you should stay a while after I leave, but then storm out at some ungodly hour. Drive off like a madman. Like you're furious."

She turns more fully, looking at him in the shadows. Whispers, her voice a threat wrapped in a caress, her words a promise: "I'm going to rip him apart."

Celia goes then. She has to get ready. Her first big, strong man is sending a car for her to pick her up, not like she's dry cleaning or takeout or a hooker, of course not, but because she's just so special to him and he just can't wait to see her. He's so fancy. He must want her so bad. The light in the bathroom flicks on, the door half-closed. Time to straighten her hair. Time to plump her lips and wear something that pushes her tits together and put on enough eye makeup to make her look three, four, five years younger than she is, and a great deal more innocent. Like a fawn, and not a wolf.

When she goes, she's in heels and a short little skirt and a top that buttons. It doesn't look like a schoolgirl costume from the 'sexy' part of the Halloween store, but it implies it. She stopped just short of knee socks and plaid. She comes back over to Erich, wherever he's put himself, and just... curls up with him. On his lap or against his side. She waits for her phone to vibrate again to tell her that her car has arrived. She doesn't say anything. She just watches him.

Cares about him. Loves him.

Likes him.

Until she leaves.

Erich

It's so quiet in this big, fancy hotel room that Erich can hear the tiny tap-tap-taps Melantha's fingertips make on the screen of her phone. He can hear the ventilation cycling up as the room temperature drops a fraction below some preset point. He can hear the sheets stir as she turns to look at him, and so he looks at her too, sitting up as she gives him suggestions. Instructions.

"Okay," he says. He'll do it, everything she says, exactly as she says. They are both warriors. They're both soldiers, and he knows this is her area of expertise. He trusts her implicitly.

And then: when she turns more fully. When she makes him a promise.

The edge of his mouth turns up. She can barely see it in the dark. He reaches across the dimness and cups her cheek for a moment. It feels strange, hearing these words from her. Shouldn't he be the one saying this to her? But then:

they're both warriors. They're both soldiers. This is her battleground.

"I know," he says. And she goes. And he lays back down, reaching over to her nightstand to set the alarm clock for some ungodly hour, three-twenty-four am.

When she comes out of the bathroom, all dolled up, all geared up, all her camouflage and warpaint on -- he's in bed, dozing, raising himself on his elbows when she comes over. His eyes move over her, noting the changes, the deliberate way she's made herself look young and innocent and spoiled and rich and coddled and sheltered and ripe for the picking. The wolf is wearing the sheepskin, he thinks,

and then he doesn't think very much at all because she curls up to him. He puts his arm around her. He wonders if Jack will smell him on her, the way he'll smell Jack on her later. His heart hurts. He hopes he does, the bastard. He hopes suspicion and paranoia tears him up. He hopes she eviscerates him.

A little later, her phone vibrates. And she gets up. And he sits up with her. And she steps into her shoes, and he catches her hand, turns her back around, kisses her mouth standing in the middle of her room, pressing his body to hers. Her skirt brushes his bare legs; her top his bare chest. He remembers the way her breasts felt against his skin. The way her legs wound around his waist, higher, when he was moving inside her. When she draws away he's looking at her, open-eyed, knowing where she's going and who she's going to and what she's going to do there.

His heart hurts. His blood runs hot, though; the vicarious thrill of the hunt. He watches her turn and walk away, the door swinging shut behind her. He goes to the window, putting his hands on the sill and leaning there, looking down to see the long black limo there because Jack is just so fancy, he's so rich, he's so debonair and so worldly and oh, of course a girl like her would be swept off her feet.

Erich's hands curl gently into fists as she steps into the limousine. The vehicle pulls away from the drive and out into the sparse after-midnight traffic, and he steps back from the window. His heart hurts.