margaret thatcher.

Erich

It surprises Erich a little when Melantha asks to talk to him alone. Surprises him, pleases him, worries him -- makes him feel a little bad for Charlotte, too. He looks at the Theurge, trying to figure out how to make her notfeelexcluded, but...

...well, it's not really necessary. Charlotte isn't quite the same shy, fragile bird she was in D.C. She picks herself up with little fuss and poofs on out of there. It leaves Erich and Melantha in the tinyhouse -- in Charlotte's bedroom.

He's awkward for a moment, not looking at Melantha. Then he finds an excuse to do something other than sit there: he picks up the emptied plate of sandwiches and scoots off the bed, taking it to the kitchen sink. Which is approximately two steps away. Which means he's gone for about ten seconds, long enough to set the plate down and run some water over it to keep food particles from drying on.

Then he's back, filling up the narrow doorframe, looking in at her.

"So uh," he slides his hands into his pockets, "what didja wanna talk about?"

Melantha

Melantha is a little at a loss with Charlotte now, as well as they're connected, as close as they are as though drawn together by nature. She's not the same shy, fragile bird she was in D.C., but Melantha has no idea how that happened, or what changed. She missed them so much. Every different she sees in Them Then and Them Now makes her howl inside. And it was only a couple of months. It feels like longer, like more; it feels like the hole in herself where they used to fit no longer wraps around them quite as perfectly. Or maybe the hole in her just got bigger.

Then Erich looks awkward, is still silent, and picks himself up to scoot out the door. Melantha exhales a rough-edged sigh, almost a huff of air, which is barely out of her mouth before he's back, asking her what she wants to talk about.

For a few moments, she just stares at him, a little bit stunned. And then distressed, her brow knitting and her mouth turning down. She just looks at him.

Erich

All of which distresses him, too. Erich shifts, and then -- half-warily -- he shifts his shoulder off the doorframe, comes into the little tiny room again.

And after a moment, onto the bed. One knee, then the other, then a silent dexterous turn until he's sitting next to Melantha, elbows over knees. A moment passes. Then he looks at her.

"I'm not asking to be a dick," he says quietly. "Just... I don't really know what to say right now." He pauses a while. "I really missed you. I thought about you all the time. Both of us did, Charlotte and me. But I don't think I ever really thought about what it'd be like to be together again. I kinda assumed we'd all just pick up where we left off.

"You seem different though. I think I'm different too. And everything around us is definitely different. I just ... don't even know where we stand now."

Melantha

She does not flinch from him, or jerk back, when he starts to move onto the bed, though she follows him with her eyes very closely, though not warily. She willed this. His presence, and her presence alone with him, wasn't something forced on her by someone else or suggested by anyone else or even asked for. She decided it, even if she isn't sure where to start.

Neither does Erich. But he does anyway.

"I think that's because I don't know where I stand right now," she says quietly, the words coming to her more easily than she thought they would. "And you guys had each other and I just had my tribe and... you guys went through all this stuff without me, together. Like... Charlotte's teasing and cracking jokes now, and you're actually kind of chill, and I'm not used to that either." She shakes her head, looking away, looking at her hands. Her knees are up, her arms wrapped around her legs, her hands on her shins, a frown aching on her features.

There's a pause. It's a pretty long one.

"I just don't even know who I am right now," she whispers, because to speak louder feels rather dangerous, emotionally. "You guys picked up everything and traveled nonstop for two months because of me, and I thought... I thought when I'd be back something would be different, since it was my last one." She shakes her head a little, numb from sorrow. "I thought they'd have a plan for me, or it would be acknowledged somehow, or... I'd be acknowledged. I thought maybe I'd finally feel like I belonged there."

There are tears in her eyes. Oh, because of course there are tears in her eyes.

Her lips curl inward, pressing together for a miserable moment. "But everything was just like it always was. Damaris was training a new girl. Sisters came to sleep next to me like before. No one had a plan for me. No one really... recognized what I did. None of it made any difference."

