out of the fortress, into the rainstorm.

Melantha Argyris

It's September now, but it's still too warm during the day and only barely cooling at night. They leave the skylights open, turn the fan on while they sleep to let air pass through the tinyhouse where the three of them sleep.

Sometimes Erich goes to patrol and sometimes Charlotte goes to patrol and sometimes Erich and Charlotte go to patrol and sometimes when it's Erich, with or without Charlotte, he comes back and finds Melantha sleeping in his loft, in torturous shorts and tank tops,

and sometimes when he's trying to get into bed she ends up kissing him when he wakes her by accident or design, not even whispering, kissing him until she wants him so badly she thinks she might die, her heart might burst from the silence, her body might implode from desire.

And it goes nowhere, because it can't. Because whatever nameless but powerful thing it is they feel for each other, they both love Charlotte.

--

Early September, and Melantha is not crawling into the loft or crawling into Charlotte's bed or letting one or the other of them climb up to her little alcove and snuggle with her the way wolves have wanted to snuggle with and hold her since she was a child, protective and endeared and a hundred other things drawing them to wrap her up in their arms like they do.

It's daylight, and Melantha is outside checking on the radishes when Erich comes out of the tinyhouse, probably from sleeping late or something. Charlotte is off somewhere. Something about water, and making it clear and clean and pure and rivers and so on.

She smiles at him, dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and she admitted to herself a while ago that, y'know, actually... she likes having smooth legs more than she likes having hairy legs and so she has taken to shaving them again. Her hair has not been cut since they left D.C. and it is wild and thick and curls and waves at the ends where it falls in her mid-back. She is lean and strong, standing there in a heather t-shirt she got from somewhere like Wal-Mart or Target the last time she was in anything resembling a town, and on that gray t-shirt are some thorny roses and a couple of feathers in black, some random assortment of images.

Melantha waves as he comes out on the porch, but she's standing on the ground outside the porch's railing, checking on some of the not-flower boxes hanging from said railing.

"Charlotte's off doing that water thing she was talking about," she tells him, poking gently at the soil she just dampened, peering at the tiny shoots that suggest where tiny vegetables are growing.

"I'm not going to school this fall," she also tells him, which maybe he has already figured out, given the time of year it is and when he goes into the city there are a lot more 18-22 year olds wandering around Auraria campus or DU, but maybe he hasn't, because when he's in the city it's usually night and he's usually fighting something or doing something else, but:

Melantha is here. Melantha hasn't been in Denver proper, buying up books and registering for classes. Melantha has been in and around the tinyhouse. Pretty much all the time. Which is very much Not Going To School.

Erich Reinhardt

It is daylight.

It is beyond daylight. It past noon, close to one, and his highness the Shadow Fenrir Lord has finally seen fit to roll out of bed,

and lower himself from the loft with his hands gripping the edge,

and shamble into the tinybathroom where he scrubs out his mouth with a toothbrush that looks more frazzled every day; scrubs out his face with soapy hands that trail water down to his elbows and all over the floor.

Now: the door open onto the porch. One Erich emerges, a six-inch chunk of polish sausage in hand -- the sort you can sometimes buy two for five bucks at a grocery store. He is wearing a very old pair of shorts, which used to be white but are now this horrid fugly grey-fuschia-ugh hue from getting washed repeatedly with other cheap clothes that sometimes bled color. The elastic is failing. It hangs precariously on his hipbones, and he has to keep tugging it up, and at least once Melantha's seen him wearing it around the house and it has simply fallen off altogether because his arms were full of dirty laundry and he couldn't pull it up, and Melantha wouldn't help him and Charlotte was clapping her hands over her eyes. So he just shuffled awkwardly across the floor until he could dump his armful somewhere and get his pants back up. Which they laughed about for hours and hours afterward.

Still: he wears it because it's comfortable and because he has little else and because none of them like to waste things that were still serviceable. And he gnaws on his polish sausage, which is apparently the equivalent of munching an apple for breakfast for him, and he leans against one of the porch posts, the midday sun warming his fair skin without ever really tanning it much, and he smiles sleepily, lazily, crookedly, as Melantha waves.

Huge yawn. He showed off all the half-masticated food in his mouth. Charming boy. His teeth shut with a click, he swallows, he tears off another bite. " 'kay," he muffles, re: Charlotte and water. And then nodding, chewing, chewing and nodding.

"I know," he replies. "Or well. I figured. It's like September and my sister's already started classes. So I figured if you were gonna go you would've been buying books already at least."

He straightens up off the post. Comes ambling loosejointed down the steps. You'd think he was up all night patrolling, that he's tired now after pulling a shift like that -- and sometimes that is indeed the case -- but no, not today. Today, he is simply lazy. And he half-collapses in a crosslegged sprawl next to Melantha, giving the -- er -- access port of his shorts a tug to keep himself modest. Sort of.

"I'm glad," he adds, and leans over to butt his forehead against her shoulder. "I know you're probably not gonna live in a tinyhouse with me for the rest of your life, but I like having you around. And I'll miss you when you move out. So I'm glad you're not moving out."

He breaks off a chunk of sausage from the unchewed end. Offers it to her.

Melantha Argyris

Sometimes Erich lowers himself from his loft and Melantha watches him move like that, like some kind of Tarzan. Sometimes he walks around in low-slung boxers and she looks at the dimples in his lower back, the outline of his abdominals. Sometimes she just grins, wicked as you please, when his shorts fall down and he would rather waddle around with his butt hanging out than drop his pile of laundry.

Sometimes Melantha walks around in a t-shirt and shorts. Sometimes just the t-shirt. Sometimes she leaves the curtains on her alcove open at night for airflow and he knows she nearly always sleeps naked, her body covered by a thin sheet that has been washed so much it's nearly translucent.

It's a small living space. There's not a lot the three of them can hide from each other. Somehow they still manage to. Some things, at least.

--

Melantha watches him amble down and sprawl, her eyes flicking to follow his hand as he adjust his shorts a bit. She flicks a brow up, mouth quirking into a half-smile. He's glad, and truth be told she wasn't sure he would be. Both he and Charlotte seem to want so much for her. Want her to be a hunter and want her to be happy and want her to be with them forever and ever and Melantha is still figuring out what she wants from day to day, and Melantha does not know where she is going.

She wasn't sure he would be okay with her not going to school, much less glad of it, and her eyes give off a soft ache for a moment as she examines those little growing things that she is making because function matters to her. Food. Sustenance. Everything, and everyone, serving a purpose.

I like having you around. She looks at him again, wondering if she's heard him say that before, and she's pretty sure he has, but something about the words rubs her the wrong way. There's a flicker of that, in passing, and it is about to go when he also says

I'll miss you when you move out.

And now she is frowning, and her brow is all furrowed and her lips are turned down at the corners, a sad and pensive little expression that has, in the past, made men give her presents so she'll stop looking like that and be the squealing, bubbly, soft bouncy squirming wet sex kitten on their laps again. Make them happy. Be fun. Don't make that face, which is -- yes -- sort of a pout. There are many reasons why Melantha ended up on the path she did. Her face falls so naturally into these expressions, which are mind-warping and terrifying in how effortless they are for her.

"Am I supposed to move out?" she asks him a moment after that, quieter, looking down at him past her shoulder.

Erich Reinhardt

His brow is still against her leg. The outside of her thigh, to be exact: that warm, sunbrowned, smooth-again thigh of hers. Melantha tans more easily than Erich. Even without sunlight, her skin is olive to his fair -- her blue eyes a startling, intriguing offset.

She looks down at him. Asks him a sort of question that would, in another form, make his tail wag slowly and uncertainly. He lifts his forehead and looks up at her, popping that piece of meat into his own mouth since she didn't accept it. He doesn't push meat on her quite so hard anymore. That's worth noting: that now he almost seems to trust her to know whether or not she's hungry, shocker! Once in a while, anyway. But that is beside the point:

the point is he looks up at her, his own eyes blue, blue, blue, his brow furrowing a little in puzzlement.

"You're not supposed to. I mean, it's not like I want you to? I'd be happy if you stayed here forever. I just sort of assumed you and Charlotte might want your own places eventually. I mean Charlotte lived in that huge Victorian, and you had your own apartment." He looks unhappier with every word out of his mouth. "This is all coming out wrong. I'm not saying you're materialistic or something. I just ... kinda thought you'd get tired of being crammed into a tinyhouse all the time. And if you went to school, I thought you'd probably live in a dorm or get an apartment or something.

"But I don't want you to move out. I can't imagine anything happier than being in the same den as you and Charlotte."

Melantha Argyris

"I never had my own apartment," Melantha says, not just quiet but softly, which is not the same as gently but is the same as putting her hand lightly on his back when he's in a wolf-form to settle him somehow. It can't be gentle because the truth in it is far from gentle. That apartment wasn't hers any more than the hotel room was, or Damaris's lean-to or the clothes or jewelry or handbags or any of it.

She gives him an odd little smile. It's kind of sad. "I grew up mostly living in tiny little shelters. During winter the sisters would wear fur and huddle around the kin to help keep us all warm." She pauses, and turns from the planters, fingertips dirty but she doesn't wipe them on her shorts or anything, she just slowly sits down on the grass with him, her back to a post, facing him.

"Mostly you wear leather and hide up there. Cloth sometimes, but it wears out so fast with the kind of use we gave it. But you buy a good pair of jeans they'll last you awhile. You can take off and then re-sew the sleeves of a tunic season to season if it's sturdy and you're not lazy about the sewing. Whenever there's a new kin or cub someone shares their bed til she can make her own. There aren't a lot of spots for good shelters, though; you tend to group together according to who you can live with and sometimes you just live with whatever you can get because it's better than sleeping out in the rain."

Melantha brushes her hand over the grass, the blades taking bits of wet soil from her skin.

"I think the tinyhouse is pretty luxurious by comparison," she mentions quietly. "There's even a toilet."

Erich Reinhardt

It's sort of a painful truth, and one that he understands immediately when she speaks it. She's never had her own apartment. She's never had her own anything, not after her family was

torn apart,

broken,

killed.

Even when she was with the sisters, that was a commune. Communal -- that's the whole point. And when she was out on a mission, whatever she had was provided by the tribe, the nation, the mark. Even when she came here, she lived in shared quarters. A dorm for cubs, for Garou and kin passing through, where she was stared at, sniffed, coveted -- just she has been since ... god. Since puberty.

Since before puberty, if one wants to be terribly, brutally, disgustingly realistic about such things.

So: he understands. And he watches her as she sits, and he tries again to offer her a bite of sausage, popping the rest into his mouth. He doesn't mind that her hand is dirty. Of course he doesn't mind: he just sat down in the dirt wearing undershorts. And then, with his hands empty, he runs them over the grass to ... clean them. Sort of.

"Do you think you might wanna stay a while, then?" he asks her, hopeful. And look, a big word: "Indefinitely?"

Melantha Argyris

"Yeah," Melantha says quietly, watching him. "I thought... that was kinda the idea. You and Charlotte and me. You know?"

No one's really talked about Ingrid to her. All she knows is a face that showed up near theirs in an elevator and was gone. But if she did know, and did find out that Ingrid pulled away from Erich almost as soon as she found him again because the depth of what these three mean to each other hit her like wave in the face, sucking her underneath, well:

Melantha might not blame her for how she handled that. Reacted to it. Retreated from it.

He is offering her meat again. She just smiles at the meat, then at him, gives a little shake of her head.

Erich Reinhardt

Erich lets out this little laugh. Not a huff: a laugh, a blurt of one like he can't quite contain it. And he grins, popping that last bit of meat into his mouth.

"Awesome," he says. "I'm glad." And after a while, "I'm really glad."

Then, wiping his hands on the grass, he looks around. Seems to notice for the first time that she was out here doing something. Checking on radishes. At least he thinks those are radishes she's growing in the windowboxes, or maybe even in little patches of earth around the tinyhouse, since the tinyhouse has been in one place for so long. That was something she started. The windowboxes were Charlotte's idea -- or maybe Erich's, but even if they were Erich's he only got the idea because he saw that lovely garden Charlotte had in D.C. But planting something useful, something that could actually add vitamins and sustenance and variety to their plates: that's all Melantha. It should surprise no one that that was Melantha.

"It wouldn't have been the same if you moved out. Or Charlotte. Or me, I guess, but I'm never moving out. This is the first place of my own I've had since forever, too. That I could stand up in, anyway."

Melantha Argyris

At first, Melantha doesn't quite get why Erich laughs like that. She's uncertain about his uncertainty: hasn't it been obvious that she would stay here, that they would all stay here, unless they absolutely had to go elsewhere? Where would she go? Why would she leave them, when they are, in a sense, the foundation of her life right now? She's bewildered by the fact that he didn't seem to know, wary of it because if he didn't know, maybe she's wrong somehow. That he laughs doesn't upset her or offend her; it just makes no sense to her.

She might have asked, but he says he's glad, and she thinks she believes him, but even with their renewed and growing-again attraction and even with their closeness in this little living space, sometimes she still feels confused about him, a little lost, a little at a loss with him.

Melantha draws up her knees, leaning spine to post, looking over at him as he says it wouldn't have been the same, and she feels a little worm of guilt for being bewildered or wary or lost or confused when it comes to Erich. Erich is just sort of... basic. There isn't much he thinks that he doesn't say, isn't much that he says that is obfuscating something else. She wonders a little why she doesn't trust him; she wonders, too, if trust is really what it's about at all. But what he says is true enough: it wouldn't have been the same.

Her eyebrows quirk when he says he's never moving out, though. "Never?"

Erich Reinhardt

"Well, maybe if I build a better tinyhouse," he muses. "But I think this one's just fine."

He gives his palm one more swipe over the grass, and then he just

kinda

flops backwards, tucking his hands behind his head. It's just past noon. The sun is direct, falling on his face, making him squint up at that flawless high-altitude sky for a moment before closing his eyes. Now the world is pink-red, the color of the blood inside his eyelids. He has a brief musing thought about rose-tinted lenses and closed eyes, and it almost connects in his head but then he lets it go.

His eyes open again. One of them, anyway. He turns his head, looks at Melantha through that single blue eye.

"If you're asking whether or not I ever want to move into like a real house, though -- right now, probably not. I don't really like staying in one place. I like being able to move around, and having my den move with me. It's just nice to never have to really leave home, you know? Your home just comes with you."

Melantha Argyris

Melantha is still. Wild thing that she is, she's a strangely still point among all of them. Still not in silence or even tranquility but the way bulbs are still during winter, hiding under the earth beneath layers of hardened soil, working some strange alchemy within herself until the outside world seems habitable again for one of her kind. It's a stirring, gestating sort of stillness and quietude, but: she's not quite like Erich, eager to be able to keep roaming, to always have a home at his back or on it, to never be tied down,

to never have to really leave home, as he puts it, which means something else entirely.

It makes her think of something else, which isn't about whether she'll stay or go ever of if Erich will ever really change or just be the same sort of affable, simple werewolf he was when she met him and was when she saw him again here. There's wisdom in rolling with the punches the way he does, of simply dusting himself of and getting back up and continuing on his way without rancor at the universe, though he has plenty of reason to be bitter. To be sad.

He doesn't like to be sad.

Melantha tips her head to one side, remembering that something else that he made her think of, and asks: "So you're keeping up with your sister? After you saw her?"

Erich Reinhardt

That puts a smile on his face again: because she's right. He doesn't like to be sad. He'd rather put the past away. Roll with the punches, gets back up, moves on.

Forgets. Or tries to. Or pretends to. Or tries to pretend to.

So maybe it's partly wisdom. Maybe it's also partly an immature coping mechanism -- though, in his defense, there's really little else for him to do when confronting the past also means going home also means getting killed.

So: yeah.

He brightens, though, when she asks about his sister. And he rolls onto his side, propping his head up on one arm, stretched out all long and lazy and ... canine-on-a-hot-day-ish. "Yeah," he says. "It's easier now with her in college. We can text and stuff. She might visit me for Thanksgiving or Christmas or something.

"What about you? Have you heard from anyone ... y'know, back at the commune?"

Melantha Argyris

It could be said that none of them likes to be sad. Why would they crave that, or seek it, when they've had enough? Erich perhaps is the only one who distances himself from it so... readily? It would be unjust to say it's done easily, or maybe just blind. Habit isn't the same as ease. Nor is necessity.

Melantha hasn't moved, but she watches him roll over and smile and talk about his sister and how she might come visit and in the back of her mind she's wary, suddenly and knee-jerkishly, of meeting this young woman even though she also wants to be eager and excited but what if something changes, what if something breaks this peace and quiet and renewal that feels not just precious to her but incredibly tenuous, terrifyingly fragile?

She takes a sip of air though and shakes her head to his question, reminding him quietly: "I don't have a phone, or internet, or anything. Or an address."

Her tongue slips out, moistening her lips as her eyes flick down his body, then come back to his face with some sudden, flickering, unexpected amusement: "Your dick is about to fall out, I think."

Melantha Argyris

[NOOOO]

Erich Reinhardt

"No it's not," Erich argues without even glancing down. "I'd feel the breeze."

A small pause, then. He sobers a little. She can feel him looking at her, studying her, trying to figure out that tiny little sip of air, that look on her face that was briefly -- pensive? Troubled? He isn't quite sure.

"Do you want to hear from them?" he asks, very quietly.

Melantha Argyris

"I didn't say it was falling out, just that it's about to," Melantha says, arguing right back. But they quiet. And it's an awkward little pause, a lack of delving into some ridiculous argument-discussion over whether or not his penis is about to make a run for it to escape its grey-fuchsia-ugh prison. Melantha glances down, picking at some grass -- no. Not picking at it, plucking it out, breaking the blades. She is touching them between finger and thumb, thinking about them, and they say when Persephone was taken she was doing such things with flowers in a field. It was late summer and or maybe early spring and she was taking delight in the work of her mother's power in the earth, and she was innocent but

she was also alone, and her mother was not watching her,

and she was the most vulnerable she had ever been, or would be again.

--

want? he asks, and Melantha pauses, thinking to herself without looking at anything, then turns her head and fixes him with those pale, eternal-seeming eyes of hers. Those eyes, one might think, could see through to his parent's generation and his grandparents and their grandparents and far, far back, when humankind was not so human, when the line between animal and human was far more blurred and no one thought it odd that shapeshifting wolves might come for them in the night to cull their numbers.

She breathes in, and holds it a moment, and shrugs.

"I think about it sometimes, and when I was out there doing what I did, I was always really alone. No one visited or called or wrote or even checked in. If something happened I had people I could call to get me out or help me, but no one was reaching out. I never noticed it, or thought about it, because I always felt like I was... a part of this thing that was so much bigger than myself. I never really felt alone. Now I'm... not really doing anything." She shrugs. "I mean, you know: I sleep a lot. I go do stuff with you or Charlotte or hunt or whatever. Chores," though they both know how minimal chores can be with their lifestyle.