A hand lifts, the heel brushing over her eyes. No fresh tears fall, but are caught on her palm. She sniffs. "I know it made a difference or whatever, I'm not talking about stuff I did. I mean... for me. With them. I never... got what I really wanted. I did what I was supposed to and what I was good at and I did it really well and I did my part in the war or whatever, but... for me, for what I wanted, it was just... all for nothing."

Melantha tightens her legs closer, sniffing again, and her eyes are full now, full and wet but by god she doesn't want to shed them again. She hugs her legs closer, closer, staring at the bedspread because she knows if she blinks, those tears are going to roll down her eyes no matter what she does to try and stop them.

"They didn't even really... try much to keep me there, when I said I wanted to go to school again. And I wanted to go and I think they thought they were doing me a favor and they are, just... I thought they'd... tell me they wished I would stay.

"They let me go so easily," she whispers, her voice falling again.

Erich

It surprises him a little when she says she's not used to him being 'kinda chill'. No one ever thinks of themselves as intense or angry or whatever.

And he wasn't -- not intense, not angry, not really. But she's right. That trip across the country, those two months rolling through a dozen states or more, plus half of Mexico besides: it changed him. Mellowed something out. Or maybe it was Charlotte's company, having a constant chattering shadow who he could trust, who he knew wouldn't abandon him, who he knew would stay with him even if he was a Shadow Lord with Fenrir blood, even if he was still a Cliath x years after changing. Maybe that's what made him a little less ... defensive. Wary. Restless, and ready for it all to fall apart.

He doesn't say any of that, though. She's only bringing that up because she wants to say: it is different. And she doesn't even know who she is. And all those people that she thought she was a part of for so long, that she thought would be proud of her, would care for her, would show her somehow that she was precious to them and cared for and important and good -- they just

let her go

so easily.

--

Erich scoots over a little on the bed. And then a little more. And the bed isn't big; it's wedged into the tiny little room, but it's rather tiny itself. So there's not much room to scoot before he's next to Melantha, his shoulder against hers, his hip and leg aligned.

He doesn't tell her not to cry. Or that it'll be all right. Or that those people, her commune, her family, really did love her and treasure her and want her to stay. He doesn't even tell her how well he understands, if only through the lens of his own experience, how much it sucks to realize you really didn't matter as much to your family as you thought you did.

He just sits next to her. In contact now, trying to reassure her with nothing more than that contact. And after a while, if she lets him: with his arm wrapping loose and comforting and heavy around her shoulders.

Like a friend. Because that's what they were, first and foremost. And that's what they are now, even if their strange little affair seems to have simmered down into awkwardness.

Melantha

Who doesn't find it easier to relax, easier to breathe, easier to simply be when they know they're accepted just-as-they-are? Which is how Charlotte accepts, or does not accept: it's wholehearted, as Erich is wholehearted. Melantha is not. But forgive her: right now, her heart isn't whole.

He understands. Maybe Charlotte does a little, but Charlotte scarcely remembers all her own rejections, the way she was so summarily cast out. She has blocked it, like she blocked the sense she got of Melantha's instincts earlier, and how conflicted they are. Charlotte all but ran from it. Ultimately: Melantha knew Erich would understand this. To be loved, or think yourself loved. And then to be let go. In his case it was because he didn't mesh with what they were, he didn't match up, he was seen as a traitor.

In hers, it's because she was never really anything more than another soldier in the war. All her sacrifices, all her worship, all her supplication

was never really to a goddess, but to a tribe.

A family.

--

Melantha's tears roll down, more silently than on the porch. She doesn't move away when Erich comes near. She curls against herself, and perhaps a little bit to him, too. She puts her brow on her folded knees and lets the tears slip down her cheeks, though now she doesn't sob. She just lets them go.

His arm comes around her.

"And now you're here, and I don't want to curl my hair and wear makeup and heels and shave all the time," she mutters, the words hard to hear because they're muffled against her knees. "And I'm so sad," the final word choked, choking, falling hard from her mouth. "And I don't know what to do. I'm just ruining everything happy and I can't help it because I'm just sad. I don't know who I'm supposed to be. I don't feel like anything."