Melantha gives another shrug, though this time just one shoulder. She shrugs a lot, like there's a mantle she can't shake off, like there's a weight she can remember but can't feel anymore. "I do feel a lone a lot, you know... when I am. I don't feel lonely, though. Not if you or Charlotte is around.

"When you're not," she continues, though slower now, quieter, "I really want one or both of you to come back. I don't like it. I don't feel like I'm a part of this big thing anymore. And I'm worried about losing you both. And I don't... really have anything to do."

She looks down, brushing her palm over the grass, swallowing.

"I really don't know. They were gonna help me pay for school and I haven't called Damaris or anyone to tell them I'm not going and I don't know what she might say. I haven't tried talking to anyone up there since I got to Denver. I just wanted to be with you and Charlotte."

Erich Reinhardt

Listening, Erich gradually ... changes. Not like that, not like: into a wolf or into a monster or anything like that. But some of his laziness and simple pleasure at being near her -- well, it doesn't quite fade, but it does take a backseat. And after a while, he sits up. He scoots over by her, looping those long, lean, iron-defined arms over his knees, and just kinda listens.

Hears. Digests. Leans over after a while, bumping his brow against her shoulder the way he had against her leg when she was standing and looking at her radishes, and he was flopped down by her feet like that just might be his favorite place in the world.

"Did it make you feel like you were losing us, when I kinda asked about you moving out?"

Melantha Argyris

Sometimes -- now, for instance -- Melantha misses that simple pleasure. Not misses in the sense that she longs for it, but misses it in that she doesn't even notice that it's there, or perhaps see it for what it is. This is how garou are. This is how garou have been with her ever since fifth grade when she was around them for the first time. They would follow her around to watch over her. They would hold her to some high, sometimes unfair, standard of behavior and dedication. When she was a little older, new cubs who were missing home or struggling with life in the commune would gravitate towards her, not fully understanding why they thought so highly of her or why they thought she would be nice to them or why they felt better when they were around her. Melantha, when living with the Black Furies, almost never slept without someone wrapped around her or curled up beside her.

Charlotte was drawn to her because of that breeding. Zeroed in on her instantly, offered to take 'Jack' and tear him to tiny pieces and told 'Celia' that she should never ever ever ever ever ever let him touch her ever ever again, but of course that couldn't be the way things went.

Erich was drawn to her in a different way. And maybe the scent of her had him holding her to a higher standard already, because her tottering on those heels and giggling in the back seat of a limo with Senator Wyrmbreath just about made him hate her. Or made him act like it.

All that said, the point is that Melantha doesn't really think about it much. She doesn't seem to see it all for what it is: Erich coming out of the tinyhouse and veritably flopping at her feet just because it's so nice to be near her, on the grass and in the sun and with her smelling like earth and antiquity and green growing things and Melantha-hasn't-washed-today-yet smell and so on. She just thinks he's lazy and drowsy and enjoying being outside. She doesn't recognize that he might be just as lazy and happy anywhere, sunlight or no sunlight, tinyhouse or no tinyhouse, if she was there and he could just... scoot over. And be near her.

--

But he does scoot, from where he reclines across from her to sit beside her, not quite arm to arm, nudging his brow against her as if he he had changed into a wolf. Melantha turns her head, hair sweeping over her arm, looking at him. Dark, lush thoughts flit through those uncannily pristine irises for a moment.

At first, she shakes her head at his question. Then there's a pause, and she gives a small nod. "Kinda."

Another pause, but it's obvious in the tiny line between her brows that she's thinking. "Or more... like maybe I've never really had you. Because... I always thought I was a part of this big thing and that I always had the sisters with me and... now I don't really feel that way anymore. I'm not sure if I was just been fooling myself all that time. So it makes me think...I could be really wrong?"

She never used to talk like that. Little lifts of inflection at the ends of her sentences, making them sound like questions, like requests for permission to continue or permission to hold that thought or even just constant, constant uncertainty.

Melantha wants to lean to him, curl against his side, feel his arm around her. but she doesn't make a move in that direction. She just looks at a spot on his upper arm, contemplating the fairness of his skin even in summer. "The thing is," she says, almost whispering it, "I'm not really worried about Charlotte wanting me around. I think she'd follow me into hell if I went. And back in DC I got the feeling with you that you were... really into me. Like really into me." She swallows, still staring at his skin, not at his face. "And I don't know if I ruined something because I've been so sad or if something changed and you just sort of... think of me as a friend or if we had sex if it would really just be about the sex or... what. But I just keep feeling like something with you and me is just really, really disconnected. And really friendly and amicable and all that, just not... the way it was. Or the way I feel about you."

There's a beat there, a stretch of silence. "Like I've already lost you."

Erich Reinhardt

"You haven't," Erich replies, instantly, immediately, unequivocally.

His brow has furrowed. He isn't rubbing his head against her arm now like an affectionate canine. He isn't leaning into her, or wrapping that arm around her, or flopping all over her the way he does sometimes.

He's just ... looking at her. Frowning, achingly.

"You haven't lost me," he repeats. "You can't." A ghost of humor steals in here, "Sorry to disappoint you," and away again. He sobers, he looks at the mountains biting against the sky; back at her.

"What do you mean, though?" he adds, quieter. "What ... feels disconnected, or not the way it was?"

Melantha Argyris

Melantha pulls her eyes up from Erich's arm when he says she hasn't lost him. Instantly. Definitively. There's an ache in her eyes all the same, a worry and a wariness that seems to shadow her every move in this city, a self-doubt that gnaws at her from inside. She has lost all the faith she had, it seems, and that faith was what gave her all of her inner strength.

When he looks at the mountains she opens her mouth to ask him a question, but he turns back to her and her lips close. He asks one of his own, or two, or the same question two different ways. She exhales, soundless yet sighing, trying to put it into words. Words are woefully inadequate.

"I feel like... back in DC we were closer. Like there was something there, or could have been?" She shrugs, once, small and tight this time, glancing away. Strands of hair fall across her cheek, hanging down like a curtain. "I don't mean sex. I don't mean being friends. I know you care about me and like me. Just... something else. I don't really know what to call it,"

which is at least half untrue, because she does, she just really doesn't want to say any of it aloud,

"it just feels like maybe because we were apart for so long or had to leave the city so quickly or because I'm so screwed up now, maybe we just... missed that chance."

Erich Reinhardt

"I didn't think anything had changed," Erich replies, sounding a little miserable now. "I didn't think we'd missed our chance. And I definitely don't think you're screwed up, Melantha. God, why would you even think that?"

And: he does put his arm around her, then. Suddenly, and fiercely, he wraps an arm around her and all but drags her against his side, holds her fast.

"I just figured we were taking things slow and easy," he whispers. "'Cause it's been a while, and 'cause of what you've been through, and 'cause ... well, because we have time now. Which we didn't before."

Erich Reinhardt

"I didn't think anything had changed," Erich replies, sounding a little miserable now. "I didn't think we'd missed our chance. And I definitely don't think you're screwed up, Melantha. God, why would you even think that?"

And: he does put his arm around her, then. Or tries. Suddenly, and fiercely, he wraps an arm around her and all but drags her against his side.

Melantha Argyris

It's hard to put his arm around her. Hard because his God, why would you even makes her flinch away, shoulders and upper body leaning aside, head turned to him, the furrow in her brow going from wounded to reproachful -- no, defensive -- in a moment. She's stiff when his arm goes around her, and she will not be dragged anywhere, held anywhere.

Erich Reinhardt

So he doesn't put his arm around her after all. He starts to -- she flinches away -- he stops. He wraps his arms around himself instead, which is awkward because he's sitting on the ground. There's a silence.

"Why do you think you're screwed up, Melantha?" he asks at length.

Melantha Argyris

The look on her face is so bald, so open, and he's seen her when she's pretending. He met her when she was pretending, when she was false, when she was hunting. He saw her gleeful, delighted, bouncing over to him in a fucking pink minidress with thigh-high white stockings and lips so glossy and sweet and held in this horny little pout,

her eyes full of righteous vengeance, ruthless hunger, savage joy at the thought of ripping this man's life to pieces and letting him burn alive in his own filth. He has seen her, in an instant, hide that look in her eyes until it was hard to believe it had ever been there.

Melantha hasn't pretended, at all, since he met her again in Denver. And it's not hard, even or especially for someone as open and honest as Erich is, as simple and basic and up-front, to see that what he said or how he said it made her regret being vulnerable, regret telling him these painful little thoughts she has, because why would she even, like --

like she's just screwed up for thinking that. Like there's got to be something wrong with her if she thinks those thoughts, feels those feelings. Is as she is.

Right now, she looks pretty miserable, too.

"Because I thought I was connected to something most of my life, and I was wrong," she says quietly, feeling like it's a reiteration, and maybe it is, but maybe it has context now. "Because now I think maybe the reason they wanted me to do what I was doing was because I was just sort of... screwed up from the start, because I didn't have my mom, so maybe that's all I was really good for. So what the hell do I know?"

There's almost a laugh there, but it's really just a bitter exhale. "And I'm sad all the time, and I'm just hiding in the tinyhouse all the time, and I'm like... I'm don't... I don't feel connected to anything anymore." She's choking a bit, and whispers the last like a secret, because it is a secret: "Sometimes even not Charlotte."