Erich

Unrejected, that arm of his tightens a little around her. He holds her closer against him, tight against that solid and complex mesh of muscle and bone that forms the sidewall of his body. He's quiet a little while, thinking.

"I don't think," he says carefully, "you can really figure out who you're supposed to be just by thinking about it. You know? I think it's more just ... well, it's like Margaret Thatcher said in that movie. That thing about watching your thoughts because they become your words, and your words become your actions, and your actions become your habits and your habits become your character and your character becomes your destiny or something? It's kinda like that, only not in a bad way. I think it's not so much about who you're supposed to be deciding what you do and what you think. It's more like... who you are is what you do is what you think. It kinda runs the other way, from thoughts up to character. Ugh, I'm getting all mixed up.

"Do you get what I'm trying to say? I'm trying to say maybe you shouldn't look at it topdown. Like don't ask yourself 'who am I' so much. Just ask yourself 'what do I think of X. And what do I do about Y.' And I think that'll, like, build up by itself to who you are. And who you're supposed to be."

He thinks a little more. He's very thoughtful today, Erich is.

"And maybe," he adds, "you can think about what made you happiest, or gave you the most purpose, or mattered the most to you before you stopped being like a secret agent for Gaia. Maybe you can just pick out what was good there and weave it into whatever you're gonna do next. Like, if you liked being undercover -- and I don't think you did, I'm just making an example -- if you liked that, then maybe you can be an undercover cop. You know?"

Melantha

Erich hasn't talked much to Melantha today. Well: in the car he talked some. He was blissfully unaware of all this darkness under the surface, or maybe just hoping he was imagining it, or something. Melantha was excited to see his tiny house, and he was excited to show it to her, and now they're here and it was very exciting and she squealed and she was happy for a little bit but now she's crying again. And somewhere between coming to the house and this moment, he stopped talking much to her. He didn't have much to say, and is in fact not always a verbal creature. She knows that. She didn't take it personally. But it comforts her, all the same, when he starts to talk to her again.

And holds her.

She hasn't seen that movie, but she doesn't tell him that. Really, it's on her list. She had other stuff going on. The quote, however mangled it is, makes her eyebrows lift a little as she sniffs, wiping her face with the heel of her hand, lifting her eyes up to look at him, resting her temple on her knees. She knows that saying, and it's one of the better ways to explain how representations of women in media can drastically affect real-life behavior and broad societal attitudes and that's why the nonstop sexualization of underage girls in film and television is so fucking wrong, because you can never, ever say that it's just a movie and these things don't exist in a vacuum, do they, just like

your thoughts and words and actions and habits and character don't exist in a vacuum.

What Erich says has weight with her. Charlotte said, in her way, that it was okay to be empty, and that empty isn't bad, and that empty isn't even not-bad just because of the potential for being filled, but because the bowl is not its fillings. The bowl is the bowl. But Erich says something else entirely, and if she fit it into the same metaphor, it would be something along the lines of

when you see a bowl and its full of something, you describe what its full of: a bowl of cherries,of milk,of pennies.

Melantha calms a bit, thinking this over. She does think it over, considering it. Her face turns again and she puts her chin on her knees, staring ahead, while Erich keeps his arm firm and warm around her, and with his arm lifted she can smell the sweat of the day under his arm and feel the curve of muscle from his bicep against her back.

She's quiet, afterward, even though when he says you know? at the very end she gives a small nod. Melantha doesn't pull away, but stays curled up tight in her ball, held to his side, her face wet and eyes red. After some time, she says, very softly:

"So what do I do about being so sad?"

Erich

"I don't know," he says, just as softly. Apologetically, too, because: he doesn't know. And he feels bad for not knowing. For not being wise, or cunning, or just plain smart enough to have something to say that would just magically fix it all. "If I knew the trick, I would've done it myself a long time ago.