Erich Reinhardt

After she flinched away from his last wanna-hug, he was going to give her some space. He really was. Except now she sounds so miserable, and so unhappy, and so ashamed that he

can't

help himself. He scoots over some more, making up that distance she put between them and then some. He puts his arm around her. He hugs her, hard, squeezing her against his side as she tells him she doesn't feel connected, not even to Charlotte, she's sad and she's hiding and, and, and.

He just holds her. And turns his head toward her, and rests his chin gently over her head if she's curled into his side, and just sort of: shelters her for a while. His bare skin is very warm, and his arm is strong, and he smells very much like himself and nothing else.

Some time later:

"I don't think you're screwed up," he says quietly. "I can't imagine you being screwed up. But that doesn't mean you might not feel screwed up. And after what you've been through, I think maybe... it'd be weird if you didn't feel a little screwed up.

"You're not, though. You're awesome and wonderful and strong and kickass. And I think you'll remember that again someday. Someday soon."

A small pause.

"But now I think... maybe you should go to school. Or do something else, something that forces you to get out of the tinyhouse and back into the world on a regular basis. I want you to live with me still. I want you to live with me and Charlotte forever. But I don't want you to just hide away here forever. There's a difference, you know?

"It's okay for you to kinda hole up here if you just need some time to rest and think and figure out your next move. But now it kinda sounds more like... you're starting to turn this place into a sort of fortress, which is turning into a sort of self-imposed prison where you don't have to deal with the world at all. And I don't think that's very healthy, Melantha."

Melantha Argyris

This time, Melantha doesn't flinch. She doesn't tense slightly when he nears again, like she did at his first scooting-over to be closer to her. She doesn't frown at him in reproach or yank herself back from his touch, but leans into him when he moves over. His arm is allowed around her on the second try, and her arms tuck in, then her head tucks in, and she curls up along his side.

It's odd that they can do this when she's half asleep or about to be, but it seems so much harder for her when she's awake and the sun is shining. It's odd that in the darkness, sometimes she'll climb stealthily up the ladder and slip into his bed and breathe in his scent and slide her arms around his waist and intertwine their legs, but that she barely so much as touches him even when they're passing each other in the tinyhouse and there's no room not to brush up against each other but somehow she manages not to. It's very odd that she acts like she can't stand to be looked at sideways most of the time they're both awake and wandering around but sometimes she'll smile lazily at him from her loft and wordlessly invite him up and just as wordlessly run her hands up his sides and pant softly as he kisses her neck, her hips lifting to rub herself against his torso or his thigh or whatever through her bedsheets.

So it feels right, surely it feels right, to have her curling up to him like this, welcoming his embrace and seeking it, even in her misery. Welcomes his chin over her head, encompassing her like a hollow in a cliffside, just enough to shield off the rain and hide her from the lightning. And for a while they exist there, Melantha falling quiet and Erich not saying a word, her eyes closing and her mind gradually blanking until all she lets herself sense is his warmth, and the solidity of his body, and the comfort she finds in these things.

When he starts talking, it's only midway through that she really begins to listen. She can hear him, of course, and she begins to even absorb some of what he says like someone asleep may dream of the things their body is hearing though they do not wake, but it's when he begins telling her that even though he wants her to stay forever, he doesn't want her to hide forever,

that her ears and mind really begin to open. Her eyes follow, and she isn't really looking at his hand or his lap, but the grass beyond his skin.

He's right, of course. Even if he doesn't entirely know it for sure, but he is. She isn't figuring out her next move. She stays out of the city, and Charlotte thinks she should stay out of the city right now and truth be told, Melantha doesn't entirely disagree from what she's heard of what's going on there, but even Charlotte was talking about the kin rangers at Forgotten Questions and now Erich is talking about getting out there and maybe it's not like a life choice or school or picking a path forever and ever and ever but at least something that gets her out of here sometimes, gets her into the world.

Out of the fortress. Out of hell.

For a while, she's just quiet still. Then slowly, she breathes in, and says: "Maybe... if you don't mind me taking the truck sometimes, I could like... go get a job. Not necessarily in the city, just... maybe over in town. I bet some of their summer help and stuff are leaving to go back to school. I could find a job. We wouldn't have to use Charlotte's family's money so much, and... I don't really know if my tribe will pay for anything since I'm not going this fall like I was planning to."

She's looking up at him now. She's obviously waiting to hear what he thinks of that idea.

Erich Reinhardt

Erich is smiling when she looks up at him. He leans down to her, impulsively, and kisses her gently on the lips.

"I think that's an awesome idea," he says softly. "You can take the truck whenever you want. But I think we can just move the tinyhouse down too. Park at the edge of town where we're not in anyone's way. I love it here," he nods at the landscape: the sky, the mountains, the trees, the wildgrass, the water, "but I didn't plan on staying here forever. We'll get snowed in come November. Which is cool, the tinyhouse can totally handle it, but ... I'm not sure we can handle that."

He stops rambling. He falls quiet, resting his chin on her hair again, gently so that his jaw doesn't dig into her skull. He's happy again. Quietly, profoundly so.

"I think it'll be good for us all," he says.

Melantha Argyris

She breathes in when he kisses her. It's a small sip of that richly oxygenated air they've been breathing for weeks now, but it's audible just before his lips touch on hers. And she's soft herself, soft enough that if he didn't know better he might think that there is no other way to kiss her but this: gently, sweetly.

When he draws back, even if just a few centimeters, she's watching as he tells her that would be awesome and she should totally do that and they can even live closer to Evergreen, especially as fall flits by them in a matter of weeks and turns into winter. And he's rambling about it, which makes her smile, but she's thinking of something else.

Melantha wants to keep looking at him, so she un-tucks her head from beneath his jaw when he goes to set it there again, pressing her brow to the side of his chin instead, bumpily nuzzling him like that. "I was thinking about... the whole job thing, and having my own money? And thought maybe... then it'd be a little easier to get on birth control again, or even just buy condoms," she says quietly. "And be able to... you know. Get a room somewhere sometimes or something."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich laughs under his breath, somewhere between shocked and pleased and anticipatory. "I can buy my own condoms," he says, that slow flush creeping up his cheek even as he does his best to ignore it. "You shouldn't have to eat weird chemicals just so we can, y'know. Make love.

"It'd be awesome if we could get a room once in a while though. Sometimes I can find work putting up fences and laying cement and stuff. I'll try to chip in too. But y'know... I wouldn't mind just going camping again. Though I guess when winter comes it's gonna be really cold."

Melantha Argyris

Now, here's the constant conflict of her tribe: the knowledge that reliable, available reproductive control is not just a stepping stone on a path to self-determination, education, and success for women, but may very well be its foundation. The knowledge that the forms of such control that Gaia gave them were, in fact, so reliable that some of them were harvested to extinction by greedy mortals (*coughRomanscough*). The knowledge that nothing is ever 100% because both Gaia and Luna are mothers, that motherhood is one of the three pillars of closeness between the female soul and the spirits of these goddesses. The knowledge that these Weird Chemicals are just synthetic versions of nature, but that they also have a strange effect on nature at the same time.

For Melantha it comes to this: she bristles a bit because she's been eating weird chemicals since she was a virgin, and she has been put at risk for disease over and over when she could not compromise her Mission by demanding testing or demanding condoms or demanding anything and that she's had to trust her tribe not to send her after someone riddled with STIs, and she has either been very lucky or else her trust just wasn't misplaced. She doesn't tense up in his arms because of that bristling, but she certainly gives him a weird little look when he says that.

It shifts when he says y'know. Make love all awkward like that, and her lips purse and her eyebrows hop up and she is very much trying not to laugh, but when she can finally let her lips stop touching they spread into a grin.

Melantha catches him mid-ramble and twists under his arm, putting her hands on his shoulders and, quite frankly, just tackling him to his back on the grass, one knee between his thighs, one outside, smiling down at him.

"You built the house. You don't have to chip in for a while," she says, and ducks her head down to him, kissing his brow. "But I've been 'eating weird chemicals' since I was a lot younger, Erich." There's a beat. A slightly more serious beat. "It's really none of your business how I decide to not get pregnant, either."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich, tackles, gets romped onto his back in the grass. He's rather goodnatured about it all, thumping down with an under-his-breath oof before tucking a hand behind his head. That clear sky behind her reflects into his eyes, making them bluer than blue. He returns her smile.

"Well, Charlotte paid for a lot of it too," he says. "I had some left over because the Mustang was worth more than the truck, but if we'd built the house from my money only it would've been a lot crappier. Cheap insulation, leaky pipes, maybe even a sewage tank rupture as we bumped down to Baja. Could you imagine?"

She kisses his brow, then. He closes his eyes, opens them again. She says it's none of his business, and his eyebrow quirks.

"Birth control as a method of asserting ownership over your body?" Look who's been reading Jezebel.com: he almost sounds like he knows what he's talking about. "I would've never thought of that. I sorta thought it was almost the other way around. Like, if I was gonna be so selfish that I refuse to buy condoms, you'd have to go on the pill to keep yourself from getting knocked up."

Melantha Argyris

"But you built it," she continues arguing. "Imagine if you'd been paying for the labor as well instead of doing it yourself. That's at least an equal investment, if not double, the cost of materials. Skilled labor is pricey."

Her hair is everywhere, because it's very long now, hanging down her back and over her shoulders. Sunlight filters through it. They discuss feminism and he doesn't sound like he's arguing with her. She brightens a bit because he almost sounds like he knows what he's talking about. "Well it's not a method of assertion, it's just taking responsibility. My body has always been mine. I don't want to get pregnant, so I'm not going to. Whether it's buying condoms or another method of birth control,"

she says, while kneeling-straddling him and pinning him to the grass,

"I consider that my responsibility. It's different if it's like... an actual partnership? And then, yeah... it's nice if you chip in on the financial front. But if you extrapolate that a little farther, then everyone who has a stake in whether or not I get pregnant could share in that responsibility, which is -- in my opinion -- one of the arguments for government-subsidized reproductive control, since every layer of society ends up sharing the burden and consequences of the lack of reproductive control. And the only argument against that is 'well, maybe you ladies should just never have sex', which is pretty much bullshit."

She tips her head to the side. She's the one rambling now. "If you wouldn't buy condoms for yourself, and I really, really wanted to have sex with you, I would buy them. If you refused to wear them, well. Then I could just not have sex with you. I wouldn't have to do anything. It's more like: if you want to have sex with me, and you want to take responsibility for your own reproduction or lack thereof, then we could A, both be using a birth control method, and B, both be contributing to the cost of that."

Melantha sways a little, rocking side to side. "Do you want to?"

Erich Reinhardt

"Skilled is arguable," Erich replies, mouth quirking. "More like me banging hammers on nails until miraculously things came together."

Her hair is everywhere. It is dark, and so silky-smooth that it almost feels slippery between his fingers. Which he knows, of course, because he reaches up to thread his hands through as she leans over him like that. She starts talking about assertion vs responsibility, which makes sense to him: but then, Melantha rarely makes a nonsensical argument.

Not that they're arguing right now. Just... talking. Having an intelligent conversation, a discourse on reproduction and responsibility, all while she straddles him somewhat suggestively in the grass.

"Wasn't that like the threat some ancient Greek women used to prevent a war? Threaten not to have sex? That seems like the worst argument in the world for a bunch of guys to make."

She goes on. What he may or may not do. What she would or would not do! The alternatives, the options. Responsibility. Does he want to?

Erich -- who, we must admit, has spaced out just a little bit, has started to let his eyes wander just a little bit -- snaps his gaze back up to hers. "Do I want to..." he's lost for a minute; the only question he can think of is one that he's pretty sure she's not asking him. And then he gets it: "Oh! Yeah. I want to share responsibility. So I think I should contribute. To the cause. And to buying condoms. And pills. And, yeah."

Melantha Argyris

She kisses him again. Because he argues that 'skilled' is maybe... not... the right word for it. He's a hammer. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And she smirks. "It is the worst argument in the world. For lots of reasons,"

which is a gloss. Melantha does not, right now, want to talk about rape culture, or about the hand-waving that goes on in order for people to pretend that one in six women are likely to experience and then report a rape, not counting the women who are raped and don't report it or the women who are raped and are told that what happened to them wasn't really rape because it's not rape if you're married it's not rape if you're drunk it's not rape if he paid it's not rape if, if, if. She doesn't want to talk right now, in this idyllic mountain meadow by a lake, about how stupid it is to argue that women should take responsibility for Not Having Sex but can't be trusted with the responsibility for deciding Whether Or Not A Baby Should Happen, or about how if she thinks about any of this too much she wants to explode, preferably obliterating half the mountain and anyone on it with her.

There is a lot of rage in the Black Furies. There's a lot of good reasons for it.

She massages his shoulders a little where she's pinning him. The V of her t-shirt's neckline dips between her breasts a bit, especially leaning over him like this; she catches him glancing there, eyes wandering to where her thighs come smooth and lean from under her little shorts. That massage is tight, meant to snap his gaze back up, and it seems to work just fine. He's lost. Does he want to what.

Erich gets it. Agrees! Yes! No pregnancy and stuff. He wants to be involved in the no-pregnancy thing. Contribute to the cause! Melantha laughs and leans over him, kissing him again, this time on the mouth,

this time soft and sweet and yes, gentle but yes lingering, too.

Erich Reinhardt

Soft. And sweet. And gentle. And lingering. This is not their first kiss today -- it's not even their second, or their third -- and with every successive one they are, let's admit it, getting a little more familiar.

Not that they've become strangers. Not that they haven't been familiarizing themselves over the past few weeks, ever since they all met again there on the umpteenth story of that colossal, futuristic Sept

that has since been gutted from within. Like a fish.

It's a sobering thought. And Erich's eyes are a little more sober as that kiss draws apart. As he looks up at her, his beloved black fury girl with her electric eyes and her conviction and her rage and her iron spine. He leans up on impulse: he kisses her again, open-eyed this time, and then

rolls with her, rolls her under so that now she's looking up at him with the mountains framing his shoulders, the sky framing his face.

"Do you still love me?" he asks quietly. "Because I love you."

Melantha Argyris

If Erich has been looking at her lately like he looks at her now, thinking of her as beloved, as his, with admiration and ache and sober adoration, Melantha has been missing it. She kisses him slowly, tastingly, her hand lifting from his shoulder to trace gently on his jaw, sipping the air when their mouths part for a moment, pressing their lips together again, touching her tongue to his. She's kissing him long enough that she sort of wants to lie down on top of him, but every time they've kissed like this lately it's been in her bed or his and has led to wandering hands in dim lighting and trembling, panting breathing that she's had to retreat from just because, well,

obvious reasons. And some not so obvious.

Erich lifts himself to her, up on his elbows, kissing her more firmly. One arm moves around her to steady her, more than likely, when he rolls them over. Melantha gives a quiet gasp, startled, and she's not kissing him again but looking up at him, hair on the grass and under her body, noticing that the sky is the same color as his eyes. There's flickers in her own gaze, though, different from a moment ago.

He asks her what he does, and her brows twitch together for a moment. They sort of got off track earlier, and those thoughts swim to the surface again: wondering if she ever really had him. Feeling like she's not connected to him. Or anything. Being told she hasn't lost him, can't lose him, doesn't quite make that feeling go away. Or make other feelings come back. In fact, knowing that Erich hadn't even noticed the disconnection at all only makes her feel bad for feeling that way in the first place.

Screwed up.

"I know you love me," she says quietly. "I know you and Charlotte love me. And I love you two."

Erich Reinhardt

The answer leaves Erich just a touch uncertain. Was she hedging, just a little, by bringing Charlotte into the picture? He knows it's the three of them, him and her and Charlotte; it'll always be the three of them, so long as there's breath in his body to protect that tiny holy trinity of theirs. But perhaps that wasn't quite what he was asking. Was it? He's not sure himself.

He kisses her shoulder. And then he rolls to the side, their bodies still aligned and his torso warm against her arm, her side, but -- not quite over her the way he was. His arm spans her waist. He looks past her at the mountains, that glistening lake. Back to her again.

"I didn't really mean ... like a packmate. I meant the way we loved each other in the forest. But it's okay if you don't really know the answer right now."

Melantha Argyris

It's a welcome shift, when he rolls to the side. He can see the taut look fade from her eyes when he does that, and the way she moves to her side as well, stomach to stomach, slipping her arm around his waist partly to hold herself up and partly just to, well: put her arm around his waist. To feel him against herself. To stay close, even if sometimes she doesn't want him over her. Sometimes she does. He knows that because of the random interludes when apparently she's so hungry for his body and his touch she can't help herself.

He didn't mean like a packmate. He means like in the forest. Melantha looks confused, but less tense, so that helps.

"Sometimes," she says quietly, a beginning but not an answer, "I feel like everything in DC happened to someone else. I'm so used to leaving an entire life and identity behind. And this time I'm not. But sometimes it's hard to even remember everything. Not... like amnesia. It's just like... I'm looking at the memories through a fog. It's hard to feel them, you know?"

She looks sad. Sad because she can't answer. She doesn't know the answer. Her hand comes up, touches his face, turns, brushing knuckles over his jaw. "Will you help me remember?"

Erich Reinhardt

Erich turns his face into her touch. He doesn't even seem to think twice about it. Or once. Or think at all. It's instinctive, natural as a flower turning to face the sun. As a wolf leaning into the caress of a loved one.

His lips brush her fingertips. He looks back at her.

"Of course," he whispers. "But you might have to show me how. Because sometimes I'm just so happy to be with you again, and close to you, and living in a tinyhouse with you that I kinda almost lose sight of how ... how hard this is for you."

Melantha Argyris

It's so easy for him. For Charlotte, too, perhaps. She's here! She's in Denver and they're out in the wild and things feel clean now and she doesn't have to let some gross Wyrm-ish man touch her or get on top of her and she is safe with them now, living with them now and they are all of them together and and and yay.

Hard for her, though. To remember who she is, because she's never really been solely herself, no matter how much she thought she was, all those years. To figure out who she wants to be and what she wants to do from here on out.

Melantha gives a small, tilting smile to the left side of her mouth. "If I could show you how, I probably wouldn't need your help," she tells him, because Melantha is, no matter what, always so very honest with him.

She leans over, hand moving to his shoulder, kissing him softly again. "Sometimes this helps," she whispers, easing back for a moment, still close enough that he can feel her breath on his lips. "Just... feeling you against me."

Servius Sacrificed-Memory

(open scene?)

Erich Reinhardt

[sadly, probably not -- and i'm also heading to bed after my next post. sorry!]

Erich Reinhardt

Honesty. That's a strange theme for the two of them to have, considering how they met. Considering when they met, she was dishonest about who she was and just about everything else about herself to him, to her mark, to everyone. Only -- that's not quite true. From the start, when they were alone, she was honest with him. As much as she could be. As much as he could comprehend.