"All I can tell you is it still makes me sad to think about how my family just sent me packing. But ... it's not so bad anymore. I don't think about it as much, and it's not as sad when I do think about it, because now I've got you and Charlotte and a tinyden and two Septs of wolves who don't try to beat each other down all the time.

"I saw my sister again too. When we were driving through Nebraska. Charlotte set it up. And ... that helped too. So... I guess people help. People you love can help you not be so sad. I don't think being let go of so easily by the people you loved and respected once you stopped being useful to them will ever be something you'll be one hundred percent not-sad about, but it can get better." He nudges back against her gently, leaning his weight into her, rocking them a little on Charlotte's little bed. "It will get better."

Melantha

I would've done it myself a long time ago.

That makes Melantha lean harder, firmer into Erich's side, turning her head from her own knees to his body. It's animal, and it's instinctive, and it is both apologetic and comforting, or trying to be. They're all rejects, only: Melantha didn't know she was until now.

She's so curled, so tucked against him when he tells her that he saw his sister that her head coming up makes her head clock into his jaw, or at least skim it with contact that makes her slowly blink, eyes swimming for a second as they focus on him. "You saw your sister?" she says, aching and eager somehow, possibly even interrupting him though she doesn't mean to.

Erich

"Yeah!" Just like that Erich brightens. "Charlotte set it up," he says -- again, not because he thinks Melantha didn't hear but because he wants to make sure she knows, everyone knows, everyone ever knows what a lovely and decent heart Charlotte has. "I wasn't even gonna go through Nebraska because ... I mean, what's the point, other than feeling like crap?"

Which he didn't say to Charlotte. Which he couldn't have, because somehow he had to be strong for Charlotte, at least in that quarter. They are the three points of a triangle, Melantha and Erich and Charlotte, and the lines between them meet without intersecting. They are stronger together than apart.

"But Charlotte cooked up this plot where she ran like a billion miles, showed up on my family's farm, and was all 'hey I'm lost, can you give me a ride?' And my sister was in on it, so she gave Charlotte a ride back to where I was holed up starting to build the tinyhouse, and -- yeah.

"I saw my sister. She's -- hell, she just graduated high school. When I saw her she was still trying to decide where to go for college. Had a bunch of acceptances. I told her she should go out of state, see the world, come back if she wants to. So maybe she will. Maybe I'll see her more."

He's quiet a moment, then. A few seconds go by. Then he kinda nudge-nuzzles Melantha again, animal-like, as though to rouse her.

"So... really, what did you want to talk about? I'm not asking to be an ass. Did you wanna talk about like. Us?"

Melantha

Of course Charlotte set it up. Charlotte's first reaction to Melantha was to tell her that she didn't think she should let that guy touch her ever, ever, ever again and that if she wanted, Charlotte would do something about him. Charlotte, who is even thinner than Melantha, whose strength is not in brute physical force, who looks like a fragile, pale bird mid-molt at times -- she offered to take care of the bastard. And at that moment, Melantha had no doubt that Charlotte's methods would not be pretty, would not be gentle, and would not be quick.

Charlotte, who could have easily felt like a third wheel to Erich and Melantha's odd little affair, who could have felt too weird or too highborne or something to hang out with them, who could have just been sad that Melantha would be leaving, invented a new talen to make sure they could find each other again. To say that her heart is lovely, and decent, and as pure as her breeding suggests, is putting it mildly. She is the best sort of saint: loving, vengeful, and creative in both her love and vengeance.

Of course it was Charlotte's idea to reunite Erich and his sister. Melantha breathes this in, thinking that when all is said and done, she wants to thank Charlotte for that.

"I hope she does," she says quietly to him, of his sister going away to school.

Melantha doesn't say anything after that, either, and a few more seconds go by. And a few more. And then Erich nuzzles her. Melantha breathes in quick, sudden, as though this startles her. She doesn't look at him, but looks ahead, hesitant.

"I don't think you're being an ass," she says. She frowns a little. "Partly I just wanted to talk to you about... all that. Alone. I think some of it is a little harder for Charlotte to understand or ... talk about like you might?" She swallows. "And you weren't really talking at all while she was here. I thought if we were alone you might... talk to me again." She breathes in deep, exhales very slow, her voice becoming very quiet. "And... yeah. Us, I guess."