Their mouths meet again. Soft as springtime. His eyes closing and opening again: their irises reflecting each to each, variations on that same skyborn hue. He smiles a little too, and then he stirs, shifting a little closer, laying his leg over hers.

"Maybe we should have Netflix nights too, after we move down to Evergreen. Just park outside Starbucks, pile up on Charlotte's bed, and watch movies."

Melantha Argyris

He's wearing boxer shorts. There's no one within earshot. They're rolling around on sweet late-summer grass and she smells the way she always smells, which is not just delicious but comforting and not just comforting but endearing and not just endearing but intoxicating, and right back around into delicious again. Her hand slides down his arm as he kisses her again. And again.

His leg comes over hers and she moves into him, sliding her thigh between his, rucking up the edge of that thin scrap of discolored cotton that happens to be the only thing between his cock and her smooth, leanly muscled leg.

Melantha looks up at him, and her tongue slips out slightly to lick her lips. If he put his hand on her now, anywhere close to an artery, she's sure he would feel how hard her pulse is at the moment. But maybe he doesn't. He talks about Netflix nights and parking at a coffee place or snuggling on Charlotte's bed and all watching something together. It sounds like a wonderful way to spend the winter, should they get snowed into the mountains, snowed into the tinyhouse.

She exhales softly, sighing, and wrapping her arms around his neck, kissing him again. Deeply.

Erich

Melantha

sort of

seems like she'd rather do something other than talk. And Erich, simple, easily-pleased, joyful, easily-wounded Erich: he finally kinda gets the point. Her arms wind around his neck. He likes her warmth, he likes her softness, he likes the intimation of strength just beneath that softness. The surprisingly solid tensile force of her. His arms wrap around her, too, sweeping her close as that kiss deepens. In another moment his hand is at her waist, is at her ribcage,

is cupping her breast through whatever shirt she wears. She doesn't wear those ridiculous outfits she wore in DC anymore. No more of those cute-skimpy tops, those tight expensive jeans, those tiny jackets, those teetering heels. She wears ... the sort of stuff he and Charlotte wear, more or less. Old, comfortable, rumpled clothes. Worn so thin from washing that his body heat and hers seem to seep right through, intertwine, make an alchemy all their own.

The kiss parts. It parts because he makes it part, lowering his head, exhaling a laugh. "We should wait until we've got condoms and a hotel room," he whispers.

Melantha Argyris

Talking is fine. Talking about really wonderful ways to spend long winter nights with her two favorite people ever is great. It's just that he's almost naked and she's warm and it's sunny and the breeze moves over the not-too-far-off lake every so often and makes her feel like she's a part of the very earth she's laying on.

Melantha's fingers spread in Erich's hair while he runs his hand up her side. She makes a small, soft sound into his mouth when his hand cups over her breast, shifting closer to him until he lowers his head, brow to brow, exhaling like that.

Her hand is still in his hair. His hand is still on her breast. Over her shirt. She hears him, and listens, but then she just leans over to him again, putting her mouth on his again, murmuring in between those lingering kisses:

"I should argue with you that just because I'm kissing you

"doesn't mean we need to get condoms,

"but I really don't want to stop this time."

Melantha slows a moment, her hand leaving his hair and going down his neck and his spine, smoothing over his lower back, feeling out his musculature beneath her touch. "I want to fool around, Erich," she whispers, kissing his jaw and his neck, poor neglected parts of him. "We can go out in the woods on a blanket. We don't have to have sex."

Erich

He remembers the first time she kissed his jaw and his neck. All those poor neglected parts of him that he hadn't even realize could make him feel like this. Hypersensitive and hyperaware, his heart about to burst. They didn't have sex that time, either.

He draws back. Very slightly, but tangibly. His eyes open; he finds her eyes.

"I miss having sex with you," he confesses. "I miss having sex in general, but I especially miss having sex with you. It's ... it's not that I don't want to fool around with you. But it's getting harder to stop every time."

Melantha Argyris

The first time Melantha leaned forward and kissed him just under his ear, Erich was hard and wanting in a moment and his head was spinning. He didn't know that sort of touch on that spot would have that kind of effect. It took him a moment, blitzed as he was, to notice how weird she was being, how weird it all was, how much sense it made that men might give up their lives to have her touch them, and he didn't want that, and she didn't really want that, and --

none of that matters right now.

Like then, he pulls back, and Melantha is sensitive enough to notice, to pause, to look at him. He says to her the same thing he said -- a month ago? More or less. He misses sex in general, which weirds her out a little to hear him say, just like I like having you around strikes her as so odd, so jarring, so distancing. He especially misses sex with her. Like he misses ice cream but most of all he misses vanilla. Melantha doesn't know what to make of it when he talks like that.

She takes a breath, though, exhales: "I mean... I want to get each other off, Erich. Even if you're not inside me."

Erich

Somehow that makes his eyebrows tug together. He probably couldn't explain it if he tried, and he's well aware that it's neither logical nor even perhaps all that sensible. Sensical. Still, his hand comes to her face. He leans forward and he kisses her, suddenly and wantingly and almost-almost-almost desperately, but

then he draws back again. Eyes closed. Brow to hers.

"Let's just wait," he whispers. "It's not really about getting off, anyway. Not for me. It's more ... how close to you I feel when I'm inside you. How close we feel to each other, like that. I don't mind waiting for that."

Melantha Argyris

That kiss makes her think he's saying oh! okay. I didn't get it at first. let's absolutely do that. like now. and she smiles into it and wraps both of her arms around him, smoothing her body against his, pressing their hips together, making a soft little noise of an exhale to feel him against her.

But then he stops again and she's about to lose her mind when he says wait. Melantha sighs, because it's really hard not to right now, loosening her arms around him a bit, looking at him with her brows furrowed together, her eyes open.

"Erich, I'm trying to be close to you. And I do mind waiting. Not because it's 'about getting off' for me. I just... want to relax with you, and play with you, and... it doesn't have to be like this one specific way and that's the only thing that's real or something."

Erich

Erich, almost in echo, sighs as well. Her arms loosen. He rolls onto his back. His eyes open too; he looks into the brilliant sky for a moment, and then over to her.

"Melantha," he says -- there's a note of imploring there, "I know it's not like there's only one real way to do it or something. But I just ... I want the first time we come together after ... after all that stuff in DC, and all that time apart, and all this time waiting, to be like that. I'd just like that. It doesn't have to be like that, and I don't want there to be pressure or whatever to get it right or something dumb like that -- but I'd like it.

"And anyway... I don't really want to go into the woods and get each other off. Not right now. I just want to lie here for a while and like. Cuddle. Okay?"

Melantha Argyris

Her brow is still furrowed. This time when he moves away he sort of moves completely away, rolling onto his back, and it's hard not to feel a little rejected when the air moves between them, cooler than either his skin or hers. She shrinks back from it a little.

"It kinda feels like there's pressure now," she says quietly, and she starts to sit up, sighing. Her knees are bent, her spine leaning forward until her hands cup her shins. She looks forward while he looks at her, and frankly: she looks sort of miserable.

"I'm just... trying to do what feels right as I go. And it's hard not to feel like... now what feels right and good to me isn't good enough or something, and it just... makes me want it less, Erich. I'm just..."

her eyes blink rapidly, her throat choking, and even though Melantha has never held back on her tears, she is just. so. sick. of crying. She sniffs, refusing it, shaking her head a little. "I'm just so tired of feeling like I need to please, and perform, and..."

There's not really an 'and' after that. Just an exhale. She closes her eyes, her shoulders dropping as she breathes out that heavy air. "I'm not trying to talk you into anything right now," she mutters. "I don't want you to do anything that isn't what you want, either. I'm just talking. I started to feel normal with you, and now I feel weird about it again, and it just... sucks. I'm so tired of feeling like I'm made of broken glass."

Erich

Erich has long since lost count of all the times he's managed to make Melantha cry. Or at least been present when she cried, usually due to something he did or said or something they fought over. It doesn't make him any less miserable every time, though.

"Oh, baby." He unfolds his arm for her, and if she comes to him he wraps that arm back around her. Tightly. Securely. "There's no pressure. And we can try and do what feels right. It's just a little hard right now. Because ... even though we're just trying to do what feels right, there are all these hidden little lines we can't cross. We don't really have a place where we won't hurt Charlotte. We don't even have birth control. And that's on top of all the adjustments you have to make, and...

"Just be patient, Melantha. We'll take it a day at a time. We'll start with moving closer to town and buying condoms and seeing other human faces again. We'll move on from there. You won't be broken glass forever. Okay?" He kisses her: her temple, her cheek. "I promise."

Melantha

There's something in the tone of that oh, Melantha that sends a slight but creeping, growing tension up her spine. Call it wariness. Call it a sort of broken familiarity, shadowy memories that do not belong in the here or now or with the person who is actually beside her. When his arm unfolds she doesn't lean into him, doesn't tuck herself into that offered warmth and closeness and security.

He says there's no pressure and it feels like a lie to her, because it has usually been a lie, even though objectively she knows Erich would not lie to her; he wouldn't even attempt it. He says there are hidden little lines and she doesn't understand and because she's the one who feels like she's made of shards, all jagged-edged and turning to nigh-invisible dust, it feels like a subtle accusation and it makes her angry,

even if a moment later he's talking about those lines and that anger deflates, feels very suddenly empty. She sort of sees what he means: it's not about lines being crossed, not really. It's about how even when something feels right, there are a half-dozen hurdles in their way. She wants to cry again, actually cry this time, because that's what she was trying to get around, doesn't he get it, doesn't he know she wants to be with him and she doesn't want all this stuff in the way, she just wants to be close to him.