She curls up a little closer in on herself. "I missed you," she says quietly. "I dreamt about you. You're so... different from every other man I've been with."

Not just his person. He's not tainted. He's not evil. He isn't ten, twenty (or more) years older than she is, balding, overweight, smelling of Jameson, putting his hand up her skirt or yanking her hand to his crotch. He's not a mark, he's not a target, he's not a job.

He is the only one she's really chosen.

Melantha takes a breath, looking at the blanket, exhaling in a distant sigh. "I missed feeling you against me. There were nights I thought that if you were there I'd be having sex with you every night, just... constantly. And then I came back out here, like... in the world, I mean. And I feel so different from everyone, and I feel so out of place and... like I'm half a step removed into an entirely different universe that sits parallel to this one, and you're just... kinda normal and happy and friendly and I sort of wonder if you just want to be friends. And I sort of wonder if that might be because I don't... look as glossy as I did before. Or it's not a turn-on anymore because I'm not exciting anymore."

She swallows, staring at nothing, the words pouring out of her, unexpected even to her, especially to her. "Sometimes when we've all been curled up sleeping I've sort of wanted to have you touch me, or I've wanted to roll over and start kissing you, but Charlotte's there and that would be so... not even slightly okay. And then sometimes I just feel tense and completely turned off and I don't know... I don't know where the hell my head is or what I want because I want you but I'm afraid of you touching me."

She sniffs, lifts her hand, and rubs at her face. "And I can't say a lot of that around Charlotte." She never told him that Charlotte threw up when she told her about Erich and her sleeping together. Charlotte asked her not to. Melantha kept her promise. "It's not really a conversation to have with anyone but you."

Erich

Erich

sort of

stares when Melantha suggests -- nay, says outright -- that she thinks Erich might not really want her anymore. That maybe he just wants to be friends. He doesn't want to burst in and interrupt, and he certainly doesn't want to yell something like NO DUMMY, which would just be not-okay, but:

he stares. For a second, his eyes almost bug out.

He manages to keep quiet, though. He manages not to blurt anything out, and he manages, even, to listen to her wrestle through all those various feelings and thoughts that have gone through her on those nights they've all slept in a pile. At the Sept. In the common quarters, on borrowed bunks and the like, where the cubs and the homeless and, sometimes, the under-probation sleep. And when she's done, he sort of sighs.

And then he flops back on the little bed. He pulls Melantha with him, and she can tell in an instant that he really did build this tinyroom just for Charlotte, because his feet stick a few inches off the bed. He glomps her to his side, gently but rather adoringly, and he scritches his head with a hand that then slips behind to be a pillow.

"I love you," he says. "I still do and I think I always will, and I think I might be in love with you too." Pause. "I'm not one hundred percent sure on that. I don't think either of us is. And I think that's okay, so I hope that doesn't make you angry or sad.

"I want to be friends with you. Even if we have nothing else, I'd want to be friends with you. 'Cause you're one of my best friends and I only have like, two best friends. But ... I do miss you. Like that, I mean. I miss sex with you. I miss sex in general, but I especially miss it with you. I just missed you, in every which way. And if you think I'm not turned on by you anymore because you've stopped making yourself look like an 18 year old sex kitten who just walked off a billboard or a runway or a movie screen, then -- well, I don't even know. Just no, Melantha. In case you forgot, I didn't even really like Celia de Luca. I just fought with Celia de Luca. I thought she was some sort of rich, spoiled, everyone-look-at-me brat. Or at least just kinda ditzy. I only started liking you when I realized you weren't Celia de Luca at all. And just for the record, when you were climbing into my sleeping bag with smelly armpits and twigs in your hair," he's exaggerating a little, laughing a little, "that's when I couldn't help myself.

"But I've sorta been waiting for you to make a move. 'Cause I know you just got out of a life where you were like ... with men for ulterior motives, 'cause you were a secret agent." That's apparently his name for her now: SECRET AGENT. "And I know you even more recently got out of a life where there were like zero men around at all. So I wasn't sure if you still wanted to. And I didn't wanna push. 'Cause sometimes I was pretty sure you didn't want to."

Melantha

Melantha is looking at her knees or the bedspread or her hands, so she misses Erich staring at her, yearning to burst out with NO DUMMY. She does hear the sigh, and turns to look at him, curious and stung even though she doesn't know why. She just feels brittle. She does know why it stings a little when he flops backward, but instead of his arms sliding away from her, he pulls her with him. It's in her spine to resist, just for the sake of resisting, but she goes. She goes and when she decides to go she goes wholeheartedly, curling up against his side and tucking her arms and legs in, face on his chest.

He loves her. She's not sure if he's said that since he got back. Out loud, at least. She breathes in, and takes his scent and those words into her lungs to hold them there until they burn.

He also thinks he might, y'know, be in love with her, but he's not sure, and he doesn't think she's sure, so pleasedon'tbemadorsadokay? Melantha isn't mad. He has never really had to wonder if she's mad, not with the way she shuts down, sullen and silent as though she doesn't trust herself to unleash her own wrath verbally. Then again, he also has had some knock-down, drag-out fights with her where he's seen her push past that and really... not... hold back when it comes to telling him that she's mad as hell.

She isn't mad. She doesn't start crying all over again.

In fact, when he reminds her that it was out in the woods with dirt under her nails and sweat on her skin and the blood of a small mammal only recently washed from her skin -- that that was when he could help himself -- she huffs a dry, small laugh. "You climbed into mine," she reminds him, because one of the things that she is, one of the things that she is when she isn't Celia or Maria or any of those girls, is... well. A little argumentative and contrary. She sniffs moisture from her nostrils, moisture lingering from earlier tears, and wraps her arm around him, laying it over his abdomen. The feel of the warm, flat ridges under his shirt pressed against the inside of her forearm sends one of those unexpected, startling ripples of lust through her. A thought enters her mind, but she doesn't follow it.

She follows the tenderness of being understood, or feeling understood: she was only ever with men to destroy them. Then she wasn't with men at all. And she never really was. Melantha closes her eyes against him, holding him like that, quiet for a long time. "I still want to," she says quietly, into his shirt.

Quieter still, and after another long pause: "I don't want to feel so fragile. I haven't felt this scared and alone since... since my dad died and Damaris took me to the Furies." She lifts a hand and wipes at her face, closing her eyes again as she tucks herself close to him. Her brow furrows, and she moves her arms between her stomach and Erich's side, collapsing in on her soft parts, her vulnerable pieces. "I'm not really sure when I'm going to be ready to let you in," she adds in a whisper.

Erich

It used to infuriate Erich, how argumentative and contrary Melantha could be. For a while it was like they couldn't meet without fighting, and even after the mask of Celia de Luca began to slip, they still argued all the time. They still disagree all the time, or at least they did before they split up for months and months, though -- it's a little less vicious now. There's less vitriol in it.

He never hated it though. It drove him nuts and sometimes it made him yell at her, but he never hated that she argued. Or stood her ground. Or basically: wasn't the silly, empty-headed, too-privileged girl who had no idea how the world really worked that she pretended to be.

So: he misremembers. She corrects him. He grins despite himself and argues back: "Okay, but you pulled me there." It's only in jest, though. A moment later he adds,

"I wanted to be there."

She almost echoes him. I still want to. He smiles at the ceiling. It's hard not to. It's hard not to beam, to grin stupidly at the low, close, raw-wood ceiling that he put together with his own hands. She still wants to. He doesn't even trust himself to respond. He'll say something stupid, he knows he will. Of course he will; he less than threes her. So he's still grinning mutely at the ceiling when she goes on,

and then his grin abates a little. Softens. He gives her a squeeze, his arm tightening tenderly around her.