Of course even as the thoughts are working their way through her mind she does, in fact, start crying. Not sniffing and holding back, but fat droplets welling up and then rolling down her cheeks even though she doesn't want him to hug her and she doesn't want him to tell her everything will be okay when Nothing Feels Okay At All because he's wrong and even if he's not wrong well it doesn't help does it no it doesn't.

Melantha swallows hard, her lips pressing together as he even tells her they'll take it 'one day at a time', and she pulls her head to the side. She doesn't want to be hugged, and she doesn't want to be kissed, and

"Stop talking to me like a kid who just had a nightmare," she says, a little more edge in it than she even means to put in there, a little more edge than most people would be able to put into their words when they're in the middle of weeping. Mostly, though, she just sounds sad. Maybe even a bit of a whine in those words. She leans over, arms around her knees, shoulders hunched. "Stop telling me everything is going to be okay. I don't feel okay. I --"

She exhales, roughly, pushing her hands down on the ground and getting to her feet. She doesn't storm off, though. She looks down at him. "I want to lie around naked on a blanket with you in the open air and sunlight and touch each other and kiss each other and make each other feel good and just be together. I want it because we never did anything like that, and it feels close and sweet and beautiful to me and the only people who have ever been willing to do anything like that with me were sisters, because men only apparently want to have sex with me if they can penetrate me. I just wanted something that I want, that I like, something special that makes me feel warm and happy and intimate, because I wanted to be with you. Not because I 'miss sex in general but mostly with you'."

And if it sounds like she has grown more heated since standing, it's because she has, because the blood rises with the body, and because the heat rises with the tears, and because she has hit on something honest and angry and honestly angry and it is purging out of her now.

"I don't want to lie here and cuddle when you just rejected something really lovely with me like it was just scraps of what you really want. I don't want the first time I'm with you again to be in another damn hotel, and I don't want the first time I'm with anyone again to be me having to pretend like what they want is what I want and what they feel is what I feel."

Melantha's hands are splayed, down and in front of her like she's holding the lid on something, but she finally just shakes her head, spreading her hands, turning, walking. "I'm going for a walk," she mutters.

Erich

"Okay, now you're acting like I always want you to do what I want, and that's not fair!"

She's stood up. He's -- for the most part -- stayed where he is, pushing up on his hands as she grew angrier. When she turns to leave, though, Erich springs to his feet.

"I get it. You had to do what other men, really gross horrible men that you wanted nothing more to destroy, wanted. For years. And that really sucks, and I can't even imagine what it must have been like for you. I get that I'm the first guy that you're with because you want to be with me, and that I'm the only chance you've ever had -- so far -- to be with someone in ways you want.

"But it's not fair to act like just because I ask -- once -- for something to be the way I want it, that I always do this. Because I don't. I've tried really hard to do what you want, Melantha. And so what if I want to do something different? It's not degrading, is it? I'm not asking you to do something horrible. I wouldn't. I thought this is kinda what you do if you're with someone: you give and take, you try to do things that both of you enjoy but once in a while one of you might have to give a little more than the other.

"Also," he's really on a roll here, "at the end of the day, I had no idea I was setting off bad associations here. I had no idea you felt like I was acting like those really gross guys who you always had to like, please. So you could destroy them eventually. If I'd known, I might have tried harder to meet you where you were. Okay?"

Melantha

Melantha could have seen that coming. The that's not fair piece of it, and when it comes on the heels of her own words, she stops her turn and glowers at him as he jumps to his feet.

That makes her heart stop for a beat. It would make just about anyone's heart stop, and not in a good way. He's taller than she is. He has a longer reach than most of the barrel-chested built-like-tanks garou of his birth tribe. His rage is appalling to the senses, and he's mad at her, and he's getting up to come after her, and so yes: knowing him, even loving him enough to try to remember what loving other people feels like to her, her heart freezes in place like it, of all her parts and pieces, is a prey animal.

"That's not what I'm saying, Erich," she says, which is intensely spoken of course -- they are fighting again, after all -- but at least isn't a tangent. "I'm not telling you that you're acting like one of them. But if you tell me that 'we' feel so close when we do it like that, and if I have to wait for that -- which I don't know when I'm going to be ready for or wanting -- in order to be with you at all, it makes me feel like I have to act a certain way or feel a certain way or at least fake it really well so you can feel like it's special or close or something which just makes me not want to do it at all,"

look at her, talking about sex like... like Charlotte or something, spinning out from her own words until she has to stop and take a breath and refocus:

"-- then can you maybe see why I'm freaking out?" She swallows, her throat moving with it. "You can give me the give-and-take bit and I won't disagree with you, but then I'm right where... where you think you are, I guess, where I ask for something the way I want it and you say no. And you know what?"

She looks up at him, exhaling, shoulders rounding down. She's not crying openly anymore, which is at least one benefit of fighting like this. "I'm not even upset that you said no. I'm upset that you acted like what I wanted didn't count, or wasn't good enough or you wouldn't even feel close to me otherwise or something. I'm upset that you keep saying stuff like how you 'like having me around' and you 'miss sex in general', and then you turn around and don't seem to get why maybe I don't feel quite so connected, or loved, or like maybe I just imagined whatever is between us. And I'm really pissed that you played the 'look how hard I've tried' game and followed it right up with the 'I'm asking so little' game.

"You're asking a lot," Melantha says more quietly, the wind out of her sails which gives some more of that wind, that breath, to her mind. "I really want to be with you. I want to be close to you. I want to... I want to come with you," she stammers out, exhaling. "I miss being close to you like that," and now she's nearly whispering, looking at his navel for no reason at all, "and I feel like maybe it would help me not feel so disconnected, too. I just don't feel ready yet to have you inside me again."

Smaller and smaller still: "And... that wasn't good enough for you, and it makes me feel screwed up and defective and it makes me dread having sex and like nothing is ever going to feel okay again. So I was gonna just take a walk."

Erich

Maybe Erich saw that flash. That moment, that instant where her heart skipped over a beat altogether. Missed it because

he is a monster

and she is afraid of him.

Maybe he saw. Maybe that hurt more than her tears ever did -- which is saying something, because he hates it when he makes her cry. Maybe it makes him stop dead in his tracks. Well; no. He does stop. Dead in his tracks. He winces a little, and she flings words at him, throws them like spears, like arrows, like darts, like paper airplanes, like...

a breath, finally. Smaller and smaller, sadder and sadder. Until he comes to her after all, step by slow step, holding his hand out for hers.

"I only said I missed sex in general," that's what he approaches first, of all things, "because it was my stupid way of telling you I haven't been sleeping around. Without just saying it, 'cause I thought maybe it'd sound like I was bragging or trying to mine you for information or something.

"And I didn't turn down what you were offering because it wasn't good enough. Even if I made it sound that way, that wasn't why and that wasn't what I wanted to do. I just ... I don't know, I guess I thought you were kinda not taking it seriously or something? I don't know. We were talking about movie nights and making out a little and then you were just like 'hey let's go get off in the woods' and I was just like... I don't know." It's the third time he's said that. "I just felt for a minute like it was ... trivial? Or something? Even though I know now it wasn't."

It ends there, imperfectly. He's quiet for a while. And then:

"Can I maybe come with you on your walk? Maybe we can just ... walk."

Melantha

Melantha's eyes are round and beautiful. Melantha's eyes used to be painted up to be even more frightened-looking, even more young. Now they are hers and hers alone, watching him as he stops on a dime. She doesn't see that it hurts him that she tensed, even for a moment, when he got up to his feet. It wouldn't make a difference; it's not something she can help any more than he can help being what he is. They were each born to be what they are, elements of predestination in his spirit, in her veins.

She watches him as he says that he was trying to tell her he hadn't had sex with anyone else. Melantha just shakes her head: partly because he's right, that was a totally stupid way to try and tell her that, and partly because: "I would have understood."

Maybe that's even true; doesn't really matter if it is or not. She doesn't know why she tells him that.

And she listens, and her brows tug together tight and quick and aching when he says it sounded like she wasn't taking it seriously, it was trivial, it was just like, I don't know. "I can see why it felt that way," she admits quietly, a soft interjection. Her arms have folded over her stomach, hands cupping elbows.

So there: imperfect and awkward silence, until he asks if he can come on her walk.

Melantha shrugs, looking at the ground. Presses her lips together, then looks up and over at him. "I think I want to be alone for a while," she says, this truth as soft as the last one. "...Maybe later?"

Erich

Erich's crest falls a little. He can't help it. His hands slip to his pockets, or where his pockets would be if he had pockets. Which he doesn't. So they kinda slip to his hips and then hang there a moment, awkwardly, before they drop.

"Okay," he says quietly. "I'll be around. Maybe inside. Vacuuming. I dunno." A pause. "Come back soon, okay?"

Melantha

A moment ago, Erich slowly stepped towards her, holding out his hand, and Melantha wrapped her arms around herself instead. It can't have felt good. The truth is that they both feel pretty rejected right now. They both feel confused by all this, afraid of what has changed and what might have changed.

She watches him try to put his hands into pockets that don't exist, elbows awkwardly akimbo until his shoulders round and his hands slide down. There's a faint quirk of her mouth despite herself, a sort of aching, fond, sad little look. It flickers when he says something else that catches her attention:

"We have a vacuum?"

which is sort of irrelevant, but whatever.