"That's okay," he says quietly. "There's no timer on me or anything. It's not like I'm gonna count down to zero and then blast off out of your orbit.

"And ... I know you feel alone and scared right now? But you're not. We're here with you. And for you. And seriously. If you want to? You can just live here. For a while until you figure stuff out, or forever if you want to. I kinda made sure there was extra space in the tinyhouse just so you could stay here too. Both my bed and Charlotte's sleeps two. And the couch folds out into a cot. And if you're gonna be here longterm then we can probably even figure out a way to jam one more real bed in here."

Melantha

Erich is... simple. Not stupid, not idiotic, but he's quite simple. He informs her that he is not a rocket, and she huffs, but the laugh -- if it can be called that -- is dry and humorless. She feels like a raw nerve. Every protective shield has been stripped off and peeled away. She thinks of the years she tried to prove herself worthy, the trials, the tests, the punishment, the endurance of slurs and degradation. She thinks of the fact that the first time she had sex was with a man twenty-odd years her senior, a man who was at least partly responsible for the destruction of what little remained of her family. She thinks of prayers in the woods, paeans to Luna that were pleadings, that were supplications:

love me. love me. love me.

And when it was all over, when everything was done, when she completed her work... there was nothing. For the first time in all those years of being a so-called Whore of Gaia, she felt the sting of it, the dehumanization, the sense that beneath the sex and lip gloss and manipulation there was nothing to her. It isn't easy to let go of that. It isn't easy to live with the weight of that regret. For the first time since she was gathered up in Damaris's arms in a blanket and carried, sobbing, away from the only home she'd ever known,

Melantha feels completely powerless.

She doesn't really have it in her to laugh.

--

Erich tells her she can live there. 'Extra space', he says, as though that isn't a joke. But his bed can sleep two, and Charlotte's can sleep two, and there's the couch if she doesn't want to sleep with anyone, and they'll figure something out, they totally can. She can make a little bed across from his in the other eave, the spot he's been throwing his dirty socks into. Something like that.

Melantha thinks about the dorm at 1999 Broadway and considers this.

"I'd sort of like to stay with you guys instead of at the sept," she says quietly. "It's not bad, it's just... not really what I'm used to. And I'd rather not be so alone. And some of the younger guys there just... sniff at me. It makes me feel freaked out. I don't feel good there."

Erich

Erich actually growls at the thought of the cubs sniffing at Melantha. Not that he blames them: she does smell good, fantastically wild and good on a level a Garou's very spirit understands, and on a level that very, very few Garou ever encounter anymore. Outside of the Fangs, of course. But still! It pisses him off, and he growls, a deep rrrrr! in his chest.

"Don't go back then. We don't even have to drive the tinyhouse back. We'll just camp up here 'til we get bored, then go park it somewhere else and explore. We'll live like gypsies. Go where we want, when we want. And if you just wanna hide inside for a while that's fine too.

"I can probably widen the little loft over the door," he says, already planning it out in his head. "Right now it's just headspace. And like, where I toss the laundry. But I can put a couple more beams down. And a railing. Or maybe I can even push it out over the porch the other way. Anyway it should be pretty easy to expand that part a bit so we can put another bed there, like Charlotte's. You can hang a curtain up like mine too, so you kinda have privacy.

"I think Charlotte would be really, really happy to have you with us too," he adds, softer. "It's been really fun driving with her, and I think she's getting more sure of herself? But she really missed you too. We kinda... all complete each other in different ways."

Melantha

Erich growls and Melantha, Melantha-in-D.C., might have yelled at him for that. Might have informed him that she is not attracted to that kind of behavior, that he doesn't need to get all puffed up and protective any of it. But: Melantha has never been surrounded by young male cubs before. When among Garou, she is among females and only females, plus a few metis who don't dare sniff at her. She has never felt so unnerved just walking down the hallway, being looked at, stared at, sniffed at. When Erich growls, some small and uncertain part of her just curls closer to him for it, because, yes: it feels wrong. And Erich snarls, because it feels wrong to him, too.

"Well I have a couple things there. Not... a lot," she says, admitting the truth. "But I have a couple changes of clothes now."

She sniffs. She stays where she is, curled up with one packmate atop the bed of a third, and Erich tells her he could widen the other loft, where he throws his dirty socks. He could make it a little bigger, wedge a little bed in there, and she could have a curtain, and they could share the ladder and she thinks, slowly opening her eyes, of whispering goodnight to Erich from across the empty space. Of being able to see when Charlotte's door is open so she could climb down or hop down and go see her. Of waking up and looking out a tiny window at the porch with its windowboxes and flowers. She closes her eyes again, and unfolds her arms, and wraps one over Erich's middle again.

Her legs, then. One moves, and rests over Erich's leg, calf to calf. She exhales, because she held her breath as she moved to hold him.

"I really like the sound of that," she tells him. Then a pause: "We don't need to go back to get any of my stuff. I can do without it."

Erich

"I can go back and get it," Erich volunteers,

because of course he does. Melantha was raised in a Fury commune with few material possessions; without none, he can almost bet, that she couldn't remake from raw materials with her bare hands. Erich -- well; Erich's had a similarly material-scant few years, but that's where the similarities end. Without the benefit of a commune, of a society where everything is made by one's hands and shared amongst the group, he's learned instead the incalculable value of little things. He does not like to lose things, or let things go to waste. That's why everything, every last little cheap thing in this tiny little house, has its place. Has a little hideyhole somewhere where it will be secure and safe when the whole thing goes on the move.

"Just tell me what you left there and where to get it. I'll drive the truck down and you can chill here with Charlotte. I'll need to buy some wood and weatherproofing anyway to expand the loft."

Melantha

She smiles a little, small because she is sad, but a smile because she ... well. She doesn't know. She decides not to question the desire to smile, and just nods. "We can all go. I'll pick up my stuff and you'll buy some wood and we can get some seeds to grow radishes in one of the windowboxes. Or herbs."

There's a pause. She pushes herself up on her elbow and for a moment, with her lying alongside him and her hand on his chest and her leg all but between his legs, there's a memory of days and times when they were like this, just like this, only out in the woods and hiding in a tent together.

"I know you can't eat radishes," she says, "but I want to grow something edible." Because Melantha, too, does not like to let things go to waste. Does not like to dismiss utility. She looks at him for a moment, then breathes in and removes herself from him, drawing away not because she's nervous but because it's complicated. "What do you want to do til Charlotte comes back?"

Erich

[WITH none. not without none. omg.]

Erich

It felt ... familiar, natural, right. When she was alongside him, and they were intertwined. Erich only really notices it with its loss. When she removes herself, he raises himself up on his elbows. Charlotte's bed is small, but it is clean and it is soft and it is cozy. There may be a few stray clumps of fur on it.

"Just ... this," he says, after a moment's thought. "I just want to hang out. Or maybe we can go look at the other loft and you can help me plan how to expand it. So if you can put your own touch on it. Like maybe a skylight or something. My loft has skylights, did you see?"

Melantha

Just... this.

Melantha exhales, looking at him. She smiles, achingly, when he tells her he has skylights. She nods. "I'd like that. Skylights. I'm used to sleeping under open air in summertime." She lowers her head to his, brow to his brow, but it's slow. She's gentle with it, intimate, which is frightening and natural at once.

"Thank you," she says to him, and he knows she's going to yell at him if he tells her she doesn't need to thank him for anything, so maybe he holds back this time. After a while she lifts her head, and looks at him for another few moments. She reaches up and rubs the pads of her fingers against his scalp, gently scritching.

So: she lies down with him again after a moment. They look at the ceiling, and they talk about the little loft. She says she should have an actual curtain, not a bead curtain. This is as far into the future as they go. Not school or life or even the two of them: just the loft. The house. The things that are tangible and touchable, the things that she can reach out and hold on to.

When Charlotte comes back, she finds them at the little table in the 'living' space, hunkered down over some paper, drawing plans. For Melantha's bedroom. In the tinyhouse.