Melantha nods to him. It's awkward even then, the two of them standing there not sure what to do. Maybe Erich moves to go back in the tinyhouse. Maybe he just stands uncertainly, looking at her or at the ground. But after a few heartbeats of this, Melantha walks over to him and gives him a hug. That's not any smoother or more natural; she wraps her arms around his waist and turns her head to the side and closes her eyes tight when she squeezes him, soaking up the warmth he gives off. Breathing in deep afterward, she holds her breath for a second and then slips away, letting him go and turning from him, heading away from the tinyhouse and into the meadows and fields that lead out into heavily tree'd areas. They aren't so thick that he could lose her in there; they live in mountains and in plains deserts, not in forests. Denver was known for wealth found in gold, not lumber.

--

The warmth of the afternoon makes time crawl. When the sky begins to darken and the breeze begins to bring cooler air, it's mostly just a relief; up here even the slightest rain brings a humidity level that's unfamiliar but not stifling like it is nearer to lakes and seas. The sky is still the same hue but only because of the tint to the clouds, deep gray and a pale blue that somehow still seems heavy. It's going to rain, and like most rains in Denver, it comes in from nowhere: the pattering of a few drops becomes a constant fall in mere seconds, drenching everything. The drops are not large, the volume of water not lush, but the rain is steady and quick and its falling on the ceiling makes the inside of the tinyhouse noisy. So far there's no lightning, no telltale roll of thunder; you don't want to be out there in an electrical storm, not this high up, not even in an idyllic meadow.

So it's hard to hear, when a couple of pebbles clatter against the skylight first. Then one of the lower windows in case he's downstairs. They aren't big rocks, but they're a distinctly different sound than a raindrop. If he looks through either window on that side, there's Melantha, soaked to the skin, hair hanging almost straight from the water but a little frizzy on top. She's grinning, holding another couple of pebbles just in case. Her mouth is moving, open: it takes a couple more iterations to realize she's calling his name.

Erich

The very first lightning storm the tinyhouse saw -- and it saw a lot of them, crossing the midwest in late spring, early summer -- made Erich rush to run a grounding cable down from the aluminum roof to the steel undercarriage. Even now, when the storms really kick up Erich sometimes re-caulks the seams and re-seals the wood when everything dries out, wary of leaks, rot, lightning strikes.

During the storms themselves, though, he stays inside. He stays safe and dry and warm, because even though his is the tribe of Thunder he doesn't actually like catching bronchitis. Not that one catches bronchitis from a rainstorm. Not that he's even capable of catching bronchitis, but the point still stands.

So: pebbles ping against the windows. And Erich lounges up in his loft lost in a book -- a lurid paperback mystery! -- and thinks to himself that it must be some poor bird trying to get out of the storm, that's the only rational explanation his half-distracted mind can think of, when

pop!

another pebble hits. He looks up. He looks around. He realizes it's raining. And Melantha is still out there! He sits up and he looks out the window and there. is. Melantha, soaked to the skin, grinning and calling him.

So, alarmed, he comes down. She can see him moving through the windows: freeze-frames as he hurries down the length of the tinyhouse, and then the front door pops open and he comes out onto the porch to yell: "Get in, you're soaked!"

Melantha

It's not a lightning storm. It's not even a thunderstorm yet. There have been a couple since they parked the tinyhouse here, not many, and Melantha knows too much about surviving in high places to go running around outside. Storms like that can be dangerous in the lowlands; they are nature's brutality and ferocity incarnate in the mountains, terrifying and glorious to behold. No wonder the Shadow Lords follow Thunder.

When those sorts of storms come, Melantha goes out on the porch for as long as she can, before the wind makes the rain go sideways or the lightning strikes a little too close. She watches their mother, furious and wild, move through the sky and over the earth. She loves that madness a little bit, that uncaringness, that untouchable, savage soul of nature. And then, when it's too windy and too dangerous to be outside and Erich is all but pacing, she goes inside and maybe they put a tiny fire in the tiny fireplace if it's not too hot outside which it sometimes has been and squish together in the miniature living space, warm and sometimes too warm but dry and safe. More or less.

But no: this is a rainstorm, and it's even still daytime, and when those dark clouds move around the sky sometimes the sky is grey and sometimes the sun is shining but just shaded. Granted, yes, Melantha is soaked. She grins and stops throwing pebbles at the house, beaming.

"No!" she yells back. With a wide gesture, she beckons him out. "Come out with me!"

Erich

Erich looks dubiously at the sky, then at her, then at the sky again. "It's really wet out there!"

Melantha

Melantha just puts her hands out to her sides, palms up, elbows in at her waist, giving him a Look, like

duh-DOY.

Erich

"Nngh," it's almost a canine whine. Then Erich scuffs a hand over his hair like somehow that might make it more rain-resistant and comes out until the shade of his porch, where he could have stayed warm and dry and unmuddy. His bare feet squelch in the fresh mud. He looks down at this phenomenon, and then squelches on over to her.

"I swear," he grouses, only he's not really-really grousing, "you just love mud." And, reaching her, he unceremoniously wraps his arms around her. Squeezes. "Hey," he says. "Welcome back."

Melantha

She can't believe he's so hesitant to come out in the rain. It's just rain and mud and things. She laughs as he squelches over, grass sticking to his feet, mud occasionally washing from his toes in puddles and then promptly finding a way back to him again.

"I love Gaia," she says, effortlessly, and she means it, and she's smiling as he comes nearer, as -- despite his grousing -- he puts his arms around her. It thoroughly soaks him, of course, through whatever he's wearing and please let him be wearing more than boxers now, but Melantha wraps her arms around his waist, too, smiling into his chest.

"I love you," she also says, quieter, as she's loosening her arms and drawing back her head to look up at him. "Sometimes I do remember that. I know it's asking a lot to tell you to just... believe that, even when I'm not sure."

Her lips come to his chest, pressing through whatever he's wearing or even just touching his skin over his heart, but even so: she's drawing away, holding out her hand. "Come on. Let's walk."

Erich

Well, he's wearing more than boxers now. He's wearing shorts. And an undershirt, which promptly turns translucent as it soaks through. Still: he wraps his arms around her, welcomes her back, and she wraps her arms around him,

tells him she loves him.

Such sureness. Such quiet certainty. Erich's heart gives a single powerful squeeze, much as his arms do, and then he kisses her damp-wet hair.

"I'll try," he promises, muffled.

His palm covers hers, his fingers wrap around hers. His hand on hers is steady and warm. He follows her, barefoot, letting that warm late-summer rain wash over him. After a while, he doesn't even mind so much anymore. It's not like it's cold or anything.

Melantha

They are soaked in moments. Well: Melantha started off soaked. It isn't cold outside but the temperature has dropped with the rain and the meadow is humid. The sunlight is diffuse through drifting clouds and water-drenched air. The smell of the mud and the evergreens and the grasses and wildflowers is drawn up by the storm, rising around them. This is not too different from the way Melantha grew up: colder there, though, the elevation lower, the sun not so diffident.

She holds him, telling him that she loves him even when she feels so unsure of herself that she can't tell love from dependence or lust from love. His heart beats where she can hear it, and his arms tighten so she can feel it, and Melantha closes her eyes and puts her head on his chest again and breathes in deep, smelling the way he smells when he's covered in rain, which seems to her to be the only way he should ever smell, except when he should smell like the sun is on him, or when the night air is cool and crisp and still.

Melantha breathes out. She opens her eyes and looks up at him, drawing away, their hands coming together. She smiles at him and they go, out where she was walking earlier.

--

There's an outcropping of rock that looks over a bit of valley she wants to show him. She and Charlotte hung out there a while ago, she tells him, working on gourds and watching birds. She shows him a bird's nest she found and, on a whim, they climb up and see that the nest is empty now and there are eggshells, which Melantha cradles in her palms to take back to their Theurge. The rain abates, and the grass sticks to their wet feet and legs as they walk to the lake, rinsing their feet before sitting out on some rocks and letting the sun dry them, which it does in shocking time.

Melantha rinses out the eggshells as carefully as she can while Erich takes off his shirt, wringing the water out of it. Melantha's hair is frizzy as it dries, but she doesn't mind, even if Erich teases her. She doesn't care at all. She laughs: I'm Greek!, which is the truth. Melantha has played Mexican and Spanish and Italian and American but never once did she admit to the men she destroyed who she really was.

She speaks Greek to Erich. Tells him after what she said, as they're walking back towards the tinyhouse in late, late afternoon: I said that I love you, and that this is my home now.

--

Charlotte comes back and is gifted with eggshells. They cook leftovers rather than anyone going for a hunt. Melantha tells Charlotte that she's going to get a job in Evergreen. They talk about winter a bit, perhaps. But eventually the sun is setting and they are building a tiny fire outside and telling stories. Not about themselves. Just stories they've heard. Odd little ones, longer ones, scary ones, ones from childhood where the endings are obvious until the Surprise Twist.

That night, when it is finally time to sleep, Melantha goes into Charlotte's room and kisses her brow and cheek goodnight. She climbs up to Erich's loft with him and lays down with him for a few minutes, just to hold him and be held by him, but she whispers in his ear before their mouths ever drift together that she's going to sleep in her own bed. She doesn't think she can stay there and get any sleep, doesn't think she can stand to have him against her. So she slips out again, climbing down and then up, curling up in her own little alcove.

Where she listens to the other two of them breathing. Shifting around. It comforts her. It puts her to sleep.